Edgar Allan Poe

Eureka Edgar Allan Poe

Book Excerpt: ...at no axioms exist; but, with a distinction which could not have been cavilled at even by Mr. Mill himself, I am ready to grant that, if an axiom there be, then the proposition of which we speak has the fullest right to be considered an axiom--that no more absolute axiom is--and, consequently, that any subsequent proposition which shall conflict with this one primarily advanced, must be either a falsity in itself--that is to say no axiom--or, if admitted axiomatic, must at once neutralize both itself and its predecessor."And now, by the logic of their own propounder, let us proceed to test any one of the axioms propounded. Let us give Mr. Mill the fairest of play. We will bring the point to no ordinary issue. We will select for investigation no common-place axiom--no axiom of what, not the less preposterously because only impliedly, he terms his secondary class--as if a positive truth by definition could be either more or less positively a truth: --we wil.