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MARGINALIA.

BY EDGAR A. POE.

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[[M155]]

IN general, our first impressions are the true ones — the chief difficulty is in making sure which are the first. In early youth we read a poem, for instance, and are enraptured with it. At manhood we are assured by our reason that we had no reason to be enraptured. But some years elapse, and we return to our primitive admiration, just as a matured judgment enables us precisely to see what and why we admired. Thus, as individuals, we think in cycles, and may, from the frequency or infrequency of our revolutions about the various thought-centres, form an accurate estimate of the advance of our thought toward maturity. It is really wonderful to observe how closely, in all the essentials of truth, the child-opinion coincides with that of the man proper — of the man at his best.

And as with individuals, so, perhaps, with mankind. When the world begins to return, frequently, to its first impressions, we shall then be warranted in looking for the millennium — or whatever it is: — we may safely take it for granted that we are attaining our maximum of wit, and of the happiness which is thence to ensue. The indications of such a return are, at present, like the visits of angels — but we have them now and then — in the case, for example, of credulity. The philosophic, of late days, are distinguished by that very facility in belief which was the characteristic of the illiterate half a century ago. Skepticism, in regard to apparent miracles, is not, as formerly, an evidence either of superior wisdom or knowledge. In a word, the wise now believe — yesterday they would not believe — and day before yesterday (in the time of Strabo for example) they {{1849-02: exclusively, }} believed, {{1844-01: exclusively, }} anything and everything: — here, then, is one of the indicative cycles completed — indicative of the world's approach to years of discretion. I mention Strabo merely as an exception to the rule of his epoch — (just as one, in a hurry for an illustration, [column 2:] might describe Mr. So and So to be as witty or as amiable as Mr. This and That is not[[)]] — for so rarely did men reject in Strabo's time, and so much more rarely did they err by rejection, that the skepticism of this philosopher must be regarded as one of the most remarkable anomalies on record.

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I cannot help believing, with Gosselin, that Hanno proceeded only so far as Cape Nun.

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The drugging system, in medical practice, seems to me but a modification of the idea of penance, which has haunted the world since its infancy — the idea that the voluntary endurance of pain is atonement for sin. In this, the primary phase of the folly, there is at least a show of rationality. Man {{1849-02: (it is assumed) }} offends the Deity; thus appears to arise a necessity for retribution, or, more strictly, a desire, on the part of Deity, to punish. The self-infliction of punishment, then, seemed to include at once an acknowledgment of error, zeal in anticipating the will of God, and expiation of the wrong. The thought, thus stated, however absurd, is not unnatural; but the principle being gradually left out of sight, mankind at length found itself possessed of the naked idea that, in general, the suffering of mankind is grateful to the Creator: — hence the Dervishes, the Simeons, the monastic hair-cloths and shoe-peas, the present Puritanism and cant about the “mortification of the flesh.” From this point the conceit {{1844-01: makes //1849-02: made }} another lapse; the fancy took root, that in the voluntary endurance of ill there existed, in the abstract, a tendency to good; and it was but in pursuance of this fancy, that, in sickness, remedies were selected in the ratio of their repulsiveness. How else shall we account for the fact, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the articles of the Materia Medica are distasteful?

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