Complete Essays, Literary Criticism, Cryptography, Autography, Translations & Letters. Эдгар Аллан По
meaning of the term. Thus, we must regard the primary act as an act for the establishment of what we now call “principles.” But this primary act itself is to be considered as continuousVolition. The Thought of God is to be understood as originating the Diffusion — as proceeding with it — as regulating it — and, finally, as being withdrawn from it upon its completion. Then commences Reaction, and through Reaction, “Principle,” as we employ the word. It will be advisable, however, to limit the application of this word to the two immediate results of the discontinuance of the Divine Volition — that is, to the two agents, Attraction and Repulsion. Every other natural agent depends, either more or less immediately, upon these two, and therefore would be more conveniently designated as sub-principle.
It may be objected, thirdly, that, in general, the peculiar mode of distribution which I have suggested for the atoms is “an hypothesis and nothing more.”
Now, I am aware that the word “hypothesis” is a ponderous sledge-hammer, grasped immediately, if not lifted, by all very diminutive thinkers, on the first appearance of any proposition wearing, in any particular, the garb of a theory. But “hypothesis” cannot be wielded here to any good purpose, even by those who succeed in lifting it — little men or great.
I maintain, first, that only in the mode described is it conceivable that Matter could have been diffused so as to fulfil at once the conditions of radiation and of generally equable distribution. I maintain, secondly, that these conditions themselves have been imposed upon me, as necessities, in a train of ratiocination as rigorously logical as that which establishes any demonstration in Euclid; and I maintain, thirdly, that even if the charge of “hypothesis” were as fully sustained as it is, in fact, unsustained and untenable, still the validity and indisputability of my result would not, even in the slightest particular, be disturbed.
To explain:— The Newtonian Gravity — a law of Nature — a law whose existence as such no one out of Bedlam questions — a law whose admission as such enables us to account for nine-tenths of the Universal phenomena — a law which, merely because it does so enable us to account for these phenomena, we are perfectly willing, without reference to any other considerations, to admit, and cannot help admitting, as a law — a law, nevertheless, of which neither the principle nor the modusoperandi of the principle has ever yet been traced by the human analysis — a law, in short, which, neither in its detail nor in its generality, has been found susceptible of explanation at all — is at length seen to be at every point thoroughly explicable, provided we only yield our assent to — what? To an hypothesis? Why, if an hypothesis — if the merest hypothesis — if an hypothesis for whose assumption, as in the case of that pure hypothesis the Newtonian law itself, no shadow of a priori reason could be assigned — if an hypothesis, even so absolute as all this implies, would enable us to perceive a principle for the Newtonian law — would enable us to understand as satisfied, conditions so miraculously, so ineffably complex and seemingly irreconcileable as those involved in the relations of which Gravity tells us, — what rational being could so expose his fatuity as to call even this absolute hypothesis an hypothesis any longer; unless, indeed, he were to persist in so calling it, with the understanding that he did so simply for the sake of consistency in words?
But what is the true state of our present case? What is the fact? Not only that it is not an hypothesis which we are required to adopt, in order to admit the principle at issue explained, but that it is a logical conclusion which we are requested not to adopt if we can avoid it — which we are simply invited to deny if we can; a conclusion of so accurate a logicality that to dispute it would be the effort — to doubt its validity, beyond our power; a conclusion from which we see no mode of escape, turn as we will; a result which confronts us either at the end of an inductive journey from the phenomena of the very Law discussed, or at the close of a deductive career from the most rigorously simple of all conceivable assumptions — the assumption, in a word, of Simplicity itself.
And if here, it be urged, that although my starting-point is, as I assert, the assumption of absolute Simplicity, yet Simplicity, considered merely in itself, is no axiom; and that only deductions from axioms are indisputable; it is thus that I reply:
Every other science than Logic is the science of certain concrete relations. Arithmetic, for example, is the science of the relations of number — Geometry, of the relations of form — Mathematics in general, of the relations of quantity in general — of whatever can be increased or diminished. Logic, however, is the science of Relation in the abstract — of absolute Relation — of Relation considered solely in itself. An axiom in any particular science other than Logic is, thus, merely a proposition announcing certain concrete relations which seem to be too obvious for dispute — as when we say, for instance, that the whole is greater than its part; and, thus again, the principle of the Logical axiom — in other words, of an axiom in the abstract — is, simply, obviousness of relation. Now, it is clear, not only that what is obvious to one mind may not be obvious to another, but that what is obvious to one mind at one epoch, may be anything but obvious, at another epoch, to the same mind. It is clear, moreover, that what to-day is obvious even to the majority of mankind, or to the majority of the best intellects of mankind, may to-morrow be, to either majority, more or less obvious, or in no respect obvious at all. It is seen, then, that the axiomatic principle itself is susceptible of variation, and of course that axioms are susceptible of similar change. Being mutable, the “truths” which grow out of them are necessarily mutable too; or, in other words, are never to be positively depended on as truths at all — since Truth and Immutability are one.
It will now be readily understood that no axiomatic idea — no idea founded in the fluctuating principle, obviousness of relation — can possibly be so secure — so reliable a basis for any structure erected by the Reason, as that idea (whatever it is, wherever we can find it, or if it be practicable to find it anywhere) which is irrelative altogether; which not only presents to the understanding no obviousness of relation, either greater or less, to be considered, but subjects the intellect, not in the slightest degree, to the necessity of even looking at any relation at all. If such an idea be not what we too heedlessly term “an axiom,” it is at least preferable, as a logical basis, to any axiom ever propounded, or to all imaginable axioms combined; and such, precisely, is the idea with which my deductive process, so thoroughly corroborated by induction, commences. My Particle Proper is but absolute Relation.
To sum up what has been advanced:— As a starting-point I have taken it for granted, simply, that the Beginning had nothing behind it or before it, that it was a Beginning in fact, that it was a Beginning and nothing different from a Beginning; in short, that this Beginning was — that which it was. If this be a “mere assumption,” then a “mere assumption” let it be.
To conclude this branch of the subject:— I am fully warranted in announcing that the Law which we call Gravity exists on account of Matter’s having been radiated, at its origin, atomically, into a limited7 sphere of Space, from one, individual, unconditional, irrelative, and absolute Particle Proper, by the sole process in which it was possible to satisfy, at the same time, the two conditions — Radiation, and equable distribution throughout the sphere; that is to say, by a force varying in direct proportion with the squares of the distances between the Radiated atoms, respectively, and the Particular centre of Radiation.
I have already given my reasons for presuming Matter to have been diffused by a determinate rather than by a continuous or infinitely continued force. Supposing a continuous force, we should be unable, in the first place, to comprehend a reaction at all; and we should be required, in the second place, to entertain the impossible conception of an infinite extension of Matter. Not to dwell upon the impossibility of the conception, the infinite extension of Matter is an idea which, if not positively disproved, is at least not in any respect warranted by telescopic observation of the stars — a point to be explained more fully hereafter; and this empirical reason for believing in the original finity of Matter is unempirically confirmed. For example:— Admitting, for the