Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/83

Rh embodied a false philosophy: "Witness the principles of our divine faith—that moral mechanism by which the simplicity of a child may overbalance the wisdom of a man." In reviewing Zanoni he says: "All that is truly noble in Bulwer's imaginary doctrines of the Rosicrucians is stolen from the pure precepts of our holy religion." Knowledge of nature, says Poe, adds to our knowledge of God, and Macaulay's assertion that theology is not a progressive science is declared to be false and misleading:

"Were the indications we derive from science, of the nature and designs of Deity, and thence, by inference, of man's destiny,—were these indications proof direct, it is then very true that no advance in science could strengthen them; for, as the essayist justly observes, 'nothing can be added to the force of the argument which the mind finds in every beast, bird and flower;' but, since these indications are rigidly analogical, every step in human knowledge, every astronomical discovery, in especial, throws additional light upon the august subject, by extending the range of analogy. That we know no more, to-day, of the nature of Deity, of its purposes, and thus of man himself, than we did even a dozen years ago, is a proposition disgracefully absurd. 'If Natural Philosophy,' says a greater than Macaulay, 'should continue to be improved in its various branches, the bounds of moral philosophy would be enlarged also.' These words of the prophetic Newton are felt to be true, and will be fulfilled."

It was the scepticism of Lord Bolingbroke which, according to Poe, rendered nearly half of the viscount's work comparatively worthless: