The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe (Penguin Classics)

by Edgar Allan Poe

  ‘The long duration of human life in your time, together with the occasional practice of passing it, as you have explained, in instalments, must have had, indeed, a strong tendency to the general development and conglomeration of knowledge. I presume, therefore, that we are to attribute the marked inferiority of the old Egyptians in all particulars of science, when compared with the moderns, and more especially with the Yankees, altogether to the superior solidity of the Egyptian skull.’

  ‘I confess again,’ replied the Count with much suavity, ‘that I am somewhat at a loss to comprehend you; pray, to what particulars of science do you allude?’

  Here our whole party, joining voices, detailed, at great length, the assumptions of phrenology and the marvels of animal magnetism.

  Having heard us to an end, the Count proceeded to relate a few anecdotes, which rendered it evident that prototypes of Gall and Spurzheim had flourished and faded in Egypt so long ago as to have been nearly forgotten, and that the manœuvres of Mesmer9 were really very contemptible tricks when put in collation with the positive miracles of the Theban savans, who created lice and a great many other similar things.

  I here asked the Count if his people were able to calculate eclipses. He smiled rather contemptuously, and said they were.

  This put me a little out, but I began to make other inquiries in regard to his astronomical knowledge, when a member of the company, who had never as yet opened his mouth, whispered in my ear that, for information on this head, I had better consult Ptolemy, (whoever Ptolemy is) 10 as well as one Plutarch de facie lunœ.11

  I then questioned the Mummy about burning-glasses and lenses, and, in general, about the manufacture of glass; but I had not made an end of my queries before the silent member again touched me quietly on the elbow, and begged me for God’s sake to take a peep at Diodorus Siculus.12 As for the Count, he merely asked me, in the way of reply, if we moderns possessed any such microscopes as would enable us to cut cameos in the style of the Egyptians. While I was thinking how I should answer this question, little Doctor Ponnoner committed himself in a very extraordinary way.

  ‘Look at our architecture!’ he exclaimed, greatly to the indignation of both the travelers, who pinched him black and blue to no purpose.

  ‘Look,’ he cried with enthusiasm, ‘at the Bowling-Green Fountain in New York!13 or if this be too vast a contemplation, regard for a moment the Capitol at Washington, D. C.!’ – and the good little medical man went on to detail very minutely the proportions of the fabric to which he referred. He explained that the portico alone was adorned with no less than four and twenty columns, five feet in diameter, and ten feet apart.

  The Count said that he regretted not being able to remember, just at that moment, the precise dimensions of any one of the principal buildings of the city of Aznac,14 whose foundations were laid in the night of Time, but the ruins of which were still standing, at the epoch of his entombment, in a vast plain of sand to the westward of Thebes. He recollected, however, (talking of porticoes) that one affixed to an inferior palace in a kind of suburb called Carnac, consisted of a hundred and forty-four columns, thirty-seven feet each in circumference, and twenty-five feet apart. The approach of this portico, from the Nile, was through an avenue two miles long, composed of sphinxes, statues and obelisks, twenty, sixty, and a hundred feet in height. The palace itself (as well as he could remember) was, in one direction, two miles long, and might have been, altogether, about seven in circuit. Its walls were richly painted all over, within and without, with hieroglyphics. He would not pretend to assert that even fifty or sixty of the Doctor’s Capitols might have been built within these walls, but he was by no means sure that two or three hundred of them might not have been squeezed in with some trouble. That palace at Carnac was an insignificant little building after all. He, (the Count) however, could not conscientiously refuse to admit the ingenuity, magnificence, and superiority of the Fountain at the Bowling-Green, as described by the Doctor. Nothing like it, he was forced to allow, had ever been seen in Egypt or elsewhere.

  I here asked the Count what he had to say to our rail-roads.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied, ‘in particular.’ They were rather slight, rather ill-conceived, and clumsily put together. They could not be compared, of course, with the vast, level, direct, iron-grooved causeways, upon which the Egyptians conveyed entire temples and solid obelisks of a hundred and fifty feet in altitude.

  I spoke of our gigantic mechanical forces.

  He agreed that we knew something in that way, but inquired how I should have gone to work in getting up the imposts on the lintels of even the little palace at Carnac.

  This question I concluded not to hear, and demanded if he had any idea of Artesian wells; but he simply raised his eye-brows; while Mr Gliddon, winked at me very hard, and said, in a low tone, that one had been recently discovered by the engineers employed to bore for water in the Great Oasis.

  I then mentioned our steel; but the foreigner elevated his nose, and asked me if our steel could have executed the sharp carved work seen on the obelisks, and which was wrought altogether by edge-tools of copper.

  This disconcerted us so greatly that we thought it advisable to vary the attack to Metaphysics. We sent for a copy of a book called the ‘Dial’,15 and read out of it a chapter or two about something which is not very clear, but which the Bostonians call the Great Movement or Progress.

  The Count merely said that Great Movements were awfully common things in his day, and as for Progress it was at one time quite a nuisance, but it never progressed.

  We then spoke of the great beauty and importance of Democracy, and were at much trouble in impressing the Count with a due sense of the advantages we enjoyed in living where there was suffrage ad libitum, and no king.

  He listened with marked interest, and in fact seemed not a little amused. When we had done, he said that, a great while ago, there had occurred something of a very similar sort. Thirteen Egyptian provinces determined all at once to be free, and so set a magnificent example to the rest of mankind. They assembled their wise men, and concocted the most ingenious constitution it is possible to conceive. For a while they managed remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism that ever was heard of upon the face of the Earth.

  I asked what was the name of the usurping tyrant.

  As well as the Count could recollect, it was Mob.

  Not knowing what to say to this, I raised my voice, and deplored the Egyptian ignorance of steam.

  The Count looked at me with much astonishment, but made no answer. The silent gentleman, however, gave me a violent nudge in the ribs with his elbows – told me I had sufficiently exposed myself for once – and demanded if I was really such a fool as not to know that the modern steam engine is derived from the invention of Hero, through Solomon de Caus.16

  We were now in imminent danger of being discomfited; but, as good luck would have it, Doctor Ponnonner, having rallied, returned to our rescue, and inquired if the people of Egypt would seriously pretend to rival the moderns in the all-important particular of dress.

  The Count, at this, glanced downward to the straps of his pantaloons, and then, taking hold of the end of one of his coattails, held it up close to his eyes for some minutes. Letting it fall, at last, his mouth extended itself very gradually from ear to ear; but I do not remember that he said anything in the way of reply.

  Hereupon we recovered our spirits, and the Doctor, approaching the Mummy with great dignity, desired it to say candidly, upon its honor as a gentleman, if the Egyptians had comprehended, at any period, the manufacture of either Ponnonner’s lozenges, or Brandreth’s pills.17

  We looked, with profound anxiety, for an answer; – but in vain. It was not forthcoming. The Egyptian blushed and hung down his head. Never was triumph more consummate; never was defeat borne with so ill a
grace. Indeed I could not endure the spectacle of the poor Mummy’s mortification. I reached my hat, bowed to him stiffly, and took leave.

  Upon getting home I found it past four o’clock, and went immediately to bed. It is now ten, A. M. I have been up since seven, penning these memoranda for the benefit of my family and of mankind. The former I shall behold no more. My wife is a shrew. The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life and of the nineteenth century in general. I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. Besides, I am anxious to know who will be President in 2045. As soon, therefore, as I shave and swallow a cup of coffee, I shall just step over to Ponnonner’s and get embalmed for a couple of hundred years.

  The Power of Words

  Oinos. Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with immortality!1

  Agathos. You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here is knowledge a thing of intuition. For wisdom ask of the angels freely, that it may be given!

  Oinos. But in this existence, I dreamed that I should be at once cognizant of all things, and thus at once happy in being cognizant of all.

  Agathos. Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend.

  Oinos. But does not The Most High know all?

  Agathos. That (since he is The Most Happy) must be still the one thing unknown even to HIM.

  Oinos. But, since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not at last all things be known?

  Agathos. Look down into the abysmal distances! – attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them thus – and thus – and thus! Even the spiritual vision, is it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe? – the walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has appeared to blend into unity?

  Oinos. I clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream.

  Agathos. There are no dreams in Aidenn2 – but it is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which the soul may allay the thirst to know which is for ever unquenchable within it – since to quench it would be to extinguish the soul’s self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without fear. Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades,3 and swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart’s-ease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple-tinted suns.4

  Oinos. And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me! speak to me in the earth’s familiar tone! I understood not what you hinted to me, just now, of the modes or of the methods of what, during mortality, we were accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean to say that the Creator is not God?

  Agathos. I mean to say that the Deity does not create.

  Oinos. Explain!

  Agathos. In the beginning only, he created. The seeming creatures which are now, throughout the universe, so perpetually springing into being, can only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or immediate results of the Divine creative power.

  Oinos. Among men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered heretical in the extreme.

  Agathos. Among angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.

  Oinos. I can comprehend you thus far – that certain operations of what we term Nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise to that which has all the appearance of creation. Shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many very successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to denominate the creation of animalculæ.

  Agathos. The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the secondary creation – and of the only species of creation which has ever been, since the first word spoke into existence the first law.

  Oinos. Are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity, burst hourly forth into the heavens – are not these stars, Agathos, the immediate handiwork of the King?

  Agathos. Let me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead you, step by step, to the conception I intend. You are well aware that, as no thought can perish, so no act is without infinite result.5 We moved our hands, for example, when we were dwellers on the earth, and, in so doing, we gave vibration to the atmosphere which engirdled it. This vibration was indefinitely extended, till it gave impulse to every particle of the earth’s air, which thenceforward, and for ever, was actuated by the one movement of the hand. This fact the mathematicians of our globe well knew. They made the special effects, indeed, wrought in the fluid by special impulses, the subject of exact calculation – so that it became easy to determine in what precise period an impulse of given extent would engirdle the orb, and impress (for ever) every atom of the atmosphere circumambient. Retrograding, they found no difficulty, from a given effect, under given conditions, in determining the value of the original impulse. Now the mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse were absolutely endless – and who saw that a portion of these results were accurately traceable through the agency of algebraic analysis – who saw, too, the facility of the retrogradation – these men saw, at the same time, that this species of analysis itself, had within itself a capacity for indefinite progress – that there were no bounds conceivable to its advancement and applicability, except within the intellect of him who advanced or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians paused.

  Oinos. And why, Agathos, should they have proceeded?

  Agathos. Because there were some considerations of deep interest, beyond. It was deducible from what they knew, that to a being of infinite understanding – one to whom the perfection of the algebraic analysis lay unfolded – there could be no difficulty in tracing every impulse given the air – and the ether through the air – to the remotest consequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of time. It is indeed demonstrable that every such impulse given the air, must, in the end, impress every individual thing that exists within the universe; – and the being of infinite understanding – the being whom we have imagined – might trace the remote undulations of the impulse – trace them upward and onward in their influences upon all particles of all matter – upward and onward for ever in their modifications of old forms – or in other words in their creation of new – until he found them reflected – unimpressive at last – back from the throne of the Godhead. And not only could such a being do this, but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded him – should one of these numberless comets, for example, be presented to his inspection – he could have no difficulty in determining, by the analytic retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due. This power of retrogradation in its absolute fulness and perfection – this faculty of referring at all epochs, all effects to all causes – is of course the prerogative of the Deity alone – but in every variety of degree, short of the absolute perfection, is the power itself exercised by the whole host of the Angelic Intelligences.

  Oinos. But you speak merely of impulses upon the air.

  Agathos. In speaking of the air, I referred only to the earth: – but the general proposition has reference to impulses upon the ether – which, since it pervades, and alone pervades all space, is thus the great medium of creation.

  Oinos. Then all motion, of whatever nature, creates?

  Agathos. It must: but a true philosophy has long taught that the source of all motion is thought – and the source of all thought is –

  Oinos. God.6

  Agathos. I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a child of the fair Earth which lately perished – of impulses upon the atmosphere of the Earth.

  Oinos. You did.

  Agathos. And while I thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some thought of the physical power of words? Is not every word an impulse on the air?

  Oinos. But why, Agathos, do you weep? – and why – oh why do your wings droop as we hover above this fair star – which is the greenest and yet m
ost terrible7 of all we have encountered in our flight? Its brilliant flowers look like a fairy dream – but its fierce volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent heart.

  Agathos. They are! – they are! This wild star – it is now three centuries since with clasped hands, and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my beloved – I spoke it – with a few passionate sentences – into birth. Its brilliant flowers are the dearest of all unfulfilled dreams, and its raging volcanoes are the passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of hearts.

  The System of Dr Tarr and Prof. Fether

  DURING the autumn of 18—, while on a tour through the extreme Southern provinces of France, my route led me within a few miles of a certain Maison de Santé, or private Mad-House, about which I had heard much, in Paris, from my medical friends. As I had never visited a place of the kind, I thought the opportunity too good to be lost; and so proposed to my traveling companion, (a gentleman with whom I had made casual acquaintance, a few days before,) that we should turn aside, for an hour or so, and look through the establishment. To this he objected – pleading haste, in the first place, and, in the second, a very usual horror at the sight of a lunatic. He begged me, however, not to let any mere courtesy toward himself interfere with the gratification of my curiosity, and said that he would ride on leisurely, so that I might overtake him during the day, or, at all events, during the next. As he bade me good-bye, I bethought me that there might be some difficulty in obtaining access to the premises, and mentioned my fears on this point. He replied that, in fact, unless I had personal knowledge of the superintendent, Monsieur Maillard, or some credential in the way of a letter, a difficulty might be found to exist, as the regulations of these private mad-houses were more rigid than the public hospital laws. For himself, he added, he had, some years since, made the acquaintance of Maillard, and would so far assist me as to ride up to the door and introduce me; although his feelings on the subject of lunacy would not permit of his entering the house.