Eureka: A Prose Poem — Edgar A. Poe, 1848 — reading text

EUREKA: PROSE POEM BY EDGAR A. POE NEW-YORK: GEO. P. PU TN AM, OF LATE FIRM OF "WILEY & PUTNAM 155 BROADWAY. MDCCCXLVni. ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, BY EDGAR A. POE, la the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New- York. 1. H; AVITT, TROW & Cc Prs , 33 Ann-street. WITH VERY PROFOUND RESPECT, &&is iSJEJorlt fs ZJeTJicatelJ TO ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. PREFACE. To the few who love me and whom I love — to those who feel rather than to those who think — to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities — I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth- Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth ; con stituting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone : — let us say as a Romance ; or, if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem. What I here propound is true: — therefore it cannot die : — or if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will " rise again to the Life Everlasting." Nevertheless it is as a Poem only that I wish this work to be judged after I am dead. E. A. P. EUREKA: AN ESSAY ON THE MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE. IT is with humility really unassumed — it is with a senti ment 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. What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sub limity — sufficiently sublime in their simplicity — for the mere enunciation of my theme ? 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 Condi tion and its Destiny. I shall be so rash, moreover, as to challenge the conclusions, and thus, in effect, to question the sagacity, of many of the greatest and most justly rever enced of men. EUREKA. In the beginning, let me as distinctly as possible announce — not the theorem which I hope to demonstrate — for, what ever 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. 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. In illustration of this idea, I propose to take such a sur vey of the Universe that the mind may be able really to receive and to perceive an individual impression. He who from the top of ^Etna 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 ^Etna, 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. I do not know a treatise in which a survey of the Uni verse — 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 de signate the utmost conceivable expanse of space, with all things, spiritual and material, that can be imagined to exist within the compass of that expanse. In speaking of what is^ ordinarily implied by the expression, " Universe," I shall THE UNIVERSE. take a phrase of limitation — " the Universe of stars." Why this distinction is considered necessary, will be seen in the sequel. But even of treatises on the really limited, although always assumed as the unlimited, 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 " Cos mos" of Alexander Von Humboldt. He presents the sub ject, 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 occa sions, necessarily, an amount of detail, and thus an involu tion of idea, which preclude all individuality of impres sion. It seems to me that, in aiming at this latter effect, and, through it, at the consequences — the conclusions — the sug gestions — 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 1* 10 EUREKA. 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 con sidered in its planetary relations alone. A man, in this view, becomes mankind ; mankind a member of the cosmi- cal family of Intelligences. 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 Tenebra- rum — 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 trans cribe, they, I fancy, will speak for themselves. " Do you know, my dear friend," says the writer, ad dressing, 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, pos sibly, 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 demon stration that sneezing is a natural provision, by means of THE UNIVERSE. 11 which over-profound thinkers are enabled to expel superflu ous 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 Reductive or a priori philosophy. He started with what he maintained to be axioms, or self-evident truths : — and the now well un derstood fact that no truths are se/f-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 Dutch man, the originator of that species of Transcendentalism which, with the change r»erely of a C for a K, now bears his peculiar name. " Well, Aries TottJe flourished supreme, until the advent of one Hog, surna^ied ' the Ettrick shepherd/ who preached an entirely different system, which he called the a posteriori or inductive. His plan referred altogether to sensation. He proceeded by observing, analyzing, and classifying facts — iastanticB Natures, 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 competi tors, past, present, and to come ; putting an end to all con- 12 EUREKA. troversy 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 know ledge : — ' 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 digni fied and euphonious. " 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 pro gress of true Science, which makes its most important advances — as all History wi\l show — by seemingly intuitive leaps. These ancient ideas confined investigation to crawl ing ; 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 maivy centuries, so great was the infatuation, about Hog especially, that a vir tual stop was put to all thinking, properly so calit/i. 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,