From: utzoo!decvax!duke!harpo!uwvax!doug Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Creation - SPOILER WARNING Article-I.D.: uwvax.539 Posted: Sat Aug 7 21:51:45 1982 Received: Sun Aug 8 02:36:51 1982 >From CREATION by Gore Vidal: (Cyrus Spitama is the writer's uncle - an ambassador from Persia to Greece about 2500 years ago and also the grandson of Zoroaster.) "...I have been able in the course of a long life to work out the causes not only of all celestial phenomena but of creation itself. The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely human thought. Worlds such as this one are unlimited in number. They come into being, and perish. But nothing can come into being from that which is not, or pass away into what is not. Further, the essential atoms are without limit in size and number and they make of the universe a vortex in which all composite things are generated - fire, water, air, earth. The cause of the coming into being of all things is the ceaseless whirl, which I call necessity; and everything happens according to necessity. Thus creation is constantly created and re-created. As Cyrus Spitama was beginning to suspect, if not believe, there is neither a beginning nor an end to a creation which exists in a state of flux in a time that is truly infinite. Although I have nowhere observed the slightest trace of Zoroaster's Wise Lord, he might well be a concept which can be translated into that circle which stands for the cosmos, for the primal unity, for creation."