Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  no variation of principle in their investigations; at best, when

  urged by some unusual emergency - by some extraordinary reward - they

  extend or exaggerate their old modes of practice, without touching

  their principles. What, for example, in this case of D--, has been

  done to vary the principle of action? What is all this boring, and

  probing, and sounding, and scrutinizing with the microscope and

  dividing the surface of the building into registered square inches -

  what is it all but an exaggeration of the application of the one

  principle or set of principles of search, which are based upon the

  one set of notions regarding human ingenuity, to which the Prefect,

  in the long routine of his duty, has been accustomed? Do you not see

  he has taken it for granted that all men proceed to conceal a letter,

  - not exactly in a gimlet hole bored in a chair-leg - but, at least,

  in someout-of-the-way hole or corner suggested by the same tenor of

  thought which would urge a man to secrete a letter in a gimlet-hole

  bored in a chair-leg? And do you not see also, that such recherchés

  nooks for concealment are adapted only for ordinary occasions, and

  would be adopted only by ordinary intellects; for, in all cases of

  concealment, a disposal of the article concealed - a disposal of it

  in this recherché manner, - is, in the very first instance,

  presumable and presumed; and thus its discovery depends, not at all

  upon the acumen, but altogether upon the mere care, patience, and

  determination of the seekers; and where the case is of importance -

  or, what amounts to the same thing in the policial eyes, when the

  reward is of magnitude, - the qualities in question have never been

  known to fail. You will now understand what I meant in suggesting

  that, had the purloined letter been hidden any where within the

  limits of the Prefect's examination - in other words, had the

  principle of its concealment been comprehended within the principles

  of the Prefect - its discovery would have been a matter altogether

  beyond question. This functionary, however, has been thoroughly

  mystified; and the remote source of his defeat lies in the

  supposition that the Minister is a fool, because he has acquired

  renown as a poet. All fools are poets; this the Prefect feels; and he

  is merely guilty of a non distributio medii in thence inferring that

  all poets are fools."

  "But is this really the poet?" I asked. "There are two brothers, I

  know; and both have attained reputation in letters. The Minister I

  believe has written learnedly on the Differential Calculus. He is a

  mathematician, and no poet."

  "You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As poet and

  mathematician, he would reason well; as mere mathematician, he could

  not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of

  the Prefect."

  "You surprise me," I said, "by these opinions, which have been

  contradicted by the voice of the world. You do not mean to set at

  naught the well-digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason

  has long been regarded as the reason par excellence."

  " 'Il y a à parièr,' " replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfort, " 'que

  toute idée publique, toute convention reçue est une sottise, car elle

  a convenue au plus grand nombre.' The mathematicians, I grant you,

  have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you

  allude, and which is none the less an error for its promulgation as

  truth. With an art worthy a better cause, for example, they have

  insinuated the term 'analysis' into application to algebra. The

  French are the originators of this particular deception; but if a

  term is of any importance - if words derive any value from

  applicability - then 'analysis' conveys 'algebra' about as much as,

  in Latin, 'ambitus' implies 'ambition,' 'religio' 'religion,' or

  'homines honesti,' a set of honorablemen."

  "You have a quarrel on hand, I see," said I, "with some of the

  algebraists of Paris; but proceed."

  "I dispute the availability, and thus the value, of that reason which

  is cultivated in any especial form other than the abstractly logical.

  I dispute, in particular, the reason educed by mathematical study.

  The mathematics are the science of form and quantity; mathematical

  reasoning is merely logic applied to observation upon form and

  quantity. The great error lies in supposing that even the truths of

  what is called pure algebra, are abstract or general truths. And this

  error is so egregious that I am confounded at the universality with

  which it has been received. Mathematical axioms are notaxioms of

  general truth. What is true of relation - of form and quantity - is

  often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In this latter

  science it is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal

  to the whole. In chemistry also the axiom fails. In the consideration

  of motive it fails; for two motives, each of a given value, have not,

  necessarily, a value when united, equal to the sum of their values

  apart. There are numerous other mathematical truths which are only

  truths within the limits of relation. But the mathematician argues,

  from his finite truths, through habit, as if they were of an

  absolutely general applicability - as the world indeed imagines them

  to be. Bryant, in his very learned 'Mythology,' mentions an analogous

  source of error, when he says that 'although the Pagan fables are not

  believed, yet we forget ourselves continually, and make inferences

  from them as existing realities.' With the algebraists, however, who

  are Pagans themselves, the 'Pagan fables' are believed, and the

  inferences are made, not so much through lapse of memory, as through

  an unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I never yet

  encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted out of equal

  roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point of his

  faith that x2+px was absolutely and unconditionally equal to q. Say

  to one of these gentlemen, by way of experiment, if you please, that

  you believe occasions may occur where x2+px is not altogether equal

  to q, and, having made him understand what you mean, get out of his

  reach as speedily as convenient, for, beyond doubt, he will endeavor

  to knock you down.

  "I mean to say," continued Dupin, while I merely laughed at his last

  observations, "that if the Minister had been no more than a

  mathematician, the Prefect would have been under no necessity of

  giving me this check. I know him, however, as both mathematician and

  poet, and my measures were adapted to his capacity, with reference to

  the circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew him as a

  courtier, too, and as a bold intriguant. Such a man, I considered,

  could not fail to be aware of the ordinary policial modes of action.

  He could not have failed to anticipate - and events have proved that

  he did not fail to anticipate - the waylayings to which he was

  subjected. He must have foreseen, I reflected, the secret

  investigations of his premises. His frequent absen
ces from home at

  night, which were hailed by the Prefect as certain aids to his

  success, I regarded only as ruses, to afford opportunity for thorough

  search to the police, and thus the sooner to impress them with the

  conviction to which G--, in fact, did finally arrive - the conviction

  that the letter was not upon the premises. I felt, also, that the

  whole train of thought, which I was at some pains in detailing to you

  just now, concerning the invariable principle of policial action in

  searches for articles concealed - I felt that this whole train of

  thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the Minister. It

  would imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary nooks of

  concealment. He could not, I reflected, be so weak as not to see that

  the most intricate and remote recess of his hotel would be as open as

  his commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes, to the gimlets, and

  to the microscopes of the Prefect. I saw, in fine, that he would be

  driven, as a matter of course, to simplicity, if not deliberately

  induced to it as a matter of choice. You will remember, perhaps, how

  desperately the Prefect laughed when I suggested, upon our first

  interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so

  much on account of its being so very self-evident."

  "Yes," said I, "I remember his merriment well. I really thought he

  would have fallen into convulsions."

  "The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds with very strict

  analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been

  given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made

  to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description. The

  principle of the vis inertiæ, for example, seems to be identical in

  physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a

  large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one,

  and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this

  difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster

  capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in

  their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less

  readily moved, and more embarrassed and full of hesitation in the

  first few steps of their progress. Again: have you ever noticed which

  of the street signs, over the shop- doors, are the most attractive of

  attention?"

  "I have never given the matter a thought," I said.

  "There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which is played upon a

  map. One party playing requires another to find a given word - the

  name of town, river, state or empire - any word, in short, upon the

  motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game

  generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most

  minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as stretch,

  in large characters, from one end of the chart to the other. These,

  like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street,

  escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the

  physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral

  inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those

  considerations which are too obtrusively and too palpably

  self-evident. But this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or

  beneath the understanding of the Prefect. He never once thought it

  probable, or possible, that the Minister had deposited the letter

  immediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by way of best

  preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it.

  "But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and

  discriminating ingenuity of D--; upon the fact that the document must

  always have been at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose;

  and upon the decisive evidence, obtained by the Prefect, that it was

  not hidden within the limits of that dignitary's ordinary search -

  the more satisfied I became that, to conceal this letter, the

  Minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of

  not attempting to conceal it at all.

  "Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green

  spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at the

  Ministerial hotel. I found D-- at home, yawning, lounging, and

  dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be in the last extremity of

  ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really energetic human being now

  alive - but that is only when nobody sees him.

  "To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented the

  necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I cautiously and

  thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while seemingly intent only

  upon the conversation of my host.

  "I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near which he

  sat, and upon which lay confusedly, some miscellaneous letters and

  other papers, with one or two musical instruments and a few books.

  Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw

  nothing to excite particular suspicion.

  "At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a

  trumpery fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a

  dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle

  of the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four

  compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter.

  This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two,

  across the middle - as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it

  entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second.

  It had a large black seal, bearing the D-- cipher very conspicuously,

  and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D--, the minister,

  himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed,

  contemptuously, into one of the uppermost divisions of the rack.

  "No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to be

  that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was, to all appearance,

  radically different from the one of which the Prefect had read us so

  minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D--

  cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S--

  family. Here, the address, to the Minister, diminutive and feminine;

  there the superscription, to a certain royal personage, was markedly

  bold and decided; the size alone formed a point of correspondence.

  But, then, the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive;

  the dirt; the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent