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

and weigh ing 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 micro scopical 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. These ideas — conceptions such as these — unthoughtlike thoughts — soul-reveries rather than conclusions or even THE -UNIVERSE. 43 considerations of the intellect : — ideas, I repeat, such as these, are such as we can alone hope profitably to enter tain in any effort at grasping the great principle, Attraction. 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 phae- nomena observed — a condition from which they sprang. 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 irrespec tive, 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 perfec tion of the simple ? It is not that the atoms, as we see them, are divided or that they are complex in their rela tions — but that they are inconceivably divided and unutter ably complex : — it is the extremeness of the conditions to which 1 now allude, rather than to the conditions them selves. In a word, is it 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 absolute ly, this irrelatively, this unconditionally one ? 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 ?' 44 EUREKA. — 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 ?" 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 cen tre, because of the sphereicity with which they have been irradiated into space. Each atom, forming one of a gener ally uniform globe of atoms, finds more atoms in the direc tion 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 law, 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 cSntre of irra diation 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 THE UNIVERSE. 45 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 simi lar force, to a general centre" 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 irresistible 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 phenomena of the Newtonian gravitation. Thus, accord ing to the schools, I prove nothing. So be it : — I design but to suggest — and to convince through the suggestion, lam proudly aware that there exist many of the most pro found and cautiously discriminative human intellects which cannot help being abundantly content with my — sugges tions. 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 ad- 46 E U R, E K A . vanced — the truth of Original Unity as the source — as the principle of the Universal Phenomena. For my part, I am not so sure that I speak and see — I am not so sure that my heart beats and that my soul lives : — of the rising ©f to-morrow's sun — a probability that as yet lies in the Fu ture — 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 Multi plicity of Relation, sprang at once into being from the primordial and irrelative One. Referring to the Newtonian Gravity, Dr. Nichol, the eloquent author of " The Architecture of the Heavens," says : — " In truth we have no reason to suppose this great Law, as now revealed, to be the ultimate or simplest, and therefore the universal and all-comprehensive, form of a great Ordinance. The mode in which its intensity dimi nishes with the element of distance, has not the aspect of an ultimate principle ; which always assumes the simpli city and self-evidence of those axioms which constitute the basis of Geometry." Now, it is quite true that " ultimate principles," in the common understanding of the words, always assume the simplicity of geometrical axioms — (as for " self-evidence," there is no such thing) — but these principles are clearly not " ultimate ;" in other terms what we are in the habit of calling principles are no principles, properly speaking — since there can be but one principle, the Volition of God. We have no right to assume, then, from what we observe in rules that we choose foolishly to name "principles," anything at all in respect to the characteristics of a princi- THE UNIVERSE. 47 pie proper. The "ultimate principles " of which Dr. Nichol speaks as having geometrical simplicity, may and do have this geometrical turn, as being part and parcel of a vast geometrical system, and thus a system of simplicity itself — in which, nevertheless, the truly ultimate principle is, as we know, the consummation of the complex — that is to say, of the unintelligible — for is it not the Spiritual Capacity of God? I quoted Dr. Nichol's remark, however, not so much to question its philosophy, as by way of calling attention to the fact that, while all men have admitted some principle as existing behind the Law of Gravity, no attempt has been yet made to point out what this principle in particular is : — if we except, perhaps, occasional fantastic efforts at refer ring it to Magnetism, or Mesmerism, or Swedenborgianism, or Transcendentalism, or some other equally delicious ism of the same species, and invariably patronized by one and the same species of people. The great mind of Newton, while boldly grasping the Law itself, shrank from the prin ciple of the Law. The more fluent and comprehensive at least, if not the more patient and profound, sagacity of Laplace, had not the courage to attack it. But hesitation on the part of these two astronomers it is, perhaps, not so very difficult to understand. They, as well as all the first class of mathematicians, were mathematicians solely : — their intellect, at least, had a firmly-pronounced mathema- tico-physical tone. What lay not distinctly within the domain of Physics, or of Mathematics, seemed to them either Non-Entity or Shadow. Nevertheless, we may well won der that Leibnitz, who was a marked exception to the 48 EUREKA. general rule in these respects, and whose mental temper ament was a singular admixture of the mathematical with the physico-metaphysical, did not at once investigate and establish the point at issue. Either Newton or Laplace, seeking a principle and discovering none physical, would have rested contentedly in the conclusion that there was absolutely none ; but it is almost impossible to fancy, of Leibnitz, that, having exhausted in his search the physical dominions, he would not have stepped at once, boldly and hopefully, amid his old familiar haunts in the kingdom of Metaphysics. Here, indeed, it is clear that he must have adventured in search of the treasure : — that he did not find it after all, was, perhaps, because his fairy guide, Imagina tion, was not sufficiently well-grown, or well-educated, to direct him aright. I observed, just now, that, in fact, there had been cer tain vague attempts at