Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/84

64 "The philosophical essays, occupying two of the volumes on our table, are comparatively valueless, and inferior, both in style and matter, to the political tracts. They are deeply imbued with the sceptical opinions of the author, and we should have willingly seen them omitted in this edition, if it were possible to get a complete one, with nearly one half of the author's works left out. Little, therefore, as we value the philosophical works of Bolingbroke, we commend the publishers for not expunging them as too many others have done."

"Twenty years ago," says Poe, writing in 1844, "credulity was the characteristic trait of the mob, incredulity the distinctive feature of the philosophic; now the case is conversed. The wise are wisely averse from disbelief. To be sceptical is no longer evidence either of information or of wit."

"No man doubts the immortality of the soul," declares Poe, "yet of all truths this truth of immortality is the most difficult to prove by any mere series of syllogisms." And later: "However well a man may reason on the great topics of God and immortality, he will be forced to admit tacitly in the end, that God and immortality are things to be felt rather than demonstrated." There was a time, however, when Poe believed that man's immortality could be proved:

"Indeed, to our own mind, the only irrefutable argument in support of the soul's immortality—or, rather, the only conclusive proof of man's alternate dissolution and rejuvenescence ad infinitum—is to be found in analogies deduced from the modern established theory of