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

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, expres sions in Logic." * Now the very definition of Attraction implies particu larity — the existence of parts, particles, or atoms ; for we define it as the tendency of " each atom &c. to every other atom" &c. according to a certain law. Of course where there are no parts — where there is absolute Unity — where the tendency to oneness is satisfied — there can be no At traction : — this has been fully shown, and all Philosophy admits it. When, on fulfilment of its purposes, then, Mat ter shall have returned into its original condition of One — a condition which presupposes the expulsion of the separa tive ether, whose province and whose capacity are limited to keeping the atoms apart until that great day when, this ether being no longer needed, the overwhelming pressure of the finally collective Attraction shall at length just suffi- * Page 37. THE UNIVERSE. 139 ciently predominate* and expel it : — when, I say, Matter, finally, expelling the Ether, shall have returned into abso lute Unity, — it will then (to speak paradoxically for the moment) be Matter without Attraction and without Repul sion—in other words, Matter without Matter — in other words, again, Matter no more. In sinking into Unity, it will sink at once into that Nothingness which, to all Finite Perception, Unity must be — into that Material Nihility from which alone we can conceive it to have been evoked — to have been created by the Volition of God. I repeat then — Let us endeavor to comprehend that the final globe of globes will instantaneously disappear, and that God will remain all in all. But are we here to pause ? Not so. On the Universal agglomeration and dissolution, we can readily conceive that a new and perhaps totally different series of conditions may ensue— another creation and irradiation, returning into itself — another action and reaction of the Divine Will. Guiding our imaginations by that omniprevalent law of laws, the law of periodicity, are we not, indeed, more than justified in entertaining a belief — let us say, rather, in in dulging a hope — that the processes we have here ventured to contemplate will be renewed forever, and forever, and forever ; a novel Universe swelling into existence, and then subsiding into nothingness, at every throb of the Heart Divine ? And now — this Heart Divine — what is it ? It is our own, * " Gravity, therefore, must be the strongest of forces." — See page 39. 140 E U B, E K A. Let not the merely seeming irreverence of this idea frighten our souls from that cool exercise of consciousness — from that deep tranquillity of self-inspection — through which alone we can hope to .attain' the presence of this, the most sublime of truths, and look it leisurely in the face. The phenomena on which our conclusions must at this point depend, are merely spiritual shadows, but not the less thoroughly substantial. We walk about, amid the destinies of our world-exist ence, encompassed by dim but ever present Memories of a Destiny more vast — very distant in the by-gone time, and infinitely awful. We live out a Youth peculiarly haunted by such dreams ; yet never mistaking them for dreams. As Memories we know them. During our Youth the distinction is too clear to deceive us even for a moment. So long as this Youth endures, the feeling that we exist, is the most natural of all feelings. We understand it tho roughly. That there was a period at which we did not exist — or, that it might so have happened that we never had existed at all — are the considerations, indeed, which during this youth, we find difficulty in understanding. Why we should not exist, is, up to the epoch of our Manhood, of all queries the most unanswerable. Existence — self-exist ence — existence from all Time and to all Eternity — seems, up to the epoch of Manhood, a normal and unquestionable condition : — seems, because it is. But now comes the period at which a conventional World-Reason awakens us from the truth of our dream. THE UNIVERSE. 141 Doubt, Surprise and Incomprehensibility arrive at the same moment. They say : — " You live and the time* was when you lived not. You have been created. An Intelligence exists greater than your own ; and .it is only through this Intelligence you live at all." These things we struggle to comprehend and cannot : — cannot, because these things, being untrue, are thus, of necessity, incomprehensible. No thinking being lives who, at some luminous point of his life of thought, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding, or believing, that anything exists greater than his own soul. * The utter impossibility of any one's soul feeling itself inferior to another ; the in tense, overwhelming dissatisfaction and rebellion at the thought ; — these, with the omniprevalent aspirations at per fection, are but the spiritual, coincident with the material, struggles towards the original Unity — are, to my mind at least, a species of proof far surpassing what Man terms de monstration, that no one soul is inferior to another — that nothing is, or can be, superior to any one soul — that eacjh. soul is, in part, its own God — its own Creator : — in a word, that God — the material and spiritual God — now exists solely in the diffused Matter and Spirit of the Universe ; and that the regathering of this diffused Matter and Spirit will be but the re-constitution of the purely Spiritual and Indivi dual God. In this view, and in this view alone, we comprehend the riddles of Divine Injustice — of Inexorable Fate. In this view alone the existence of Evil becomes intelligible ; but in this view it becomes more — it becomes endurable. Our souls no longer rebel at a Sorrow which we ourselves have 142 EUREKA. imposed upon ourselves, in furtherance of our own pur poses — with a view — if even with a futile view — to the extension of our own Joy. I have spoken of Memories that haunt us during our youth. They sometimes pursue us even in our Manhood : — assume gradually less and less indefinite shapes : — now and then speak to us with low voices, saying : " There was an epoch in the Night of Time, when a still-existent Being existed — one of an absolutely infinite number of similar Beings that people the absolutely infinite domains of the absolutety infinite space.* It was not and is not in the power of this Being — any more than it is in your own — to extend, by actual increase, the joy of his Existence ; but just as it is in your power to expand or to concentrate your pleasures (the absolute amount of happi ness remaining always the same) so did and does a similar capability appertain to this Divine Being, who thus passes his Eternity in perpetual variation of Concentrated Self and almost Infinite Self-Diffusion. What you call The Universe is but his present expansive existence. He now feels his life through an infinity of imperfect pleasures — the partial and pain-intertangled pleasures of those inconceiva bly numerous things which you designate as his creatures, but which are really but infinite individualizations of Him self. All these creatures — all — those which you term ani mate, as well as those to whom you deny life for no better reason than that you do not behold it in operation — all these creatures have, in a greater or less degree, a capacity See page 102-103-Paragraph commencing " I reply that the right," and ending " proper and particular God." THE UNIVERSE. 143 for pleasure and for pain : — but the general sum of their sen sations is precisely that amount of Happiness which apper tains by right to the Divine Being when concentrated with in Himself. These creatures are all, too, more or less con scious Intelligences ; conscious, first, of a proper identity ; conscious-, secondly and by faint indeterminate glimpses, of an identity with the Divine Being of whom we speak — of an identity with God. Of the two classes of consciousness, fancy that the former will grow weaker, the latter stronger, during the long succession of ages which must elapse before these myriads of individual Intelligences become blended — when the bright stars become blended — into One. Think that the sense of individual identity will be gradually merged in the general consciousness — that Man, for^example, ceasing imperceptibly to feel himself Man, will at length attain that awfully triumphant epoch when he shall recognize his ex istence as that of Jehovah. In the meantime bear in mind that all is Life — Life — Life within Life — the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine. THE END. 155 Broadway, NEW YORK. 14'2 Strand, LONDON. Of late firm of WILXT & PUTNAM. New Works in Press, Or recently published, by GEORGE P. PUTNAM, 155 Broadway, New York. G. P. PUTNAM has the pleasure of announcing that, agreeably to his contract with the distinguished author, he has now in the course of publication A new, uniform, and complete edition OF THE Works of Washington Irving, Revised and enlarged by the Author, In Twelve Elegant Duodecimo Volumes, Beautifully printed with new type, and on superior paper, made expressly for the purpose. The first volume of the Series will be The Sketch-Book, complete in one volume, which will be ready on the first day of September. Knickerbocker's History of New York, with revisions and copious additions, will be published on the 1st of October. The Life and Voyages of Columbus, Vol. I. on the 1st of November, and the succeeding volumes will be issued on the first day of each month until com pleted ; — as follows : The Sketch-Book, in one volume. 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