XIII.

While Mrs. Lewis and I were chatting in one corner on interests specially feminine, the Dominie had got Mr. Remington into a metaphysical discussion of some length.  From time to time we heard, “Pascal’s idea seems to be,” and then, “The notion of Descartes and all that school of thinkers”; and feeling that they were plunging quite beyond our depth, we continued babbling of dry goods, and what was becoming, till Mr. Remington leaned back laughing to us, and said,—­

“What do you think, ladies? or are you of the opinion of somebody who said of metaphysics, ’Whoever troubles himself to skin a flint should have the skin for his pains’?”

“But that is a most unfair comparison!” said the minister, eagerly, “and what I will by no means allow.  By so much more as the mind is better than the body, nay, because the mind is all that is worth anything about a man, metaphysics is the noblest science, and most worthy”—­

“I give in!  I am down!” said Remington.

“But what are you disputing about?” said I.

“Oh, only Infinity!” said Remington.  “But then you know metaphysics does not hesitate at anything.  I say, it is impossible for the mind to go back to a first cause, and if the mind of a man cannot conceive an idea, why of course that idea can never be true to him.  I can think of no cause that may not be an effect.”

“Nor of infinite space, nor of infinite time?” said the minister.

“No,—­of nothing that cannot be divided, and nothing that cannot be extended.”

“Very good.  Perhaps you can’t.  I suppose we cannot comprehend infinity, because we are essentially finite ourselves.  But it by no means follows that we cannot apprehend and believe in attributes which we are unable to comprehend.  We can certainly do that.”

“No.  After you reach your limit of comprehension, you may say, all beyond that is infinite,—­but you only push the object of your thought out of view.  After you have reiterated the years till you are tired, you say, beyond that is infinite.  You only mean that you are tired of computing and adding.”

“Then you cannot believe in an Infinite Creator?” said the minister.

“I can believe in nothing that is not founded on reason.  I should be very glad to believe in an Infinite Creator, only it is entirely impossible, you see, for the mind to conceive of a being who is not himself created.”

“Yet you can believe in a world that is not created?” said the minister.  “You can believe that a world full of adaptations, full of signs of intelligence and design, could be uncreated.  How do you make that out?”

“There remains no greater difficulty to me,” said Remington, “in believing in an uncreated world than you have in believing in an uncreated God.  Why is it stranger that Chaos should produce harmony than that Nothing should produce God?”