Complete Essays, Literary Criticism, Cryptography, Autography, Translations & Letters. Эдгар Аллан По
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continually biasing towards this fancy even the mightiest intellects — perpetually, although imperceptibly, leading them away from the real characteristics of the principle; thus preventing them, up to this date, from ever getting a glimpse of that vital truth which lies in a diametrically opposite direction — behind the principle’s essential characteristics — those, not of concentralization or especiality, but of universality and diffusion. This “vital truth” is Unity as the source of the phenomenon.
Let me now repeat the definition of Gravity:— Every atom, of every body, attracts every other atom, both of its own and of every other body, with a force which varies inversely as the squares of the distances of the attracting and attracted atom.
Here let the reader pause with me, for a moment, in contemplation of the miraculous, of the ineffable, of the altogether unimaginable, complexity of relation involved in the fact that each atom attracts every other atom; involved merely in this fact of the Attraction, without reference to the law or mode in which the Attraction is manifested; involved merely in the fact that each atom attracts every other atom at all, in a wilderness of atoms so numerous that those which go to the composition of a cannon-ball exceed, probably, in mere point of number, all the stars which go to the constitution of the Universe.
Had we discovered, simply, that each atom tends to some one point, a favorite with all, we should still have fallen upon a discovery which, in itself, would have sufficed to overwhelm the mind; but what is it that we are actually called on to comprehend? That each atom attracts — sympathizes with the most delicate movements of every other atom, and with each and with all at the same time, and forever, and according to a determinate law of which the complexity, even considered by itself solely, is utterly beyond the grasp of the imagination. If I propose to ascertain the influence of one mote in a sunbeam on its neighboring mote, I cannot accomplish my purpose without first counting and weighing 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 microscopical 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 considerations of the intellect — ideas, I repeat, such as these, are such as we can alone hope profitably to entertain 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 phenomena 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 irrespective, 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 perfection of the simple? It is not that the atoms, as we see them, are divided, or that they are complex in their relations — but that they are inconceivably divided and unutterably complex; it is the extremeness of the conditions to which I now allude, rather than to the conditions themselves. 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 absolutely, 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 as ‘merely a general tendency to a centre’? — why, in especial, do not your atoms, the atoms which you describe as having been radiated 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 centre, because of the sphereicity with which they have been radiated into space. Each atom, forming one of a generally uniform globe of atoms, finds more atoms in the direction 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 likelocation 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 centre of radiation with forces inversely proportional with 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 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, etc., with a force, etc.; the general result being a tendency of all, with a similar 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 irresistable 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 Gravity. Thus, according to the schools, I prove nothing. So be it; — I design but to suggest, and to convince through the suggestion. I am proudly aware that there exist many of the most profound and cautiously discriminative intellects which cannot help being abundantly content with my — suggestions. 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 advanced, the truth of Original Unity as the source, as the principle, of the Universal Phenomena. For my part I am not sure that I speak and see — I am not so sure that my heart beats and that my soul lives; of the rising of to-morrow’s sun — a probability that as yet lies in the Future; I do not pretend to be one thousandth part as sure, as I am of the irretrievably bygone Fact that All Things and All Thoughts of Things, with all their ineffable Multiplicity 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 diminishes with the element of distance has not the aspect of an ultimate principle; which always assumes the simplicity and self-evidence of those axioms which constitute the basis of Geometry.”
Now,