BY
EDGAR A. POE.
NEW-YORK:
GEO. P. PUTNAM,
OF LATE FIRM OF “WILEY & PUTNAM,”
155 BROADWAY.
MDCCCXLVIII.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848,
By EDGAR A. POE,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New-York.
Leavitt, Trow & Co Prs.,
33 Ann-street.
WITH VERY PROFOUND RESPECT,
This Work is Dedicated
TO
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.
To the few who love me and whom I love—to thosewho feel rather than to those who think—to the dreamersand those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities—Ioffer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller,but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constitutingit true. To these I present the composition as anArt-Product alone:—let us say as a Romance; or, if I benot urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem.
What I here propound is true:—therefore it cannotdie:—or if by any means it be now trodden down so that itdie, it will “rise again to the Life Everlasting.”
Nevertheless it is as a Poem only that I wish this workto be judged after I am dead.
E. A. P.
It is with humility really unassumed—it is with a sentimenteven of awe—that I pen the opening sentence of thiswork: for of all conceivable subjects I approach the readerwith the most solemn—the most comprehensive—the mostdifficult—the most august.
What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sublimity—sufficientlysublime in their simplicity—for the mereenunciation of my theme?
I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical andMathematical—of the Material and Spiritual Universe:—ofits Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its Present Conditionand its Destiny. I shall be so rash, moreover, as tochallenge the conclusions, and thus, in effect, to questionthe sagacity, of many of the greatest and most justly reverencedof men.[8]
In the beginning, let me as distinctly as possible announce—notthe theorem which I hope to demonstrate—for, whateverthe mathematicians may assert, there is, in this worldat least, no such thing as demonstration—but the rulingidea which, throughout this volume, I shall be continuallyendeavoring to suggest.
My general proposition, then, is this:—In the OriginalUnity of the First Thing lies the Secondary Cause of AllThings, with the Germ of their Inevitable Annihilation.
In illustration of this idea, I propose to take such a surveyof the Universe that the mind may be able really toreceive and to perceive an individual impression.
He who from the top of Ætna casts his eyes leisurelyaround, is affected chiefly by the extent and diversity of thescene. Only by a rapid whirling on his heel could he hopeto comprehend the panorama in the sublimity of its oneness.But as, on the summit of Ætna, no man has thought ofwhirling on his heel, so no man has ever taken into hisbrain the full uniqueness of the prospect; and so, again,whatever considerations lie involved in this un