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

body gravitates to- * I am prepared to show that the anomalous revolution of the satellites of Uranus is a simply perspective anomaly arising from the inclination of the axis of the planet. THE UNIVERSE. 79 ward its parent, is neither greater nor less than that by which it was discarded; that is, than the centrifugal, or, far more properly, than the tangential, velocity. From the unity, however, of the origin of these two forces, we might have expected to find them as they are found — the one accurately counterbalancing the other. It has been shown, indeed, that the act of whirling-off is, in every case, merely an act for the preservation of the counterbalance. After referring, however, the centripetal force to the omniprevalent law of Gravity, it has been the fashion with astronomical treatises, to seek beyond the limits of mere Nature — that is to say, of Secondary Cause — a solution of the phenomenon of tangential velocity. This latter they attribute directly to a First Cause — to God. The force which carries a stellar body around its primary they assert to have originated in an impulse given immediately by the finger — this is the childish phraseology employed — by the finger of Deity itself. In this view, the planets, fully formed, are conceived to have been hurled from the Divine hand, to a position in the vicinity of the suns, with an impetus mathematically adapted to the masses, or attractive capaci ties, of the suns themselves. An idea so grossly unphiloso- phical, although so supinely adopted, could have arisen only from the difficulty of otherwise accounting for the absolutely accurate adaptation, each to each, of two forces so seemingly independent, one of the other, as are the gra vitating and tangential. But it should be remembered that, for a long time, the coincidence between the moon's rota tion and her sidereal revolution — two matters seemingly far more independent than those now considered — was 80 E U R E K A . looked upon as positively miraculous ; and there was a strong disposition, even among astronomers, to attribute the marvel to the direct and continual agency of God — who, in this case, it was said, had found it necessary to in terpose, specially, among his general laws, a set of subsidiary regulations, for the purpose of forever concealing from mor tal eyes the glories, or perhaps the horrors, of the other side of the Moon — of that mysterious hemisphere which has al ways avoided, and must perpetually avoid, the telescopic scrutiny of mankind. The advance of Science, however, soon demonstrated — what to the philosophical instinct needed no demonstration — that the one movement is but a portion — something more, even, than a consequence— of the other. For my part, I have no patience with fantasies at once so timorous, so idle, and so awkward. They belong to the veriest cowardice of thought. That Nature and the God of Nature are distinct, no thinking being can long doubt. By the former we imply merely the laws of the latter. But with the very idea of God, omnipotent, omni scient, we entertain, also, the idea of the infallibility of his laws. With Him there being neither Past nor Future — with Him all being Now — do we not insult him in suppos ing his laws so contrived as not to provide for every possible contingency ? — or, rather, what idea can we have of any possible contingency, except that it is at once a result and a manifestation of his laws ? He who, divesting himself of prejudice, shall have the rare courage to think absolutely for himself, cannot fail to arrive, in the end, at the conden sation of laws into Law — cannot fail of reaching the con- THE UNIVERSE. 81 elusion that each law of Nature is dependent at all points upon all other laws, and that all are but consequences of one primary exercise of the Divine Volition. Such is the principle of the Cosmogony which, with all necessary defe rence, I here venture to suggest and to maintain. In this view, it will be seen that, dismissing as frivolous, and even impious, the fancy of the tangential force having been imparted to the planets immediately by " the finger of God," I consider this force as originating in the rotation of the stars : — this rotation as brought about by the in-rushing of the primary atoms, towards their respective centres of aggregation : — this in-rushing as the consequence of the law of Gravity :-r-this law as but the mode in which is neces sarily manifested the tendency of the atoms to return into imparticularity : — this tendency to return as but the inevi table reaction of the first and most sublime of Acts — that act by which a God, self- existing and alone existing, be came all things at once, through dint of his volition, while all things were thus constituted a portion of God. The radical assumptions of this Discourse suggest to me, and in fact imply, certain important modifications of the Nebular Theory as given by Laplace. The efforts of the repulsive power I have considered as made for the pur pose of preventing contact among the atoms, and thus as made in the ratio of the approach to contact — that is to say, in the ratio of condensation.* In other words, Electri city, with its involute phenomena, heat, light and magnet ism, is to be understood as proceeding as condensation proceeds, and, of course, inversely as density proceeds, * See page 70. 4* 82 EUREKA. or the cessation to condense. Thus the Sun, in the process of its aggregation, must soon, in developing repulsion, have become excessively heated — perhaps incandescent : and we can perceive how the operation of discarding its rings must have been materially assisted by the slight incrustation of its surface consequent on cooling. Any common experi ment shows us how readily a crust of the character sug gested, is separated, through heterogeneity, from the inte rior mass. But, on every successive rejection of the crust, the new surface would appear incandescent as before ; and the period at which it would again become so far encrusted as to be readily loosened and discharged, may well be ima gined as exactly coincident with that at which a new effort would be needed, by the whole mass, to restore the equili brium of its two forces, disarranged through condensation. In other words : — by the time the electric influence (Re pulsion) has prepared the surface for rejection, we are to understand that the gravitating influence (Attraction) is precisely ready to reject it. Here, then, as everywhere, the Body and the Soul walk hand in hand. These ideas are empirically confirmed at all points. Since condensation can never, in any body, be considered as absolutely at an end, we are warranted in anticipating that, whenever we have an opportunity of testing the mat ter, we shall find indications of resident luminosity in all the stellar bodies — moons and planets as well as suns. That our Moon is strongly self-luminous, we see at her every total eclipse, when, if not so, she would disappear. On the dark part of the satellite, too, during her phases, we often observe flashes like our own Auroras ; and that, these lat ter, with our various other so-called electrical phenomena, THE UNIVERSE. 83 without reference to any more steady radiance, must give our Earth a certain appearance of luminosity to an inhabit ant of the Moon, is quite evident. In fact, we should regard all the phenomena referred to, as mere manifestations, in different moods and degrees, of the Earth's feebly-conti nued condensation. If my views are tenable, we should be prepared to find the newer planets — that is to say, those nearer the Sun — more luminous than those older and more remote : — and the extreme brilliancy of Venus (on whose dark portions, during her phases, the Auroras are frequently visible) does not seem to be altogether accounted for by her mere proxi mity to the central orb. fehe is no doubt vividly self-lumi nous, although less so than Mercury : while the luminosity of Neptune may be comparatively nothing. Admitting what I have urged, it is clear that, from the moment of the Sun's discarding a ring, there must be a continuous diminution both of his heat and light, on account of the continuous encrustation of his surface ; and that a period would arrive — the period immediately previous to a new discharge — when a very material decrease of both light and heat, must become apparent. Now, we know that tokens of such changes are distinctly recognizable. On the Melville islands — to adduce merely one out of a hundred examples — we find traces of ultra-tropical vege tation — of plants that never could have flourished without immensely more light and heat than are at present afforded by our Sun to any portion of the surface of the Earth. Is such vegetation referable to an epoch immediately subse quent to the whirling-off of Venus ? At this epoch must 84 EUREKA. have occurred to us our greatest access of solar influence ; and, in fact, this influence must then have attained its maxi mum : — leaving out of view, of course, the period when the Earth itself was discarded — the period of its mere organi zation. Again : — we know that there exist non-luminous suns — that is to say, suns whose existence we determine through the movements of others, but whose luminosity is not suffi cient to impress us. Are these suns invisible merely on account of the length of time elapsed since their discharge of a planet ? And yet again : — may we not — at least in certain cases — account for the sudden appearances of suns where none had been previously suspected, by the hypo thesis that, having rolled with encrusted surfaces through out the few thousand years of our astronomical history, each of these suns, in whirling off a new secondary, has at length been enabled to display the glories of its still incan descent interior ? — To the well-ascertained fact of the pro portional increase of heat as we descend into the Earth, I need of course, do nothing more than refer : — it comes in the strongest possible corroboration of all that I have said on the topic now at issue. In speaking, not long ago, of the repulsive or electrical influence, I remarked that " the important phenomena of vitality, consciousness, and thought, whether we