Eureka - A Prose Poem (an Essay On The Material And Spiritual Universe) Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A B C D E E F G E H H I H H J K D L M H N H H H J O P H Q R M S T E E E H H U V T W X H G M H Y E E Z A2 X E H B2 C2 H F M D2 H E E2 H M E F2 E E M G| It is with humility really unassumed it is with a sentiment even of awe that I pen the opening sentence of this work for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn the most comprehensive the most difficult the most august | A |
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| What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sublimity sufficiently sublime in their simplicity for the mere enunciation of my theme | B |
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| I design to speak of the Physical Metaphysical and Mathematical of the Material and Spiritual Universe of its Essence its Origin its Creation its Present Condition and its Destiny I shall be so rash moreover as to chAllange the conclusions and thus in effect to question the sagacity of many of the greatest and most justly reverenced of men | C |
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| In the beginning let me as distinctly as possible announce not the theorem which I hope to demonstrate for whatever the mathematicians may assert there is in this world at least no such thing as demonstration but the ruling idea which throughout this volume I shall be continually endeavoring to suggest | D |
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| My general proposition then is this In the Original Unity of the First Thing lies the Secondary Cause of All Things with the Germ of their Inevitable Annihilation | E |
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| In illustration of this idea I propose to take such a survey of the Universe that the mind may be able really to receive and to perceive an individual impression | E |
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| He who from the top of AEtna casts his eyes leisurely around is affected chiefly by the extent and diversity of the scene Only by a rapid whirling on his heel could he hope to comprehend the panorama in the sublimity of its oneness But as on the summit of AEtna no man has thought of whirling on his heel so no man has ever taken into his brain the full uniqueness of the prospect and so again whatever considerations lie involved in this uniqueness have as yet no practical existence for mankind | F |
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| I do not know a treatise in which a survey of the Universe using the word in its most comprehensive and only legitimate acceptation is taken at all and it may be as well here to mention that by the term Universe wherever employed without qualification in this essay I mean to designate the utmost conceivable expanse of space with all things spiritual and material that can he imagined to exist within the compass of that expanse In speaking of what is ordinarily implied by the expression Universe I shall take a phrase of limitation the Universe of stars Why this distinction is considered necessary will be seen in the sequel | G |
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| But even of treatises on the really limited although always assumed as the un limited Universe of stars I know none in which a survey even of this limited Universe is so taken as to warrant deductions from its individuality The nearest approach to such a work is made in the Cosmos of Alexander Von Humboldt He presents the subject however not in its individuality but in its generality His theme in its last result is the law of each portion of the merely physical Universe as this law is related to the laws of every other portion of this merely physical Universe His design is simply synoeretical In a word he discusses the universality of material relation and discloses to the eye of Philosophy whatever inferences have hitherto lain hidden behind this universality But however admirable be the succinctness with which he has treated each particular point of his topic the mere multiplicity of these points occasions necessarily an amount of detail and thus an involution of idea which preclude all individuality of impression | E |
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| It seems to me that in aiming at this latter effect and through it at the consequences the conclusions the suggestions the speculations or if nothing better offer itself the mere guesses which may result from it we require something like a mental gyration on the heel We need so rapid a revolution of all things about the central point of sight that while the minutiae vanish altogether even the more conspicuous objects become blended into one Among the vanishing minutiae in a survey of this kind would be all exclusively terrestrial matters The Earth would be considered in its planetary relations alone A man in this view becomes mankind mankind a member of the cosmical family of Intelligences | H |
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| And now before proceeding to our subject proper let me beg the reader's attention to an extract or two from a somewhat remarkable letter which appears to have been found corked in a bottle and floating on the Mare Tenebrarum an ocean well described by the Nubian geographer Ptolemy Hephestion but little frequented in modern days unless by the Transcendentalists and some other divers for crotchets The date of this letter I confess surprises me even more particularly than its contents for it seems to have been written in the year Two thousand eight hundred and forty eight As for the passages I am about to transcribe they I fancy will speak for themselves | H |
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| Do you know my dear friend says the writer addressing no doubt a contemporary Do you know that it is scarcely more than eight or nine hundred years ago since the metaphysicians first consented to relieve the people of the singular fancy that there exist but two practicable roads to Truth Believe it if you can It appears however that long long ago in the night of Time there lived a Turkish philosopher called Aries and surnamed Tottle Here possibly the letter writer means Aristotle the best names are wretchedly corrupted in two or three thousand years The fame of this great man depended mainly upon his demonstration that sneezing is a natural provision by means of which over profound thinkers are enabled to expel superfluous ideas through the nose but he obtained a scarcely less valuable celebrity as the founder or at all events as the principal propagator of what was termed the de ductive or a priori philosophy He started with what he maintained to be axioms or self evident truths and the now well understood fact that no truths are self evident really does not make in the slightest degree against his speculations it was sufficient for his purpose that the truths in question were evident at all From axioms he proceeded logically to results His most illustrious disciples were one Tuclid a geometrician meaning Euclid and one Kant a Dutchman the originator of that species of Transcendentalism which with the change merely of a C for a K now bears his peculiar name | I |
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| Well Aries Tottle flourished supreme until the advent of one Hog surnamed 'the Ettrick shepherd ' who preached an entirely different system which he called the a posteriori or in ductive His plan referred altogether to sensation He proceeded by observing analyzing and classifying facts instantiae Naturae as they were somewhat affectedly called and arranging them into general laws In a word while the mode of Aries rested on noumena that of Hog depended on phenomena and so great was the admiration excited by this latter system that at its first introduction Aries fell into general disrepute Finally however he recovered ground and was permitted to divide the empire of Philosophy with his more modern rival the savans contenting themselves with proscribing all other competitors past present and to come putting an end to all controversy on the topic by the promulgation of a Median law to the effect that the Aristotelian and Baconian roads are and of right ought to be the sole possible avenues to knowledge 'Baconian ' you must know my dear friend adds the letter writer at this point was an adjective invented as equivalent to Hog ian and at the same time more dignified and euphonious | H |
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| Now I do assure you most positively proceeds the epistle that I represent these matters fairly and you can easily understand how restrictions so absurd on their very face must have operated in those days to retard the progress of true Science which makes its most important advances as all History will show by seemingly intuitive leaps These ancient ideas confined investigation to crawling and I need not suggest to you that crawling among varieties of locomotion is a very capital thing of its kind but because the tortoise is sure of foot for this reason must we clip the wings of the eagles For many centuries so great was the infatuation about Hog especially that a virtual stop was put to all thinking properly so called No man dared utter a truth for which he felt himself indebted to his soul alone It mattered not whether the truth was even demonstrably such for the dogmatizing philosophers of that epoch regarded only the road by which it professed to have been attained The end with them was a point of no moment whatever 'the means ' they vociferated 'let us look at the means ' and if on scrutiny of the means it was found to come neither under the category Hog nor under the category Aries which means ram why then the savans went no farther but calling the thinker a fool and branding him a 'theorist ' would never thenceforward have any thing to do either with him or with his truths | H |
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| Now my dear friend continues the letter writer it cannot be maintained that by the crawling system exclusively adopted men would arrive at the maximum amount of truth even in any long series of ages for the repression of imagination was an evil not to be counterbalanced even by absolute certainty in the snail processes But their certainty was very far from absolute The error of our progenitors was quite analogous with that of the wiseacre who fancies he must necessarily see an object the more distinctly the more closely he holds it to his eyes They blinded themselves too with the impalpable titillating Scotch snuff of detail and thus the boasted facts of the Hog ites were by no means always facts a point of little importance but for the assumption that they always were The vital taint however in Baconianism its most lamentable fount of error lay in its tendency to throw power and consideration into the hands of merely perceptive men of those inter Tritonic minnows the microscopical savans the diggers and pedlers of minute facts for the most part in physical science facts all of which they retailed at the same price upon the highway their value depending it was supposed simply upon the fact of their fact without reference to their applicability or inapplicability in the development of those ultimate and only legitimate facts called Law | J |
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| Than the persons the letter goes on to say than the persons thus suddenly elevated by the Hog ian philosophy into a station for which they were unfitted thus transferred from the sculleries into the parlors of Science from its pantries into its pulpits than these individuals a more intolerant a more intolerable set of bigots and tyrants never existed on the face of the earth Their creed their text and their sermon were alike the one word 'fact' but for the most part even of this one word they knew not even the meaning On those who ventured to disturb their facts with the view of putting them in order and to use the disciples of Hog had no mercy whatever All attempts at generalization were met at once by the words 'theoretical ' 'theory ' 'theorist' all thought to be brief was very properly resented as a personal affront to themselves Cultivating the natural sciences to the exclusion of Metaphysics the Mathematics and Logic many of these Bacon engendered philosophers one idead one sided and lame of a leg were more wretchedly helpless more miserably ignorant in view of all the comprehensible objects of knowledge than the veriest unlettered hind who proves that he knows something at least in admitting that he knows absolutely nothing | K |
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| Nor had our forefathers any better right to talk about certainty when pursuing in blind confidence the a priori path of axioms or of the Ram At innumerable points this path was scarcely as straight as a ram's horn The simple truth is that the Aristotelians erected their castles upon a basis far less reliable than air for no such things as axioms ever existed or can possibly exist at all This they must have been very blind indeed not to see or at least to suspect for even in their own day many of their long admitted 'axioms' had been abandoned 'ex nihilo nihil fit ' for example and a 'thing cannot act where it is not ' and 'there cannot be antipodes ' and 'darkness cannot proceed from light ' These and numerous similar propositions formerly accepted without hesitation as axioms or undeniable truths were even at the period of which I speak seen to be altogether untenable how absurd in these people then to persist in relying upon a basis as immutable whose mutability had become so repeatedly manifest | D |
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| But even through evidence afforded by themselves against themselves it is easy to convict these a priori reasoners of the grossest unreason it is easy to show the futility the impalpability of their axioms in general I have now lying before me it will be observed that we still proceed with the letter I have now lying before me a book printed about a thousand years ago Pundit assures me that it is decidedly the cleverest ancient work on its topic which is 'Logic ' The author who was much esteemed in his day was one Miller or Mill and we find it recorded of him as a point of some importance that he rode a mill horse whom he called Jeremy Bentham but let us glance at the volume itself | L |
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| Ah 'Ability or inability to conceive ' says Mr Mill very properly 'is in no case to be received as a criterion of axiomatic truth ' Now that this is a palpable truism no one in his senses will deny Not to admit the proposition is to insinuate a charge of variability in Truth itself whose very title is a synonym of the Steadfast If ability to conceive be taken as a criterion of Truth then a truth to David Hume would very seldom be a truth to Joe and ninety nine hundredths of what is undeniable in Heaven would be demonstrable falsity upon Earth The proposition of Mr Mill then is sustained I will not grant it to be an axiom and this merely because I am showing that no axioms exist but with a distinction which could not have been cavilled at even by Mr Mill himself I am ready to grant that if an axiom there be then the proposition of which we speak has the fullest right to be considered an axiom that no more absolute axiom is and consequently that any subsequent proposition which shall conflict with this one primarily advanced must be either a falsity in itself that is to say no axiom or if admitted axiomatic must at once neutralize both itself and its predecessor | M |
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| And now by the logic of their own propounder let us proceed to test any one of the axioms propounded Let us give Mr Mill the fairest of play We will bring the point to no ordinary issue We will select for investigation no common place axiom no axiom of what not the less preposterously because only impliedly he terms his secondary class as if a positive truth by definition could be either more or less positively a truth we will select I say no axiom of an unquestionability so questionable as is to be found in Euclid We will not talk for example about such propositions as that two straight lines cannot enclose a space or that the whole is greater than any one of its parts We will afford the logician every advantage We will come at once to a proposition which he regards as the acme of the unquestionable as the quintessence of axiomatic undeniability Here it is 'Contradictions cannot both be true that is cannot coexist in nature ' Here Mr Mill means for instance and I give the most forcible instance conceivable that a tree must be either a tree or not a tree that it cannot be at the same time a tree and not a tree all which is quite reasonable of itself and will answer remarkably well as an axiom until we bring it into collation with an axiom insisted upon a few pages before in other words words which I have previously employed until we test it by the logic of its own propounder 'A tree ' Mr Mill asserts 'must be either a tree or not a tree ' Very well and now let me ask him why To this little query there is but one response I defy any man living to invent a second The sole answer is this 'Because we find it impossible to conceive that a tree can be anything else than a tree or not a tree ' This I repeat is Mr Mill's sole answer he will not pretend to suggest another and yet by his own showing his answer is clearly no answer at all for has he not already required us to admit as an axiom that ability or inability to conceive is in no case to be taken as a criterion of axiomatic truth Thus all absolutely his argumentation is at sea without a rudder Let it not be urged that an exception from the general rule is to be made in cases where the 'impossibility to conceive' is so peculiarly great as when we are called upon to conceive a tree both a tree and not a tree Let no attempt I say be made at urging this sotticism for in the first place there are no degrees of 'impossibility ' and thus no one impossible conception can be more peculiarly impossible than another impossible conception in the second place Mr Mill himself no doubt after thorough deliberation has most distinctly and most rationally excluded all opportunity for exception by the emphasis of his proposition that in no case is ability or inability to conceive to be taken as a criterion of axiomatic truth in the third place even were exceptions admissible at all it remains to be shown how any exception is admissible here That a tree can be both a tree and not a tree is an idea which the angels or the devils may entertain and which no doubt many an earthly Bedlamite or Transcendentalist does | H |
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| Now I do not quarrel with these ancients continues the letter writer so much on account of the transparent frivolity of their logic which to be plain was baseless worthless and fantastic altogether as on account of their pompous and infatuate proscription of all other roads to Truth than the two narrow and crooked paths the one of creeping and the other of crawling to which in their ignorant perversity they have dared to confine the Soul the Soul which loves nothing so well as to soar in those regions of illimitable intuition which are utterly incognizant of 'path ' | - |
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| By the bye my dear friend is it not an evidence of the mental slavery entailed upon those bigoted people by their Hogs and Rams that in spite of the eternal prating of their savans about roads to Truth none of them fell even by accident into what we now so distinctly perceive to be the broadest the straightest and most available of all mere roads the great thoroughfare the majestic highway of the Consistent Is it not wonderful that they should have failed to deduce from the works of God the vitally momentous consideration that a perfect consistency can be nothing but an absolute truth How plain how rapid our progress since the late announcement of this proposition By its means investigation has been taken out of the hands of the ground moles and given as a duty rather than as a task to the true to the only true thinkers to the generally educated men of ardent imagination These latter our Keplers our Laplaces 'speculate' 'theorize' these are the terms can you not fancy the shout of scorn with which they would be received by our progenitors were it possible for them to be looking over my shoulders as I write The Keplers I repeat speculate theorize and their theories are merely corrected reduced sifted cleared little by little of their chaff of inconsistency until at length there stands apparent an unencumbered Consistency a consistency which the most stolid admit because it is a consistency to be an absolute and unquestionable TRuth | N |
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| I have often thought my friend that it must have puzzled these dogmaticians of a thousand years ago to determine even by which of their two boasted roads it is that the cryptographist attains the solution of the more complicated cyphers or by which of them Champollion guided mankind to those important and innumerable truths which for so many centuries have lain entombed amid the phonetical hieroglyphics of Egypt In especial would it not have given these bigots some trouble to determine by which of their two roads was reached the most momentous and sublime of their truths the truth the fact of gravitation Newton deduced it from the laws of Kepler Kepler admitted that these laws he guessed these laws whose investigation disclosed to the greatest of British astronomers that principle the basis of all existing physical principle in going behind which we enter at once the nebulous kingdom of Metaphysics Yes these vital laws Kepler guessed that it is to say he imagined them Had he been asked to point out either the de ductive or in ductive route by which he attained them his reply might have been 'I know nothing about routes but I do know the machinery of the Universe Here it is I grasped it with my soul I reached it through mere dint of intuition ' Alas poor ignorant old man Could not any metaphysician have told him that what he called 'intuition' was but the conviction resulting from de ductions or in ductions of which the processes were so shadowy as to have escaped his consciousness eluded his reason or bidden defiance to his capacity of expression How great a pity it is that some 'moral philosopher' had not enlightened him about all this How it would have comforted him on his death bed to know that instead of having gone intuitively and thus unbecomingly he had in fact proceeded decorously and legitimately that is to say Hog ishly or at least Ram ishly into the vast halls where lay gleaming untended and hitherto untouched by mortal hand unseen by mortal eye the imperishable and priceless secrets of the Universe | H |
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| Yes Kepler was essentially a theorist but this title now of so much sanctity was in those ancient days a designation of supreme contempt It is only now that men begin to appreciate that divine old man to sympathize with the prophetical and poetical rhapsody of his ever memorable words For my part continues the unknown correspondent I glow with a sacred fire when I even think of them and feel that I shall never grow weary of their repetition in concluding this letter let me have the real pleasure of transcribing them once again 'I care not whether my work be read now or by posterity I can afford to wait a century for readers when God himself has waited six thousand years for an observer I triumph I have stolen the golden secret of the Egyptians I will indulge my sacred fury ' | - |
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| Here end my quotations from this very unaccountable and perhaps somewhat impertinent epistle and perhaps it would be folly to comment in any respect upon the chimerical not to say revolutionary fancies of the writer whoever he is fancies so radically at war with the well considered and well settled opinions of this age Let us proceed then to our legitimate thesis The Universe | H |
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| This thesis admits a choice between two modes of discussion We may as cend or des cend Beginning at our own point of view at the Earth on which we stand we may pass to the other planets of our system thence to the Sun thence to our system considered collectively and thence through other systems indefinitely outwards or commencing on high at some point as definite as we can make it or conceive it we may come down to the habitation of Man Usually that is to say in ordinary essays on Astronomy the first of these two modes is with certain reservation adopted this for the obvious reason that astronomical facts merely and principles being the object that object is best fulfilled in stepping from the known because proximate gradually onward to the point where all certitude becomes lost in the remote For my present purpose however that of enabling the mind to take in as if from afar and at one glance a distant conception of the individual Universe it is clear that a descent to small from great to the outskirts from the centre if we could establish a centre to the end from the beginning if we could fancy a beginning would be the preferable course but for the difficulty if not impossibility of presenting in this course to the unastronomical a picture at all comprehensible in regard to such considerations as are involved in quantity that is to say in number magnitude and distance | H |
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| Now distinctness intelligibility at all points is a primary feature in my general design On important topics it is better to be a good deal prolix than even a very little obscure But abstruseness is a quality appertaining to no subject per se All are alike in facility of comprehension to him who approaches them by properly graduated steps It is merely because a stepping stone here and there is heedlessly left unsupplied in our road to the Differential Calculus that this latter is not altogether as simple a thing as a sonnet by Mr Solomon Seesaw | J |
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| By way of admitting then no chance for misapprehension I think it advisable to proceed as if even the more obvious facts of Astronomy were unknown to the reader In combining the two modes of discussion to which I have referred I propose to avail myself of the advantages peculiar to each and very especially of the iteration in detail which will be unavoidable as a consequence of the plan Commencing with a descent I shall reserve for the return upwards those indispensable considerations of quantity to which allusion has already been made | O |
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| Let us begin then at once with that merest of words Infinity This like God spirit and some other expressions of which the equivalents exist in all languages is by no means the expression of an idea but of an effort at one It stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception Man needed a term by which to point out the direction of this effort the cloud behind which lay forever invisible the object of this attempt A word in fine was demanded by means of which one human being might put himself in relation at once with another human being and with a certain tendency of the human intellect Out of this demand arose the word Infinity which is thus the representative but of the thought of a thought | P |
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| As regards that infinity now considered the infinity of space we often hear it said that its idea is admitted by the mind is acquiesced in is entertained on account of the greater difficulty which attends the conception of a limit But this is merely one of those phrases by which even profound thinkers time out of mind have occasionally taken pleasure in deceiving themselves The quibble lies concealed in the word difficulty The mind we are told entertains the idea of limitless through the greater difficulty which it finds in entertaining that of limited space Now were the proposition but fairly put its absurdity would become transparent at once Clearly there is no mere difficulty in the case The assertion intended if presented according to its intention and without sophistry would run thus The mind admits the idea of limitless through the greater impossibility of entertaining that of limited space | H |
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| It must be immediately seen that this is not a question of two statements between whose respective credibilities or of two arguments between whose respective validities the reason is called upon to decide it is a matter of two conceptions directly conflicting and each avowedly impossible one of which the intellect is supposed to be capable of entertaining on account of the greater impossibility of entertaining the other The choice is not made between two difficulties it is merely fancied to be made between two impossibilities Now of the former there are degrees but of the latter none just as our impertinent letter writer has already suggested A task may be more or less difficult but it is either possible or not possible there are no gradations It might be more difficult to overthrow the Andes than an ant hill but it can be no more impossible to annihilate the matter of the one than the matter of the other A man may jump ten feet with less difficulty than he can jump twenty but the impossibility of his leaping to the moon is not a whit less than that of his leaping to the dog star | Q |
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| Since all this is undeniable since the choice of the mind is to be made between impossibilities of conception since one impossibility cannot be greater than another and since thus one cannot be preferred to another the philosophers who not only maintain on the grounds mentioned man's idea of infinity but on account of such supposititious idea infinity itself are plainly engaged in demonstrating one impossible thing to be possible by showing how it is that some one other thing is impossible too This it will be said is nonsense and perhaps it is indeed I think it very capital nonsense but forego all claim to it as nonsense of mine | R |
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| The readiest mode however of displaying the fallacy of the philosophical argument on this question is by simply adverting to a fact respecting it which has been hitherto quite overlooked the fact that the argument alluded to both proves and disproves its own proposition The mind is impelled say the theologians and others to admit a First Cause by the superior difficulty it experiences in conceiving cause beyond cause without end The quibble as before lies in the word difficulty but here what is it employed to sustain A First Cause And what is a First Cause An ultimate termination of causes And what is an ultimate termination of causes Finity the Finite Thus the one quibble in two processes by God knows how many philosophers is made to support now Finity and now Infinity could it not be brought to support something besides As for the quibblers they at least are insupportable But to dismiss them what they prove in the one case is the identical nothing which they demonstrate in the other | M |
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| Of course no one will suppose that I here contend for the absolute impossibility of that which we attempt to convey in the word Infinity My purpose is but to show the folly of endeavoring to prove Infinity itself or even our conception of it by any such blundering ratiocination as that which is ordinarily employed | S |
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| Nevertheless as an individual I may be permitted to say that I cannot conceive Infinity and am convinced that no human being can A mind not thoroughly self conscious not accustomed to the introspective analysis of its own operations will it is true often deceive itself by supposing that it has entertained the conception of which we speak In the effort to entertain it we proceed step beyond step we fancy point still beyond point and so long as we Continue the effort it may be said in fact that we are tending to the formation of the idea designed while the strength of the impression that we actually form or have formed it is in the ratio of the period during which we keep up the mental endeavor But it is in the act of discontinuing the endeavor of fulfilling as we think the idea of putting the finishing stroke as we suppose to the conception that we overthrow at once the whole fabric of our fancy by resting upon some one ultimate and therefore definite point This fact however we fail to perceive on account of the absolute coincidence in time between the settling down upon the ultimate point and the act of cessation in thinking In attempting on the other hand to frame the idea of a limited space we merely converse the processes which involve the impossibility | T |
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| We believe in a God We may or may not believe in finite or in infinite space but our belief in such cases is more properly designated as faith and is a matter quite distinct from that belief proper from that intellectual belief which presupposes the mental conception | E |
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| The fact is that upon the enunciation of any one of that class of terms to which Infinity belongs the class representing thoughts of thought he who has a right to say that he thinks at all feels himself called upon not to entertain a conception but simply to direct his mental vision toward some given point in the intellectual firmament where lies a nebula never to be resolved To solve it indeed he makes no effort for with a rapid instinct he comprehends not only the impossibility but as regards all human purposes the inessentiality of its solution He perceives that the Deity has not designed it to be solved He sees at once that it lies out of the brain of man and even how if not exactly why it lies out of it There are people I am aware who busying themselves in attempts at the unattainable acquire very easily by dint of the jargon they emit among those thinkers that they think with whom darkness and depth are synonymous a kind of cuttle fish reputation for profundity but the finest quality of Thought is its self cognizance and with some little equivocation it may be said that no fog of the mind can well be greater than that which extending to the very boundaries of the mental domain shuts out even these boundaries themselves from comprehension | E |
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| It will now be understood that in using the phrase Infinity of Space I make no call upon the reader to entertain the impossible conception of an absolute infinity I refer simply to the utmost conceivable expanse of space a shadowy and fluctuating domain now shrinking now swelling in accordance with the vacillating energies of the imagination | E |
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| Hitherto the Universe of stars has always been considered as coincident with the Universe proper as I have defined it in the commencement of this Discourse It has been always either directly or indirectly assumed at least since the dawn of intelligible Astronomy that were it possible for us to attain any given point in space we should still find on all sides of us an interminable succession of stars This was the untenable idea of Pascal when making perhaps the most successful attempt ever made at periphrasing the conception for which we struggle in the word Universe It is a sphere he says of which the centre is everywhere the circumference nowhere But although this intended definition is in fact no definition of the Universe of stars we may accept it with some mental reservation as a definition rigorous enough for all practical purposes of the Universe proper that is to say of the Universe of space This latter then let us regard as a sphere of which the centre is everywhere the circumference nowhere In fact while we find it impossible to fancy an end to space we have no difficulty in picturing to ourselves any one of an infinity of beginnings | H |
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| As our starting point then let us adopt the Godhead Of this Godhead in itself he alone is not imbecile he alone is not impious who propounds nothing Nous ne connaissons rien says the Baron de Bielfeld Nous ne connaissons rien de la nature ou de l'essence de Dieu pour savoir ce qu'il est il faut etre Dieu meme We know absolutely nothing of the nature or essence of God in order to comprehend what he is we should have to be God ourselves | H |
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| We should have to be God ourselves With a phrase so startling as this yet ringing in my ears I nevertheless venture to demand if this our present ignorance of the Deity is an ignorance to which the soul is everlastingly condemned | U |
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| By Him however now at least the Incomprehensible by Him assuming him as Spirit that is to say as not Matter a distinction which for all intelligible purposes will stand well instead of a definition by Him then existing as Spirit let us content ourselves to night with supposing to have been created or made out of Nothing by dint of his Volition at some point of Space which we will take as a centre at some period into which we do not pretend to inquire but at all events immensely remote by Him then again let us suppose to have been created what This is a vitally momentous epoch in our considerations What is it that we are justified that alone we are justified in supposing to have been primarily and solely created | V |
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| We have attained a point where only Intuition can aid us but now let me recur to the idea which I have already suggested as that alone which we can properly entertain of intuition It is but the conviction arising from those inductions or deductions of which the processes are so shadowy as to escape our consciousness elude our reason or defy our capacity of expression With this understanding I now assert that an intuition altogether irresistible although inexpressible forces me to the conclusion that what God originally created that that Matter which by dint of his Volition he first made from his Spirit or from Nihility Could have been nothing but Matter in its utmost conceivable state of what of Simplicity | T |
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| This will be found the sole absolute assumption of my Discourse I use the word assumption in its ordinary sense yet I maintain that even this my primary proposition is very very far indeed from being really a mere assumption Nothing was ever more certainly no human conclusion was ever in fact more regularly more rigorously de duced but alas the processes lie out of the human analysis at all events are beyond the utterance of the human tongue | W |
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| Let us now endeavor to conceive what Matter must be when or if in its absolute extreme of Simplicity Here the Reason flies at once to Imparticularity to a particle to one particle a particle of one kind of one character of one nature of one size of one form a particle therefore without form and void a particle positively a particle at all points a particle absolutely unique individual undivided and not indivisible only because He who created it by dint of his Will can by an infinitely less energetic exercise of the same Will as a matter of course divide it | X |
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| Oneness then is all that I predicate of the originally created Matter but I propose to show that this Oneness is a principle abundantly sufficient to account for the constitution the existing phaenomena and the plainly inevitable annihilation of at least the material Universe | H |
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| The willing into being the primordial particle has completed the act or more properly the Conception of Creation We now proceed to the ultimate purpose for which we are to suppose the Particle created that is to say the ultimate purpose so far as our considerations yet enable us to see it the constitution of the Universe from it the Particle | G |
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| This constitution has been effected by forcing the originally and therefore normally One into the abnormal condition of Many An action of this character implies reaction A diffusion from Unity under the conditions involves a tendency to return into Unity a tendency ineradicable until satisfied But on these points I will speak more fully hereafter | M |
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| The assumption of absolute Unity in the primordial Particle includes that of infinite divisibility Let us conceive the Particle then to be only not totally exhausted by diffusion into Space From the one Particle as a centre let us suppose to be irradiated spherically in all directions to immeasurable but still to definite distances in the previously vacant space a certain inexpressibly great yet limited number of unimaginably yet not infinitely minute atoms | H |
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| Now of these atoms thus diffused or upon diffusion what conditions are we permitted not to assume but to infer from consideration as well of their source as of the character of the design apparent in their diffusion Unity being their source and difference from Unity the character of the design manifested in their diffusion we are warranted in supposing this character to be at least generally preserved throughout the design and to form a portion of the design itself that is to say we shall be warranted in conceiving continual differences at all points from the uniquity and simplicity of the origin But for these reasons shall we be justified in imagining the atoms heterogeneous dissimilar unequal and inequidistant More explicitly are we to consider no two atoms as at their diffusion of the same nature or of the same form or of the same size and after fulfilment of their diffusion into Space is absolute inequidistance each from each to be understood of all of them In such arrangement under such conditions we most easily and immediately comprehend the subsequent most feasible carrying out to completion of any such design as that which I have suggested the design of variety out of unity diversity out of sameness heterogeneity out of homogeneity complexity out of simplicity in a word the utmost possible multiplicity of relation out of the emphatically irrelative One Undoubtedly therefore we should be warranted in assuming all that has been mentioned but for the reflection first that supererogation is not presumable of any Divine Act and secondly that the object supposed in view appears as feasible when some of the conditions in question are dispensed with in the beginning as when all are understood immediately to exist I mean to say that some are involved in the rest or so instantaneous a consequence of them as to make the distinction inappreciable Difference of size for example will at once be brought about through the tendency of one atom to a second in preference to a third on account of particular inequidistance which is to be comprehended as particular inequidistances between centres of quantity in neighboring atoms of different form a matter not at all interfering with the generally equable distribution of the atoms Difference of kind too is easily conceived to be merely a result of differences in size and form taken more or less conjointly in fact since the Unity of the Particle Proper implies absolute homogeneity we cannot imagine the atoms at their diffusion differing in kind without imagining at the same time a special exercise of the Divine Will at the emission of each atom for the purpose of effecting in each a change of its essential nature so fantastic an idea is the less to be indulged as the object proposed is seen to be thoroughly attainable without such minute and elaborate interposition We perceive therefore upon the whole that it would be supererogatory and consequently unphilosophical to predicate of the atoms in view of their purposes any thing more than difference of form at their dispersion with particular inequidistance after it all other differences arising at once out of these in the very first processes of mass constitution We thus establish the Universe on a purely geometrical basis Of course it is by no means necessary to assume absolute difference even of form among the atoms irradiated any more than absolute particular inequidistance of each from each We are required to conceive merely that no neighboring atoms are of similar form no atoms which can ever approximate until their inevitable reunition at the end | Y |
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| Although the immediate and perpetual tendency of the disunited atoms to return into their normal Unity is implied as I have said in their abnormal diffusion still it is clear that this tendency will be without consequence a tendency and no more until the diffusive energy in ceasing to be exerted shall leave it the tendency free to seek its satisfaction The Divine Act however being considered as determinate and discontinued on fulfilment of the diffusion we understand at once a reaction in other words a satisfiable tendency of the disunited atoms to return into One | E |
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| But the diffusive energy being withdrawn and the reaction having commenced in furtherance of the ultimate design that of the utmost possible Relation this design is now in danger of being frustrated in detail by reason of that very tendency to return which is to effect its accomplishment in general Multiplicity is the object but there is nothing to prevent proximate atoms from lapsing at once through the now satisfiable tendency before the fulfilment of any ends proposed in multiplicity into absolute oneness among themselves there is nothing to impede the aggregation of various unique masses at various points of space in other words nothing to interfere with the accumulation of various masses each absolutely One | E |
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| For the effectual and thorough completion of the general design we thus see the necessity for a repulsion of limited capacity a separate something which on withdrawal of the diffusive Volition shall at the same time allow the approach and forbid the junction of the atoms suffering them infinitely to approximate while denying them positive contact in a word having the power up to a certain epoch of preventing their Coalition but no ability to interfere with their Coalescence in any respect or degree The repulsion already considered as so peculiarly limited in other regards must be understood let me repeat as having power to prevent absolute coalition only up to a certain epoch Unless we are to conceive that the appetite for Unity among the atoms is doomed to be satisfied never unless we are to conceive that what had a beginning is to have no end a conception which cannot really be entertained however much we may talk or dream of entertaining it we are forced to conclude that the repulsive influence imagined will finally under pressure of the Uni tendency collectively applied but never and in no degree until on fulfilment of the Divine purposes such collective application shall be naturally made yield to a force which at that ultimate epoch shall be the superior force precisely to the extent required and thus permit the universal subsidence into the inevitable because original and therefore normal One The conditions here to be reconciled are difficult indeed we cannot even comprehend the possibility of their conciliation nevertheless the apparent impossibility is brilliantly suggestive | Z |
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| That the repulsive something actually exists we see Man neither employs nor knows a force sufficient to bring two atoms into contact This is but the well established proposition of the impenetrability of matter All Experiment proves all Philosophy admits it The design of the repulsion the necessity for its existence I have endeavored to show but from all attempt at investigating its nature have religiously abstained this on account of an intuitive conviction that the principle at issue is strictly spiritual lies in a recess impervious to our present understanding lies involved in a consideration of what now in our human state is not to be considered in a consideration of Spirit in itself I feel in a word that here the God has interposed and here only because here and here only the knot demanded the interposition of the God | A2 |
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| In fact while the tendency of the diffused atoms to return into Unity will be recognized at once as the principle of the Newtonian Gravity what I have spoken of as a repulsive influence prescribing limits to the immediate satisfaction of the tendency will be understood as that which we have been in the practice of designating now as heat now as magnetism now as electricity displaying our ignorance of its awful character in the vacillation of the phraseology with which we endeavor to circumscribe it | X |
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| Calling it merely for the moment electricity we know that all experimental analysis of electricity has given as an ultimate result the principle or seeming principle heterogeneity Only where things differ is electricity apparent and it is presumable that they never differ where it is not developed at least if not apparent Now this result is in the fullest keeping with that which I have reached unempirically The design of the repulsive influence I have maintained to be that of preventing immediate Unity among the diffused atoms and these atoms are represented as different each from each Difference is their character their essentiality just as no difference was the essentiality of their course When we say then that an attempt to bring any two of these atoms together would induce an effort on the part of the repulsive influence to prevent the contact we may as well use the strictly convertible sentence that an attempt to bring together any two differences will result in a development of electricity All existing bodies of course are composed of these atoms in proximate contact and are therefore to be considered as mere assemblages of more or fewer differences and the resistance made by the repulsive spirit on bringing together any two such assemblages would be in the ratio of the two sums of the differences in each an expression which when reduced is equivalent to this The amount of electricity developed on the approximation of two bodies is proportional to the difference between the respective sums of the atoms of which the bodies are composed That no two bodies are absolutely alike is a simple corollary from all that has been here said Electricity therefore existing always is developed whenever any bodies but manifested only when bodies of appreciable difference are brought into approximation | E |
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| To electricity so for the present continuing to call it we may not be wrong in referring the various physical appearances of light heat and magnetism but far less shall we be liable to err in attributing to this strictly spiritual principle the more important phaenomena of vitality consciousness and Thought On this topic however I need pause here merely to suggest that these phaenomena whether observed generally or in detail seem to proceed at least in the ratio of the heterogeneous | H |
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| Discarding now the two equivocal terms gravitation and electricity let us adopt the more definite expressions attraction and repulsion The former is the body the latter the soul the one is the material the other the spiritual principle of the Universe No other principles exist All phaenomena are referable to one or to the other or to both combined So rigorously is this the case so thoroughly demonstrable is it that attraction and repulsion are the sole properties through which we perceive the Universe in other words by which Matter is manifested to Mind that for all merely argumentative purposes we are fully justified in assuming that matter exists only as attraction and repulsion that attraction and repulsion are matter there being no conceivable case in which we may not employ the term matter and the terms attraction and repulsion taken together as equivalent and therefore convertible expressions in Logic | B2 |
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| I said just now that what I have described as the tendency of the diffused atoms to return into their original unity would be understood as the principle of the Newtonian law of gravity and in fact there can be but little difficulty in such an understanding if we look at the Newtonian gravity in a merely general view as a force impelling matter to seek matter that is to say when we pay no attention to the known modus operandi of the Newtonian force The general coincidence satisfies us but upon looking closely we see in detail much that appears in coincident and much in regard to which no coincidence at least is established For example the Newtonian gravity when we think of it in certain moods does not seem to be a tendency to oneness at all but rather a tendency of all bodies in all directions a phrase apparently expressive of a tendency to diffusion Here then is an in coincidence Again when we reflect on the mathematical LA governing the Newtonian tendency we see clearly that no coincidence has been made good in respect of the modus operandi at least between gravitation as known to exist and that seemingly simple and direct tendency which I have assumed | C2 |
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| In fact I have attained a point at which it will be advisable to strengthen my position by reversing my processes So far we have gone on a priori from an abstract consideration of Simplicity as that quality most likely to have characterized the original action of God Let us now see whether the established facts of the Newtonian Gravitation may not afford us a posteriori some legitimate inductions | H |
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| What does the Newtonian law declare That all bodies attract each other with forces proportional to their quantities of matter and inversely proportional to the squares of their distances Purposely I have here given in the first place the vulgar version of the law and I confess that in this as in most other vulgar versions of great truths we find little of a suggestive character Let us now adopt a more philosophical phraseology Every atom of every body attracts every other atom both of its own and of every other body with a force which varies inversely as the squares of the distances between the attracting and attracted atom Here indeed a flood of suggestion bursts upon the mind | F |
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| But let us see distinctly what it was that Newton proved according to the grossly irrational definitions of proof prescribed by the metaphysical schools He was forced to content himself with showing how thoroughly the motions of an imaginary Universe composed of attracting and attracted atoms obedient to the law he announced coincide with those of the actually existing Universe so far as it comes under our observation This was the amount of his demonstration that is to say this was the amount of it according to the conventional cant of the philosophies His successes added proof multiplied by proof such proof as a sound intellect admits but the demonstration of the law itself persist the metaphysicians had not been strengthened in any degree Ocular physical proof however of attraction here upon Earth in accordance with the Newtonian theory was at length much to the satisfaction of some intellectual grovellers afforded This proof arose collaterally and incidentally as nearly all important truths have arisen out of an attempt to ascertain the mean density of the Earth In the famous Maskelyne Cavendish and Bailly experiments for this purpose the attraction of the mass of a mountain was seen felt measured and found to be mathematically consistent with the immortal theory of the British astronomer | M |
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| But in spite of this confirmation of that which needed none in spite of the so called corroboration of the theory by the so called ocular and physical proof in spite of the character of this corroboration the ideas which even really philosophical men cannot help imbibing of gravity and especially the ideas of it which ordinary men get and contentedly maintain are seen to have been derived for the most part from a consideration of the principle as they find it developed merely in the planet upon which they stand | D2 |
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| Now to what does so partial a consideration tend to what species of error does it give rise On the Earth we see and feel only that gravity impels all bodies towards the centre of the Earth No man in the common walks of life could be made to see or feel anything else could be made to perceive that anything anywhere has a perpetual gravitating tendency in any other direction than to the centre of the Earth yet with an exception hereafter to be specified it is a fact that every earthly thing not to speak now of every heavenly thing has a tendency not only to the Earth's centre but in every conceivable direction besides | H |
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| Now although the philosophic cannot be said to err with the vulgar in this matter they nevertheless permit themselves to be influenced without knowing it by the sentiment of the vulgar idea Although the Pagan fables are not believed says Bryant in his very erudite Mythology yet we forget ourselves continually and make inferences from them as from existing realities I mean to assert that the merely sensitive perception of gravity as we experience it on Earth beguiles mankind into the fancy of Concentralization or especiality respecting it has been continually biasing towards this fancy even the mightiest intellects perpetually although imperceptibly leading them away from the real characteristics of the principle thus preventing them up to this date from ever getting a glimpse of that vital truth which lies in a diametrically opposite direction behind the principle's essential characteristics those not of concentralization or especiality but of universality and diffusion This vital truth is Unity as the source of the phaenomenon | E |
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| Let me now repeat the definition of gravity Every atom of every body attracts every other atom both of its own and of every other body with a force which varies inversely as the squares of the distances of the attracting and attracted atom | E2 |
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| Here let the reader pause with me for a moment in contemplation of the miraculous of the ineffable of the altogether unimaginable complexity of relation involved in the fact that each atom attracts every other atom involved merely in this fact of the attraction without reference to the law or mode in which the attraction is manifested involved merely in the fact that each atom attracts every other atom at all in a wilderness of atoms so numerous that those which go to the composition of a cannon ball exceed probably in mere point of number all the stars which go to the constitution of the Universe | H |
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| Had we discovered simply that each atom tended to some one favorite point to some especially attractive atom we should still have fAllan upon a discovery which in itself would have sufficed to overwhelm the mind but what is it that we are actually called upon to comprehend That each atom attracts sympathizes with the most delicate movements of every other atom and with each and with all at the same time and forever and according to a determinate law of which the complexity even considered by itself solely is utterly beyond the grasp of the imagination of man If I propose to ascertain the influence of one mote in a sunbeam upon its neighboring mote I cannot accomplish my purpose without first counting and weighing all the atoms in the Universe and defining the precise positions of all at one particular moment If I venture to displace by even the billionth part of an inch the microscopical speck of dust which lies now upon the point of my finger what is the character of that act upon which I have adventured I have done a deed which shakes the Moon in her path which causes the Sun to be no longer the Sun and which alters forever the destiny of the multitudinous myriads of stars that roll and glow in the majestic presence of their Creator | M |
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| These ideas conceptions such as these unthought like thoughts soul reveries rather than conclusions or even considerations of the intellect ideas I repeat such as these are such as we can alone hope profitably to entertain in any effort at grasping the great principle Attraction | E |
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| But now with such ideas with such a vision of the marvellous complexity of Attraction fairly in his mind let any person competent of thought on such topics as these set himself to the task of imagining a principle for the phaenomena observed a condition from which they sprang | F2 |
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| Does not so evident a brotherhood among the atoms point to a common parentage Does not a sympathy so omniprevalent so ineradicable and so thoroughly irrespective suggest a common paternity as its source Does not one extreme impel the reason to the other Does not the infinitude of division refer to the utterness of individuality Does not the entireness of the complex hint at the perfection of the simple It is not that the atoms as we see them are divided or that they are complex in their relations but that they are inconceivably divided and unutterably complex it is the extremeness of the conditions to which I now allude rather than to the conditions themselves In a word not because the atoms were at some remote epoch of time even more than together is it not because originally and therefore normally they were One that now in all circumstances at all points in all directions by all modes of approach in all relations and through all conditions they struggle back to this absolutely this irrelatively this unconditionally one | E |
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| Some person may here demand Why since it is to the One that the atoms struggle back do we not find and define Attraction 'a merely general tendency to a centre ' why in especial do not your atoms the atoms which you describe as having been irradiated from a centre proceed at once rectilinearly back to the central point of their origin | E |
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| I reply that they do as will be distinctly shown but that the cause of their so doing is quite irrespective of the centre as such They all tend rectilinearly towards a centre because of the sphereicity with which they have been irradiated into space Each atom forming one of a generally uniform globe of atoms finds more atoms in the direction of the centre of course than in any other and in that direction therefore is impelled but is not thus impelled because the centre is the point of its origin It is not to any point that the atoms are allied It is not any locality either in the concrete or in the abstract to which I suppose them bound Nothing like location was conceived as their origin Their source lies in the principle Unity This is their lost parent This they seek always immediately in all directions wherever it is even partially to be found thus appeasing in some measure the ineradicable tendency while on the way to its absolute satisfaction in the end It follows from all this that any principle which shall be adequate to account for the LA or modus operandi of the attractive force in general will account for this law in particular that is to say any principle which will show why the atoms should tend to their general centre of irradiation with forces inversely proportional to the squares of the distances will be admitted as satisfactorily accounting at the same time for the tendency according to the same law of these atoms each to each for the tendency to the centre is merely the tendency each to each and not any tendency to a centre as such Thus it will be seen also that the establishment of my propositions would involve no necessity of modification in the terms of the Newtonian definition of Gravity which declares that each atom attracts each other atom and so forth and declares this merely but always under the supposition that what I propose be in the end admitted it seems clear that some error might occasionally be avoided in the future processes of Science were a more ample phraseology adopted for instance Each atom tends to every other atom c with a force c the general result being a tendency of all with a similar force to a general centre | M |
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| The reversal of our processes has thus brought us to an identical result but while in the one process intuition was the starting point in the other it was the goal In commencing the former journey I could only say that with an irresistable intuition I felt Simplicity to have been the characteristic of the original action of God in ending the latter I can only declare that with an irresistible intuition I perceive Unity to have been the source of the observed phaenomena of the Newtonian gravitation Thus according to the schools I prove nothing So be it I design but to suggest and to Convince through the suggestion I am proudly aware that there exist many of the most profound and cautiously discriminative human intellects which cannot help being abundantly content with my suggestions To these intellects as to my own there is no mathematical demonstration which Could bring the least additional TRue proof of the great TRuth which I have advanced the truth of Original Unity as the source as the principle of the Universal Phaenomena For my part I am not sure that I speak and see I am not so sure that my heart beats and that my soul lives of the rising of to morrow's sun a probability that as yet lies in the Future I do not pretend to be one thousandth part as sure as I am of the irretrievably by gone Fact that All Things and All Thoughts of Things with all their ineffable Multiplicity of Relation sprang at once into being from the primordial and irrel | G |
Edgar Allan Poe
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