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

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  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