rity"--now presented, I leap at once to _the_ secret--a secret
which I might never have attained _but_ for the peculiarity and the
inferences which, _in its mere character of peculiarity_, it affords me.

[1] "_Murders in the Rue Morgue_"--p. 133.

The process of thought, at this point, may be thus roughly sketched:--I
say to myself--"Unity, as I have explained it, is a truth--I feel it.
Diffusion is a truth--I see it. Irradiation, by which alone these two
truths are reconciled, is a consequent truth--I perceive it. _Equability_
of diffusion, first deduced _a priori_ and then corroborated by the
inspection of phaenomena, is also a truth--I fully admit it. So far all is
clear around me:--there are no clouds behind which _the_ secret--the great
secret of the gravitating _modus operandi_--can possibly lie hidden;--but
this secret lies _hereabouts_, most assuredly; and _were_ there but a
cloud in view, I should be driven to suspicion of that cloud." And now,
just as I say this, there actually comes a cloud into view. This cloud
is the seeming impossibility of reconciling my truth, _irradiation_,
with my truth, _equability of diffusion_. I say now:--"Behind this
_seeming_ impossibility is to be found what I desire." I do not say
"_real_ impossibility;" for invincible faith in my truths assures me
that it is a mere difficulty after all--but I go on to say, with
unflinching confidence, that, _when_ this _difficulty_ shall be solved,
we shall find, _wrapped up in the process of solution_, the key to the
secret at which we aim. Moreover--I _feel_ that we shall discover _but
one_ possible solution of the difficulty; this for the reason that, were
there two, one would be supererogatory--would be fruitless--would be
empty--would contain no key--since no duplicate key can be needed to any
secret of Nature.

And now, let us see:--Our usual notions of irradiation--in fact _all_ our
distinct notions of it--are caught merely from the process as we see it
exemplified in _Light_. Here there is a _continuous_ outpouring of
_ray-streams_, and _with a force which we have at least no right to
suppose varies at all_. Now, in any such irradiation _as
this_--continuous and of unvarying force--the regions nearer the centre
must _inevitably_ be always more crowded with the irradiated matter than
the regions more remote. But I have assumed _no_ such irradiation _as
this_. I assumed no _continuous_ irradiation; and for the simple reason
that s