Eureka.
by Edgar A. Poe.
PREFACE.
To the few who love me and whom I love-to those who feel rather than to those who think-to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities-I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; const.i.tuting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone:-let us say as a Romance; or, if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem.
_What I here propound is true_:-therefore it cannot die:-or if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will "rise again to the Life Everlasting."
Nevertheless it is as a Poem only that I wish this work to be judged after I am dead.
E. A. P.
EUREKA:
AN ESSAY ON THE MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE.
It is with humility really una.s.sumed-it is with a sentiment even of awe-that I pen the opening sentence of this work: for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn-the most comprehensive-the most difficult-the most august.
What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sublimity-sufficiently sublime in their simplicity-for the mere enunciation of my theme?
I design to speak of the _Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical-of the Material and Spiritual Universe:-of its Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its Present Condition and its Destiny_. I shall be so rash, moreover, as to challenge the conclusions, and thus, in effect, to question the sagacity, of many of the greatest and most justly reverenced of men.
In the beginning, let me as distinctly as possible announce-not the theorem which I hope to demonstrate-for, whatever the mathematicians may a.s.sert, there is, in this world at least, _no such thing_ as demonstration-but the ruling idea which, throughout this volume, I shall be continually endeavoring to suggest.
My general proposition, then, is this:-_In the Original Unity of the First Thing lies the Secondary Cause of All Things, with the Germ of their Inevitable Annihilation_.
In ill.u.s.tration of this idea, I propose to take such a survey of the Universe that the mind may be able really to receive and to perceive an individual impression.
He who from the top of aetna casts his eyes leisurely around, is affected chiefly by the _extent_ and _diversity_ of the scene. Only by a rapid whirling on his heel could he hope to comprehend the panorama in the sublimity of its _oneness_. But as, on the summit of aetna, _no_ man has thought of whirling on his heel, so no man has ever taken into his brain the full uniqueness of the prospect; and so, again, whatever considerations lie involved in this uniqueness, have as yet no practical existence for mankind.
I do not know a treatise in which a survey of the _Universe_-using the word in its most comprehensive and only legitimate acceptation-is taken at all:-and it may be as well here to mention that by the term "Universe," wherever employed without qualification in this essay, I mean to designate _the utmost conceivable expanse of s.p.a.ce, with all things, spiritual and material, that can be imagined to exist within the compa.s.s of that expanse_. In speaking of what is ordinarily implied by the expression, "Universe," I shall take a phrase of limitation-"the Universe of stars." Why this distinction is considered necessary, will be seen in the sequel.
But even of treatises on the really limited, although always a.s.sumed as the _un_limited, Universe of _stars_, I know none in which a survey, even of this limited Universe, is so taken as to warrant deductions from its _individuality_. The nearest approach to such a work is made in the "Cosmos" of Alexander Von Humboldt. He presents the subject, however, _not_ in its individuality but in its generality. His theme, in its last result, is the law of _each_ portion of the merely physical Universe, as this law is related to the laws of _every other_ portion of this merely physical Universe. His design is simply synretical. In a word, he discusses the universality of material relation, and discloses to the eye of Philosophy whatever inferences have hitherto lain hidden _behind_ this universality. But however admirable be the succinctness with which he has treated each particular point of his topic, the mere multiplicity of these points occasions, necessarily, an amount of detail, and thus an involution of idea, which precludes all _individuality_ of impression.
It seems to me that, in aiming at this latter effect, and, through it, at the consequences-the conclusions-the suggestions-the speculations-or, if nothing better offer itself the mere guesses which may result from it-we require something like a mental gyration on the heel. We need so rapid a revolution of all things about the central point of sight that, while the minutiae vanish altogether, even the more conspicuous objects become blended into one. Among the vanishing minutiae, in a survey of this kind, would be all exclusively terrestrial matters. The Earth would be considered in its planetary relations alone. A man, in this view, becomes mankind; mankind a member of the cosmical family of Intelligences.
And now, before proceeding to our subject proper, let me beg the reader"s attention to an extract or two from a somewhat remarkable letter, which appears to have been found corked in a bottle and floating on the _Mare Tenebrarum_-an ocean well described by the Nubian geographer, Ptolemy Hephestion, but little frequented in modern days unless by the Transcendentalists and some other divers for crotchets.
The date of this letter, I confess, surprises me even more particularly than its contents; for it seems to have been written in the year _two_ thousand eight hundred and forty-eight. As for the pa.s.sages I am about to transcribe, they, I fancy, will speak for themselves.
"Do you know, my dear friend," says the writer, addressing, no doubt, a contemporary-"Do you know that it is scarcely more than eight or nine hundred years ago since the metaphysicians first consented to relieve the people of the singular fancy that there exist _but two practicable roads to Truth_? Believe it if you can! It appears, however, that long, long ago, in the night of Time, there lived a Turkish philosopher called Aries and surnamed Tottle." [Here, possibly, the letter-writer means Aristotle; the best names are wretchedly corrupted in two or three thousand years.] "The fame of this great man depended mainly upon his demonstration that sneezing is a natural provision, by means of which over-profound thinkers are enabled to expel superfluous ideas through the nose; but he obtained a scarcely less valuable celebrity as the founder, or at all events as the princ.i.p.al propagator, of what was termed the _de_ductive or _a priori_ philosophy. He started with what he maintained to be axioms, or self-evident truths:-and the now well understood fact that _no_ truths are _self_-evident, really does not make in the slightest degree against his speculations:-it was sufficient for his purpose that the truths in question were evident at all. From axioms he proceeded, logically, to results. His most ill.u.s.trious disciples were one Tuclid, a geometrician," [meaning Euclid] "and one Kant, a Dutchman, the originator of that species of Transcendentalism which, with the change merely of a C for a K, now bears his peculiar name.
"Well, Aries Tottle flourished supreme, until the advent of one Hog, surnamed "the Ettrick shepherd," who preached an entirely different system, which he called the _a posteriori_ or _in_ductive. His plan referred altogether to sensation. He proceeded by observing, a.n.a.lyzing, and cla.s.sifying facts-_instantiae Naturae_, as they were somewhat affectedly called-and arranging them into general laws. In a word, while the mode of Aries rested on _noumena_, that of Hog depended on _phenomena_; and so great was the admiration excited by this latter system that, at its first introduction, Aries fell into general disrepute. Finally, however, he recovered ground, and was permitted to divide the empire of Philosophy with his more modern rival:-the savans contenting themselves with proscribing all _other_ compet.i.tors, past, present, and to come; putting an end to all controversy on the topic by the promulgation of a Median law, to the effect that the Aristotelian and Baconian roads are, and of right ought to be, the solo possible avenues to knowledge:-"Baconian," you must know, my dear friend," adds the letter-writer at this point, "was an adjective invented as equivalent to Hog-ian, and at the same time more dignified and euphonious.
"Now I do a.s.sure you most positively"-proceeds the epistle-"that I represent these matters fairly; and you can easily understand how restrictions so absurd on their very face must have operated, in those days, to r.e.t.a.r.d the progress of true Science, which makes its most important advances-as all History will show-by seemingly intuitive _leaps_. These ancient ideas confined investigation to crawling; and I need not suggest to you that crawling, among varieties of locomotion, is a very capital thing of its kind;-but because the tortoise is sure of foot, for this reason must we clip the wings of the eagles? For many centuries, so great was the infatuation, about Hog especially, that a virtual stop was put to all thinking, properly so called. No man dared utter a truth for which he felt himself indebted to his soul alone. It mattered not whether the truth was even demonstrably such; for the dogmatizing philosophers of that epoch regarded only _the road_ by which it professed to have been attained. The end, with them, was a point of no moment, whatever:-"the means!" they vociferated-"let us look at the means!"-and if, on scrutiny of the means, it was found to come neither under the category Hog, nor under the category Aries (which means ram), why then the savans went no farther, but, calling the thinker a fool and branding him a "theorist," would never, thenceforward, have any thing to do either with _him_ or with his truths.
"Now, my dear friend," continues the letter-writer, "it cannot be maintained that by the crawling system, exclusively adopted, men would arrive at the maximum amount of truth, even in any long series of ages; for the repression of imagination was an evil not to be counterbalanced even by _absolute_ certainty in the snail processes. But their certainty was very far from absolute. The error of our progenitors was quite a.n.a.logous with that of the wiseacre who fancies he must necessarily see an object the more distinctly, the more closely he holds it to his eyes.
They blinded themselves, too, with the impalpable, t.i.tillating Scotch snuff of _detail_; and thus the boasted facts of the Hog-ites were by no means always facts-a point of little importance but for the a.s.sumption that they always _were_. The vital taint, however, in Baconianism-its most lamentable fount of error-lay in its tendency to throw power and consideration into the hands of merely perceptive men-of those inter-Tritonic minnows, the microscopical savans-the diggers and pedlers of minute _facts_, for the most part in physical science-facts all of which they retailed at the same price upon the highway; their value depending, it was supposed, simply upon the _fact of their fact_, without reference to their applicability or inapplicability in the development of those ultimate and only legitimate facts, called Law.
"Than the persons"-the letter goes on to say-"Than the persons thus suddenly elevated by the Hog-ian philosophy into a station for which they were unfitted-thus transferred from the sculleries into the parlors of Science-from its pantries into its pulpits-than these individuals a more intolerant-a more intolerable set of bigots and tyrants never existed on the face of the earth. Their creed, their text and their sermon were, alike, the one word "_fact_"-but, for the most part, even of this one word, they knew not even the meaning. On those who ventured to _disturb_ their facts with the view of putting them in order and to use, the disciples of Hog had no mercy whatever. All attempts at generalization were met at once by the words "theoretical," "theory,"
"theorist"-all _thought_, to be brief, was very properly resented as a personal affront to themselves. Cultivating the natural sciences to the exclusion of Metaphysics, the Mathematics, and Logic, many of these Bacon-engendered philosophers-one-idead, one-sided and lame of a leg-were more wretchedly helpless-more miserably ignorant, in view of all the comprehensible objects of knowledge, than the veriest unlettered hind who proves that he knows something at least, in admitting that he knows absolutely nothing.
"Nor had our forefathers any better right to talk about _certainty_, when pursuing, in blind confidence, the _a priori_ path of axioms, or of the Ram. At innumerable points this path was scarcely as straight as a ram"s-horn. The simple truth is, that the Aristotelians erected their castles upon a basis far less reliable than air; _for no such things as axioms ever existed or can possibly exist at all_. This they must have been very blind, indeed, not to see, or at least to suspect; for, even in their own day, many of their long-admitted "axioms" had been abandoned:-"_ex nihilo nihil fit_," for example, and a "thing cannot act where it is not," and "there cannot be antipodes," and "darkness cannot proceed from light." These and numerous similar propositions formerly accepted, without hesitation, as axioms, or undeniable truths, were, even at the period of which I speak, seen to be altogether untenable:-how absurd in these people, then, to persist in relying upon a basis, as immutable, whose mutability had become so repeatedly manifest!
"But, even through evidence afforded by themselves against themselves, it is easy to convict these _a priori_ reasoners of the grossest unreason-it is easy to show the futility-the impalpability of their axioms in general. I have now lying before me"-it will be observed that we still proceed with the letter-"I have now lying before me a book printed about a thousand years ago. Pundit a.s.sures me that it is decidedly the cleverest ancient work on its topic, which is "Logic." The author, who was much esteemed in his day, was one Miller, or Mill; and we find it recorded of him, as a point of some importance, that he rode a mill-horse whom he called Jeremy Bentham:-but let us glance at the volume itself!
"Ah!-"Ability or inability to conceive," says Mr. Mill very properly, "is _in no case_ to be received as a criterion of axiomatic truth." Now, that this is a palpable truism no one in his senses will deny. _Not_ to admit the proposition, is to insinuate a charge of variability in Truth itself, whose very t.i.tle is a synonym of the Steadfast. If ability to conceive be taken as a criterion of Truth, then a truth to _David_ Hume would very seldom be a truth to _Joe_; and ninety-nine hundredths of what is undeniable in Heaven would be demonstrable falsity upon Earth.
The proposition of Mr. Mill, then, is sustained. I will not grant it to be an _axiom_; and this merely because I am showing that _no_ axioms exist; but, with a distinction which could not have been cavilled at even by Mr. Mill himself, I am ready to grant that, _if_ an axiom _there be_, then the proposition of which we speak has the fullest right to be considered an axiom-that no _more_ absolute axiom _is_-and, consequently, that any subsequent proposition which shall conflict with this one primarily advanced, must be either a falsity in itself-that is to say no axiom-or, if admitted axiomatic, must at once neutralize both itself and its predecessor.
"And now, by the logic of their own propounder, let us proceed to test any one of the axioms propounded. Let us give Mr. Mill the fairest of play. We will bring the point to no ordinary issue. We will select for investigation no common-place axiom-no axiom of what, not the less preposterously because only impliedly, he terms his secondary cla.s.s-as if a positive truth by definition could be either more or less positively a truth:-we will select, I say, no axiom of an unquestionability so questionable as is to be found in Euclid. We will not talk, for example, about such propositions as that two straight lines cannot enclose a s.p.a.ce, or that the whole is greater than any one of its parts. We will afford the logician _every_ advantage. We will come at once to a proposition which he regards as the acme of the unquestionable-as the quintessence of axiomatic undeniability. Here it is:-"Contradictions cannot _both_ be true-that is, cannot coexist in nature." Here Mr. Mill means, for instance,-and I give the most forcible instance conceivable-that a tree must be either a tree or _not_ a tree-that it cannot be at the same time a tree _and_ not a tree:-all which is quite reasonable of itself and will answer remarkably well as an axiom, until we bring it into collation with an axiom insisted upon a few pages before-in other words-words which I have previously employed-until we test it by the logic of its own propounder. "A tree,"
Mr. Mill a.s.serts, "must be either a tree or _not_ a tree." Very well:-and now let me ask him, _why_. To this little query there is but one response:-I defy any man living to invent a second. The sole answer is this:-"Because we find it _impossible to conceive_ that a tree can be any thing else than a tree or not a tree." This, I repeat, is Mr. Mill"s sole answer:-he will not _pretend_ to suggest another:-and yet, by his own showing, his answer is clearly no answer at all; for has he not already required us to admit, _as an axiom_, that ability or inability to conceive is _in no case_ to be taken as a criterion of axiomatic truth? Thus all-absolutely _all_ his argumentation is at sea without a rudder. Let it not be urged that an exception from the general rule is to be made, in cases where the "impossibility to conceive" is so peculiarly great as when we are called upon to conceive a tree _both_ a tree and _not_ a tree. Let no attempt, I say, be made at urging this sotticism; for, in the first place, there are no _degrees_ of "impossibility," and thus no one impossible conception can be _more_ peculiarly impossible than another impossible conception:-in the second place, Mr. Mill himself, no doubt after thorough deliberation, has most distinctly, and most rationally, excluded all opportunity for exception, by the emphasis of his proposition, that, _in no case_, is ability or inability to conceive, to be taken as a criterion of axiomatic truth:-in the third place, even were exceptions admissible at all, it remains to be shown how any exception is admissible _here_. That a tree can be both a tree and not a tree, is an idea which the angels, or the devils, _may_ entertain, and which no doubt many an earthly Bedlamite, or Transcendentalist, _does_.
"Now I do not quarrel with these ancients," continues the letter-writer, "_so much_ on account of the transparent frivolity of their logic-which, to be plain, was baseless, worthless and fantastic altogether-as on account of their pompous and infatuate proscription of all _other_ roads to Truth than the two narrow and crooked paths-the one of creeping and the other of crawling-to which, in their ignorant perversity, they have dared to confine the Soul-the Soul which loves nothing so well as to soar in those regions of illimitable intuition which are utterly incognizant of "_path_."
"By the bye, my dear friend, is it not an evidence of the mental slavery entailed upon those bigoted people by their Hogs and Rams, that in spite of the eternal prating of their savans about _roads_ to Truth, none of them fell, even by accident, into what we now so distinctly perceive to be the broadest, the straightest and most available of all mere roads-the great thoroughfare-the majestic highway of the _Consistent_?
Is it not wonderful that they should have failed to deduce from the works of G.o.d the vitally momentous consideration that _a perfect consistency can be nothing but an absolute truth_? How plain-how rapid our progress since the late announcement of this proposition! By its means, investigation has been taken out of the hands of the ground-moles, and given as a duty, rather than as a task, to the true-to the _only_ true thinkers-to the generally-educated men of ardent imagination. These latter-our Keplers-our Laplaces-"speculate"-"theorize"-these are the terms-can you not fancy the shout of scorn with which they would be received by our progenitors, were it possible for them to be looking over my shoulders as I write? The Keplers, I repeat, speculate-theorize-and their theories are merely corrected-reduced-sifted-cleared, little by little, of their chaff of inconsistency-until at length there stands apparent an unenc.u.mbered _Consistency_-a consistency which the most stolid admit-because it _is_ a consistency-to be an absolute and an unquestionable _Truth_.
"I have often thought, my friend, that it must have puzzled these dogmaticians of a thousand years ago, to determine, even, by which of their two boasted roads it is that the cryptographist attains the solution of the more complicate cyphers-or by which of them Champollion guided mankind to those important and innumerable truths which, for so many centuries, have lain entombed amid the phonetical hieroglyphics of Egypt. In especial, would it not have given these bigots some trouble to determine by which of their two roads was reached the most momentous and sublime of _all_ their truths-the truth-the fact of _gravitation_?
Newton deduced it from the laws of Kepler. Kepler admitted that these laws he _guessed_-these laws whose investigation disclosed to the greatest of British astronomers that principle, the basis of all (existing) physical principle, in going behind which we enter at once the nebulous kingdom of Metaphysics. Yes!-these vital laws Kepler _guessed_-that is to say, he _imagined_ them. Had he been asked to point out either the _de_ductive or _in_ductive route by which he attained them, his reply might have been-"I know nothing about _routes_-but I _do_ know the machinery of the Universe. Here it is. I grasped it with _my soul_-I reached it through mere dint of _intuition_." Alas, poor ignorant old man! Could not any metaphysician have told him that what he called "intuition" was but the conviction resulting from _de_ductions or _in_ductions of which the processes were so shadowy as to have escaped his consciousness, eluded his reason, or bidden defiance to his capacity of expression? How great a pity it is that some "moral philosopher" had not enlightened him about all this! How it would have comforted him on his death-bed to know that, instead of having gone intuitively and thus unbecomingly, he had, in fact, proceeded decorously and legitimately-that is to say Hog-ishly, or at least Ram-ishly-into the vast halls where lay gleaming, untended, and hitherto untouched by mortal hand-unseen by mortal eye-the imperishable and priceless secrets of the Universe!
"Yes, Kepler was essentially a _theorist_; but this t.i.tle, _now_ of so much sanct.i.ty, was, in those ancient days, a designation of supreme contempt. It is only _now_ that men begin to appreciate that divine old man-to sympathize with the prophetical and poetical rhapsody of his ever-memorable words. For _my_ part," continues the unknown correspondent, "I glow with a sacred fire when I even think of them, and feel that I shall never grow weary of their repet.i.tion:-in concluding this letter, let me have the real pleasure of transcribing them once again:-"_I care not whether my work be read now or by posterity. I can afford to wait a century for readers when G.o.d himself has waited six thousand years for an observer. I triumph. I have stolen the golden secret of the Egyptians. I will indulge my sacred fury._""
Here end my quotations from this very unaccountable and, perhaps, somewhat impertinent epistle; and perhaps it would be folly to comment, in any respect, upon the chimerical, not to say revolutionary, fancies of the writer-whoever he is-fancies so radically at war with the well-considered and well-settled opinions of this age. Let us proceed, then, to our legitimate thesis, _The Universe_.
This thesis admits a choice between two modes of discussion:-We may _as_cend or _de_scend. Beginning at our own point of view-at the Earth on which we stand-we may pa.s.s to the other planets of our system-thence to the Sun-thence to our system considered collectively-and thence, through other systems, indefinitely outwards; or, commencing on high at some point as definite as we can make it or conceive it, we may come down to the habitation of Man. Usually-that is to say, in ordinary essays on Astronomy-the first of these two modes is, with certain reservation, adopted:-this for the obvious reason that astronomical _facts_, merely, and principles, being the object, that object is best fulfilled in stepping from the known because proximate, gradually onward to the point where all cert.i.tude becomes lost in the remote. For my present purpose, however,-that of enabling the mind to take in, as if from afar and at one glance, a distinct conception of the _individual_ Universe-it is clear that a descent to small from great-to the outskirts from the centre (if we could establish a centre)-to the end from the beginning (if we could fancy a beginning) would be the preferable course, but for the difficulty, if not impossibility, of presenting, in this course, to the unastronomical, a picture at all comprehensible in regard to such considerations as are involved in _quant.i.ty_-that is to say, in number, magnitude and distance.
Now, distinctness-intelligibility, at all points, is a primary feature in my general design. On important topics it is better to be a good deal prolix than even a very little obscure. But abstruseness is a quality appertaining to no subject _per se_. All are alike, in facility of comprehension, to him who approaches them by properly graduated steps.
It is merely because a stepping-stone, here and there, is heedlessly left unsupplied in our road to the Differential Calculus, that this latter is not altogether as simple a thing as a sonnet by Mr. Solomon Seesaw.
By way of admitting, then, no _chance_ for misapprehension, I think it advisable to proceed as if even the more obvious facts of Astronomy were unknown to the reader. In combining the two modes of discussion to which I have referred, I propose to avail myself of the advantages peculiar to each-and very especially of the _iteration in detail_ which will be unavoidable as a consequence of the plan. Commencing with a descent, I shall reserve for the return upwards those indispensable considerations of _quant.i.ty_ to which allusion has already been made.
Let us begin, then, at once, with that merest of words, "Infinity."
This, like "G.o.d," "spirit," and some other expressions of which the equivalents exist in all languages, is by no means the expression of an idea-but of an effort at one. It stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception. Man needed a term by which to point out the _direction_ of this effort-the cloud behind which lay, forever invisible, the _object_ of this attempt. A word, in fine, was demanded, by means of which one human being might put himself in relation at once with another human being and with a certain _tendency_ of the human intellect. Out of this demand arose the word, "Infinity;" which is thus the representative but of the _thought of a thought_.
As regards _that_ infinity now considered-the infinity of s.p.a.ce-we often hear it said that "its idea is admitted by the mind-is acquiesced in-is entertained-on account of the greater difficulty which attends the conception of a limit." But this is merely one of those _phrases_ by which even profound thinkers, time out of mind, have occasionally taken pleasure in deceiving _themselves_. The quibble lies concealed in the word "difficulty." "The mind," we are told, "entertains the idea of _limitless_, through the greater _difficulty_ which it finds in entertaining that of _limited_, s.p.a.ce." Now, were the proposition but fairly _put_, its absurdity would become transparent at once. Clearly, there is no mere _difficulty_ in the case. The a.s.sertion intended, if presented _according_ to its intention and without sophistry, would run thus:-"The mind admits the idea of limitless, through the greater _impossibility_ of entertaining that of limited, s.p.a.ce."
It must be immediately seen that this is not a question of two statements between whose respective credibilities-or of two arguments between whose respective validities-the _reason_ is called upon to decide:-it is a matter of two conceptions, directly conflicting, and each avowedly impossible, one of which the _intellect_ is supposed to be capable of entertaining, on account of the greater _impossibility_ of entertaining the other. The choice is _not_ made between two difficulties;-it is merely _fancied_ to be made between two impossibilities. Now of the former, there _are_ degrees-but of the latter, none:-just as our impertinent letter-writer has already suggested. A task _may_ be more or less difficult; but it is either possible or not possible:-there are no gradations. It _might_ be more _difficult_ to overthrow the Andes than an ant-hill; but it _can_ be no more _impossible_ to annihilate the matter of the one than the matter of the other. A man may jump ten feet with less _difficulty_ than he can jump twenty, but the _impossibility_ of his leaping to the moon is not a whit less than that of his leaping to the dog-star.
Since all this is undeniable: since the choice of the mind is to be made between _impossibilities_ of conception: since one impossibility cannot be greater than another: and since, thus, one cannot be preferred to another: the philosophers who not only maintain, on the grounds mentioned, man"s _idea_ of infinity but, on account of such supposit.i.tious idea, _infinity itself_-are plainly engaged in demonstrating one impossible thing to be possible by showing how it is that some one other thing-is impossible too. This, it will be said, is nonsense; and perhaps it is:-indeed I think it very capital nonsense-but forego all claim to it as nonsense of mine.
The readiest mode, however, of displaying the fallacy of the philosophical argument on this question, is by simply adverting to a _fact_ respecting it which has been hitherto quite overlooked-the fact that the argument alluded to both proves and disproves its own proposition. "The mind is impelled," say the theologians and others, "to admit a _First Cause_, by the superior difficulty it experiences in conceiving cause beyond cause without end." The quibble, as before, lies in the word "difficulty"-but _here_ what is it employed to sustain? A First Cause. And what is a First Cause? An ultimate termination of causes. And what is an ultimate termination of causes? Finity-the Finite. Thus the one quibble, in two processes, by G.o.d knows how many philosophers, is made to support now Finity and now Infinity-could it not be brought to support something besides? As for the quibblers-_they_, at least, are insupportable. But-to dismiss them:-what they prove in the one case is the identical nothing which they demonstrate in the other.
Of course, no one will suppose that I here contend for the absolute impossibility of _that_ which we attempt to convey in the word "Infinity." My purpose is but to show the folly of endeavoring to prove Infinity itself or even our conception of it, by any such blundering ratiocination as that which is ordinarily employed.