Page:The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe (Volume II).djvu/169

 should tend to their general centre of irradiation with forces inversely proportional to the squares of the distances will be admitted as satisfactorily accounting, at the same time, for the tendency according to the same law, of these atoms each to each;—for the tendency to the centre is merely the tendency each to each, and not any tendency to a centre as such.—Thus it will be seen, also, that the establishment of my propositions would involve no necessity of modification in the terms of the Newtonian definition of Gravity, which declares that each atom attracts each other atom and so forth, and declares this merely; but (always under the supposition that what I propose be, in the end, admitted) it seems clear that some error might occasionally be avoided, in the future processes of Science, were a more ample phraseology adopted:—for instance:—"Each atom tends to every other atom, &c., with a force &c.: the general result being a tendency of all, with a similar force, to a general centre."

The reversal of our processes has thus brought us to an identical result; but while in the one process intuition was the starting point, in the other it was the goal. In commencing the former journey I could only say that, with an irresistible intuition, I felt Simplicity to have been made the characteristic of the original action of God:—in ending the letter I can only declare that with an irresistible intuition, I perceive Unity to have been the source of the observed phænomena of the Newtonian gravitation. Thus, according to the schools, I prove nothing. So be it:—I design but to suggest—and to convince through the suggestion. I am proudly aware that there exist many of the most profound and cautiously discriminative human intellects which cannot help being abundantly content with my—suggestions. To these intellects—as to my own—there is no mathematical demonstration which could bring the least additional true proof of the great Truth which I have advanced—the truth of Original Unity as the source—as the principle of the Universal Phænomena. For my part I am not sure that I speak and see—I am not so sure that my heart beats and that my soul lives:—of the rising of to-morrow's sun—a probability that as yet lies in the Future—I do not pretend to be one thousandth part as sure—as I am of the irretrievably