not a tree. Very well; but I ask him why. His reply is this -- and
never pretends to be any thing else than this -- "Because it is
impossible to conceive that contradictories can both be true." But
this is no answer at all, by his own showing, for has he not just
admitted as a truism that "ability or inability to conceive is in no
case to be received as a criterion of axiomatic truth."
Now I do not complain of these ancients so much because their logic
is, by their own showing, utterly baseless, worthless and fantastic
altogether, as because of their pompous and imbecile proscription of
all other roads of Truth, of all other means for its attainment than
the two preposterous paths -- the one of creeping and the one of
crawling -- to which they have dared to confine the Soul that loves
nothing so well as to soar.
By the by, my dear friend, do you not think it would have puzzled
these ancient dogmaticians to have determined by which of their two
roads it was that the most important and most sublime of all their
truths was, in effect, attained? I mean the truth of Gravitation.
Newton owed it to Kepler. Kepler admitted that his three laws were
guessed at -- these three laws of all laws which led the great
Inglitch mathematician to his principle, the basis of all physical
principle -- to go behind which we must enter the Kingdom of
Metaphysics. Kepler guessed -- that is to say imagined. He was
essentially a "theorist" -- that word now of so much sanctity,
formerly an epithet of contempt. Would it not have puzzled these old
moles too, to have explained by which of the two "roads" a
cryptographist unriddles a cryptograph of more than usual secrecy, or
by which of the two roads Champollion directed mankind to those
enduring and almost innumerable truths which resulted from his
deciphering the Hieroglyphics.
One word more on this topic and I will be done boring you. Is it not
passing strange that, with their eternal prattling about roads to
Truth, these bigoted people missed what we now so clearly perceive to
be the great highway -- that of Consistency? Does it not seem
singular how they should have failed to deduce from the works of God
the vital fact that a perfect consistency must be an absolute truth!
How plain has been our progress since the late announcement of this
proposition! Investigation has been taken out of the hands of the
ground-moles and given, as a task, to the true and only true
thinkers, the men of ardent imagination. These latter theorize. Can
you not fancy the shout of scorn with which my words would be
received by our progenitors were it possible for them to be now
looking over my shoulder? These men, I say, theorize; and their
theories are simply corrected, reduced, systematized -- cleared,
little by little, of their dross of inconsistency -- until, finally,
a perfect consistency stands apparent which even the most stolid
admit, because it is a consistency, to be an absolute and an
unquestionable truth.
April 4. -- The new gas is doing wonders, in conjunction with the new
improvement with gutta percha. How very safe, commodious, manageable,
and in every respect convenient are our modern balloons! Here is an
immense one approaching us at the rate of at least a hundred and
fifty miles an hour. It seems to be crowded with people -- perhaps
there are three or four hundred passengers -- and yet it soars to an
elevation of nearly a mile, looking down upon poor us with sovereign
contempt. Still a hundred or even two hundred miles an hour is slow
travelling after all. Do you remember our flight on the railroad
across the Kanadaw continent? -- fully three hundred miles the hour
-- that was travelling. Nothing to be seen though -- nothing to be
done but flirt, feast and dance in the magnificent saloons. Do you
remember what an odd sensation was experienced when, by chance, we
caught a glimpse of external objects while the cars were in full
flight? Every thing seemed unique -- in one mass. For my part, I
cannot say but that I preferred the travelling by the slow train of a
hundred miles the hour. Here we were permitted to have glass windows
-- even to have them open -- and something like a distinct view of
the country was attainable.... Pundit says that the route for the
great Kanadaw railroad must have been in some measure marked out
about nine hundred years ago! In fact, he goes so far as to assert
that actual traces of a road are still discernible -- traces
referable to a period quite as remote as that mentioned. The track,
it appears was double only; ours, you know, has twelve paths; and
three or four new ones are in preparation. The ancient rails were
very slight, and placed so close together as to be, according to
modern notions, quite frivolous, if not dangerous in the extreme. The
present width of track -- fifty feet -- is considered, indeed,
scarcely secure enough. For my part, I make no doubt that a track of
some sort must have existed in very remote times, as Pundit asserts;
for nothing can be clearer, to my mind, than that, at some period --
not less than seven centuries ago, certainly -- the Northern and
Southern Kanadaw continents were united; the Kanawdians, then, would
have been driven, by necessity, to a great railroad across the
continent.
April 5. -- I am almost devoured by ennui. Pundit is the only
conversible person on board; and he, poor soul! can speak of nothing
but antiquities. He has been occupied all the day in the attempt to
convince me that the ancient Amriccans governed themselves! -- did
ever anybody hear of such an absurdity? -- that they existed in a
sort of every-man-for-himself confederacy, after the fashion of the
"prairie dogs" that we read of in fable. He says that they started
with the queerest idea conceivable, viz: that all men are born free
and equal -- this in the very teeth of the laws of gradation so
visibly impressed upon all things both in the moral and physical
universe. Every man "voted," as they called it -- that is to say
meddled with public affairs -- until at length, it was discovered
that what is everybody's business is nobody's, and that the
"Republic" (so the absurd thing was called) was without a government
at all. It is related, however, that the first circumstance which
disturbed, very particularly, the self-complacency of the
philosophers who constructed this "Republic," was the startling
discovery that universal suffrage gave opportunity for fraudulent
schemes, by means of which any desired number of votes might at any
time be polled, without the possibility of prevention or even
detection, by any party which should be merely villainous enough not
to be ashamed of the fraud. A little reflection upon this discovery
sufficed to render evident the consequences, which were that
rascality must predominate -- in a word, that a republican government
could never be any thing but a rascally one. While the philosophers,
however, were busied in blushing at their s
tupidity in not having
foreseen these inevitable evils, and intent upon the invention of new
theories, the matter was put to an abrupt issue by a fellow of the
name of Mob, who took every thing into his own hands and set up a
despotism, in comparison with which those of the fabulous Zeros and
Hellofagabaluses were respectable and delectable. This Mob (a
foreigner, by-the-by), is said to have been the most odious of all
men that ever encumbered the earth. He was a giant in stature --
insolent, rapacious, filthy, had the gall of a bullock with the heart
of a hyena and the brains of a peacock. He died, at length, by dint
of his own energies, which exhausted him. Nevertheless, he had his
uses, as every thing has, however vile, and taught mankind a lesson
which to this day it is in no danger of forgetting -- never to run
directly contrary to the natural analogies. As for Republicanism, no
analogy could be found for it upon the face of the earth -- unless we
except the case of the "prairie dogs," an exception which seems to
demonstrate, if anything, that democracy is a very admirable form of
government -- for dogs.
April 6. -- Last night had a fine view of Alpha Lyrae, whose disk,
through our captain's spy-glass, subtends an angle of half a degree,
looking very much as our sun does to the naked eye on a misty day.
Alpha Lyrae, although so very much larger than our sun, by the by,
resembles him closely as regards its spots, its atmosphere, and in
many other particulars. It is only within the last century, Pundit
tells me, that the binary relation existing between these two orbs
began even to be suspected. The evident motion of our system in the
heavens was (strange to say!) referred to an orbit about a prodigious
star in the centre of the galaxy. About this star, or at all events
about a centre of gravity common to all the globes of the Milky Way
and supposed to be near Alcyone in the Pleiades, every one of these
globes was declared to be revolving, our own performing the circuit
in a period of 117,000,000 of years! We, with our present lights, our
vast telescopic improvements, and so forth, of course find it
difficult to comprehend the ground of an idea such as this. Its first
propagator was one Mudler. He was led, we must presume, to this wild
hypothesis by mere analogy in the first instance; but, this being the
case, he should have at least adhered to analogy in its development.
A great central orb was, in fact, suggested; so far Mudler was
consistent. This central orb, however, dynamically, should have been
greater than all its surrounding orbs taken together. The question
might then have been asked -- "Why do we not see it?" -- we,
especially, who occupy the mid region of the cluster -- the very
locality near which, at least, must be situated this inconceivable
central sun. The astronomer, perhaps, at this point, took refuge in
the suggestion of non-luminosity; and here analogy was suddenly let
fall. But even admitting the central orb non-luminous, how did he
manage to explain its failure to be rendered visible by the
incalculable host of glorious suns glaring in all directions about
it? No doubt what he finally maintained was merely a centre of
gravity common to all the revolving orbs -- but here again analogy
must have been let fall. Our system revolves, it is true, about a
common centre of gravity, but it does this in connection with and in
consequence of a material sun whose mass more than counterbalances
the rest of the system. The mathematical circle is a curve composed
of an infinity of straight lines; but this idea of the circle -- this
idea of it which, in regard to all earthly geometry, we consider as
merely the mathematical, in contradistinction from the practical,
idea -- is, in sober fact, the practical conception which alone we
have any right to entertain in respect to those Titanic circles with
which we have to deal, at least in fancy, when we suppose our system,
with its fellows, revolving about a point in the centre of the
galaxy. Let the most vigorous of human imaginations but attempt to
take a single step toward the comprehension of a circuit so
unutterable! I would scarcely be paradoxical to say that a flash of
lightning itself, travelling forever upon the circumference of this
inconceivable circle, would still forever be travelling in a straight
line. That the path of our sun along such a circumference -- that the
direction of our system in such an orbit -- would, to any human
perception, deviate in the slightest degree from a straight line even
in a million of years, is a proposition not to be entertained; and
yet these ancient astronomers were absolutely cajoled, it appears,
into believing that a decisive curvature had become apparent during
the brief period of their astronomical history -- during the mere
point -- during the utter nothingness of two or three thousand years!
How incomprehensible, that considerations such as this did not at
once indicate to them the true state of affairs -- that of the binary
revolution of our sun and Alpha Lyrae around a common centre of
gravity!
April 7. -- Continued last night our astronomical amusements. Had a
fine view of the five Neptunian asteroids, and watched with much
interest the putting up of a huge impost on a couple of lintels in
the new temple at Daphnis in the moon. It was amusing to think that
creatures so diminutive as the lunarians, and bearing so little
resemblance to humanity, yet evinced a mechanical ingenuity so much
superior to our own. One finds it difficult, too, to conceive the
vast masses which these people handle so easily, to be as light as
our own reason tells us they actually are.
April 8. -- Eureka! Pundit is in his glory. A balloon from Kanadaw
spoke us to-day and threw on board several late papers; they contain
some exceedingly curious information relative to Kanawdian or rather
Amriccan antiquities. You know, I presume, that laborers have for
some months been employed in preparing the ground for a new fountain
at Paradise, the Emperor's principal pleasure garden. Paradise, it
appears, has been, literally speaking, an island time out of mind --
that is to say, its northern boundary was always (as far back as any
record extends) a rivulet, or rather a very narrow arm of the sea.
This arm was gradually widened until it attained its present breadth
-- a mile. The whole length of the island is nine miles; the breadth
varies materially. The entire area (so Pundit says) was, about eight
Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe Page 129