Whatever men could doubt or deny they have
doubted or denied, but in no country of the world, in no age, has the
dogma--there is something, been denied or even treated as doubtful. Here
then Atheists, Theists, and Polytheists agree. They agree of necessity.
There is no escape from the conclusion that something is, except we
adopt the unintelligible dogma there is nothing, which no human being
can, as nothing amounts to nothing and of what amounts to nothing no one
can have an idea. To define the word something by any other word, would
be labour in vain. There is no other word in any language whose meaning
is better understood, and they who do not under stand what it means, if
such persons there be, are not likely to understand the meaning of any
word or words whatever. Ideas of nothing none have. That there is
something, we repeat, must be true; all dogmas or propositions being
necessarily true whose denial involves an impossibility. What the nature
of that something may be is a secondary question, and however determined
cannot affect the primary dogma--things are things whatever may be their
individual or their aggregate nature.
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