Page:Edgar Poe and his critics.djvu/69

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Edgar Poe and his Critics.
67

“No thinking man lives who, at some luminous point of his life, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding or believing that anything exists greater than his own soul. The intense, overwhelming dissatisfaction and rebellion at the thought, together with the omniprevalent aspirations at perfection, are but the spiritual, coincident with the material, struggles towards the original Unity. The material and spiritual God now exists solely in the diffused matter and Spirit of the Universe, and the regathering of this diffused Matter and Spirit will be but the reconstitution of the purely Spiritual and Individual God.”

In a copy of the original edition of Eureka, purchased at the recent sale of Dr. Griswold’s library, the following note was found inscribed in the handwriting of the author on the half blank page at the end of the volume. It is singularly ingenious and characteristic.

Note.—The pain of the consideration that we shall lose our