Introduction
Written for this Edition
IT struck me once, during a long meditation on literature, that every man who has written has had but one idea in his head. To the best of my recollection, the particular example in my mind at the time was Edgar Allan Poe, who executed a wonderful series of variations on one theme.
He had conceived the notion, I do not know whether as a sincere belief, or as a mere artistic topic, that death was not the swift, sudden and determinate stroke of most men's thoughts, and of science itself. The mourners about the bed might see the sick man cease to breathe, the doctor might say, "It is all over," and grant his certificate; but to Poe, this event, commonly perceived as death, was but the beginning of a slow and lingering process during which consciousness of a sort per-
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