ules and despises, and pours forth his
rhapsodical ecstasies in a glorification of the third mode--the noble art
of _guessing_.' What I _really_ say is this:--That there is no absolute
_certainty_ either in the Aristotelian or Baconian process--that, for
this reason, neither Philosophy is so profound as it fancies itself--and
that neither has a right to sneer at that _seemingly_ imaginative process
called Intuition (by which the great Kepler attained his laws); since
'Intuition,' after all, 'is but the conviction arising from those
_in_ductions or _de_ductions of which the processes are so shadowy as to
escape our consciousness, elude our reason or defy our capacity of
expression.' The second misrepresentation runs thus:--'The developments
of electricity and the formation of stars and suns, luminous and
nonluminous, moons and planets, with their rings, &c., is deduced, very
much according to the nebular theory of Laplace, from the principle
propounded above.' Now the impression intended to be made here upon the
reader's mind, by the 'Student of Theology,' is evidently, that my theory
may all be very well in its way, but that it is nothing but Laplace over
again, with some modifications that he (the Student of Theology) cannot
regard as at all important. I have only to say that no gentleman can
accuse me of the disengenuousness here implied; inasmuch as, having
proceeded with my theory up to that point at which Laplace's theory
_meets_ it, I then _give Laplace's theory in full_, with the expression
of my firm conviction of its absolute truth _at all points_. The _ground_
covered by the great French astronomer compares with that covered by my
theory, as a bubble compares with the ocean on which it floats; nor has
he the slightest allusion to the 'principle propounded above,' the
principle of Unity being the source of all things--the principle of
Gravity being merely the Reaction of the Divine Act which irradiated all
things from Unity. In fact _no_ point of _my_ theory has been even
so much as alluded to by Laplace. I have not considered it necessary,
here to speak of the astronomical knowledge displayed in the 'stars _and_
suns' of the Student of Theology, nor to hint that it would be better to
say that 'development and formation _are_, than that development and
formation _is_. The third misrepresentation lies in a foot-note, where
the critic says:--'Further than this, Mr. Poe's claim that he can account
for the existence