Poe, Edgar Allen / 2008-09-04 00:00:00

1841
THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE
by Edgar Allan Poe
THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE
What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid
himself among women, although puzzling questions are not beyond all
conjecture. --SIR THOMAS BROWNE, Urn-Burial.
THE mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in
themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them
only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that
they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a
source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his
physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles
into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which
disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial
occupations bringing his talents into play. He is fond of enigmas,
of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a
degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension
preternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence
of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition. The faculty
of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and
especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on
account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par
excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyze.
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