{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_22472/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_22472","id":"gutenberg_22472","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22472","summary":null,"tags":["Astronomy -- Miscellanea","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Science - Earth/Agricultural/Farming","Meteorology -- Miscellanea"],"text":"Produced by Julie Barkley, Graeme Mackreth and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE BOOK OF THE DAMNED\n\n\n\n\n1\n\n\nA procession of the damned.\n\nBy the damned, I mean the excluded.\n\nWe shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded.\n\nBattalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I have\nexhumed, will march. You'll read them--or they'll march. Some of them\nlivid and some of them fiery and some of them rotten.\n\nSome of them are corpses, skeletons, mummies, twitching, tottering,\nanimated by companions that have been damned alive. There are giants\nthat will walk by, though sound asleep. There are things that are\ntheorems and things that are rags: they'll go by like Euclid arm in arm\nwith the spirit of anarchy. Here and there will flit little harlots.\nMany are clowns. But many are of the highest respectability. Some are\nassassins. There are pale stenches and gaunt superstitions and mere\nshadows and lively malices: whims and amiabilities. The naive and the\npedantic and the bizarre and the grotesque and the sincere and the\ninsincere, the profound and the puerile.\n\nA stab and a laugh and the patiently folded hands of hopeless propriety.\n\nThe ultra-respectable, but the condemned, anyway.\n\nThe aggregate appearance is of dignity and dissoluteness: the aggregate\nvoice is a defiant prayer: but the spirit of the whole is processional.\n\nThe power that has said to all these things that they are damned, is\nDogmatic Science.\n\nBut they'll march.\n\nThe little harlots will caper, and freaks will distract attention, and\nthe clowns will break the rhythm of the whole with their\nbuffooneries--but the solidity of the procession as a whole: the\nimpressiveness of things that pass and pass and pass, and keep on and\nkeep on and keep on coming.\n\nThe irresistibleness of things that neither threaten nor jeer nor defy,\nbut arrange themselves in mass-formations that pass and pass and keep on\npassing.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo, by the damned, I mean the excluded.\n\nBut by the excluded I mean that which will some day be the excluding.\n\nOr everything that is, won't be.\n\nAnd everything that isn't, will be--\n\nBut, of course, will be that which won't be--\n\nIt is our expression that the flux between that which isn't and that\nwhich won't be, or the state that is commonly and absurdly called\n\"existence,\" is a rhythm of heavens and hells: that the damned won't\nstay damned; that salvation only precedes perdition. The inference is\nthat some day our accursed tatterdemalions will be sleek angels. Then\nthe sub-inference is that some later day, back they'll go whence they\ncame.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is our expression that nothing can attempt to be, except by\nattempting to exclude something else: that that which is commonly called\n\"being\" is a state that is wrought more or less definitely\nproportionately to the appearance of positive difference between that\nwhich is included and that which is excluded.\n\nBut it is our expression that there are no positive differences: that\nall things are like a mouse and a bug in the heart of a cheese. Mouse\nand a bug: no two things could seem more unlike. They're there a week,\nor they stay there a month: both are then only transmutations of cheese.\nI think we're all bugs and mice, and are only different expressions of\nan all-inclusive cheese.\n\nOr that red is not positively different from yellow: is only another\ndegree of whatever vibrancy yellow is a degree of: that red and yellow\nare continuous, or that they merge in orange.\n\nSo then that, if, upon the basis of yellowness and redness, Science\nshould attempt to classify all phenomena, including all red things as\nveritable, and excluding all yellow things as false or illusory, the\ndemarcation would have to be false and arbitrary, because things colored\norange, constituting continuity, would belong on both sides of the\nattempted borderline.\n\nAs we go along, we shall be impressed with this:\n\nThat no basis for classification, or inclusion and exclusion, more\nreasonable than that of redness and yellowness has ever been conceived\nof.\n\nScience has, by appeal to various bases, included a multitude of data.\nHad it not done so, there would be nothing with which to seem to be.\nScience has, by appeal to various bases, excluded a multitude of data.\nThen, if redness is continuous with yellowness: if every basis of\nadmission is continuous with every basis of exclusion, Science must have\nexcluded some things that are continuous with the accepted. In redness\nand yellowness, which merge in orangeness, we typify all tests, all\nstandards, all means of forming an opinion--\n\nOr that any positive opinion upon any subject is illusion built upon the\nfallacy that there are positive differences to judge by--\n\nThat the quest of all intellection has been for something--a fact, a\nbasis, a generalization, law, formula, a major premise that is positive:\nthat the best that has ever been done has been to say that some things\nare self-evident--whereas, by evidence we mean the support of something\nelse--\n\nThat this is the quest; but that it has never been attained; but that\nScience has acted, ruled, pronounced, and condemned as if it had been\nattained.\n\nWhat is a house?\n\nIt is not possible to say what anything is, as positively distinguished\nfrom anything else, if there are no positive differences.\n\nA barn is a house, if one lives in it. If residence constitutes\nhouseness, because style of architecture does not, then a bird's nest is\na house: and human occupancy is not the standard to judge by, because we\nspeak of dogs' houses; nor material, because we speak of snow houses of\nEskimos--or a shell is a house to a hermit crab--or was to the mollusk\nthat made it--or things seemingly so positively different as the White\nHouse at Washington and a shell on the seashore are seen to be\ncontinuous.\n\nSo no one has ever been able to say what electricity is, for instance.\nIt isn't anything, as positively distinguished from heat or magnetism or\nlife. Metaphysicians and theologians and biologists have tried to define\nlife. They have failed, because, in a positive sense, there is nothing\nto define: there is no phenomenon of life that is not, to some degree,\nmanifest in chemism, magnetism, astronomic motions.\n\nWhite coral islands in a dark blue sea.\n\nTheir seeming of distinctness: the seeming of individuality, or of\npositive difference one from another--but all are only projections from\nthe same sea bottom. The difference between sea and land is not\npositive. In all water there is some earth: in all earth there is some\nwater.\n\nSo then that all seeming things are not things at all, if all are\ninter-continuous, any more than is the leg of a table a thing in itself,\nif it is only a projection from something else: that not one of us is a\nreal person, if, physically, we're continuous with environment; if,\npsychically, there is nothing to us but expression of relation to\nenvironment.\n\nOur general expression has two aspects:\n\nConventional monism, or that all \"things\" that seem to have identity of\ntheir own are only islands that are projections from something\nunderlying, and have no real outlines of their own.\n\nBut that all \"things,\" though only projections, are projections that are\nstriving to break away from the underlying that denies them identity of\ntheir own.\n\nI conceive of one inter-continuous nexus, in which and of which all\nseeming things are only different expressions, but in which all things\nare localizations of one attempt to break away and become real things,\nor to establish entity or positive difference or final demarcation or\nunmodified independence--or personality or soul, as it is called in\nhuman phenomena--\n\nThat anything that tries to establish itself as a real, or positive, or\nabsolute system, government, organization, self, soul, entity,\nindividuality, can so attempt only by drawing a line about itself, or\nabout the inclusions that constitute itself, and damning or excluding,\nor breaking away from, all other \"things\":\n\nThat, if it does not so act, it cannot seem to be;\n\nThat, if it does so act, it falsely and arbitrarily and futilely and\ndisastrously acts, just as would one who draws a circle in the sea,\nincluding a few waves, saying that the other waves, with which the\nincluded are continuous, are positively different, and stakes his life\nupon maintaining that the admitted and the damned are positively\ndifferent.\n\nOur expression is that our whole existence is animation of the local by\nan ideal that is realizable only in the universal:\n\nThat, if all exclusions are false, because always are included and\nexcluded continuous: that if all seeming of existence perceptible to us\nis the product of exclusion, there is nothing that is perceptible to us\nthat really is: that only the universal can really be.\n\nOur especial interest is in modern science as a manifestation of this\none ideal or purpose or process:\n\nThat it has falsely excluded, because there are no positive standards to\njudge by: that it has excluded things that, by its own pseudo-standards,\nhave as much right to come in as have the chosen.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOur general expression:\n\nThat the state that is commonly and absurdly called \"existence,\" is a\nflow, or a current, or an attempt, from negativeness to positiveness,\nand is intermediate to both.\n\nBy positiveness we mean:\n\nHarmony, equilibrium, order, regularity, stability, consistency, unity,\nrealness, system, government, organization, liberty, independence, soul,\nself, personality, entity, individuality, truth, beauty, justice,\nperfection, definiteness--\n\nThat all that is called development, progress, or evolution is movement\ntoward, or attempt toward, this state for which, or for aspects of\nwhich, there are so many names, all of which are summed up in the one\nword \"positiveness.\"\n\nAt first this summing up may not be very readily acceptable. At first it\nmay seem that all these words are not synonyms: that \"harmony\" may mean\n\"order,\" but that by \"independence,\" for instance, we do not mean\n\"truth,\" or that by \"stability\" we do not mean \"beauty,\" or \"system,\" or\n\"justice.\"\n\nI conceive of one inter-continuous nexus, which expresses itself in\nastronomic phenomena, and chemic, biologic, psychic, sociologic: that it\nis everywhere striving to localize positiveness: that to this attempt in\nvarious fields of phenomena--which are only quasi-different--we give\ndifferent names. We speak of the \"system\" of the planets, and not of\ntheir \"government\": but in considering a store, for instance, and its\nmanagement, we see that the words are interchangeable. It used to be\ncustomary to speak of chemic equilibrium, but not of social equilibrium:\nthat false demarcation has been broken down. We shall see that by all\nthese words we mean the same state. As every-day conveniences, or in\nterms of common illusions, of course, they are not synonyms. To a child\nan earth worm is not an animal. It is to the biologist.\n\nBy \"beauty,\" I mean that which seems complete.\n\nObversely, that the incomplete, or the mutilated, is the ugly.\n\nVenus de Milo.\n\nTo a child she is ugly.\n\nWhen a mind adjusts to thinking of her as a completeness, even though,\nby physiologic standards, incomplete, she is beautiful.\n\nA hand thought of only as a hand, may seem beautiful.\n\nFound on a battlefield--obviously a part--not beautiful.\n\nBut everything in our experience is only a part of something else that\nin turn is only a part of still something else--or that there is nothing\nbeautiful in our experience: only appearances that are intermediate to\nbeauty and ugliness--that only universality is complete: that only the\ncomplete is the beautiful: that every attempt to achieve beauty is an\nattempt to give to the local the attribute of the universal.\n\nBy stability, we mean the immovable and the unaffected. But all seeming\nthings are only reactions to something else. Stability, too, then, can\nbe only the universal, or that besides which there is nothing else.\nThough some things seem to have--or have--higher approximations to\nstability than have others, there are, in our experience, only various\ndegrees of intermediateness to stability and instability. Every man,\nthen, who works for stability under its various names of \"permanency,\"\n\"survival,\" \"duration,\" is striving to localize in something the state\nthat is realizable only in the universal.\n\nBy independence, entity, and individuality, I can mean only that\nbesides which there is nothing else, if given only two things, they must\nbe continuous and mutually affective, if everything is only a reaction\nto something else, and any two things would be destructive of each\nother's independence, entity, or individuality.\n\nAll attempted organizations and systems and consistencies, some\napproximating far higher than others, but all only intermediate to Order\nand Disorder, fail eventually because of their relations with outside\nforces. All are attempted completenesses. If to all local phenomena\nthere are always outside forces, these attempts, too, are realizable\nonly in the state of completeness, or that to which there are no outside\nforces.\n\nOr that all these words are synonyms, all meaning the state that we call\nthe positive state--\n\nThat our whole \"existence\" is a striving for the positive state.\n\nThe amazing paradox of it all:\n\nThat all things are trying to become the universal by excluding other\nthings.\n\nThat there is only this one process, and that it does animate all\nexpressions, in all fields of phenomena, of that which we think of as\none inter-continuous nexus:\n\nThe religious and their idea or ideal of the soul. They mean distinct,\nstable entity, or a state that is independent, and not a mere flux of\nvibrations or complex of reactions to environment, continuous with\nenvironment, merging away with an infinitude of other interdependent\ncomplexes.\n\nBut the only thing that would not merge away into something else would\nbe that besides which there is nothing else.\n\nThat Truth is only another name for the positive state, or that the\nquest for Truth is the attempt to achieve positiveness:\n\nScientists who have thought that they were seeking Truth, but who were\ntrying to find out astronomic, or chemic, or biologic truths. But Truth\nis that besides which there is nothing: nothing to modify it, nothing to\nquestion it, nothing to form an exception: the all-inclusive, the\ncomplete--\n\nBy Truth I mean the Universal.\n\nSo chemists have sought the true, or the real, and have always failed in\ntheir endeavors, because of the outside relations of chemical\nphenomena: have failed in the sense that never has a chemical law,\nwithout exceptions, been discovered: because chemistry is continuous\nwith astronomy, physics, biology--For instance, if the sun should\ngreatly change its distance from this earth, and if human life could\nsurvive, the familiar chemic formulas would no longer work out: a new\nscience of chemistry would have to be learned--\n\nOr that all attempts to find Truth in the special are attempts to find\nthe universal in the local.\n\nAnd artists and their striving for positiveness, under the name of\n\"harmony\"--but their pigments that are oxydizing, or are responding to a\nderanging environment--or the strings of musical instruments that are\ndifferently and disturbingly adjusting to outside chemic and thermal and\ngravitational forces--again and again this oneness of all ideals, and\nthat it is the attempt to be, or to achieve, locally, that which is\nrealizable only universally. In our experience there is only\nintermediateness to harmony and discord. Harmony is that besides which\nthere are no outside forces.\n\nAnd nations that have fought with only one motive: for individuality, or\nentity, or to be real, final nations, not subordinate to, or parts of,\nother nations. And that nothing but intermediateness has ever been\nattained, and that history is record of failures of this one attempt,\nbecause there always have been outside forces, or other nations\ncontending for the same goal.\n\nAs to physical things, chemic, mineralogic, astronomic, it is not\ncustomary to say that they act to achieve Truth or Entity, but it is\nunderstood that all motions are toward Equilibrium: that there is no\nmotion except toward Equilibrium, of course always away from some other\napproximation to Equilibrium.\n\nAll biologic phenomena act to adjust: there are no biologic actions\nother than adjustments.\n\nAdjustment is another name for Equilibrium. Equilibrium is the\nUniversal, or that which has nothing external to derange it.\n\nBut that all that we call \"being\" is motion: and that all motion is the\nexpression, not of equilibrium, but of equilibrating, or of equilibrium\nunattained: that life-motions are expressions of equilibrium unattained:\nthat all thought relates to the unattained: that to have what is called\nbeing in our quasi-state, is not to be in the positive sense, or is to\nbe intermediate to Equilibrium and Inequilibrium.\n\nSo then:\n\nThat all phenomena in our intermediate state, or quasi-state, represent\nthis one attempt to organize, stabilize, harmonize, individualize--or to\npositivize, or to become real:\n\nThat only to have seeming is to express failure or intermediateness to\nfinal failure and final success:\n\nThat every attempt--that is observable--is defeated by Continuity, or by\noutside forces--or by the excluded that are continuous with the\nincluded:\n\nThat our whole \"existence\" is an attempt by the relative to be the\nabsolute, or by the local to be the universal.\n\nIn this book, my interest is in this attempt as manifested in modern\nscience:\n\nThat it has attempted to be real, true, final, complete, absolute:\n\nThat, if the seeming of being, here, in our quasi-state, is the product\nof exclusion that is always false and arbitrary, if always are included\nand excluded continuous, the whole seeming system, or entity, of modern\nscience is only quasi-system, or quasi-entity, wrought by the same false\nand arbitrary process as that by which the still less positive system\nthat preceded it, or the theological system, wrought the illusion of its\nbeing.\n\nIn this book, I assemble some of the data that I think are of the\nfalsely and arbitrarily excluded.\n\nThe data of the damned.\n\nI have gone into the outer darkness of scientific and philosophical\ntransactions and proceedings, ultra-respectable, but covered with the\ndust of disregard. I have descended into journalism. I have come back\nwith the quasi-souls of lost data.\n\nThey will march.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs to the logic of our expressions to come--\n\nThat there is only quasi-logic in our mode of seeming:\n\nThat nothing ever has been proved--\n\nBecause there is nothing to prove.\n\nWhen I say that there is nothing to prove, I mean that to those who\naccept Continuity, or the merging away of all phenomena into other\nphenomena, without positive demarcations one from another, there is, in\na positive sense, no one thing. There is nothing to prove.\n\nFor instance nothing can be proved to be an animal--because animalness\nand vegetableness are not positively different. There are some\nexpressions of life that are as much vegetable as animal, or that\nrepresent the merging of animalness and vegetableness. There is then no\npositive test, standard, criterion, means of forming an opinion. As\ndistinct from vegetables, animals do not exist. There is nothing to\nprove. Nothing could be proved to be good, for instance. There is\nnothing in our \"existence\" that is good, in a positive sense, or as\nreally outlined from evil. If to forgive be good in times of peace, it\nis evil in wartime. There is nothing to prove: good in our experience is\ncontinuous with, or is only another aspect of evil.\n\nAs to what I'm trying to do now--I accept only. If I can't see\nuniversally, I only localize.\n\nSo, of course then, that nothing ever has been proved:\n\nThat theological pronouncements are as much open to doubt as ever they\nwere, but that, by a hypnotizing process, they became dominant over the\nmajority of minds in their era:\n\nThat, in a succeeding era, the laws, dogmas, formulas, principles, of\nmaterialistic science never were proved, because they are only\nlocalizations simulating the universal; but that the leading minds of\ntheir era of dominance were hypnotized into more or less firmly\nbelieving them.\n\nNewton's three laws, and that they are attempts to achieve positiveness,\nor to defy and break Continuity, and are as unreal as are all other\nattempts to localize the universal:\n\nThat, if every observable body is continuous, mediately or immediately,\nwith all other bodies, it cannot be influenced only by its own inertia,\nso that there is no way of knowing what the phenomena of inertia may be;\nthat, if all things are reacting to an infinitude of forces, there is no\nway of knowing what the effects of only one impressed force would be;\nthat if every reaction is continuous with its action, it cannot be\nconceived of as a whole, and that there is no way of conceiving what it\nmight be equal and opposite to--\n\nOr that Newton's three laws are three articles of faith:\n\nOr that demons and angels and inertias and reactions are all\nmythological characters:\n\nBut that, in their eras of dominance, they were almost as firmly\nbelieved in as if they had been proved.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nEnormities and preposterousnesses will march.\n\nThey will be \"proved\" as well as Moses or Darwin or Lyell ever \"proved\"\nanything.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe substitute acceptance for belief.\n\nCells of an embryo take on different appearances in different eras.\n\nThe more firmly established, the more difficult to change.\n\nThat social organism is embryonic.\n\nThat firmly to believe is to impede development.\n\nThat only temporarily to accept is to facilitate.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut:\n\nExcept that we substitute acceptance for belief, our methods will be the\nconventional methods; the means by which every belief has been\nformulated and supported: or our methods will be the methods of\ntheologians and savages and scientists and children. Because, if all\nphenomena are continuous, there can be no positively different methods.\nBy the inconclusive means and methods of cardinals and fortune tellers\nand evolutionists and peasants, methods which must be inconclusive, if\nthey relate always to the local, and if there is nothing local to\nconclude, we shall write this book.\n\nIf it function as an expression of its era, it will prevail.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAll sciences begin with attempts to define.\n\nNothing ever has been defined.\n\nBecause there is nothing to define.\n\nDarwin wrote _The Origin of Species_.\n\nHe was never able to tell what he meant by a \"species.\"\n\nIt is not possible to define.\n\nNothing has ever been finally found out.\n\nBecause there is nothing final to find out.\n\nIt's like looking for a needle that no one ever lost in a haystack that\nnever was--\n\nBut that all scientific attempts really to find out something, whereas\nreally there is nothing to find out, are attempts, themselves, really to\nbe something.\n\nA seeker of Truth. He will never find it. But the dimmest of\npossibilities--he may himself become Truth.\n\nOr that science is more than an inquiry:\n\nThat it is a pseudo-construction, or a quasi-organization: that it is an\nattempt to break away and locally establish harmony, stability,\nequilibrium, consistency, entity--\n\nDimmest of possibilities--that it may succeed.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThat ours is a pseudo-existence, and that all appearances in it partake\nof its essential fictitiousness--\n\nBut that some appearances approximate far more highly to the positive\nstate than do others.\n\nWe conceive of all \"things\" as occupying gradations, or steps in series\nbetween positiveness and negativeness, or realness and unrealness: that\nsome seeming things are more nearly consistent, just, beautiful,\nunified, individual, harmonious, stable--than others.\n\nWe are not realists. We are not idealists. We are intermediatists--that\nnothing is real, but that nothing is unreal: that all phenomena are\napproximations one way or the other between realness and unrealness.\n\nSo then:\n\nThat our whole quasi-existence is an intermediate stage between\npositiveness and negativeness or realness and unrealness.\n\nLike purgatory, I think.\n\nBut in our summing up, which was very sketchily done, we omitted to make\nclear that Realness is an aspect of the positive state.\n\nBy Realness, I mean that which does not merge away into something else,\nand that which is not partly something else: that which is not a\nreaction to, or an imitation of, something else. By a real hero, we mean\none who is not partly a coward, or whose actions and motives do not\nmerge away into cowardice. But, if in Continuity, all things do merge,\nby Realness, I mean the Universal, besides which there is nothing with\nwhich to merge.\n\nThat, though the local might be universalized, it is not conceivable\nthat the universal can be localized: but that high approximations there\nmay be, and that these approximate successes may be translated out of\nIntermediateness into Realness--quite as, in a relative sense, the\nindustrial world recruits itself by translating out of unrealness, or\nout of the seemingly less real imaginings of inventors, machines which\nseem, when set up in factories, to have more of Realness than they had\nwhen only imagined.\n\nThat all progress, if all progress is toward stability, organization,\nharmony, consistency, or positiveness, is the attempt to become real.\n\nSo, then, in general metaphysical terms, our expression is that, like a\npurgatory, all that is commonly called \"existence,\" which we call\nIntermediateness, is quasi-existence, neither real nor unreal, but\nexpression of attempt to become real, or to generate for or recruit a\nreal existence.\n\nOur acceptance is that Science, though usually thought of so\nspecifically, or in its own local terms, usually supposed to be a prying\ninto old bones, bugs, unsavory messes, is an expression of this one\nspirit animating all Intermediateness: that, if Science could absolutely\nexclude all data but its own present data, or that which is assimilable\nwith the present quasi-organization, it would be a real system, with\npositively definite outlines--it would be real.\n\nIts seeming approximation to consistency, stability,\nsystem--positiveness or realness--is sustained by damning the\nirreconcilable or the unassimilable--\n\nAll would be well.\n\nAll would be heavenly--\n\nIf the damned would only stay damned.\n\n\n\n\n2\n\n\nIn the autumn of 1883, and for years afterward, occurred\nbrilliant-colored sunsets, such as had never been seen before within the\nmemory of all observers. Also there were blue moons.\n\nI think that one is likely to smile incredulously at the notion of blue\nmoons. Nevertheless they were as common as were green suns in 1883.\n\nScience had to account for these unconventionalities. Such publications\nas _Nature_ and _Knowledge_ were besieged with inquiries.\n\nI suppose, in Alaska and in the South Sea Islands, all the medicine men\nwere similarly upon trial.\n\nSomething had to be thought of.\n\nUpon the 28th of August, 1883, the volcano of Krakatoa, of the Straits\nof Sunda, had blown up.\n\nTerrific.\n\nWe're told that the sound was heard 2,000 miles, and that 36,380 persons\nwere killed. Seems just a little unscientific, or impositive, to me:\nmarvel to me we're not told 2,163 miles and 36,387 persons. The volume\nof smoke that went up must have been visible to other planets--or,\ntormented with our crawlings and scurryings, the earth complained to\nMars; swore a vast black oath at us.\n\nIn all text-books that mention this occurrence--no exception so far so I\nhave read--it is said that the extraordinary atmospheric effects of 1883\nwere first noticed in the last of August or the first of September.\n\nThat makes a difficulty for us.\n\nIt is said that these phenomena were caused by particles of volcanic\ndust that were cast high in the air by Krakatoa.\n\nThis is the explanation that was agreed upon in 1883--\n\nBut for seven years the atmospheric phenomena continued--\n\nExcept that, in the seven, there was a lapse of several years--and where\nwas the volcanic dust all that time?\n\nYou'd think that such a question as that would make trouble?\n\nThen you haven't studied hypnosis. You have never tried to demonstrate\nto a hypnotic that a table is not a hippopotamus. According to our\ngeneral acceptance, it would be impossible to demonstrate such a thing.\nPoint out a hundred reasons for saying that a hippopotamus is not a\ntable: you'll have to end up agreeing that neither is a table a\ntable--it only seems to be a table. Well, that's what the hippopotamus\nseems to be. So how can you prove that something is not something else,\nwhen neither is something else some other thing? There's nothing to\nprove.\n\nThis is one of the profundities that we advertised in advance.\n\nYou can oppose an absurdity only with some other absurdity. But Science\nis established preposterousness. We divide all intellection: the\nobviously preposterousness and the established.\n\nBut Krakatoa: that's the explanation that the scientists gave. I don't\nknow what whopper the medicine men told.\n\nWe see, from the start, the very strong inclination of science to deny,\nas much as it can, external relations of this earth.\n\nThis book is an assemblage of data of external relations of this earth.\nWe take the position that our data have been damned, upon no\nconsideration for individual merits or demerits, but in conformity with\na general attempt to hold out for isolation of this earth. This is\nattempted positiveness. We take the position that science can no more\nsucceed than, in a similar endeavor, could the Chinese, or than could\nthe United States. So then, with only pseudo-consideration of the\nphenomena of 1883, or as an expression of positivism in its aspect of\nisolation, or unrelatedness, scientists have perpetrated such an\nenormity as suspension of volcanic dust seven years in the\nair--disregarding the lapse of several years--rather than to admit the\narrival of dust from somewhere beyond this earth. Not that scientists\nthemselves have ever achieved positiveness, in its aspect of unitedness,\namong themselves--because Nordenskiold, before 1883, wrote a great deal\nupon his theory of cosmic dust, and Prof. Cleveland Abbe contended\nagainst the Krakatoan explanation--but that this is the orthodoxy of the\nmain body of scientists.\n\nMy own chief reason for indignation here:\n\nThat this preposterous explanation interferes with some of my own\nenormities.\n\nIt would cost me too much explaining, if I should have to admit that\nthis earth's atmosphere has such sustaining power.\n\nLater, we shall have data of things that have gone up in the air and\nthat have stayed up--somewhere--weeks--months--but not by the sustaining\npower of this earth's atmosphere. For instance, the turtle of Vicksburg.\nIt seems to me that it would be ridiculous to think of a good-sized\nturtle hanging, for three or four months, upheld only by the air, over\nthe town of Vicksburg. When it comes to the horse and the barn--I think\nthat they'll be classics some day, but I can never accept that a horse\nand a barn could float several months in this earth's atmosphere.\n\nThe orthodox explanation:\n\nSee the _Report of the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal Society_. It\ncomes out absolutely for the orthodox explanation--absolutely and\nbeautifully, also expensively. There are 492 pages in the \"Report,\" and\n40 plates, some of them marvelously colored. It was issued after an\ninvestigation that took five years. You couldn't think of anything done\nmore efficiently, artistically, authoritatively. The mathematical parts\nare especially impressive: distribution of the dust of Krakatoa;\nvelocity of translation and rates of subsidence; altitudes and\npersistences--\n\n_Annual Register_, 1883-105:\n\nThat the atmospheric effects that have been attributed to Krakatoa were\nseen in Trinidad before the eruption occurred:\n\n_Knowledge_, 5-418:\n\nThat they were seen in Natal, South Africa, six months before the\neruption.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nInertia and its inhospitality.\n\nOr raw meat should not be fed to babies.\n\nWe shall have a few data initiatorily.\n\nI fear me that the horse and the barn were a little extreme for our\nbudding liberalities.\n\nThe outrageous is the reasonable, if introduced politely.\n\nHailstones, for instance. One reads in the newspapers of hailstones the\nsize of hens' eggs. One smiles. Nevertheless I will engage to list one\nhundred instances, from the _Monthly Weather Review_, of hailstones the\nsize of hens' eggs. There is an account in _Nature_, Nov. 1, 1894, of\nhailstones that weighed almost two pounds each. See Chambers'\nEncyclopedia for three-pounders. _Report of the Smithsonian\nInstitution_, 1870-479--two-pounders authenticated, and six-pounders\nreported. At Seringapatam, India, about the year 1800, fell a\nhailstone--\n\nI fear me, I fear me: this is one of the profoundly damned. I blurt out\nsomething that should, perhaps, be withheld for several hundred\npages--but that damned thing was the size of an elephant.\n\nWe laugh.\n\nOr snowflakes. Size of saucers. Said to have fallen at Nashville, Tenn.,\nJan. 24, 1891. One smiles.\n\n\"In Montana, in the winter of 1887, fell snowflakes 15 inches across,\nand 8 inches thick.\" (_Monthly Weather Review_, 1915-73.)\n\nIn the topography of intellection, I should say that what we call\nknowledge is ignorance surrounded by laughter.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBlack rains--red rains--the fall of a thousand tons of butter.\n\nJet-black snow--pink snow--blue hailstones--hailstones flavored like\noranges.\n\nPunk and silk and charcoal.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAbout one hundred years ago, if anyone was so credulous as to think that\nstones had ever fallen from the sky, he was reasoned with:\n\nIn the first place there are no stones in the sky:\n\nTherefore no stones can fall from the sky.\n\nOr nothing more reasonable or scientific or logical than that could be\nsaid upon any subject. The only trouble is the universal trouble: that\nthe major premise is not real, or is intermediate somewhere between\nrealness and unrealness.\n\nIn 1772, a committee, of whom Lavoisier was a member, was appointed by\nthe French Academy, to investigate a report that a stone had fallen from\nthe sky at Luce, France. Of all attempts at positiveness, in its aspect\nof isolation, I don't know of anything that has been fought harder for\nthan the notion of this earth's unrelatedness. Lavoisier analyzed the\nstone of Luce. The exclusionists' explanation at that time was that\nstones do not fall from the sky: that luminous objects may seem to fall,\nand that hot stones may be picked up where a luminous object seemingly\nhad landed--only lightning striking a stone, heating, even melting it.\n\nThe stone of Luce showed signs of fusion.\n\nLavoisier's analysis \"absolutely proved\" that this stone had not fallen:\nthat it had been struck by lightning.\n\nSo, authoritatively, falling stones were damned. The stock means of\nexclusion remained the explanation of lightning that was seen to strike\nsomething--that had been upon the ground in the first place.\n\nBut positiveness and the fate of every positive statement. It is not\ncustomary to think of damned stones raising an outcry against a sentence\nof exclusion, but, subjectively, aerolites did--or data of them\nbombarded the walls raised against them--\n\n_Monthly Review_, 1796-426\n\n\"The phenomenon which is the subject of the remarks before us will seem\nto most persons as little worthy of credit as any that could be offered.\nThe falling of large stones from the sky, without any assignable cause\nof their previous ascent, seems to partake so much of the marvelous as\nalmost entirely to exclude the operation of known and natural agents.\nYet a body of evidence is here brought to prove that such events have\nactually taken place, and we ought not to withhold from it a proper\ndegree of attention.\"\n\nThe writer abandons the first, or absolute, exclusion, and modifies it\nwith the explanation that the day before a reported fall of stones in\nTuscany, June 16, 1794, there had been an eruption of Vesuvius--\n\nOr that stones do fall from the sky, but that they are stones that have\nbeen raised to the sky from some other part of the earth's surface by\nwhirlwinds or by volcanic action.\n\nIt's more than one hundred and twenty years later. I know of no aerolite\nthat has ever been acceptably traced to terrestrial origin.\n\nFalling stones had to be undamned--though still with a reservation that\nheld out for exclusion of outside forces.\n\nOne may have the knowledge of a Lavoisier, and still not be able to\nanalyze, not be able even to see, except conformably with the hypnoses,\nor the conventional reactions against hypnoses, of one's era.\n\nWe believe no more.\n\nWe accept.\n\nLittle by little the whirlwind and volcano explanations had to be\nabandoned, but so powerful was this exclusion-hypnosis, sentence of\ndamnation, or this attempt at positiveness, that far into our own times\nsome scientists, notably Prof. Lawrence Smith and Sir Robert Ball,\ncontinued to hold out against all external origins, asserting that\nnothing could fall to this earth, unless it had been cast up or whirled\nup from some other part of this earth's surface.\n\nIt's as commendable as anything ever has been--by which I mean it's\nintermediate to the commendable and the censurable.\n\nIt's virginal.\n\nMeteorites, data of which were once of the damned, have been admitted,\nbut the common impression of them is only a retreat of attempted\nexclusion: that only two kinds of substance fall from the sky: metallic\nand stony: that the metallic objects are of iron and nickel--\n\nButter and paper and wool and silk and resin.\n\nWe see, to start with, that the virgins of science have fought and wept\nand screamed against external relations--upon two grounds:\n\nThere in the first place;\n\nOr up from one part of this earth's surface and down to another.\n\nAs late as November, 1902, in _Nature Notes_, 13-231, a member of the\nSelborne Society still argued that meteorites do not fall from the sky;\nthat they are masses of iron upon the ground \"in the first place,\" that\nattract lightning; that the lightning is seen, and is mistaken for a\nfalling, luminous object--\n\nBy progress we mean rape.\n\nButter and beef and blood and a stone with strange inscriptions upon\nit.\n\n\n\n\n3\n\n\nSo then, it is our expression that Science relates to real knowledge no\nmore than does the growth of a plant, or the organization of a\ndepartment store, or the development of a nation: that all are\nassimilative, or organizing, or systematizing processes that represent\ndifferent attempts to attain the positive state--the state commonly\ncalled heaven, I suppose I mean.\n\nThere can be no real science where there are indeterminate variables,\nbut every variable is, in finer terms, indeterminate, or irregular, if\nonly to have the appearance of being in Intermediateness is to express\nregularity unattained. The invariable, or the real and stable, would be\nnothing at all in Intermediateness--rather as, but in relative terms, an\nundistorted interpretation of external sounds in the mind of a dreamer\ncould not continue to exist in a dreaming mind, because that touch of\nrelative realness would be of awakening and not of dreaming. Science is\nthe attempt to awaken to realness, wherein it is attempt to find\nregularity and uniformity. Or the regular and uniform would be that\nwhich has nothing external to disturb it. By the universal we mean the\nreal. Or the notion is that the underlying super-attempt, as expressed\nin Science, is indifferent to the subject-matter of Science: that the\nattempt to regularize is the vital spirit. Bugs and stars and chemical\nmesses: that they are only quasi-real, and that of them there is nothing\nreal to know; but that systematization of pseudo-data is approximation\nto realness or final awakening--\n\nOr a dreaming mind--and its centaurs and canary birds that turn into\ngiraffes--there could be no real biology upon such subjects, but\nattempt, in a dreaming mind, to systematize such appearances would be\nmovement toward awakening--if better mental co-ordination is all that we\nmean by the state of being awake--relatively awake.\n\nSo it is, that having attempted to systematize, by ignoring externality\nto the greatest possible degree, the notion of things dropping in upon\nthis earth, from externality, is as unsettling and as unwelcome to\nScience as--tin horns blowing in upon a musician's relatively symmetric\ncomposition--flies alighting upon a painter's attempted harmony, and\ntracking colors one into another--suffragist getting up and making a\npolitical speech at a prayer meeting.\n\nIf all things are of a oneness, which is a state intermediate to\nunrealness and realness, and if nothing has succeeded in breaking away\nand establishing entity for itself, and could not continue to \"exist\" in\nintermediateness, if it should succeed, any more than could the born\nstill at the same time be the uterine, I of course know of no positive\ndifference between Science and Christian Science--and the attitude of\nboth toward the unwelcome is the same--\"it does not exist.\"\n\nA Lord Kelvin and a Mrs. Eddy, and something not to their liking--it\ndoes not exist.\n\nOf course not, we Intermediates say: but, also, that, in\nIntermediateness, neither is there absolute non-existence.\n\nOr a Christian Scientist and a toothache--neither exists in the final\nsense: also neither is absolutely non-existent, and, according to our\ntherapeutics, the one that more highly approximates to realness will\nwin.\n\nA secret of power--\n\nI think it's another profundity.\n\nDo you want power over something?\n\nBe more nearly real than it.\n\nWe'll begin with yellow substances that have fallen upon this earth:\nwe'll see whether our data of them have a higher approximation to\nrealness than have the dogmas of those who deny their existence--that\nis, as products from somewhere external to this earth.\n\nIn mere impressionism we take our stand. We have no positive tests nor\nstandards. Realism in art: realism in science--they pass away. In 1859,\nthe thing to do was to accept Darwinism; now many biologists are\nrevolting and trying to conceive of something else. The thing to do was\nto accept it in its day, but Darwinism of course was never proved:\n\nThe fittest survive.\n\nWhat is meant by the fittest?\n\nNot the strongest; not the cleverest--\n\nWeakness and stupidity everywhere survive.\n\nThere is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does\nsurvive.\n\n\"Fitness,\" then, is only another name for \"survival.\"\n\nDarwinism:\n\nThat survivors survive.\n\nAlthough Darwinism, then, seems positively baseless, or absolutely\nirrational, its massing of supposed data, and its attempted coherence\napproximate more highly to Organization and Consistency than did the\ninchoate speculations that preceded it.\n\nOr that Columbus never proved that the earth is round.\n\nShadow of the earth on the moon?\n\nNo one has ever seen it in its entirety. The earth's shadow is much\nlarger than the moon. If the periphery of the shadow is curved--but the\nconvex moon--a straight-edged object will cast a curved shadow upon a\nsurface that is convex.\n\nAll the other so-called proofs may be taken up in the same way. It was\nimpossible for Columbus to prove that the earth is round. It was not\nrequired: only that with a higher seeming of positiveness than that of\nhis opponents, he should attempt. The thing to do, in 1492, was\nnevertheless to accept that beyond Europe, to the west, were other\nlands.\n\nI offer for acceptance, as something concordant with the spirit of this\nfirst quarter of the 20th century, the expression that beyond this earth\nare--other lands--from which come things as, from America, float things\nto Europe.\n\nAs to yellow substances that have fallen upon this earth, the endeavor\nto exclude extra-mundane origins is the dogma that all yellow rains and\nyellow snows are colored with pollen from this earth's pine trees.\n_Symons' Meteorological Magazine_ is especially prudish in this respect\nand regards as highly improper all advances made by other explainers.\n\nNevertheless, the _Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1877, reports a\ngolden-yellow fall, of Feb. 27, 1877, at Peckloh, Germany, in which four\nkinds of organisms, not pollen, were the coloring matter. There were\nminute things shaped like arrows, coffee beans, horns, and disks.\n\nThey may have been symbols. They may have been objective hieroglyphics--\n\nMere passing fancy--let it go--\n\nIn the _Annales de Chimie_, 85-288, there is a list of rains said to\nhave contained sulphur. I have thirty or forty other notes. I'll not use\none of them. I'll admit that every one of them is upon a fall of pollen.\nI said, to begin with, that our methods would be the methods of\ntheologians and scientists, and they always begin with an appearance of\nliberality. I grant thirty or forty points to start with. I'm as liberal\nas any of them--or that my liberality won't cost me anything--the\nenormousness of the data that we shall have.\n\nOr just to look over a typical instance of this dogma, and the way it\nworks out:\n\nIn the _American Journal of Science_, 1-42-196, we are told of a yellow\nsubstance that fell by the bucketful upon a vessel, one \"windless\" night\nin June, in Pictou Harbor, Nova Scotia. The writer analyzed the\nsubstance, and it was found to \"give off nitrogen and ammonia and an\nanimal odor.\"\n\nNow, one of our Intermediatist principles, to start with, is that so far\nfrom positive, in the aspect of Homogeneousness, are all substances,\nthat, at least in what is called an elementary sense, anything can be\nfound anywhere. Mahogany logs on the coast of Greenland; bugs of a\nvalley on the top of Mt. Blanc; atheists at a prayer meeting; ice in\nIndia. For instance, chemical analysis can reveal that almost any dead\nman was poisoned with arsenic, we'll say, because there is no stomach\nwithout some iron, lead, tin, gold, arsenic in it and of it--which, of\ncourse, in a broader sense, doesn't matter much, because a certain\nnumber of persons must, as a restraining influence, be executed for\nmurder every year; and, if detectives aren't able really to detect\nanything, illusion of their success is all that is necessary, and it is\nvery honorable to give up one's life for society as a whole.\n\nThe chemist who analyzed the substance of Pictou sent a sample to the\nEditor of the _Journal_. The Editor of course found pollen in it.\n\nMy own acceptance is that there'd have to be some pollen in it: that\nnothing could very well fall through the air, in June, near the pine\nforests of Nova Scotia, and escape all floating spores of pollen. But\nthe Editor does not say that this substance \"contained\" pollen. He\ndisregards \"nitrogen, ammonia, and an animal odor,\" and says that the\nsubstance was pollen. For the sake of our thirty or forty tokens of\nliberality, or pseudo-liberality, if we can't be really liberal, we\ngrant that the chemist of the first examination probably wouldn't know\nan animal odor if he were janitor of a menagerie. As we go along,\nhowever, there can be no such sweeping ignoring of this phenomenon:\n\nThe fall of animal-matter from the sky.\n\nI'd suggest, to start with, that we'd put ourselves in the place of\ndeep-sea fishes:\n\nHow would they account for the fall of animal-matter from above?\n\nThey wouldn't try--\n\nOr it's easy enough to think of most of us as deep-sea fishes of a kind.\n\n_Jour. Franklin Inst._, 90-11:\n\nThat, upon the 14th of February, 1870, there fell, at Genoa, Italy,\naccording to Director Boccardo, of the Technical Institute of Genoa, and\nProf. Castellani, a yellow substance. But the microscope revealed\nnumerous globules of cobalt blue, also corpuscles of a pearly color that\nresembled starch. See _Nature_, 2-166.\n\n_Comptes Rendus_, 56-972:\n\nM. Bouis says of a substance, reddish varying to yellowish, that fell\nenormously and successively, or upon April 30, May 1 and May 2, in\nFrance and Spain, that it carbonized and spread the odor of charred\nanimal matter--that it was not pollen--that in alcohol it left a residue\nof resinous matter.\n\nHundreds of thousands of tons of this matter must have fallen.\n\n\"Odor of charred animal matter.\"\n\nOr an aerial battle that occurred in inter-planetary space several\nhundred years ago--effect of time in making diverse remains uniform in\nappearance--\n\nIt's all very absurd because, even though we are told of a prodigious\nquantity of animal matter that fell from the sky--three days--France and\nSpain--we're not ready yet: that's all. M. Bouis says that this\nsubstance was not pollen; the vastness of the fall makes acceptable that\nit was not pollen; still, the resinous residue does suggest pollen of\npine trees. We shall hear a great deal of a substance with a resinous\nresidue that has fallen from the sky: finally we shall divorce it from\nall suggestion of pollen.\n\n_Blackwood's Magazine_, 3-338:\n\nA yellow powder that fell at Gerace, Calabria, March 14, 1813. Some of\nthis substance was collected by Sig. Simenini, Professor of Chemistry,\nat Naples. It had an earthy, insipid taste, and is described as\n\"unctuous.\" When heated, this matter turned brown, then black, then red.\nAccording to the _Annals of Philosophy_, 11-466, one of the components\nwas a greenish-yellow substance, which, when dried, was found to be\nresinous.\n\nBut concomitants of this fall:\n\nLoud noises were heard in the sky.\n\nStones fell from the sky.\n\nAccording to Chladni, these concomitants occurred, and to me they\nseem--rather brutal?--or not associable with something so soft and\ngentle as a fall of pollen?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBlack rains and black snows--rains as black as a deluge of\nink--jet-black snowflakes.\n\nSuch a rain as that which fell in Ireland, May 14, 1849, described in\nthe _Annals of Scientific Discovery_, 1850, and the _Annual Register_,\n1849. It fell upon a district of 400 square miles, and was the color of\nink, and of a fetid odor and very disagreeable taste.\n\nThe rain at Castlecommon, Ireland, April 30, 1887--\"thick, black rain.\"\n(_Amer. Met. Jour._, 4-193.)\n\nA black rain fell in Ireland, Oct. 8 and 9, 1907. (_Symons' Met. Mag._\n43-2.) \"It left a most peculiar and disagreeable smell in the air.\"\n\nThe orthodox explanation of this rain occurs in _Nature_, March 2,\n1908--cloud of soot that had come from South Wales, crossing the Irish\nChannel and all of Ireland.\n\nSo the black rain of Ireland, of March, 1898: ascribed in _Symons' Met.\nMag._ 33-40, to clouds of soot from the manufacturing towns of North\nEngland and South Scotland.\n\nOur Intermediatist principle of pseudo-logic, or our principle of\nContinuity is, of course, that nothing is unique, or individual: that\nall phenomena merge away into all other phenomena: that, for\ninstance--suppose there should be vast celestial super-oceanic, or\ninter-planetary vessels that come near this earth and discharge volumes\nof smoke at times. We're only supposing such a thing as that now,\nbecause, conventionally, we are beginning modestly and tentatively. But\nif it were so, there would necessarily be some phenomenon upon this\nearth, with which that phenomenon would merge. Extra-mundane smoke and\nsmoke from cities merge, or both would manifest in black precipitations\nin rain.\n\nIn Continuity, it is impossible to distinguish phenomena at their\nmerging-points, so we look for them at their extremes. Impossible to\ndistinguish between animal and vegetable in some infusoria--but\nhippopotamus and violet. For all practical purposes they're\ndistinguishable enough. No one but a Barnum or a Bailey would send one a\nbunch of hippopotami as a token of regard.\n\nSo away from the great manufacturing centers:\n\nBlack rain in Switzerland, Jan. 20, 1911. Switzerland is so remote, and\nso ill at ease is the conventional explanation here, that _Nature_,\n85-451, says of this rain that in certain conditions of weather, snow\nmay take on an appearance of blackness that is quite deceptive.\n\nMay be so. Or at night, if dark enough, snow may look black. This is\nsimply denying that a black rain fell in Switzerland, Jan. 20, 1911.\n\nExtreme remoteness from great manufacturing centers:\n\n_La Nature_, 1888, 2-406:\n\nThat Aug. 14, 1888, there fell at the Cape of Good Hope, a rain so black\nas to be described as a \"shower of ink.\"\n\nContinuity dogs us. Continuity rules us and pulls us back. We seemed to\nhave a little hope that by the method of extremes we could get away from\nthings that merge indistinguishably into other things. We find that\nevery departure from one merger is entrance upon another. At the Cape of\nGood Hope, vast volumes of smoke from great manufacturing centers, as an\nexplanation, cannot very acceptably merge with the explanation of\nextra-mundane origin--but smoke from a terrestrial volcano can, and that\nis the suggestion that is made in _La Nature_.\n\nThere is, in human intellection, no real standard to judge by, but our\nacceptance, for the present, is that the more nearly positive will\nprevail. By the more nearly positive we mean the more nearly Organized.\nEverything merges away into everything else, but proportionately to its\ncomplexity, if unified, a thing seems strong, real, and distinct: so, in\naesthetics, it is recognized that diversity in unity is higher beauty,\nor approximation to Beauty, than is simpler unity; so the logicians feel\nthat agreement of diverse data constitute greater convincingness, or\nstrength, than that of mere parallel instances: so to Herbert Spencer\nthe more highly differentiated and integrated is the more fully evolved.\nOur opponents hold out for mundane origin of all black rains. Our method\nwill be the presenting of diverse phenomena in agreement with the notion\nof some other origin. We take up not only black rains but black rains\nand their accompanying phenomena.\n\nA correspondent to _Knowledge_, 5-190, writes of a black rain that fell\nin the Clyde Valley, March 1, 1884: of another black rain that fell two\ndays later. According to the correspondent, a black rain had fallen in\nthe Clyde Valley, March 20, 1828: then again March 22, 1828. According\nto _Nature_, 9-43, a black rain fell at Marlsford, England, Sept. 4,\n1873; more than twenty-four hours later another black rain fell in the\nsame small town.\n\nThe black rains of Slains:\n\nAccording to Rev. James Rust (_Scottish Showers_):\n\nA black rain at Slains, Jan. 14, 1862--another at Carluke, 140 miles\nfrom Slains, May 1, 1862--at Slains, May 20, 1862--Slains, Oct. 28,\n1863.\n\nBut after two of these showers, vast quantities of a substance described\nsometimes as \"pumice stone,\" but sometimes as \"slag,\" were washed upon\nthe sea coast near Slains. A chemist's opinion is given that this\nsubstance was slag: that it was not a volcanic product: slag from\nsmelting works. We now have, for black rains, a concomitant that is\nirreconcilable with origin from factory chimneys. Whatever it may have\nbeen the quantity of this substance was so enormous that, in Mr. Rust's\nopinion, to have produced so much of it would have required the united\noutput of all the smelting works in the world. If slag it were, we\naccept that an artificial product has, in enormous quantities, fallen\nfrom the sky. If you don't think that such occurrences are damned by\nScience, read _Scottish Showers_ and see how impossible it was for the\nauthor to have this matter taken up by the scientific world.\n\nThe first and second rains corresponded, in time, with ordinary\nebullitions of Vesuvius.\n\nThe third and fourth, according to Mr. Rust, corresponded with no known\nvolcanic activities upon this earth.\n\n_La Science Pour Tous_, 11-26:\n\nThat, between October, 1863, and January, 1866, four more black rains\nfell at Slains, Scotland.\n\nThe writer of this supplementary account tells us, with a better, or\nmore unscrupulous, orthodoxy than Mr. Rust's, that of the eight black\nrains, five coincided with eruptions of Vesuvius and three with\neruptions of Etna.\n\nThe fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another\nfly wide open. I should say that my own notions upon this subject will\nbe considered irrational, but at least my gregariousness is satisfied in\nassociating here with the preposterous--or this writer, and those who\nthink in his rut, have to say that they can think of four discharges\nfrom one far-distant volcano, passing over a great part of Europe,\nprecipitating nowhere else, discharging precisely over one small\nnorthern parish--\n\nBut also of three other discharges, from another far-distant volcano,\nshowing the same precise preference, if not marksmanship, for one small\nparish in Scotland.\n\nNor would orthodoxy be any better off in thinking of exploding\nmeteorites and their debris: preciseness and recurrence would be just as\ndifficult to explain.\n\nMy own notion is of an island near an oceanic trade-route: it might\nreceive debris from passing vessels seven times in four years.\n\nOther concomitants of black rains:\n\nIn Timb's _Year Book_, 1851-270, there is an account of \"a sort of\nrumbling, as of wagons, heard for upward of an hour without ceasing,\"\nJuly 16, 1850, Bulwick Rectory, Northampton, England. On the 19th, a\nblack rain fell.\n\nIn _Nature_, 30-6, a correspondent writes of an intense darkness at\nPreston, England, April 26, 1884: page 32, another correspondent writes\nof black rain at Crowle, near Worcester, April 26: that a week later, or\nMay 3, it had fallen again: another account of black rain, upon the 28th\nof April, near Church Shetton, so intense that the following day brooks\nwere still dyed with it. According to four accounts by correspondents to\n_Nature_ there were earthquakes in England at this time.\n\nOr the black rain of Canada, Nov. 9, 1819. This time it is orthodoxy to\nattribute the black precipitate to smoke of forest fires south of the\nOhio River--\n\nZurcher, _Meteors_, p. 238:\n\nThat this black rain was accompanied by \"shocks like those of an\nearthquake.\"\n\n_Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_, 2-381:\n\nThat the earthquake had occurred at the climax of intense darkness and\nthe fall of black rain.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nRed rains.\n\nOrthodoxy:\n\nSand blown by the sirocco, from the Sahara to Europe.\n\nEspecially in the earthquake regions of Europe, there have been many\nfalls of red substance, usually, but not always, precipitated in rain.\nUpon many occasions, these substances have been \"absolutely identified\"\nas sand from the Sahara. When I first took this matter up, I came\nacross assurance after assurance, so positive to this effect, that, had\nI not been an Intermediatist, I'd have looked no further. Samples\ncollected from a rain at Genoa--samples of sand forwarded from the\nSahara--\"absolute agreement\" some writers said: same color, same\nparticles of quartz, even the same shells of diatoms mixed in. Then the\nchemical analyses: not a disagreement worth mentioning.\n\nOur intermediatist means of expression will be that, with proper\nexclusions, after the scientific or theological method, anything can be\nidentified with anything else, if all things are only different\nexpressions of an underlying oneness.\n\nTo many minds there's rest and there's satisfaction in that expression\n\"absolutely identified.\" Absoluteness, or the illusion of it--the\nuniversal quest. If chemists have identified substances that have fallen\nin Europe as sand from African deserts, swept up in African whirlwinds,\nthat's assuasive to all the irritations that occur to those cloistered\nminds that must repose in the concept of a snug, isolated, little world,\nfree from contact with cosmic wickednesses, safe from stellar guile,\nundisturbed by inter-planetary prowlings and invasions. The only trouble\nis that a chemist's analysis, which seems so final and authoritative to\nsome minds, is no more nearly absolute than is identification by a child\nor description by an imbecile--\n\nI take some of that back: I accept that the approximation is higher--\n\nBut that it's based upon delusion, because there is no definiteness, no\nhomogeneity, no stability, only different stages somewhere between them\nand indefiniteness, heterogeneity, and instability. There are no\nchemical elements. It seems acceptable that Ramsay and others have\nsettled that. The chemical elements are only another disappointment in\nthe quest for the positive, as the definite, the homogeneous, and the\nstable. If there were real elements, there could be a real science of\nchemistry.\n\nUpon Nov. 12 and 13, 1902, occurred the greatest fall of matter in the\nhistory of Australia. Upon the 14th of November, it \"rained mud,\" in\nTasmania. It was of course attributed to Australian whirlwinds, but,\naccording to the _Monthly Weather Review_, 32-365, there was a haze all\nthe way to the Philippines, also as far as Hong Kong. It may be that\nthis phenomenon had no especial relation with the even more tremendous\nfall of matter that occurred in Europe, February, 1903.\n\nFor several days, the south of England was a dumping ground--from\nsomewhere.\n\nIf you'd like to have a chemist's opinion, even though it's only a\nchemist's opinion, see the report of the meeting of the Royal Chemical\nSociety, April 2, 1903. Mr. E.G. Clayton read a paper upon some of the\nsubstance that had fallen from the sky, collected by him. The Sahara\nexplanation applies mostly to falls that occur in southern Europe.\nFarther away, the conventionalists are a little uneasy: for instance,\nthe editor of the _Monthly Weather Review_, 29-121, says of a red rain\nthat fell near the coast of Newfoundland, early in 1890: \"It would be\nvery remarkable if this was Sahara dust.\" Mr. Clayton said that the\nmatter examined by him was \"merely wind-borne dust from the roads and\nlanes of Wessex.\" This opinion is typical of all scientific opinion--or\ntheological opinion--or feminine opinion--all very well except for what\nit disregards. The most charitable thing I can think of--because I think\nit gives us a broader tone to relieve our malices with occasional\ncharities--is that Mr. Clayton had not heard of the astonishing extent\nof this fall--had covered the Canary Islands, on the 19th, for instance.\nI think, myself, that in 1903, we passed through the remains of a\npowdered world--left over from an ancient inter-planetary dispute,\nbrooding in space like a red resentment ever since. Or, like every other\nopinion, the notion of dust from Wessex turns into a provincial thing\nwhen we look it over.\n\nTo think is to conceive incompletely, because all thought relates only\nto the local. We metaphysicians, of course, like to have the notion that\nwe think of the unthinkable.\n\nAs to opinions, or pronouncements, I should say, because they always\nhave such an authoritative air, of other chemists, there is an analysis\nin _Nature_, 68-54, giving water and organic matter at 9.08 per cent.\nIt's that carrying out of fractions that's so convincing. The substance\nis identified as sand from the Sahara.\n\nThe vastness of this fall. In _Nature_, 68-65, we are told that it had\noccurred in Ireland, too. The Sahara, of course--because, prior to\nFebruary 19, there had been dust storms in the Sahara--disregarding that\nin that great region there's always, in some part of it, a dust storm.\nHowever, just at present, it does look reasonable that dust had come\nfrom Africa, via the Canaries.\n\nThe great difficulty that authoritativeness has to contend with is some\nother authoritativeness. When an infallibility clashes with a\npontification--\n\nThey explain.\n\n_Nature_, March 5, 1903:\n\nAnother analysis--36 per cent organic matter.\n\nSuch disagreements don't look very well, so, in _Nature_, 68-109, one of\nthe differing chemists explains. He says that his analysis was of muddy\nrain, and the other was of sediment of rain--\n\nWe're quite ready to accept excuses from the most high, though I do\nwonder whether we're quite so damned as we were, if we find ourselves in\na gracious and tolerant mood toward the powers that condemn--but the tax\nthat now comes upon our good manners and unwillingness to be too\nsevere--\n\n_Nature_, 68-223:\n\nAnother chemist. He says it was 23.49 per cent water and organic matter.\n\nHe \"identifies\" this matter as sand from an African desert--but after\ndeducting organic matter--\n\nBut you and I could be \"identified\" as sand from an African desert,\nafter deducting all there is to us except sand--\n\nWhy we cannot accept that this fall was of sand from the Sahara,\nomitting the obvious objection that in most parts the Sahara is not red\nat all, but is usually described as \"dazzling white\"--\n\nThe enormousness of it: that a whirlwind might have carried it, but\nthat, in that case it would be no supposititious, or doubtfully\nidentified whirlwind, but the greatest atmospheric cataclysm in the\nhistory of this earth:\n\n_Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 30-56:\n\nThat, up to the 27th of February, this fall had continued in Belgium,\nHolland, Germany and Austria; that in some instances it was not sand, or\nthat almost all the matter was organic: that a vessel had reported the\nfall as occurring in the Atlantic Ocean, midway between Southampton and\nthe Barbados. The calculation is given that, in England alone,\n10,000,000 tons of matter had fallen. It had fallen in Switzerland\n(_Symons' Met. Mag._, March, 1903). It had fallen in Russia (_Bull. Com.\nGeolog._, 22-48). Not only had a vast quantity of matter fallen several\nmonths before, in Australia, but it was at this time falling in\nAustralia (_Victorian Naturalist_, June, 1903)--enormously--red\nmud--fifty tons per square mile.\n\nThe Wessex explanation--\n\nOr that every explanation is a Wessex explanation: by that I mean an\nattempt to interpret the enormous in terms of the minute--but that\nnothing can be finally explained, because by Truth we mean the\nUniversal; and that even if we could think as wide as Universality, that\nwould not be requital to the cosmic quest--which is not for Truth, but\nfor the local that is true--not to universalize the local, but to\nlocalize the universal--or to give to a cosmic cloud absolute\ninterpretation in terms of the little dusty roads and lanes of Wessex. I\ncannot conceive that this can be done: I think of high approximation.\n\nOur Intermediatist concept is that, because of the continuity of all\n\"things,\" which are not separate, positive, or real things, all\npseudo-things partake of the underlying, or are only different\nexpressions, degrees, or aspects of the underlying: so then that a\nsample from somewhere in anything must correspond with a sample from\nsomewhere in anything else.\n\nThat, by due care in selection, and disregard for everything else, or\nthe scientific and theological method, the substance that fell,\nFebruary, 1903, could be identified with anything, or with some part or\naspect of anything that could be conceived of--\n\nWith sand from the Sahara, sand from a barrel of sugar, or dust of your\ngreat-great-grandfather.\n\nDifferent samples are described and listed in the _Journal of the Royal\nMeteorological Society_, 30-57--or we'll see whether my notion that a\nchemist could have identified some one of these samples as from anywhere\nconceivable, is extreme or not:\n\n\"Similar to brick dust,\" in one place; \"buff or light brown,\" in\nanother place; \"chocolate-colored and silky to the touch and slightly\niridescent\"; \"gray\"; \"red-rust color\"; \"reddish raindrops and gray\nsand\"; \"dirty gray\"; \"quite red\"; \"yellow-brown, with a tinge of pink\";\n\"deep yellow-clay color.\"\n\nIn _Nature_, it is described as of a peculiar yellowish cast in one\nplace, reddish somewhere else, and salmon-colored in another place.\n\nOr there could be real science if there were really anything to be\nscientific about.\n\nOr the science of chemistry is like a science of sociology, prejudiced\nin advance, because only to see is to see with a prejudice, setting out\nto \"prove\" that all inhabitants of New York came from Africa.\n\nVery easy matter. Samples from one part of town. Disregard for all the\nrest.\n\nThere is no science but Wessex-science.\n\nAccording to our acceptance, there should be no other, but that\napproximation should be higher: that metaphysics is super-evil: that the\nscientific spirit is of the cosmic quest.\n\nOur notion is that, in a real existence, such a quasi-system of fables\nas the science of chemistry could not deceive for a moment: but that in\nan \"existence\" endeavoring to become real, it represents that endeavor,\nand will continue to impose its pseudo-positiveness until it be driven\nout by a higher approximation to realness:\n\nThat the science of chemistry is as impositive as fortune-telling--\n\nOr no--\n\nThat, though it represents a higher approximation to realness than does\nalchemy, for instance, and so drove out alchemy, it is still only\nsomewhere between myth and positiveness.\n\nThe attempt at realness, or to state a real and unmodified fact here, is\nthe statement:\n\nAll red rains are colored by sands from the Sahara Desert.\n\nMy own impositivist acceptances are:\n\nThat some red rains are colored by sands from the Sahara Desert;\n\nSome by sands from other terrestrial sources;\n\nSome by sands from other worlds, or from their deserts--also from\naerial regions too indefinite or amorphous to be thought of as \"worlds\"\nor planets--\n\nThat no supposititious whirlwind can account for the hundreds of\nmillions of tons of matter that fell upon Australia, Pacific Ocean and\nAtlantic Ocean and Europe in 1902 and 1903--that a whirlwind that could\ndo that would not be supposititious.\n\nBut now we shall cast off some of our own wessicality by accepting that\nthere have been falls of red substance other than sand.\n\nWe regard every science as an expression of the attempt to be real. But\nto be real is to localize the universal--or to make some one thing as\nwide as all things--successful accomplishment of which I cannot conceive\nof. The prime resistance to this endeavor is the refusal of the rest of\nthe universe to be damned, excluded, disregarded, to receive Christian\nScience treatment, by something else so attempting. Although all\nphenomena are striving for the Absolute--or have surrendered to and have\nincorporated themselves in higher attempts, simply to be phenomenal, or\nto have seeming in Intermediateness is to express relations.\n\nA river.\n\nIt is water expressing the gravitational relation of different levels.\n\nThe water of the river.\n\nExpression of chemic relations of hydrogen and oxygen--which are not\nfinal.\n\nA city.\n\nManifestation of commercial and social relations.\n\nHow could a mountain be without base in a greater body?\n\nStorekeeper live without customers?\n\nThe prime resistance to the positivist attempt by Science is its\nrelations with other phenomena, or that it only expresses those\nrelations in the first place. Or that a Science can have seeming, or\nsurvive in Intermediateness, as something pure, isolated, positively\ndifferent, no more than could a river or a city or a mountain or a\nstore.\n\nThis Intermediateness-wide attempt by parts to be wholes--which cannot\nbe realized in our quasi-state, if we accept that in it the\nco-existence of two or more wholes or universals is impossible--high\napproximation to which, however, may be thinkable--\n\nScientists and their dream of \"pure science.\"\n\nArtists and their dream of \"art for art's sake.\"\n\nIt is our notion that if they could almost realize, that would be almost\nrealness: that they would instantly be translated into real existence.\nSuch thinkers are good positivists, but they are evil in an economic and\nsociologic sense, if, in that sense, nothing has justification for\nbeing, unless it serve, or function for, or express the relations of,\nsome higher aggregate. So Science functions for and serves society at\nlarge, and would, from society at large, receive no support, unless it\ndid so divert itself or dissipate and prostitute itself. It seems that\nby prostitution I mean usefulness.\n\nThere have been red rains that, in the middle ages, were called \"rains\nof blood.\" Such rains terrified many persons, and were so unsettling to\nlarge populations, that Science, in its sociologic relations, has\nsought, by Mrs. Eddy's method, to remove an evil--\n\nThat \"rains of blood\" do not exist;\n\nThat rains so called are only of water colored by sand from the Sahara\nDesert.\n\nMy own acceptance is that such assurances, whether fictitious or not,\nwhether the Sahara is a \"dazzling white\" desert or not, have wrought\nsuch good effects, in a sociologic sense, even though prostitutional in\nthe positivist sense, that, in the sociologic sense, they were well\njustified:\n\nBut that we've gone on: that this is the twentieth century; that most of\nus have grown up so that such soporifics of the past are no longer\nnecessary:\n\nThat if gushes of blood should fall from the sky upon New York City,\nbusiness would go on as usual.\n\nWe began with rains that we accepted ourselves were, most likely, only\nof sand. In my own still immature hereticalness--and by heresy, or\nprogress, I mean, very largely, a return, though with many\nmodifications, to the superstitions of the past, I think I feel\nconsiderable aloofness to the idea of rains of blood. Just at present,\nit is my conservative, or timid purpose, to express only that there\nhave been red rains that very strongly suggest blood or finely divided\nanimal matter--\n\nDebris from inter-planetary disasters.\n\nAerial battles.\n\nFood-supplies from cargoes of super-vessels, wrecked in inter-planetary\ntraffic.\n\nThere was a red rain in the Mediterranean region, March 6, 1888. Twelve\ndays later, it fell again. Whatever this substance may have been, when\nburned, the odor of animal matter from it was strong and persistent.\n(_L'Astronomie_, 1888-205.)\n\nBut--infinite heterogeneity--or debris from many different kinds of\naerial cargoes--there have been red rains that have been colored by\nneither sand nor animal matter.\n\n_Annals of Philosophy_, 16-226:\n\nThat, Nov. 2, 1819--week before the black rain and earthquake of\nCanada--there fell, at Blankenberge, Holland, a red rain. As to sand,\ntwo chemists of Bruges concentrated 144 ounces of the rain to 4\nounces--\"no precipitate fell.\" But the color was so marked that had\nthere been sand, it would have been deposited, if the substance had been\ndiluted instead of concentrated. Experiments were made, and various\nreagents did cast precipitates, but other than sand. The chemists\nconcluded that the rain-water contained muriate of cobalt--which is not\nvery enlightening: that could be said of many substances carried in\nvessels upon the Atlantic Ocean. Whatever it may have been, in the\n_Annales de Chimie_, 2-12-432, its color is said to have been\nred-violet. For various chemic reactions, see _Quar. Jour. Roy. Inst._,\n9-202, and _Edin. Phil. Jour._, 2-381.\n\nSomething that fell with dust said to have been meteoric, March 9, 10,\n11, 1872: described in the _Chemical News_, 25-300, as a \"peculiar\nsubstance,\" consisted of red iron ocher, carbonate of lime, and organic\nmatter.\n\nOrange-red hail, March 14, 1873, in Tuscany. (Notes and Queries 9-5-16.)\n\nRain of lavender-colored substance, at Oudon, France, Dec. 19, 1903.\n(_Bull. Soc. Met. de France_, 1904-124.)\n\n_La Nature_, 1885-2-351:\n\nThat, according to Prof. Schwedoff, there fell, in Russia, June 14,\n1880, red hailstones, also blue hailstones, also gray hailstones.\n\n_Nature_, 34-123:\n\nA correspondent writes that he had been told by a resident of a small\ntown in Venezuela, that there, April 17, 1886, had fallen hailstones,\nsome red, some blue, some whitish: informant said to have been one\nunlikely ever to have heard of the Russian phenomenon; described as an\n\"honest, plain countryman.\"\n\n_Nature_, July 5, 1877, quotes a Roman correspondent to the London\n_Times_ who sent a translation from an Italian newspaper: that a red\nrain had fallen in Italy, June 23, 1877, containing \"microscopically\nsmall particles of sand.\"\n\nOr, according to our acceptance, any other story would have been an evil\nthing, in the sociologic sense, in Italy, in 1877. But the English\ncorrespondent, from a land where terrifying red rains are uncommon, does\nnot feel this necessity. He writes: \"I am by no means satisfied that the\nrain was of sand and water.\" His observations are that drops of this\nrain left stains \"such as sandy water could not leave.\" He notes that\nwhen the water evaporated, no sand was left behind.\n\n_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1888-75:\n\nThat, Dec. 13, 1887, there fell, in Cochin China, a substance like\nblood, somewhat coagulated.\n\n_Annales de Chimie_, 85-266:\n\nThat a thick, viscous, red matter fell at Ulm, in 1812.\n\nWe now have a datum with a factor that has been foreshadowed; which will\nrecur and recur and recur throughout this book. It is a factor that\nmakes for speculation so revolutionary that it will have to be\nreinforced many times before we can take it into full acceptance.\n\n_Year Book of Facts_, 1861-273:\n\nQuotation from a letter from Prof. Campini to Prof. Matteucci:\n\nThat, upon Dec. 28, 1860, at about 7 A.M., in the northwestern part of\nSiena, a reddish rain fell copiously for two hours.\n\nA second red shower fell at 11 o'clock.\n\nThree days later, the red rain fell again.\n\nThe next day another red rain fell.\n\nStill more extraordinarily:\n\nEach fall occurred in \"exactly the same quarter of town.\"\n\n\n\n\n4\n\n\nIt is in the records of the French Academy that, upon March 17, 1669, in\nthe town of Chatillon-sur-Seine, fell a reddish substance that was\n\"thick, viscous, and putrid.\"\n\n_American Journal of Science_, 1-41-404:\n\nStory of a highly unpleasant substance that had fallen from the sky, in\nWilson County, Tennessee. We read that Dr. Troost visited the place and\ninvestigated. Later we're going to investigate some investigations--but\nnever mind that now. Dr. Troost reported that the substance was clear\nblood and portions of flesh scattered upon tobacco fields. He argued\nthat a whirlwind might have taken an animal up from one place, mauled it\naround, and have precipitated its remains somewhere else.\n\nBut, in volume 44, page 216, of the _Journal_, there is an apology. The\nwhole matter is, upon newspaper authority, said to have been a hoax by\nNegroes, who had pretended to have seen the shower, for the sake of\npracticing upon the credulity of their masters: that they had scattered\nthe decaying flesh of a dead hog over the tobacco fields.\n\nIf we don't accept this datum, at least we see the sociologically\nnecessary determination to have all falls accredited to earthly\norigins--even when they're falls that don't fall.\n\n_Annual Register_, 1821-687:\n\nThat, upon the 13th of August, 1819, something had fallen from the sky\nat Amherst, Mass. It had been examined and described by Prof. Graves,\nformerly lecturer at Dartmouth College. It was an object that had upon\nit a nap, similar to that of milled cloth. Upon removing this nap, a\nbuff-colored, pulpy substance was found. It had an offensive odor, and,\nupon exposure to the air, turned to a vivid red. This thing was said to\nhave fallen with a brilliant light.\n\nAlso see the _Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_, 5-295. In the _Annales\nde Chimie_, 1821-67, M. Arago accepts the datum, and gives four\ninstances of similar objects or substances said to have fallen from the\nsky, two of which we shall have with our data of gelatinous, or viscous\nmatter, and two of which I omit, because it seems to me that the dates\ngiven are too far back.\n\nIn the _American Journal of Science_, 1-2-335, is Professor Graves'\naccount, communicated by Professor Dewey:\n\nThat, upon the evening of August 13, 1819, a light was seen in\nAmherst--a falling object--sound as if of an explosion.\n\nIn the home of Prof. Dewey, this light was reflected upon a wall of a\nroom in which were several members of Prof. Dewey's family.\n\nThe next morning, in Prof. Dewey's front yard, in what is said to have\nbeen the only position from which the light that had been seen in the\nroom, the night before, could have been reflected, was found a substance\n\"unlike anything before observed by anyone who saw it.\" It was a\nbowl-shaped object, about 8 inches in diameter, and one inch thick.\nBright buff-colored, and having upon it a \"fine nap.\" Upon removing this\ncovering, a buff-colored, pulpy substance of the consistency of\nsoft-soap, was found--\"of an offensive, suffocating smell.\"\n\nA few minutes of exposure to the air changed the buff color to \"a livid\ncolor resembling venous blood.\" It absorbed moisture quickly from the\nair and liquefied. For some of the chemic reactions, see the _Journal_.\n\nThere's another lost quasi-soul of a datum that seems to me to belong\nhere:\n\nLondon _Times_, April 19, 1836:\n\nFall of fish that had occurred in the neighborhood of Allahabad, India.\nIt is said that the fish were of the chalwa species, about a span in\nlength and a seer in weight--you know.\n\nThey were dead and dry.\n\nOr they had been such a long time out of water that we can't accept that\nthey had been scooped out of a pond, by a whirlwind--even though they\nwere so definitely identified as of a known local species--\n\nOr they were not fish at all.\n\nI incline, myself, to the acceptance that they were not fish, but\nslender, fish-shaped objects of the same substance as that which fell at\nAmherst--it is said that, whatever they were, they could not be eaten:\nthat \"in the pan, they turned to blood.\"\n\nFor details of this story see the _Journal of the Asiatic Society of\nBengal_, 1834-307. May 16 or 17, 1834, is the date given in the\n_Journal_.\n\nIn the _American Journal of Science_, 1-25-362, occurs the inevitable\ndamnation of the Amherst object:\n\nProf. Edward Hitchcock went to live in Amherst. He says that years\nlater, another object, like the one said to have fallen in 1819, had\nbeen found at \"nearly the same place.\" Prof. Hitchcock was invited by\nProf. Graves to examine it. Exactly like the first one. Corresponded in\nsize and color and consistency. The chemic reactions were the same.\n\nProf. Hitchcock recognized it in a moment.\n\nIt was a gelatinous fungus.\n\nHe did not satisfy himself as to just the exact species it belonged to,\nbut he predicted that similar fungi might spring up within twenty-four\nhours--\n\nBut, before evening, two others sprang up.\n\nOr we've arrived at one of the oldest of the exclusionists'\nconventions--or nostoc. We shall have many data of gelatinous substance\nsaid to have fallen from the sky: almost always the exclusionists argue\nthat it was only nostoc, an Alga, or, in some respects, a fungous\ngrowth. The rival convention is \"spawn of frogs or of fishes.\" These two\nconventions have made a strong combination. In instances where testimony\nwas not convincing that gelatinous matter had been seen to fall, it was\nsaid that the gelatinous substance was nostoc, and had been upon the\nground in the first place: when the testimony was too good that it had\nfallen, it was said to be spawn that had been carried from one place to\nanother in a whirlwind.\n\nNow, I can't say that nostoc is always greenish, any more than I can say\nthat blackbirds are always black, having seen a white one: we shall\nquote a scientist who knew of flesh-colored nostoc, when so to know was\nconvenient. When we come to reported falls of gelatinous substances, I'd\nlike it to be noticed how often they are described as whitish or\ngrayish. In looking up the subject, myself, I have read only of\ngreenish nostoc. Said to be greenish, in Webster's Dictionary--said to\nbe \"blue-green\" in the New International Encyclopedia--\"from bright\ngreen to olive-green\" (_Science Gossip_, 10-114); \"green\" (_Science\nGossip_, 7-260); \"greenish\" (_Notes and Queries_, 1-11-219). It would\nseem acceptable that, if many reports of white birds should occur, the\nbirds are not blackbirds, even though there have been white blackbirds.\nOr that, if often reported, grayish or whitish gelatinous substance is\nnot nostoc, and is not spawn if occurring in times unseasonable for\nspawn.\n\n\"The Kentucky Phenomenon.\"\n\nSo it was called, in its day, and now we have an occurrence that\nattracted a great deal of attention in its own time. Usually these\nthings of the accursed have been hushed up or disregarded--suppressed\nlike the seven black rains of Slains--but, upon March 3, 1876, something\noccurred, in Bath County, Kentucky, that brought many newspaper\ncorrespondents to the scene.\n\nThe substance that looked like beef that fell from the sky.\n\nUpon March 3, 1876, at Olympian Springs, Bath County, Kentucky, flakes\nof a substance that looked like beef fell from the sky--\"from a clear\nsky.\" We'd like to emphasize that it was said that nothing but this\nfalling substance was visible in the sky. It fell in flakes of various\nsizes; some two inches square, one, three or four inches square. The\nflake-formation is interesting: later we shall think of it as signifying\npressure--somewhere. It was a thick shower, on the ground, on trees, on\nfences, but it was narrowly localized: or upon a strip of land about 100\nyards long and about 50 yards wide. For the first account, see the\n_Scientific American_, 34-197, and the _New York Times_, March 10, 1876.\n\nThen the exclusionists.\n\nSomething that looked like beef: one flake of it the size of a square\nenvelope.\n\nIf we think of how hard the exclusionists have fought to reject the\ncoming of ordinary-looking dust from this earth's externality, we can\nsympathize with them in this sensational instance, perhaps. Newspaper\ncorrespondents wrote broadcast and witnesses were quoted, and this time\nthere is no mention of a hoax, and, except by one scientist, there is no\ndenial that the fall did take place.\n\nIt seems to me that the exclusionists are still more emphatically\nconservators. It is not so much that they are inimical to all data of\nexternally derived substances that fall upon this earth, as that they\nare inimical to all data discordant with a system that does not include\nsuch phenomena--\n\nOr the spirit or hope or ambition of the cosmos, which we call attempted\npositivism: not to find out the new; not to add to what is called\nknowledge, but to systematize.\n\n_Scientific American Supplement_, 2-426:\n\nThat the substance reported from Kentucky had been examined by Leopold\nBrandeis.\n\n\"At last we have a proper explanation of this much talked of\nphenomenon.\"\n\n\"It has been comparatively easy to identify the substance and to fix its\nstatus. The Kentucky 'wonder' is no more or less than nostoc.\"\n\nOr that it had not fallen; that it had been upon the ground in the first\nplace, and had swollen in rain, and, attracting attention by greatly\nincreased volume, had been supposed by unscientific observers to have\nfallen in rain--\n\nWhat rain, I don't know.\n\nAlso it is spoken of as \"dried\" several times. That's one of the most\nimportant of the details.\n\nBut the relief of outraged propriety, expressed in the _Supplement_, is\namusing to some of us, who, I fear, may be a little improper at times.\nVery spirit of the Salvation Army, when some third-rate scientist comes\nout with an explanation of the vermiform appendix or the os coccygis\nthat would have been acceptable to Moses. To give completeness to \"the\nproper explanation,\" it is said that Mr. Brandeis had identified the\nsubstance as \"flesh-colored\" nostoc.\n\nProf. Lawrence Smith, of Kentucky, one of the most resolute of the\nexclusionists:\n\n_New York Times_, March 12, 1876:\n\nThat the substance had been examined and analyzed by Prof. Smith,\naccording to whom it gave every indication of being the \"dried\" spawn of\nsome reptile, \"doubtless of the frog\"--or up from one place and down in\nanother. As to \"dried,\" that may refer to condition when Prof. Smith\nreceived it.\n\nIn the _Scientific American Supplement_, 2-473, Dr. A. Mead Edwards,\nPresident of the Newark Scientific Association, writes that, when he saw\nMr. Brandeis' communication, his feeling was of conviction that\npropriety had been re-established, or that the problem had been solved,\nas he expresses it: knowing Mr. Brandeis well, he had called upon that\nupholder of respectability, to see the substance that had been\nidentified as nostoc. But he had also called upon Dr. Hamilton, who had\na specimen, and Dr. Hamilton had declared it to be lung-tissue. Dr.\nEdwards writes of the substance that had so completely, or\nbeautifully--if beauty is completeness--been identified as nostoc--\"It\nturned out to be lung-tissue also.\" He wrote to other persons who had\nspecimens, and identified other specimens as masses of cartilage or\nmuscular fibers. \"As to whence it came, I have no theory.\" Nevertheless\nhe endorses the local explanation--and a bizarre thing it is:\n\nA flock of gorged, heavy-weighted buzzards, but far up and invisible in\nthe clear sky--\n\nThey had disgorged.\n\nProf. Fassig lists the substance, in his \"Bibliography,\" as fish spawn.\nMcAtee (_Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1918) lists it as a jelly-like\nmaterial, supposed to have been the \"dried\" spawn either of fishes or of\nsome batrachian.\n\nOr this is why, against the seemingly insuperable odds against all\nthings new, there can be what is called progress--\n\nThat nothing is positive, in the aspects of homogeneity and unity:\n\nIf the whole world should seem to combine against you, it is only unreal\ncombination, or intermediateness to unity and disunity. Every resistance\nis itself divided into parts resisting one another. The simplest\nstrategy seems to be--never bother to fight a thing: set its own parts\nfighting one another.\n\nWe are merging away from carnal to gelatinous substance, and here there\nis an abundance of instances or reports of instances. These data are so\nimproper they're obscene to the science of today, but we shall see that\nscience, before it became so rigorous, was not so prudish. Chladni was\nnot, and Greg was not.\n\nI shall have to accept, myself, that gelatinous substance has often\nfallen from the sky--\n\nOr that, far up, or far away, the whole sky is gelatinous?\n\nThat meteors tear through and detach fragments?\n\nThat fragments are brought down by storms?\n\nThat the twinkling of stars is penetration of light through something\nthat quivers?\n\nI think, myself, that it would be absurd to say that the whole sky is\ngelatinous: it seems more acceptable that only certain areas are.\n\nHumboldt (_Cosmos_, 1-119) says that all our data in this respect must\nbe \"classed amongst the mythical fables of mythology.\" He is very sure,\nbut just a little redundant.\n\nWe shall be opposed by the standard resistances:\n\nThere in the first place;\n\nUp from one place, in a whirlwind, and down in another.\n\nWe shall not bother to be very convincing one way or another, because of\nthe over-shadowing of the datum with which we shall end up. It will mean\nthat something had been in a stationary position for several days over a\nsmall part of a small town in England: this is the revolutionary thing\nthat we have alluded to before; whether the substance were nostoc, or\nspawn, or some kind of a larval nexus, doesn't matter so much. If it\nstood in the sky for several days, we rank with Moses as a chronicler of\nimproprieties--or was that story, or datum, we mean, told by Moses? Then\nwe shall have so many records of gelatinous substance said to have\nfallen with meteorites, that, between the two phenomena, some of us will\nhave to accept connection--or that there are at least vast gelatinous\nareas aloft, and that meteorites tear through, carrying down some of the\nsubstance.\n\n_Comptes Rendus_, 3-554:\n\nThat, in 1836, M. Vallot, member of the French Academy, placed before\nthe Academy some fragments of a gelatinous substance, said to have\nfallen from the sky, and asked that they be analyzed. There is no\nfurther allusion to this subject.\n\n_Comptes Rendus_, 23-542:\n\nThat, in Wilna, Lithuania, April 4, 1846, in a rainstorm, fell nut-sized\nmasses of a substance that is described as both resinous and\ngelatinous. It was odorless until burned: then it spread a very\npronounced sweetish odor. It is described as like gelatine, but much\nfirmer: but, having been in water 24 hours, it swelled out, and looked\naltogether gelatinous--\n\nIt was grayish.\n\nWe are told that, in 1841 and 1846, a similar substance had fallen in\nAsia Minor.\n\nIn _Notes and Queries_, 8-6-190, it is said that, early in August, 1894,\nthousands of jellyfish, about the size of a shilling, had fallen at\nBath, England. I think it is not acceptable that they were jellyfish:\nbut it does look as if this time frog spawn did fall from the sky, and\nmay have been translated by a whirlwind--because, at the same time,\nsmall frogs fell at Wigan, England.\n\n_Nature_, 87-10:\n\nThat, June 24, 1911, at Eton, Bucks, England, the ground was found\ncovered with masses of jelly, the size of peas, after a heavy rainfall.\nWe are not told of nostoc, this time: it is said that the object\ncontained numerous eggs of \"some species of Chironomus, from which\nlarvae soon emerged.\"\n\nI incline, then, to think that the objects that fell at Bath were\nneither jellyfish nor masses of frog spawn, but something of a larval\nkind--\n\nThis is what had occurred at Bath, England, 23 years before.\n\nLondon _Times_, April 24, 1871:\n\nThat, upon the 22nd of April, 1871, a storm of glutinous drops neither\njellyfish nor masses of frog spawn, but something of a [line missing\nhere in original text. Ed.] railroad station, at Bath. \"Many soon\ndeveloped into a worm-like chrysalis, about an inch in length.\" The\naccount of this occurrence in the _Zoologist_, 2-6-2686, is more like\nthe Eton-datum: of minute forms, said to have been infusoria; not forms\nabout an inch in length.\n\n_Trans. Ent. Soc. of London_, 1871-proc. xxii:\n\nThat the phenomenon has been investigated by the Rev. L. Jenyns, of\nBath. His description is of minute worms in filmy envelopes. He tries to\naccount for their segregation. The mystery of it is: What could have\nbrought so many of them together? Many other falls we shall have record\nof, and in most of them segregation is the great mystery. A whirlwind\nseems anything but a segregative force. Segregation of things that have\nfallen from the sky has been avoided as most deep-dyed of the damned.\nMr. Jenyns conceives of a large pool, in which were many of these\nspherical masses: of the pool drying up and concentrating all in a small\narea; of a whirlwind then scooping all up together--\n\nBut several days later, more of these objects fell in the same place.\n\nThat such marksmanship is not attributable to whirlwinds seems to me to\nbe what we think we mean by common sense:\n\nIt may not look like common sense to say that these things had been\nstationary over the town of Bath, several days--\n\nThe seven black rains of Slains;\n\nThe four red rains of Siena.\n\nAn interesting sidelight on the mechanics of orthodoxy is that Mr.\nJenyns dutifully records the second fall, but ignores it in his\nexplanation.\n\nR.P. Greg, one of the most notable of cataloguers of meteoritic\nphenomena, records (_Phil. Mag._: 4-8-463) falls of viscid substance in\nthe years 1652, 1686, 1718, 1796, 1811, 1819, 1844. He gives earlier\ndates, but I practice exclusions, myself. In the _Report of the British\nAssociation_, 1860-63, Greg records a meteor that seemed to pass near\nthe ground, between Barsdorf and Freiburg, Germany: the next day a\njelly-like mass was found in the snow--\n\nUnseasonableness for either spawn or nostoc.\n\nGreg's comment in this instance is: \"Curious if true.\" But he records\nwithout modification the fall of a meteorite at Gotha, Germany, Sept. 6,\n1835, \"leaving a jelly-like mass on the ground.\" We are told that this\nsubstance fell only three feet away from an observer. In the _Report of\nthe British Association_, 1855-94, according to a letter from Greg to\nProf. Baden-Powell, at night, Oct. 8, 1844, near Coblenz, a German, who\nwas known to Greg, and another person saw a luminous body fall close to\nthem. They returned next morning and found a gelatinous mass of grayish\ncolor.\n\nAccording to Chladni's account (_Annals of Philosophy_, n.s., 12-94) a\nviscous mass fell with a luminous meteorite between Siena and Rome,\nMay, 1652; viscous matter found after the fall of a fire ball, in\nLusatia, March, 1796; fall of a gelatinous substance, after the\nexplosion of a meteorite, near Heidelberg, July, 1811. In the _Edinburgh\nPhilosophical Journal_, 1-234, the substance that fell at Lusatia is\nsaid to have been of the \"color and odor of dried, brown varnish.\" In\nthe _Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-26-133, it is said that gelatinous matter fell\nwith a globe of fire, upon the island of Lethy, India, 1718.\n\nIn the _Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-26-396, in many observations upon the\nmeteors of November, 1833, are reports of falls of gelatinous substance:\n\nThat, according to newspaper reports, \"lumps of jelly\" were found on the\nground at Rahway, N.J. The substance was whitish, or resembled the\ncoagulated white of an egg:\n\nThat Mr. H.H. Garland, of Nelson County, Virginia, had found a\njelly-like substance of about the circumference of a twenty-five-cent\npiece:\n\nThat, according to a communication from A.C. Twining to Prof. Olmstead,\na woman at West Point, N.Y., had seen a mass the size of a teacup. It\nlooked like boiled starch:\n\nThat, according to a newspaper, of Newark, N.J., a mass of gelatinous\nsubstance, like soft soap, had been found. \"It possessed little\nelasticity, and, on the application of heat, it evaporated as readily as\nwater.\"\n\nIt seems incredible that a scientist would have such hardihood, or\ninfidelity, as to accept that these things had fallen from the sky:\nnevertheless, Prof. Olmstead, who collected these lost souls, says:\n\n\"The fact that the supposed deposits were so uniformly described as\ngelatinous substance forms a presumption in favor of the supposition\nthat they had the origin ascribed to them.\"\n\nIn contemporaneous scientific publications considerable attention was\ngiven to Prof. Olmstead's series of papers upon this subject of the\nNovember meteors. You will not find one mention of the part that treats\nof gelatinous matter.\n\n\n\n\n5\n\n\nI shall attempt not much of correlation of dates. A mathematic-minded\npositivist, with his delusion that in an intermediate state twice two\nare four, whereas, if we accept Continuity, we cannot accept that there\nare anywhere two things to start with, would search our data for\nperiodicities. It is so obvious to me that the mathematic, or the\nregular, is the attribute of the Universal, that I have not much\ninclination to look for it in the local. Still, in this solar system,\n\"as a whole,\" there is considerable approximation to regularity; or the\nmathematic is so nearly localized that eclipses, for instance, can, with\nrather high approximation, be foretold, though I have notes that would\ndeflate a little the astronomers' vainglory in this respect--or would if\nthat were possible. An astronomer is poorly paid, uncheered by crowds,\nconsiderably isolated: he lives upon his own inflations: deflate a bear\nand it couldn't hibernate. This solar system is like every other\nphenomenon that can be regarded \"as a whole\"--or the affairs of a ward\nare interfered with by the affairs of the city of which it is a part;\ncity by county; county by state; state by nation; nation by other\nnations; all nations by climatic conditions; climatic conditions by\nsolar circumstances; sun by general planetary circumstances; solar\nsystem \"as a whole\" by other solar systems--so the hopelessness of\nfinding the phenomena of entirety in the ward of a city. But positivists\nare those who try to find the unrelated in the ward of a city. In our\nacceptance this is the spirit of cosmic religion. Objectively the state\nis not realizable in the ward of a city. But, if a positivist could\nbring himself to absolute belief that he had found it, that would be a\nsubjective realization of that which is unrealizable objectively. Of\ncourse we do not draw a positive line between the objective and the\nsubjective--or that all phenomena called things or persons are\nsubjective within one all-inclusive nexus, and that thoughts within\nthose that are commonly called \"persons\" are sub-subjective. It is\nrather as if Intermediateness strove for Regularity in this solar\nsystem and failed: then generated the mentality of astronomers, and, in\nthat secondary expression, strove for conviction that failure had been\nsuccess.\n\nI have tabulated all the data of this book, and a great deal\nbesides--card system--and several proximities, thus emphasized, have\nbeen revelations to me: nevertheless, it is only the method of\ntheologians and scientists--worst of all, of statisticians.\n\nFor instance, by the statistic method, I could \"prove\" that a black rain\nhas fallen \"regularly\" every seven months, somewhere upon this earth. To\ndo this, I'd have to include red rains and yellow rains, but,\nconventionally, I'd pick out the black particles in red substances and\nin yellow substances, and disregard the rest. Then, too, if here and\nthere a black rain should be a week early or a month late--that would be\n\"acceleration\" or \"retardation.\" This is supposed to be legitimate in\nworking out the periodicities of comets. If black rains, or red or\nyellow rains with black particles in them, should not appear at all near\nsome dates--we have not read Darwin in vain--\"the records are not\ncomplete.\" As to other, interfering black rains, they'd be either gray\nor brown, or for them we'd find other periodicities.\n\nStill, I have had to notice the year 1819, for instance. I shall not\nnote them all in this book, but I have records of 31 extraordinary\nevents in 1883. Someone should write a book upon the phenomena of this\none year--that is, if books should be written. 1849 is notable for\nextraordinary falls, so far apart that a local explanation seems\ninadequate--not only the black rain of Ireland, May, 1849, but a red\nrain in Sicily and a red rain in Wales. Also, it is said (Timb's _Year\nBook_, 1850-241) that, upon April 18 or 20, 1849, shepherds near Mt.\nArarat, found a substance that was not indigenous, upon areas measuring\n8 to 10 miles in circumference. Presumably it had fallen there.\n\nWe have already gone into the subject of Science and its attempted\npositiveness, and its resistances in that it must have relations of\nservice. It is very easy to see that most of the theoretic science of\nthe 19th century was only a relation of reaction against theologic\ndogma, and has no more to do with Truth than has a wave that bounds back\nfrom a shore. Or, if a shop girl, or you or I, should pull out a piece\nof chewing gum about a yard long, that would be quite as scientific a\nperformance as was the stretching of this earth's age several hundred\nmillions of years.\n\nAll \"things\" are not things, but only relations, or expressions of\nrelations: but all relations are striving to be the unrelated, or have\nsurrendered to, and subordinated to, higher attempts. So there is a\npositivist aspect to this reaction that is itself only a relation, and\nthat is the attempt to assimilate all phenomena under the materialist\nexplanation, or to formulate a final, all-inclusive system, upon the\nmaterialist basis. If this attempt could be realized, that would be the\nattaining of realness; but this attempt can be made only by disregarding\npsychic phenomena, for instance--or, if science shall eventually give in\nto the psychic, it would be no more legitimate to explain the immaterial\nin terms of the material than to explain the material in terms of the\nimmaterial. Our own acceptance is that material and immaterial are of a\noneness, merging, for instance, in a thought that is continuous with a\nphysical action: that oneness cannot be explained, because the process\nof explaining is the interpreting of something in terms of something\nelse. All explanation is assimilation of something in terms of something\nelse that has been taken as a basis: but, in Continuity, there is\nnothing that is any more basic than anything else--unless we think that\ndelusion built upon delusion is less real than its pseudo-foundation.\n\nIn 1829 (Timb's _Year Book_, 1848-235) in Persia fell a substance that\nthe people said they had never seen before. As to what it was, they had\nnot a notion, but they saw that the sheep ate it. They ground it into\nflour and made bread, said to have been passable enough, though insipid.\n\nThat was a chance that science did not neglect. Manna was placed upon a\nreasonable basis, or was assimilated and reconciled with the system that\nhad ousted the older--and less nearly real--system. It was said that,\nlikely enough, manna had fallen in ancient times--because it was still\nfalling--but that there was no tutelary influence behind it--that it was\na lichen from the steppes of Asia Minor--from one place in a whirlwind\nand down in another place. \"In the _American Almanac_, 1833-71, it is\nsaid that this substance--to the inhabitants of the region\"--was\n\"immediately recognized\" by scientists who examined it: and that \"the\nchemical analysis also identified it as a lichen.\"\n\nThis was back in the days when Chemical Analysis was a god. Since then\nhis devotees have been shocked and disillusioned. Just how a chemical\nanalysis could so botanize, I don't know--but it was Chemical Analysis\nwho spoke, and spoke dogmatically. It seems to me that the ignorance of\ninhabitants, contrasting with the local knowledge of foreign scientists,\nis overdone: if there's anything good to eat, within any distance\nconveniently covered by a whirlwind--inhabitants know it. I have data of\nother falls, in Persia and Asiatic Turkey, of edible substances. They\nare all dogmatically said to be \"manna\"; and \"manna\" is dogmatically\nsaid to be a species of lichens from the steppes of Asia Minor. The\nposition that I take is that this explanation was evolved in ignorance\nof the fall of vegetable substances, or edible substances, in other\nparts of the world: that it is the familiar attempt to explain the\ngeneral in terms of the local; that, if we shall have data of falls of\nvegetable substance, in, say, Canada or India, they were not of lichens\nfrom the steppes of Asia Minor; that, though all falls in Asiatic Turkey\nand Persia are sweepingly and conveniently called showers of \"manna,\"\nthey have not been even all of the same substance. In one instance the\nparticles are said to have been \"seeds.\" Though, in _Comptes Rendus_,\nthe substance that fell in 1841 and 1846 is said to have been\ngelatinous, in the _Bull. Sci. Nat. de Neuchatel_, it is said to have\nbeen of something, in lumps the size of a filbert, that had been ground\ninto flour; that of this flour had been made bread, very\nattractive-looking, but flavorless.\n\nThe great difficulty is to explain segregation in these showers--\n\nBut deep-sea fishes and occasional falls, down to them, of edible\nsubstances; bags of grain, barrels of sugar; things that had not been\nwhirled up from one part of the ocean-bottom, in storms or submarine\ndisturbances, and dropped somewhere else--\n\nI suppose one thinks--but grain in bags never has fallen--\n\nObject of Amherst--its covering like \"milled cloth\"--\n\nOr barrels of corn lost from a vessel would not sink--but a host of them\nclashing together, after a wreck--they burst open; the corn sinks, or\ndoes when saturated; the barrel staves float longer--\n\nIf there be not an overhead traffic in commodities similar to our own\ncommodities carried over this earth's oceans--I'm not the deep-sea fish\nI think I am.\n\nI have no data other than the mere suggestion of the Amherst object of\nbags or barrels, but my notion is that bags and barrels from a wreck on\none of this earth's oceans, would, by the time they reached the bottom,\nno longer be recognizable as bags or barrels; that, if we can have data\nof the fall of fibrous material that may have been cloth or paper or\nwood, we shall be satisfactory and grotesque enough.\n\n_Proc. Roy. Irish Acad._, 1-379:\n\n\"In the year 1686, some workmen, who had been fetching water from a\npond, seven German miles from Memel, on returning to their work after\ndinner (during which there had been a snowstorm) found the flat ground\naround the pond covered with a coal-black, leafy mass; and a person who\nlived near said he had seen it fall like flakes with the snow.\"\n\nSome of these flake-like formations were as large as a table-top. \"The\nmass was damp and smelt disagreeably, like rotten seaweed, but, when\ndried, the smell went off.\"\n\n\"It tore fibrously, like paper.\"\n\nClassic explanation:\n\n\"Up from one place, and down in another.\"\n\nBut what went up, from one place, in a whirlwind? Of course, our\nIntermediatist acceptance is that had this been the strangest substance\nconceivable, from the strangest other world that could be thought of;\nsomewhere upon this earth there must be a substance similar to it, or\nfrom which it would, at least subjectively, or according to description,\nnot be easily distinguishable. Or that everything in New York City is\nonly another degree or aspect of something, or combination of things, in\na village of Central Africa. The novel is a challenge to vulgarization:\nwrite something that looks new to you: someone will point out that the\nthrice-accursed Greeks said it long ago. Existence is Appetite: the gnaw\nof being; the one attempt of all things to assimilate all other things,\nif they have not surrendered and submitted to some higher attempt. It\nwas cosmic that these scientists, who had surrendered to and submitted\nto the Scientific System, should, consistently with the principles of\nthat system, attempt to assimilate the substance that fell at Memel with\nsome known terrestrial product. At the meeting of the Royal Irish\nAcademy it was brought out that there is a substance, of rather rare\noccurrence, that has been known to form in thin sheets upon marsh land.\n\nIt looks like greenish felt.\n\nThe substance of Memel:\n\nDamp, coal-black, leafy mass.\n\nBut, if broken up, the marsh-substance is flake-like, and it tears\nfibrously.\n\nAn elephant can be identified as a sunflower--both have long stems. A\ncamel is indistinguishable from a peanut--if only their humps be\nconsidered.\n\nTrouble with this book is that we'll end up a lot of intellectual roues:\nwe'll be incapable of being astonished with anything. We knew, to start\nwith, that science and imbecility are continuous; nevertheless so many\nexpressions of the merging-point are at first startling. We did think\nthat Prof. Hitchcock's performance in identifying the Amherst phenomenon\nas a fungus was rather notable as scientific vaudeville, if we acquit\nhim of the charge of seriousness--or that, in a place where fungi were\nso common that, before a given evening two of them sprang up, only he, a\nstranger in this very fungiferous place, knew a fungus when he saw\nsomething like a fungus--if we disregard its quick liquefaction, for\ninstance. It was only a monologue, however: now we have an all-star\ncast: and they're not only Irish; they're royal Irish.\n\nThe royal Irishmen excluded \"coal-blackness\" and included fibrousness:\nso then that this substance was \"marsh paper,\" which \"had been raised\ninto the air by storms of wind, and had again fallen.\"\n\nSecond act:\n\nIt was said that, according to M. Ehrenberg, \"the meteor-paper was found\nto consist partly of vegetable matter, chiefly of conifervae.\"\n\nThird act:\n\nMeeting of the royal Irishmen: chairs, tables, Irishmen:\n\nSome flakes of marsh-paper were exhibited.\n\nTheir composition was chiefly of conifervae.\n\nThis was a double inclusion: or it's the method of agreement that\nlogicians make so much of. So no logician would be satisfied with\nidentifying a peanut as a camel, because both have humps: he demands\naccessory agreement--that both can live a long time without water, for\ninstance.\n\nNow, it's not so very unreasonable, at least to the free and easy\nvaudeville standards that, throughout this book, we are considering, to\nthink that a green substance could be snatched up from one place in a\nwhirlwind, and fall as a black substance somewhere else: but the royal\nIrishmen excluded something else, and it is a datum that was as\naccessible to them as it is to me:\n\nThat, according to Chladni, this was no little, local deposition that\nwas seen to occur by some indefinite person living near a pond\nsomewhere.\n\nIt was a tremendous fall from a vast sky-area.\n\nLikely enough all the marsh paper in the world could not have supplied\nit.\n\nAt the same time, this substance was falling \"in great quantities,\" in\nNorway and Pomerania. Or see Kirkwood, _Meteoric Astronomy_, p. 66:\n\n\"Substance like charred paper fell in Norway and other parts of northern\nEurope, Jan. 31, 1686.\"\n\nOr a whirlwind, with a distribution as wide as that, would not\nacceptably, I should say, have so specialized in the rare substance\ncalled \"marsh paper.\" There'd have been falls of fence rails, roofs of\nhouses, parts of trees. Nothing is said of the occurrence of a tornado\nin northern Europe, in January, 1686. There is record only of this one\nsubstance having fallen in various places.\n\nTime went on, but the conventional determination to exclude data of all\nfalls to this earth, except of substances of this earth, and of ordinary\nmeteoric matter, strengthened.\n\n_Annals of Philosophy_, 16-68:\n\nThe substance that fell in January, 1686, is described as \"a mass of\nblack leaves, having the appearance of burnt paper, but harder, and\ncohering, and brittle.\"\n\n\"Marsh paper\" is not mentioned, and there is nothing said of the\n\"conifervae,\" which seemed so convincing to the royal Irishmen. Vegetable\ncomposition is disregarded, quite as it might be by someone who might\nfind it convenient to identify a crook-necked squash as a big fishhook.\n\nMeteorites are usually covered with a black crust, more or less\nscale-like. The substance of 1686 is black and scale-like. If so be\nconvenience, \"leaf-likeness\" is \"scale-likeness.\" In this attempt to\nassimilate with the conventional, we are told that the substance is a\nmineral mass: that it is like the black scales that cover meteorites.\n\nThe scientist who made this \"identification\" was Von Grotthus. He had\nappealed to the god Chemical Analysis. Or the power and glory of\nmankind--with which we're not always so impressed--but the gods must\ntell us what we want them to tell us. We see again that, though nothing\nhas identity of its own, anything can be \"identified\" as anything. Or\nthere's nothing that's not reasonable, if one snoopeth not into its\nexclusions. But here the conflict did not end. Berzelius examined the\nsubstance. He could not find nickel in it. At that time, the presence of\nnickel was the \"positive\" test of meteoritic matter. Whereupon, with a\nsupposititious \"positive\" standard of judgment against him, Von Grotthus\nrevoked his \"identification.\" (_Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist._,\n1-3-185.)\n\nThis equalization of eminences permits us to project with our own\nexpression, which, otherwise, would be subdued into invisibility:\n\nThat it's too bad that no one ever looked to\nsee--hieroglyphics?--something written upon these sheets of paper?\n\nIf we have no very great variety of substances that have fallen to this\nearth; if, upon this earth's surface there is infinite variety of\nsubstances detachable by whirlwinds, two falls of such a rare substance\nas marsh paper would be remarkable.\n\nA writer in the _Edinburgh Review_, 87-194, says that, at the time of\nwriting, he had before him a portion of a sheet of 200 square feet, of a\nsubstance that had fallen at Carolath, Silesia, in 1839--exactly similar\nto cotton-felt, of which clothing might have been made. The god\nMicroscopic Examination had spoken. The substance consisted chiefly of\nconifervae.\n\n_Jour. Asiatic Soc. of Bengal_, 1847-pt. 1-193:\n\nThat March 16, 1846--about the time of a fall of edible substance in\nAsia Minor--an olive-gray powder fell at Shanghai. Under the microscope,\nit was seen to be an aggregation of hairs of two kinds, black ones and\nrather thick white ones. They were supposed to be mineral fibers, but,\nwhen burned, they gave out \"the common ammoniacal smell and smoke of\nburnt hair or feathers.\" The writer described the phenomenon as \"a cloud\nof 3800 square miles of fibers, alkali, and sand.\" In a postscript, he\nsays that other investigators, with more powerful microscopes, gave\nopinion that the fibers were not hairs; that the substance consisted\nchiefly of conifervae.\n\nOr the pathos of it, perhaps; or the dull and uninspired, but courageous\npersistence of the scientific: everything seemingly found out is doomed\nto be subverted--by more powerful microscopes and telescopes; by more\nrefined, precise, searching means and methods--the new pronouncements\nirrepressibly bobbing up; their reception always as Truth at last;\nalways the illusion of the final; very little of the Intermediatist\nspirit--\n\nThat the new that has displaced the old will itself some day be\ndisplaced; that it, too, will be recognized as myth-stuff--\n\nBut that if phantoms climb, spooks of ladders are good enough for them.\n\n_Annual Register_, 1821-681:\n\nThat, according to a report by M. Laine, French Consul at Pernambuco,\nearly in October, 1821, there was a shower of a substance resembling\nsilk. The quantity was as tremendous as might be a whole cargo, lost\nsomewhere between Jupiter and Mars, having drifted around perhaps for\ncenturies, the original fabrics slowly disintegrating. In _Annales de\nChimie_, 2-15-427, it is said that samples of this substance were sent\nto France by M. Laine, and that they proved to have some resemblances to\nsilky filaments which, at certain times of the year, are carried by the\nwind near Paris.\n\nIn the _Annals of Philosophy_, n.s., 12-93, there is mention of a\nfibrous substance like blue silk that fell near Naumberg, March 23,\n1665. According to Chladni (_Annales de Chimie_, 2-31-264), the quantity\nwas great. He places a question mark before the date.\n\nOne of the advantages of Intermediatism is that, in the oneness of\nquasiness, there can be no mixed metaphors. Whatever is acceptable of\nanything, is, in some degree or aspect, acceptable of everything. So it\nis quite proper to speak, for instance, of something that is as firm as\na rock and that sails in a majestic march. The Irish are good monists:\nthey have of course been laughed at for their keener perceptions. So\nit's a book we're writing, or it's a procession, or it's a museum, with\nthe Chamber of Horrors rather over-emphasized. A rather horrible\ncorrelation occurs in the _Scientific American_, 1859-178. What\ninterests us is that a correspondent saw a silky substance fall from the\nsky--there was an aurora borealis at the time--he attributes the\nsubstance to the aurora.\n\nSince the time of Darwin, the classic explanation has been that all\nsilky substances that fall from the sky are spider webs. In 1832, aboard\nthe _Beagle_, at the mouth of La Plata River, 60 miles from land, Darwin\nsaw an enormous number of spiders, of the kind usually known as\n\"gossamer\" spiders, little aeronauts that cast out filaments by which\nthe wind carries them.\n\nIt's difficult to express that silky substances that have fallen to this\nearth were not spider webs. My own acceptance is that spider webs are\nthe merger; that there have been falls of an externally derived silky\nsubstance, and also of the webs, or strands, rather, of aeronautic\nspiders indigenous to this earth; that in some instances it is\nimpossible to distinguish one from the other. Of course, our expression\nupon silky substances will merge away into expressions upon other\nseeming textile substances, and I don't know how much better off we'll\nbe--\n\nExcept that, if fabricable materials have fallen from the sky--\n\nSimply to establish acceptance of that may be doing well enough in this\nbook of first and tentative explorations.\n\nIn _All the Year Round_, 8-254, is described a fall that took place in\nEngland, Sept. 21, 1741, in the towns of Bradly, Selborne, and\nAlresford, and in a triangular space included by these three towns. The\nsubstance is described as \"cobwebs\"--but it fell in flake-formation, or\nin \"flakes or rags about one inch broad and five or six inches long.\"\nAlso these flakes were of a relatively heavy substance--\"they fell with\nsome velocity.\" The quantity was great--the shortest side of the\ntriangular space is eight miles long. In the _Wernerian Nat. Hist. Soc.\nTrans._, 5-386, it is said that there were two falls--that they were\nsome hours apart--a datum that is becoming familiar to us--a datum that\ncannot be taken into the fold, unless we find it repeated over and over\nand over again. It is said that the second fall lasted from nine o'clock\nin the morning until night.\n\nNow the hypnosis of the classic--that what we call intelligence is only\nan expression of inequilibrium; that when mental adjustments are made,\nintelligence ceases--or, of course, that intelligence is the confession\nof ignorance. If you have intelligence upon any subject, that is\nsomething you're still learning--if we agree that that which is learned\nis always mechanically done--in quasi-terms, of course, because nothing\nis ever finally learned.\n\nIt was decided that this substance was spiders' web. That was\nadjustment. But it's not adjustment to me; so I'm afraid I shall have\nsome intelligence in this matter. If I ever arrive at adjustment upon\nthis subject, then, upon this subject, I shall be able to have no\nthoughts, except routine-thoughts. I haven't yet quite decided\nabsolutely everything, so I am able to point out:\n\nThat this substance was of quantity so enormous that it attracted wide\nattention when it came down--\n\nThat it would have been equally noteworthy when it went up--\n\nThat there is no record of anyone, in England or elsewhere, having seen\ntons of \"spider webs\" going up, September, 1741.\n\nFurther confession of intelligence upon my part:\n\nThat, if it be contested, then, that the place of origin may have been\nfar away, but still terrestrial--\n\nThen it's that other familiar matter of incredible \"marksmanship\"\nagain--hitting a small, triangular space for hours--interval of\nhours--then from nine in the morning until night: same small triangular\nspace.\n\nThese are the disregards of the classic explanation. There is no mention\nof spiders having been seen to fall, but a good inclusion is that,\nthough this substance fell in good-sized flakes of considerable weight,\nit was viscous. In this respect it was like cobwebs: dogs nosing it on\ngrass, were blindfolded with it. This circumstance does strongly suggest\ncobwebs--\n\nUnless we can accept that, in regions aloft, there are vast viscous or\ngelatinous areas, and that things passing through become daubed. Or\nperhaps we clear up the confusion in the descriptions of the substance\nthat fell in 1841 and 1846, in Asia Minor, described in one publication\nas gelatinous, and in another as a cereal--that it was a cereal that had\npassed through a gelatinous region. That the paper-like substance of\nMemel may have had such an experience may be indicated in that Ehrenberg\nfound in it gelatinous matter, which he called \"nostoc.\" (_Annals and\nMag. of Nat. Hist._, 1-3-185.)\n\n_Scientific American_, 45-337:\n\nFall of a substance described as \"cobwebs,\" latter part of October,\n1881, in Milwaukee, Wis., and other towns: other towns mentioned are\nGreen Bay, Vesburge, Fort Howard, Sheboygan, and Ozaukee. The aeronautic\nspiders are known as \"gossamer\" spiders, because of the extreme\nlightness of the filaments that they cast out to the wind. Of the\nsubstance that fell in Wisconsin, it is said:\n\n\"In all instances the webs were strong in texture and very white.\"\n\nThe Editor says:\n\n\"Curiously enough, there is no mention in any of the reports that we\nhave seen, of the presence of spiders.\"\n\nSo our attempt to divorce a possible external product from its\nterrestrial merger: then our joy of the prospector who thinks he's found\nsomething:\n\nThe _Monthly Weather Review_, 26-566, quotes the _Montgomery_ (Ala.)\n_Advertiser_:\n\nThat, upon Nov. 21, 1898, numerous batches of spider-web-like substance\nfell in Montgomery, in strands and in occasional masses several inches\nlong and several inches broad. According to the writer, it was not\nspiders' web, but something like asbestos; also that it was\nphosphorescent.\n\nThe Editor of the _Review_ says that he sees no reason for doubting that\nthese masses were cobwebs.\n\n_La Nature_, 1883-342:\n\nA correspondent writes that he sends a sample of a substance said to\nhave fallen at Montussan (Gironde), Oct. 16, 1883. According to a\nwitness, quoted by the correspondent, a thick cloud, accompanied by rain\nand a violent wind, had appeared. This cloud was composed of a woolly\nsubstance in lumps the size of a fist, which fell to the ground. The\nEditor (Tissandier) says of this substance that it was white, but was\nsomething that had been burned. It was fibrous. M. Tissandier astonishes\nus by saying that he cannot identify this substance. We thought that\nanything could be \"identified\" as anything. He can say only that the\ncloud in question must have been an extraordinary conglomeration.\n\n_Annual Register, 1832-447:_\n\nThat, March, 1832, there fell, in the fields of Kourianof, Russia, a\ncombustible yellowish substance, covering, at least two inches thick, an\narea of 600 or 700 square feet. It was resinous and yellowish: so one\ninclines to the conventional explanation that it was pollen from pine\ntrees--but, when torn, it had the tenacity of cotton. When placed in\nwater, it had the consistency of resin. \"This resin had the color of\namber, was elastic, like India rubber, and smelled like prepared oil\nmixed with wax.\"\n\nSo in general our notion of cargoes--and our notion of cargoes of food\nsupplies:\n\nIn _Philosophical Transactions_, 19-224, is an extract from a letter by\nMr. Robert Vans, of Kilkenny, Ireland, dated Nov. 15, 1695: that there\nhad been \"of late,\" in the counties of Limerick and Tipperary, showers\nof a sort of matter like butter or grease... having \"a very stinking\nsmell.\"\n\nThere follows an extract from a letter by the Bishop of Cloyne, upon \"a\nvery odd phenomenon,\" which was observed in Munster and Leinster: that\nfor a good part of the spring of 1695 there fell a substance which the\ncountry people called \"butter\"--\"soft, clammy, and of a dark\nyellow\"--that cattle fed \"indifferently\" in fields where this substance\nlay.\n\n\"It fell in lumps as big as the end of one's finger.\" It had a \"strong\nill scent.\" His Grace calls it a \"stinking dew.\"\n\nIn Mr. Vans' letter, it is said that the \"butter\" was supposed to have\nmedicinal properties, and \"was gathered in pots and other vessels by\nsome of the inhabitants of this place.\"\n\nAnd:\n\nIn all the following volumes of _Philosophical Transactions_ there is no\nspeculation upon this extraordinary subject. Ostracism. The fate of this\ndatum is a good instance of damnation, not by denial, and not by\nexplaining away, but by simple disregard. The fall is listed by\nChladni, and is mentioned in other catalogues, but, from the absence of\nall inquiry, and of all but formal mention, we see that it has been\nunder excommunication as much as was ever anything by the preceding\nsystem. The datum has been buried alive. It is as irreconcilable with\nthe modern system of dogmas as ever were geologic strata and vermiform\nappendix with the preceding system--\n\nIf, intermittently, or \"for a good part of the spring,\" this substance\nfell in two Irish provinces, and nowhere else, we have, stronger than\nbefore, a sense of a stationary region overhead, or a region that\nreceives products like this earth's products, but from external sources,\na region in which this earth's gravitational and meteorological forces\nare relatively inert--if for many weeks a good part of this substance\ndid hover before finally falling. We suppose that, in 1685, Mr. Vans and\nthe Bishop of Cloyne could describe what they saw as well as could\nwitnesses in 1885: nevertheless, it is going far back; we shall have to\nhave many modern instances before we can accept.\n\nAs to other falls, or another fall, it is said in the _Amer. Jour.\nSci._, 1-28-361, that, April 11, 1832--about a month after the fall of\nthe substance of Kourianof--fell a substance that was wine-yellow,\ntransparent, soft, and smelling like rancid oil. M. Herman, a chemist\nwho examined it, named it \"sky oil.\" For analysis and chemic reactions,\nsee the _Journal_. The _Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal_, 13-368,\nmentions an \"unctuous\" substance that fell near Rotterdam, in 1832. In\n_Comptes Rendus_, 13-215, there is an account of an oily, reddish matter\nthat fell at Genoa, February, 1841.\n\nWhatever it may have been--\n\nAltogether, most of our difficulties are problems that we should leave\nto later developers of super-geography, I think. A discoverer of America\nshould leave Long Island to someone else. If there be, plying back and\nforth from Jupiter and Mars and Venus, super-constructions that are\nsometimes wrecked, we think of fuel as well as cargoes. Of course the\nmost convincing data would be of coal falling from the sky:\nnevertheless, one does suspect that oil-burning engines were discovered\nages ago in more advanced worlds--but, as I say, we should leave\nsomething to our disciples--so we'll not especially wonder whether these\nbutter-like or oily substances were food or fuel. So we merely note that\nin the _Scientific American_, 24-323, is an account of hail that fell,\nin the middle of April, 1871, in Mississippi, in which was a substance\ndescribed as turpentine.\n\nSomething that tasted like orange water, in hailstones, about the first\nof June, 1842, near Nimes, France; identified as nitric acid (_Jour. de\nPharmacie_, 1845-273).\n\nHail and ashes, in Ireland, 1755 (_Sci. Amer._, 5-168).\n\nThat, at Elizabeth, N.J., June 9, 1874, fell hail in which was a\nsubstance, said, by Prof. Leeds, of Stevens Institute, to be carbonate\nof soda (_Sci. Amer._, 30-262).\n\nWe are getting a little away from the lines of our composition, but it\nwill be an important point later that so many extraordinary falls have\noccurred with hail. Or--if they were of substances that had had origin\nupon some other part of this earth's surface--had the hail, too, that\norigin? Our acceptance here will depend upon the number of instances.\nReasonably enough, some of the things that fall to this earth should\ncoincide with falls of hail.\n\nAs to vegetable substances in quantities so great as to suggest lost\ncargoes, we have a note in the _Intellectual Observer_, 3-468: that,\nupon the first of May, 1863, a rain fell at Perpignan, \"bringing down\nwith it a red substance, which proved on examination to be a red meal\nmixed with fine sand.\" At various points along the Mediterranean, this\nsubstance fell.\n\nThere is, in _Philosophical Transactions_, 16-281, an account of a\nseeming cereal, said to have fallen in Wiltshire, in 1686--said that\nsome of the \"wheat\" fell \"enclosed in hailstones\"--but the writer in\n_Transactions_, says that he had examined the grains, and that they were\nnothing but seeds of ivy berries dislodged from holes and chinks where\nbirds had hidden them. If birds still hide ivy seeds, and if winds still\nblow, I don't see why the phenomenon has not repeated in more than two\nhundred years since.\n\nOr the red matter in rain, at Siena, Italy, May, 1830; said, by Arago,\nto have been vegetable matter (Arago, _OEuvres_, 12-468).\n\nSomebody should collect data of falls at Siena alone.\n\nIn the _Monthly Weather Review_, 29-465, a correspondent writes that,\nupon Feb. 16, 1901, at Pawpaw, Michigan, upon a day that was so calm\nthat his windmill did not run, fell a brown dust that looked like\nvegetable matter. The Editor of the _Review_ concludes that this was no\nwidespread fall from a tornado, because it had been reported from\nnowhere else.\n\nRancidness--putridity--decomposition--a note that has been struck many\ntimes. In a positive sense, of course, nothing means anything, or every\nmeaning is continuous with all other meanings: or that all evidences of\nguilt, for instance, are just as good evidences of innocence--but this\ncondition seems to mean--things lying around among the stars a long\ntime. Horrible disaster in the time of Julius Caesar; remains from it\nnot reaching this earth till the time of the Bishop of Cloyne: we leave\nto later research the discussion of bacterial action and decomposition,\nand whether bacteria could survive in what we call space, of which we\nknow nothing--\n\n_Chemical News_, 35-183:\n\nDr. A.T. Machattie, F.C.S., writes that, at London, Ontario, Feb. 24,\n1868, in a violent storm, fell, with snow, a dark-colored substance,\nestimated at 500 tons, over a belt 50 miles by 10 miles. It was examined\nunder a microscope, by Dr. Machattie, who found it to consist mainly of\nvegetable matter \"far advanced in decomposition.\" The substance was\nexamined by Dr. James Adams, of Glasgow, who gave his opinion that it\nwas the remains of cereals. Dr. Machattie points out that for months\nbefore this fall the ground of Canada had been frozen, so that in this\ncase a more than ordinarily remote origin has to be thought of. Dr.\nMachattie thinks of origin to the south. \"However,\" he says, \"this is\nmere conjecture.\"\n\n_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1841-40:\n\nThat, March 24, 1840--during a thunderstorm--at Rajkit, India, occurred\na fall of grain. It was reported by Col. Sykes, of the British\nAssociation.\n\nThe natives were greatly excited--because it was grain of a kind unknown\nto them.\n\nUsually comes forward a scientist who knows more of the things that\nnatives know best than the natives know--but it so happens that the\nusual thing was not done definitely in this instance:\n\n\"The grain was shown to some botanists, who did not immediately\nrecognize it, but thought it to be either a spartium or a vicia.\"\n\n\n\n\n6\n\n\nLead, silver, diamonds, glass.\n\nThey sound like the accursed, but they're not: they're now of the\nchosen--that is, when they occur in metallic or stony masses that\nScience has recognized as meteorites. We find that resistance is to\nsubstances not so mixed in or incorporated.\n\nOf accursed data, it seems to me that punk is pretty damnable. In the\n_Report of the British Association_, 1878-376, there is mention of a\nlight chocolate-brown substance that has fallen with meteorites. No\nparticulars given; not another mention anywhere else that I can find. In\nthis English publication, the word \"punk\" is not used; the substance is\ncalled \"amadou.\" I suppose, if the datum has anywhere been admitted to\nFrench publications, the word \"amadou\" has been avoided, and \"punk\"\nused.\n\nOr oneness of allness: scientific works and social registers: a\nGoldstein who can't get in as Goldstein, gets in as Jackson.\n\nThe fall of sulphur from the sky has been especially repulsive to the\nmodern orthodoxy--largely because of its associations with the\nsuperstitions or principles of the preceding orthodoxy--stories of\ndevils: sulphurous exhalations. Several writers have said that they have\nhad this feeling. So the scientific reactionists, who have rabidly\nfought the preceding, because it was the preceding: and the scientific\nprudes, who, in sheer exclusionism, have held lean hands over pale eyes,\ndenying falls of sulphur. I have many notes upon the sulphurous odor of\nmeteorites, and many notes upon phosphorescence of things that come from\nexternality. Some day I shall look over old stories of demons that have\nappeared sulphurously upon this earth, with the idea of expressing that\nwe have often had undesirable visitors from other worlds; or that an\nindication of external derivation is sulphurousness. I expect some day\nto rationalize demonology, but just at present we are scarcely far\nenough advanced to go so far back.\n\nFor a circumstantial account of a mass of burning sulphur, about the\nsize of a man's fist, that fell at Pultusk, Poland, Jan. 30, 1868, upon\na road, where it was stamped out by a crowd of villagers, see _Rept.\nBrit. Assoc._, 1874-272.\n\nThe power of the exclusionists lies in that in their stand are combined\nboth modern and archaic systematists. Falls of sandstone and limestone\nare repulsive to both theologians and scientists. Sandstone and\nlimestone suggest other worlds upon which occur processes like\ngeological processes; but limestone, as a fossiliferous substance, is of\ncourse especially of the unchosen.\n\nIn _Science_, March 9, 1888, we read of a block of limestone, said to\nhave fallen near Middleburg, Florida. It was exhibited at the\nSub-tropical Exposition, at Jacksonville. The writer, in _Science_,\ndenies that it fell from the sky. His reasoning is:\n\nThere is no limestone in the sky;\n\nTherefore this limestone did not fall from the sky.\n\nBetter reasoning I cannot conceive of--because we see that a final major\npremise--universal--true--would include all things: that, then, would\nleave nothing to reason about--so then that all reasoning must be based\nupon \"something\" not universal, or only a phantom intermediate to the\ntwo finalities of nothingness and allness, or negativeness and\npositiveness.\n\n_La Nature_, 1890-2-127:\n\nFall, at Pel-et-Der (L'Aube), France, June 6, 1890, of limestone\npebbles. Identified with limestone at Chateau-Landon--or up and down in\na whirlwind. But they fell with hail--which, in June, could not very\nwell be identified with ice from Chateau-Landon. Coincidence, perhaps.\n\nUpon page 70, _Science Gossip_, 1887, the Editor says, of a stone that\nwas reported to have fallen at Little Lever, England, that a sample had\nbeen sent to him. It was sandstone. Therefore it had not fallen, but had\nbeen on the ground in the first place. But, upon page 140, _Science\nGossip_, 1887, is an account of \"a large, smooth, water-worn, gritty\nsandstone pebble\" that had been found in the wood of a full-grown beech\ntree. Looks to me as if it had fallen red-hot, and had penetrated the\ntree with high velocity. But I have never heard of anything falling\nred-hot from a whirlwind--\n\nThe wood around this sandstone pebble was black, as if charred.\n\nDr. Farrington, for instance, in his books, does not even mention\nsandstone. However, the British Association, though reluctant, is less\nexclusive: _Report_ of 1860, p. 197: substance about the size of a\nduck's egg, that fell at Raphoe, Ireland, June 9, 1860--date questioned.\nIt is not definitely said that this substance was sandstone, but that it\n\"resembled\" friable sandstone.\n\nFalls of salt have occurred often. They have been avoided by\nscientific writers, because of the dictum that only water and\nnot substances held in solution, can be raised by evaporation.\nHowever, falls of salty water have received attention from\nDalton and others, and have been attributed to whirlwinds from the sea.\nThis is so reasonably contested--quasi-reasonably--as to places not\nfar from the sea--\n\nBut the fall of salt that occurred high in the mountains of\nSwitzerland--\n\nWe could have predicted that that datum could be found somewhere. Let\nanything be explained in local terms of the coast of England--but also\nhas it occurred high in the mountains of Switzerland.\n\nLarge crystals of salt fell--in a hailstorm--Aug. 20, 1870, in\nSwitzerland. The orthodox explanation is a crime: whoever made it,\nshould have had his finger-prints taken. We are told (_An. Rec. Sci._,\n1872) that these objects of salt \"came over the Mediterranean from some\npart of Africa.\"\n\nOr the hypnosis of the conventional--provided it be glib. One reads such\nan assertion, and provided it be suave and brief and conventional, one\nseldom questions--or thinks \"very strange\" and then forgets. One has an\nimpression from geography lessons: Mediterranean not more than three\ninches wide, on the map; Switzerland only a few more inches away. These\nsizable masses of salt are described in the _Amer. Jour. Sci._, 3-3-239,\nas \"essentially imperfect cubic crystals of common salt.\" As to\noccurrence with hail--that can in one, or ten, or twenty, instances be\ncalled a coincidence.\n\nAnother datum: extraordinary year 1883:\n\nLondon _Times_, Dec. 25, 1883:\n\nTranslation from a Turkish newspaper; a substance that fell at Scutari,\nDec. 2, 1883; described as an unknown substance, in particles--or\nflakes?--like snow. \"It was found to be saltish to the taste, and to\ndissolve readily in water.\"\n\nMiscellaneous:\n\n\"Black, capillary matter\" that fell, Nov. 16, 1857, at Charleston, S.C.\n(_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 2-31-459).\n\nFall of small, friable, vesicular masses, from size of a pea to size of\na walnut, at Lobau, Jan. 18, 1835 (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1860-85).\n\nObjects that fell at Peshawur, India, June, 1893, during a storm:\nsubstance that looked like crystallized niter, and that tasted like\nsugar (_Nature_, July 13, 1893).\n\nI suppose sometimes deep-sea fishes have their noses bumped by cinders.\nIf their regions be subjacent to Cunard or White Star routes, they're\nespecially likely to be bumped. I conceive of no inquiry: they're\ndeep-sea fishes.\n\nOr the slag of Slains. That it was a furnace-product. The Rev. James\nRust seemed to feel bumped. He tried in vain to arouse inquiry.\n\nAs to a report, from Chicago, April 9, 1879, that slag had fallen from\nthe sky, Prof. E.S. Bastian (_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 3-18-78) says that the\nslag \"had been on the ground in the first place.\" It was furnace-slag.\n\"A chemical examination of the specimens has shown that they possess\nnone of the characteristics of true meteorites.\"\n\nOver and over and over again, the universal delusion; hope and despair\nof attempted positivism; that there can be real criteria, or distinct\ncharacteristics of anything. If anybody can define--not merely suppose,\nlike Prof. Bastian, that he can define--the true characteristics of\nanything, or so localize trueness anywhere, he makes the discovery for\nwhich the cosmos is laboring. He will be instantly translated, like\nElijah, into the Positive Absolute. My own notion is that, in a moment\nof super-concentration, Elijah became so nearly a real prophet that he\nwas translated to heaven, or to the Positive Absolute, with such\nvelocity that he left an incandescent train behind him. As we go along,\nwe shall find the \"true test of meteoritic material,\" which in the past\nhas been taken as an absolute, dissolving into almost utmost nebulosity.\nProf. Bastian explains mechanically, or in terms of the usual reflexes\nto all reports of unwelcome substances: that near where the slag had\nbeen found, telegraph wires had been struck by lightning; that particles\nof melted wire had been seen to fall near the slag--which had been on\nthe ground in the first place. But, according to the _New York Times_,\nApril 14, 1879, about two bushels of this substance had fallen.\n\nSomething that was said to have fallen at Darmstadt, June 7, 1846;\nlisted by Greg (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1867-416) as \"only slag.\"\n\n_Philosophical Magazine_, 4-10-381:\n\nThat, in 1855, a large stone was found far in the interior of a tree, in\nBattersea Fields.\n\nSometimes cannon balls are found embedded in trees. Doesn't seem to be\nanything to discuss; doesn't seem discussable that any one would cut a\nhole in a tree and hide a cannon ball, which one could take to bed, and\nhide under one's pillow, just as easily. So with the stone of Battersea\nFields. What is there to say, except that it fell with high velocity and\nembedded in the tree? Nevertheless, there was a great deal of\ndiscussion--\n\nBecause, at the foot of the tree, as if broken off the stone, fragments\nof slag were found.\n\nI have nine other instances.\n\nSlag and cinders and ashes, and you won't believe, and neither will I,\nthat they came from the furnaces of vast aerial super-constructions.\nWe'll see what looks acceptable.\n\nAs to ashes, the difficulties are great, because we'd expect many falls\nof terrestrially derived ashes--volcanoes and forest fires.\n\nIn some of our acceptances, I have felt a little radical--\n\nI suppose that one of our main motives is to show that there is, in\nquasi-existence, nothing but the preposterous--or something intermediate\nto absolute preposterousness and final reasonableness--that the new is\nthe obviously preposterous; that it becomes the established and\ndisguisedly preposterous; that it is displaced, after a while, and is\nagain seen to be the preposterous. Or that all progress is from the\noutrageous to the academic or sanctified, and back to the\noutrageous--modified, however, by a trend of higher and higher\napproximation to the impreposterous. Sometimes I feel a little more\nuninspired than at other times, but I think we're pretty well accustomed\nnow to the oneness of allness; or that the methods of science in\nmaintaining its system are as outrageous as the attempts of the damned\nto break in. In the _Annual Record of Science_, 1875-241, Prof. Daubree\nis quoted: that ashes that had fallen in the Azores had come from the\nChicago fire--\n\nOr the damned and the saved, and there's little to choose between them;\nand angels are beings that have not obviously barbed tails to them--or\nnever have such bad manners as to stroke an angel below the waist-line.\n\nHowever this especial outrage was challenged: the Editor of the _Record_\nreturns to it, in the issue of 1876: considers it \"in the highest degree\nimproper to say that the ashes of Chicago were landed in the Azores.\"\n\n_Bull. Soc. Astro. de France_, 22-245:\n\nAccount of a white substance, like ashes, that fell at Annoy, France,\nMarch 27, 1908: simply called a curious phenomenon; no attempt to trace\nto a terrestrial source.\n\nFlake formations, which may signify passage through a region of\npressure, are common; but spherical formations--as if of things that\nhave rolled and rolled along planar regions somewhere--are commoner:\n\n_Nature_, Jan. 10, 1884, quotes a Kimberley newspaper:\n\nThat, toward the close of November, 1883, a thick shower of ashy matter\nfell at Queenstown, South Africa. The matter was in marble-sized balls,\nwhich were soft and pulpy, but which, upon drying, crumbled at touch.\nThe shower was confined to one narrow streak of land. It would be only\nordinarily preposterous to attribute this substance to Krakatoa--\n\nBut, with the fall, loud noises were heard--\n\nBut I'll omit many notes upon ashes: if ashes should sift down upon\ndeep-sea fishes, that is not to say that they came from steamships.\n\nData of falls of cinders have been especially damned by Mr. Symons, the\nmeteorologist, some of whose investigations we'll investigate\nlater--nevertheless--\n\nNotice of a fall, in Victoria, Australia, April 14, 1875 (_Rept. Brit.\nAssoc._, 1875-242)--at least we are told, in the reluctant way, that\nsomeone \"thought\" he saw matter fall near him at night, and the next day\nfound something that looked like cinders.\n\nIn the _Proc. of the London Roy. Soc._, 19-122, there is an account of\ncinders that fell on the deck of a lightship, Jan. 9, 1873. In the\n_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 2-24-449, there is a notice that the Editor had\nreceived a specimen of cinders said to have fallen--in showery\nweather--upon a farm, near Ottowa, Ill., Jan. 17, 1857.\n\nBut after all, ambiguous things they are, cinders or ashes or slag or\nclinkers, the high priest of the accursed that must speak aloud for us\nis--coal that has fallen from the sky.\n\nOr coke:\n\nThe person who thought he saw something like cinders, also thought he\nsaw something like coke, we are told.\n\n_Nature_, 36-119:\n\nSomething that \"looked exactly like coke\" that fell--during a\nthunderstorm--in the Orne, France, April 24, 1887.\n\nOr charcoal:\n\nDr. Angus Smith, in the _Lit. and Phil. Soc. of Manchester Memoirs_,\n2-9-146, says that, about 1827--like a great deal in Lyell's\n_Principles_ and Darwin's _Origin_, this account is from\nhearsay--something fell from the sky, near Allport, England. It fell\nluminously, with a loud report, and scattered in a field. A fragment\nthat was seen by Dr. Smith, is described by him as having \"the\nappearance of a piece of common wood charcoal.\" Nevertheless, the\nreassured feeling of the faithful, upon reading this, is burdened with\ndata of differences: the substance was so uncommonly heavy that it\nseemed as if it had iron in it; also there was \"a sprinkling of\nsulphur.\" This material is said, by Prof. Baden-Powell, to be \"totally\nunlike that of any other meteorite.\" Greg, in his catalogue (_Rept.\nBrit. Assoc._, 1860-73), calls it \"a more than doubtful substance\"--but\nagain, against reassurance, that is not doubt of authenticity. Greg says\nthat it is like compact charcoal, with particles of sulphur and iron\npyrites embedded.\n\nReassurance rises again:\n\nProf. Baden-Powell says: \"It contains also charcoal, which might perhaps\nbe acquired from matter among which it fell.\"\n\nThis is a common reflex with the exclusionists: that substances not\n\"truly meteoritic\" did not fall from the sky, but were picked up by\n\"truly meteoritic\" things, of course only on their surfaces, by impact\nwith this earth.\n\nRhythm of reassurances and their declines:\n\nAccording to Dr. Smith, this substance was not merely coated with\ncharcoal; his analysis gives 43.59 per cent carbon.\n\nOur acceptance that coal has fallen from the sky will be via data of\nresinous substances and bituminous substances, which merge so that they\ncannot be told apart.\n\nResinous substance said to have fallen at Kaba, Hungary, April 15, 1887\n(_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1860-94).\n\nA resinous substance that fell after a fireball? at Neuhaus, Bohemia,\nDec. 17, 1824 (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1860-70).\n\nFall, July 28, 1885, at Luchon, during a storm, of a brownish substance;\nvery friable, carbonaceous matter; when burned it gave out a resinous\nodor (_Comptes Rendus_, 103-837).\n\nSubstance that fell, Feb. 17, 18, 19, 1841, at Genoa, Italy, said to\nhave been resinous; said by Arago (_OEuvres_, 12-469) to have been\nbituminous matter and sand.\n\nFall--during a thunderstorm--July, 1681, near Cape Cod, upon the deck of\nan English vessel, the _Albemarle_, of \"burning, bituminous matter\"\n(_Edin. New Phil. Jour._, 26-86); a fall, at Christiania, Norway, June\n13, 1822, of bituminous matter, listed by Greg as doubtful; fall of\nbituminous matter, in Germany, March 8, 1798, listed by Greg. Lockyer\n(_The Meteoric Hypothesis_, p. 24) says that the substance that fell at\nthe Cape of Good Hope, Oct. 13, 1838--about five cubic feet of it:\nsubstance so soft that it was cuttable with a knife--\"after being\nexperimented upon, it left a residue, which gave out a very bituminous\nsmell.\"\n\nAnd this inclusion of Lockyer's--so far as findable in all books that I\nhave read--is, in books, about as close as we can get to our\ndesideratum--that coal has fallen from the sky. Dr. Farrington, except\nwith a brief mention, ignores the whole subject of the fall of\ncarbonaceous matter from the sky. Proctor, in all of his books that I\nhave read--is, in books, about as close as we can get to the admission\nthat carbonaceous matter has been found in meteorites \"in very minute\nquantities\"--or my own suspicion is that it is possible to damn\nsomething else only by losing one's own soul--quasi-soul, of course.\n\n_Sci. Amer._, 35-120:\n\nThat the substance that fell at the Cape of Good Hope \"resembled a piece\nof anthracite coal more than anything else.\"\n\nIt's a mistake, I think: the resemblance is to bituminous coal--but it\nis from the periodicals that we must get our data. To the writers of\nbooks upon meteorites, it would be as wicked--by which we mean departure\nfrom the characters of an established species--quasi-established, of\ncourse--to say that coal has fallen from the sky, as would be, to\nsomething in a barnyard, a temptation that it climb a tree and catch a\nbird. Domestic things in a barnyard: and how wild things from forests\noutside seem to them. Or the homeopathist--but we shall shovel data of\ncoal.\n\nAnd, if over and over, we shall learn of masses of soft coal that have\nfallen upon this earth, if in no instance has it been asserted that the\nmasses did not fall, but were upon the ground in the first place; if we\nhave many instances, this time we turn down good and hard the mechanical\nreflex that these masses were carried from one place to another in\nwhirlwinds, because we find it too difficult to accept that whirlwinds\ncould so select, or so specialize in a peculiar substance. Among writers\nof books, the only one I know of who makes more than brief mention is\nSir Robert Ball. He represents a still more antique orthodoxy, or is an\nexclusionist of the old type, still holding out against even meteorites.\nHe cites several falls of carbonaceous matter, but with disregards that\nmake for reasonableness that earthy matter may have been caught up by\nwhirlwinds and flung down somewhere else. If he had given a full list,\nhe would be called upon to explain the special affinity of whirlwinds\nfor a special kind of coal. He does not give a full list. We shall have\nall that's findable, and we shall see that against this disease we're\nwriting, the homeopathist's prescription availeth not. Another\nexclusionist was Prof. Lawrence Smith. His psycho-tropism was to\nrespond to all reports of carbonaceous matter falling from the sky, by\nsaying that this damned matter had been deposited upon things of the\nchosen by impact with this earth. Most of our data antedate him, or were\ncontemporaneous with him, or were as accessible to him as to us. In his\nattempted positivism it is simply--and beautifully--disregarded that,\naccording to Berthelot, Berzelius, Cloez, Wohler and others these masses\nare not merely coated with carbonaceous matter, but are carbonaceous\nthroughout, or are permeated throughout. How anyone could so resolutely\nand dogmatically and beautifully and blindly hold out would puzzle us\nwere it not for our acceptance that only to think is to exclude and\ninclude; and to exclude some things that have as much right to come in\nas have the included--that to have an opinion upon any subject is to be\na Lawrence Smith--because there is no definite subject.\n\nDr. Walter Flight (_Eclectic Magazine_, 89-71) says, of the substance\nthat fell near Alais, France, March 15, 1806, that it \"emits a faint\nbituminous substance\" when heated, according to the observations of\nBergelius and a commission appointed by the French Academy. This time we\nhave not the reluctances expressed in such words as \"like\" and\n\"resembling.\" We are told that this substance is \"an earthy kind of\ncoal.\"\n\nAs to \"minute quantities\" we are told that the substance that fell at\nthe Cape of Good Hope has in it a little more than a quarter of organic\nmatter, which, in alcohol, gives the familiar reaction of yellow,\nresinous matter. Other instances given by Dr. Flight are:\n\nCarbonaceous matter that fell in 1840, in Tennessee; Cranbourne,\nAustralia, 1861; Montauban, France, May 14, 1864 (twenty masses, some of\nthem as large as a human head, of a substance that \"resembled a\ndull-colored earthy lignite\"); Goalpara, India, about 1867 (about 8 per\ncent of a hydrocarbon); at Ornans, France, July 11, 1868; substance with\n\"an organic, combustible ingredient,\" at Hessle, Sweden, Jan. 1, 1860.\n\n_Knowledge_, 4-134:\n\nThat, according to M. Daubree, the substance that had fallen in the\nArgentine Republic, \"resembled certain kinds of lignite and boghead\ncoal.\" In _Comptes Rendus_, 96-1764, it is said that this mass fell,\nJune 30, 1880, in the province Entre Rios, Argentina: that it is \"like\"\nbrown coal; that it resembles all the other carbonaceous masses that\nhave fallen from the sky.\n\nSomething that fell at Grazac, France, Aug. 10, 1885: when burned, it\ngave out a bituminous odor (_Comptes Rendus_, 104-1771).\n\nCarbonaceous substance that fell at Rajpunta, India, Jan. 22, 1911: very\nfriable: 50 per cent of its soluble in water (_Records Geol. Survey of\nIndia_, 44-pt. 1-41).\n\nA combustible carbonaceous substance that fell with sand at Naples,\nMarch 14, 1818 (_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-1-309).\n\n_Sci. Amer. Sup._, 29-11798:\n\nThat, June 9, 1889, a very friable substance, of a deep, greenish black,\nfell at Mighei, Russia. It contained 5 per cent organic matter, which,\nwhen powdered and digested in alcohol, yielded, after evaporation, a\nbright yellow resin. In this mass was 2 per cent of an unknown mineral.\n\nCinders and ashes and slag and coke and charcoal and coal.\n\nAnd the things that sometimes deep-sea fishes are bumped by.\n\nReluctances and the disguises or covered retreats of such words as\n\"like\" and \"resemble\"--or that conditions of Intermediateness forbid\nabrupt transitions--but that the spirit animating all Intermediateness\nis to achieve abrupt transitions--because, if anything could finally\nbreak away from its origin and environment, that would be a real\nthing--something not merging away indistinguishably with the\nsurrounding. So all attempt to be original; all attempt to invent\nsomething that is more than mere extension or modification of the\npreceding, is positivism--or that if one could conceive of a device to\ncatch flies, positively different from, or unrelated to, all other\ndevices--up he'd shoot to heaven, or the Positive Absolute--leaving\nbehind such an incandescent train that in one age it would be said that\nhe had gone aloft in a fiery chariot, and in another age that he had\nbeen struck by lightning--\n\nI'm collecting notes upon persons supposed to have been struck by\nlightning. I think that high approximation to positivism has often been\nachieved--instantaneous translation--residue of negativeness left\nbehind, looking much like effects of a stroke of lightning. Some day I\nshall tell the story of the _Marie Celeste_--\"properly,\" as the\n_Scientific American Supplement_ would say--mysterious disappearance of\na sea captain, his family, and the crew--\n\nOf positivists, by the route of Abrupt Transition, I think that Manet\nwas notable--but that his approximation was held down by his intense\nrelativity to the public--or that it is quite as impositive to flout and\ninsult and defy as it is to crawl and placate. Of course, Manet began\nwith continuity with Courbet and others, and then, between him and Manet\nthere were mutual influences--but the spirit of abrupt difference is the\nspirit of positivism, and Manet's stand was against the dictum that all\nlights and shades must merge away suavely into one another and prepare\nfor one another. So a biologist like De Vries represents positivism, or\nthe breaking of Continuity, by trying to conceive of evolution by\nmutation--against the dogma of indistinguishable gradations by \"minute\nvariations.\" A Copernicus conceives of helio-centricity. Continuity is\nagainst him. He is not permitted to break abruptly with the past. He is\npermitted to publish his work, but only as \"an interesting hypothesis.\"\n\nContinuity--and that all that we call evolution or progress is attempt\nto break away from it--\n\nThat our whole solar system was at one time attempt by planets to break\naway from a parental nexus and set up as individualities, and, failing,\nmove in quasi-regular orbits that are expressions of relations with the\nsun and with one another, all having surrendered, being now\nquasi-incorporated in a higher approximation to system:\n\nIntermediateness in its mineralogic aspect of positivism--or Iron that\nstrove to break away from Sulphur and Oxygen, and be real, homogeneous\nIron--failing, inasmuch as elemental iron exists only in text-book\nchemistry:\n\nIntermediateness in its biologic aspect of positivism--or the wild,\nfantastic, grotesque, monstrous things it conceived of, sometimes in a\nfrenzy of effort to break away abruptly from all preceding types--but\nfailing, in the giraffe-effort, for instance, or only caricaturing an\nantelope--\n\nAll things break one relation only by the establishing of some other\nrelation--\n\nAll things cut an umbilical cord only to clutch a breast.\n\nSo the fight of the exclusionists to maintain the traditional--or to\nprevent abrupt transition from the quasi-established--fighting so that\nhere, more than a century after meteorites were included, no other\nnotable inclusion has been made, except that of cosmic dust, data of\nwhich Nordenskiold made more nearly real than data in opposition.\n\nSo Proctor, for instance, fought and expressed his feeling of the\npreposterous, against Sir W.H. Thomson's notions of arrival upon this\nearth of organisms on meteorites--\n\n\"I can only regard it as a jest\" (_Knowledge_, 1-302).\n\nOr that there is nothing but jest--or something intermediate to jest and\ntragedy:\n\nThat ours is not an existence but an utterance;\n\nThat Momus is imagining us for the amusement of the gods, often with\nsuch success that some of us seem almost alive--like characters in\nsomething a novelist is writing; which often to considerable degree take\ntheir affairs away from the novelist--\n\nThat Momus is imagining us and our arts and sciences and religions, and\nis narrating or picturing us as a satire upon the gods' real existence.\n\nBecause--with many of our data of coal that has fallen from the sky as\naccessible then as they are now, and with the scientific pronouncement\nthat coal is fossil, how, in a real existence, by which we mean a\nconsistent existence, or a state in which there is real intelligence, or\na form of thinking that does not indistinguishably merge away with\nimbecility, could there have been such a row as that which was raised\nabout forty years ago over Dr. Hahn's announcement that he had found\nfossils in meteorites?\n\nAccessible to anybody at that time:\n\n_Philosophical Magazine_, 4-17-425:\n\nThat the substance that fell at Kaba, Hungary, April 15, 1857, contained\norganic matter \"analagous to fossil waxes.\"\n\nOr limestone:\n\nOf the block of limestone which was reported to have fallen at\nMiddleburg, Florida, it is said (_Science_, 11-118) that, though\nsomething had been seen to fall in \"an old cultivated field,\" the\nwitnesses who ran to it picked up something that \"had been upon the\nground in the first place.\" The writer who tells us this, with the usual\nexclusion-imagination known as stupidity, but unjustly, because there is\nno real stupidity, thinks he can think of a good-sized stone that had\nfor many years been in a cultivated field, but that had never been seen\nbefore--had never interfered with plowing, for instance. He is earnest\nand unjarred when he writes that this stone weighs 200 pounds. My own\nnotion, founded upon my own experience in seeing, is that a block of\nstone weighing 500 pounds might be in one's parlor twenty years,\nvirtually unseen--but not in an old cultivated field, where it\ninterfered with plowing--not anywhere--if it interfered.\n\nDr. Hahn said that he had found fossils in meteorites. There is a\ndescription of the corals, sponges, shells, and crinoids, all of them\nmicroscopic, which he photographed, in _Popular Science_, 20-83.\n\nDr. Hahn was a well-known scientist. He was better known after that.\n\nAnybody may theorize upon other worlds and conditions upon them that are\nsimilar to our own conditions: if his notions be presented undisguisedly\nas fiction, or only as an \"interesting hypothesis,\" he'll stir up no\nprude rages.\n\nBut Dr. Hahn said definitely that he had found fossils in specified\nmeteorites: also he published photographs of them. His book is in the\nNew York Public Library. In the reproductions every feature of some of\nthe little shells is plainly marked. If they're not shells, neither are\nthings under an oyster-counter. The striations are very plain: one sees\neven the hinges where bivalves are joined.\n\nProf. Lawrence Smith (_Knowledge_, 1-258):\n\n\"Dr. Hahn is a kind of half-insane man, whose imagination has run away\nwith him.\"\n\nConservation of Continuity.\n\nThen Dr. Weinland examined Dr. Hahn's specimens. He gave his opinion\nthat they are fossils and that they are not crystals of enstatite, as\nasserted by Prof. Smith, who had never seen them.\n\nThe damnation of denial and the damnation of disregard:\n\nAfter the publication of Dr. Weinland's findings--silence.\n\n\n\n\n7\n\n\nThe living things that have come down to this earth:\n\nAttempts to preserve the system:\n\nThat small frogs and toads, for instance, never have fallen from the\nsky, but were--\"on the ground, in the first place\"; or that there have\nbeen such falls--\"up from one place in a whirlwind, and down in\nanother.\"\n\nWere there some especially froggy place near Europe, as there is an\nespecially sandy place, the scientific explanation would of course be\nthat all small frogs falling from the sky in Europe come from that\ncenter of frogeity.\n\nTo start with, I'd like to emphasize something that I am permitted to\nsee because I am still primitive or intelligent or in a state of\nmaladjustment:\n\nThat there is not one report findable of a fall of tadpoles from the\nsky.\n\nAs to \"there in the first place\":\n\nSee _Leisure Hours_, 3-779, for accounts of small frogs, or toads, said\nto have been seen to fall from the sky. The writer says that all\nobservers were mistaken: that the frogs or toads must have fallen from\ntrees or other places overhead.\n\nTremendous number of little toads, one or two months old, that were seen\nto fall from a great thick cloud that appeared suddenly in a sky that\nhad been cloudless, August, 1804, near Toulouse, France, according to a\nletter from Prof. Pontus to M. Arago. (_Comptes Rendus_, 3-54.)\n\nMany instances of frogs that were seen to fall from the sky. (_Notes and\nQueries_, 8-6-104); accounts of such falls, signed by witnesses. (_Notes\nand Queries_, 8-6-190.)\n\n_Scientific American_, July 12, 1873:\n\n\"A shower of frogs which darkened the air and covered the ground for a\nlong distance is the reported result of a recent rainstorm at Kansas\nCity, Mo.\"\n\nAs to having been there \"in the first place\":\n\nLittle frogs found in London, after a heavy storm, July 30, 1838.\n(_Notes and Queries_, 8-7-437);\n\nLittle toads found in a desert, after a rainfall (_Notes and Queries_,\n8-8-493).\n\nTo start with I do not deny--positively--the conventional explanation of\n\"up and down.\" I think that there may have been such occurrences. I omit\nmany notes that I have upon indistinguishables. In the London _Times_,\nJuly 4, 1883, there is an account of a shower of twigs and leaves and\ntiny toads in a storm upon the slopes of the Apennines. These may have\nbeen the ejectamenta of a whirlwind. I add, however, that I have notes\nupon two other falls of tiny toads, in 1883, one in France and one in\nTahiti; also of fish in Scotland. But in the phenomenon of the\nApennines, the mixture seems to me to be typical of the products of a\nwhirlwind. The other instances seem to me to be typical of--something\nlike migration? Their great numbers and their homogeneity. Over and over\nin these annals of the damned occurs the datum of segregation. But a\nwhirlwind is thought of as a condition of chaos--quasi-chaos: not final\nnegativeness, of course--\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, July, 1881:\n\n\"A small pond in the track of the cloud was sucked dry, the water being\ncarried over the adjoining fields together with a large quantity of soft\nmud, which was scattered over the ground for half a mile around.\"\n\nIt is so easy to say that small frogs that have fallen from the sky had\nbeen scooped up by a whirlwind; but here are the circumstances of a\nscoop; in the exclusionist-imagination there is no regard for mud,\ndebris from the bottom of a pond, floating vegetation, loose things from\nthe shores--but a precise picking out of frogs only. Of all instances I\nhave that attribute the fall of small frogs or toads to whirlwinds, only\none definitely identifies or places the whirlwind. Also, as has been\nsaid before, a pond going up would be quite as interesting as frogs\ncoming down. Whirlwinds we read of over and over--but where and what\nwhirlwind? It seems to me that anybody who had lost a pond would be\nheard from. In _Symons' Meteorological Magazine_, 32-106, a fall of\nsmall frogs, near Birmingham, England, June 30, 1892, is attributed to a\nspecific whirlwind--but not a word as to any special pond that had\ncontributed. And something that strikes my attention here is that these\nfrogs are described as almost white.\n\nI'm afraid there is no escape for us: we shall have to give to\ncivilization upon this earth--some new worlds.\n\nPlaces with white frogs in them.\n\nUpon several occasions we have had data of unknown things that have\nfallen from--somewhere. But something not to be overlooked is that if\nliving things have landed alive upon this earth--in spite of all we\nthink we know of the accelerative velocity of falling bodies--and have\npropagated--why the exotic becomes the indigenous, or from the strangest\nof places we'd expect the familiar. Or if hosts of living frogs have\ncome here--from somewhere else--every living thing upon this earth may,\nancestrally, have come from--somewhere else.\n\nI find that I have another note upon a specific hurricane:\n\n_Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist._, 1-3-185:\n\nAfter one of the greatest hurricanes in the history of Ireland, some\nfish were found \"as far as 15 yards from the edge of a lake.\"\n\nHave another: this is a good one for the exclusionists:\n\nFall of fish in Paris: said that a neighboring pond had been blown dry.\n(_Living Age_, 52-186.) Date not given, but I have seen it recorded\nsomewhere else.\n\nThe best-known fall of fishes from the sky is that which occurred at\nMountain Ash, in the Valley of Abedare, Glamorganshire, Feb. 11, 1859.\n\nThe Editor of the _Zoologist_, 2-677, having published a report of a\nfall of fishes, writes: \"I am continually receiving similar accounts of\nfrogs and fishes.\" But, in all the volumes of the _Zoologist_, I can\nfind only two reports of such falls. There is nothing to conclude other\nthan that hosts of data have been lost because orthodoxy does not look\nfavorably upon such reports. The _Monthly Weather Review_ records\nseveral falls of fishes in the United States; but accounts of these\nreported occurrences are not findable in other American publications.\nNevertheless, the treatment by the _Zoologist_ of the fall reported from\nMountain Ash is fair. First appears, in the issue of 1859-6493, a letter\nfrom the Rev. John Griffith, Vicar of Abedare, asserting that the fall\nhad occurred, chiefly upon the property of Mr. Nixon, of Mountain Ash.\nUpon page 6540, Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, bristling with\nexclusionism, writes that some of these fishes, which had been sent to\nhim alive, were \"very young minnows.\" He says: \"On reading the evidence,\nit seems to me most probably only a practical joke: that one of Mr.\nNixon's employees had thrown a pailful of water upon another, who had\nthought fish in it had fallen from the sky\"--had dipped up a pailful\nfrom a brook.\n\nThose fishes--still alive--were exhibited at the Zoological Gardens,\nRegent's Park. The Editor says that one was a minnow and that the rest\nwere sticklebacks.\n\nHe says that Dr. Gray's explanation is no doubt right.\n\nBut, upon page 6564, he publishes a letter from another correspondent,\nwho apologizes for opposing \"so high an authority as Dr. Gray,\" but says\nthat he had obtained some of these fishes from persons who lived at a\nconsiderable distance apart, or considerably out of range of the playful\npail of water.\n\nAccording to the _Annual Register_, 1859-14, the fishes themselves had\nfallen by pailfuls.\n\nIf these fishes were not upon the ground in the first place, we base our\nobjections to the whirlwind explanation upon two data:\n\nThat they fell in no such distribution as one could attribute to the\ndischarge of a whirlwind, but upon a narrow strip of land: about 80\nyards long and 12 yards wide--\n\nThe other datum is again the suggestion that at first seemed so\nincredible, but for which support is piling up, a suggestion of a\nstationary source overhead--\n\nThat ten minutes later another fall of fishes occurred upon this same\nnarrow strip of land.\n\nEven arguing that a whirlwind may stand still axially, it discharges\ntangentially. Wherever the fishes came from it does not seem thinkable\nthat some could have fallen and that others could have whirled even a\ntenth of a minute, then falling directly after the first to fall.\nBecause of these evil circumstances the best adaptation was to laugh the\nwhole thing off and say that someone had soused someone else with a\npailful of water in which a few \"very young\" minnows had been caught up.\n\nIn the London _Times_, March 2, 1859, is a letter from Mr. Aaron\nRoberts, curate of St. Peter's, Carmathon. In this letter the fishes are\nsaid to have been about four inches long, but there is some question of\nspecies. I think, myself, that they were minnows and sticklebacks. Some\npersons, thinking them to be sea fishes, placed them in salt water,\naccording to Mr. Roberts. \"The effect is stated to have been almost\ninstantaneous death.\" \"Some were placed in fresh water. These seemed to\nthrive well.\" As to narrow distribution, we are told that the fishes\nfell \"in and about the premises of Mr. Nixon.\" \"It was not observed at\nthe time that any fish fell in any other part of the neighborhood, save\nin the particular spot mentioned.\"\n\nIn the London _Times_, March 10, 1859, Vicar Griffith writes an account:\n\n\"The roofs of some houses were covered with them.\"\n\nIn this letter it is said that the largest fishes were five inches long,\nand that these did not survive the fall.\n\n_Report of the British Association_, 1859-158:\n\n\"The evidence of the fall of fish on this occasion was very conclusive.\nA specimen of the fish was exhibited and was found to be the\n_Gasterosteus leirus_.\"\n\n_Gasterosteus_ is the stickleback.\n\nAltogether I think we have not a sense of total perdition, when we're\ndamned with the explanation that someone soused someone else with a\npailful of water in which were thousands of fishes four or five inches\nlong, some of which covered roofs of houses, and some of which remained\nten minutes in the air. By way of contrast we offer our own acceptance:\n\nThat the bottom of a super-geographical pond had dropped out.\n\nI have a great many notes upon the fall of fishes, despite the\ndifficulty these records have in getting themselves published, but I\npick out the instances that especially relate to our super-geographical\nacceptances, or to the Principles of Super-Geography: or data of things\nthat have been in the air longer than acceptably could a whirlwind carry\nthem; that have fallen with a distribution narrower than is attributable\nto a whirlwind; that have fallen for a considerable length of time upon\nthe same narrow area of land.\n\nThese three factors indicate, somewhere not far aloft, a region of\ninertness to this earth's gravitation, of course, however, a region\nthat, by the flux and variation of all things, must at times be\nsusceptible--but, afterward, our heresy will bifurcate--\n\nIn amiable accommodation to the crucifixion it'll get, I think--\n\nBut so impressed are we with the datum that, though there have been many\nreports of small frogs that have fallen from the sky, not one report\nupon a fall of tadpoles is findable, that to these circumstances another\nadjustment must be made.\n\nApart from our three factors of indication, an extraordinary observation\nis the fall of living things without injury to them. The devotees of St.\nIsaac explain that they fall upon thick grass and so survive: but Sir\nJames Emerson Tennant, in his _History of Ceylon_, tells of a fall of\nfishes upon gravel, by which they were seemingly uninjured. Something\nelse apart from our three main interests is a phenomenon that looks like\nwhat one might call an alternating series of falls of fishes, whatever\nthe significance may be:\n\nMeerut, India, July, 1824 (_Living Age_, 52-186); Fifeshire, Scotland,\nsummer of 1824 (_Wernerian Nat. Hist. Soc. Trans._, 5-575); Moradabad,\nIndia, July, 1826 (_Living Age_, 52-186); Ross-shire, Scotland, 1828\n(_Living Age_, 52-186); Moradabad, India, July 20, 1829 (_Lin. Soc.\nTrans._, 16-764); Perthshire, Scotland (_Living Age_, 52-186);\nArgyleshire, Scotland, 1830, March 9, 1830 (_Recreative Science_,\n3-339); Feridpoor, India, Feb. 19, 1830 (_Jour. Asiatic Soc. of Bengal_,\n2-650).\n\nA psycho-tropism that arises here--disregarding serial significance--or\nmechanical, unintelligent, repulsive reflex--is that the fishes of India\ndid not fall from the sky; that they were found upon the ground after\ntorrential rains, because streams had overflowed and had then receded.\n\nIn the region of Inertness that we think we can conceive of, or a zone\nthat is to this earth's gravitation very much like the neutral zone of\na magnet's attraction, we accept that there are bodies of water and also\nclear spaces--bottoms of ponds dropping out--very interesting ponds,\nhaving no earth at bottom--vast drops of water afloat in what is called\nspace--fishes and deluges of water falling--\n\nBut also other areas, in which fishes--however they got there: a matter\nthat we'll consider--remain and dry, or even putrefy, then sometimes\nfalling by atmospheric dislodgment.\n\nAfter a \"tremendous deluge of rain, one of the heaviest falls on record\"\n(_All the Year Round_, 8-255) at Rajkote, India, July 25, 1850, \"the\nground was found literally covered with fishes.\"\n\nThe word \"found\" is agreeable to the repulsions of the conventionalists\nand their concept of an overflowing stream--but, according to Dr. Buist,\nsome of these fishes were \"found\" on the tops of haystacks.\n\nFerrel (_A Popular Treatise_, p. 414) tells of a fall of living\nfishes--some of them having been placed in a tank, where they\nsurvived--that occurred in India, about 20 miles south of Calcutta,\nSept. 20, 1839. A witness of this fall says:\n\n\"The most strange thing which ever struck me was that the fish did not\nfall helter-skelter, or here and there, but they fell in a straight\nline, not more than a cubit in breadth.\" See _Living Age_, 52-186.\n\n_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-32-199:\n\nThat, according to testimony taken before a magistrate, a fall occurred,\nFeb. 19, 1830, near Feridpoor, India, of many fishes, of various\nsizes--some whole and fresh and others \"mutilated and putrefying.\" Our\nreflex to those who would say that, in the climate of India, it would\nnot take long for fishes to putrefy, is--that high in the air, the\nclimate of India is not torrid. Another peculiarity of this fall is that\nsome of the fishes were much larger than others. Or to those who hold\nout for segregation in a whirlwind, or that objects, say, twice as heavy\nas others would be separated from the lighter, we point out that some of\nthese fishes were twice as heavy as others.\n\nIn the _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, 2-650, depositions of\nwitnesses are given:\n\n\"Some of the fish were fresh, but others were rotten and without heads.\"\n\n\"Among the number which I got, five were fresh and the rest stinking and\nheadless.\"\n\nThey remind us of His Grace's observation of some pages back.\n\nAccording to Dr. Buist, some of these fishes weighed one and a half\npounds each and others three pounds.\n\nA fall of fishes at Futtepoor, India, May 16, 1833:\n\n\"They were all dead and dry.\" (Dr. Buist, _Living Age_, 52-186.)\n\nIndia is far away: about 1830 was long ago.\n\n_Nature_, Sept. 19, 1918-46:\n\nA correspondent writes, from the Dove Marine Laboratory, Cuttercoats,\nEngland, that, at Hindon, a suburb of Sunderland, Aug. 24, 1918,\nhundreds of small fishes, identified as sand eels, had fallen--\n\nAgain the small area: about 60 by 30 yards.\n\nThe fall occurred during a heavy rain that was accompanied by\nthunder--or indications of disturbance aloft--but by no visible\nlightning. The sea is close to Hindon, but if you try to think of these\nfishes having described a trajectory in a whirlwind from the ocean,\nconsider this remarkable datum:\n\nThat, according to witnesses, the fall upon this small area occupied ten\nminutes.\n\nI cannot think of a clearer indication of a direct fall from a\nstationary source.\n\nAnd:\n\n\"The fish were all dead, and indeed stiff and hard, when picked up,\nimmediately after the occurrence.\"\n\nBy all of which I mean that we have only begun to pile up our data of\nthings that fall from a stationary source overhead: we'll have to take\nup the subject from many approaches before our acceptance, which seems\nquite as rigorously arrived at as ever has been a belief, can emerge\nfrom the accursed.\n\nI don't know how much the horse and the barn will help us to emerge:\nbut, if ever anything did go up from this earth's surface and stay\nup--those damned things may have:\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1878:\n\nIn a tornado, in Wisconsin, May 23, 1878, \"a barn and a horse were\ncarried completely away, and neither horse nor barn, nor any portion of\neither have since been found.\"\n\nAfter that, which would be a little strong were it not for a steady\nimprovement in our digestions that I note as we go along, there is\nlittle of the bizarre or the unassimilable in the turtle that hovered\nsix months or so over a small town in Mississippi:\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1894:\n\nThat, May 11, 1894, at Vicksburg, Miss., fell a small piece of\nalabaster; that, at Bovina, eight miles from Vicksburg, fell a gopher\nturtle.\n\nThey fell in a hailstorm.\n\nThis item was widely copied at the time: for instance, _Nature_, one of\nthe volumes of 1894, page 430, and _Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 20-273. As to\ndiscussion--not a word. Or Science and its continuity with\nPresbyterianism--data like this are damned at birth. The _Weather\nReview_ does sprinkle, or baptize, or attempt to save, this infant--but\nin all the meteorological literature that I have gone through, after\nthat date--not a word, except mention once or twice. The Editor of the\n_Review_ says:\n\n\"An examination of the weather map shows that these hailstorms occur on\nthe south side of a region of cold northerly winds, and were but a small\npart of a series of similar storms; apparently some special local whirls\nor gusts carried heavy objects from this earth's surface up to the cloud\nregions.\"\n\nOf all incredibilities that we have to choose from, I give first place\nto a notion of a whirlwind pouncing upon a region and scrupulously\nselecting a turtle and a piece of alabaster. This time, the other\nmechanical thing \"there in the first place\" cannot rise in response to\nits stimulus: it is resisted in that these objects were coated with\nice--month of May in a southern state. If a whirlwind at all, there must\nhave been very limited selection: there is no record of the fall of\nother objects. But there is no attempt in the _Review_ to specify a\nwhirlwind.\n\nThese strangely associated things were remarkably separated.\n\nThey fell eight miles apart.\n\nThen--as if there were real reasoning--they must have been high to fall\nwith such divergence, or one of them must have been carried partly\nhorizontally eight miles farther than the other. But either supposition\nargues for power more than that of a local whirl or gust, or argues for\na great, specific disturbance, of which there is no record--for the\nmonth of May, 1894.\n\nNevertheless--as if I really were reasonable--I do feel that I have to\naccept that this turtle had been raised from this earth's surface,\nsomewhere near Vicksburg--because the gopher turtle is common in the\nsouthern states.\n\nThen I think of a hurricane that occurred in the state of Mississippi\nweeks or months before May 11, 1894.\n\nNo--I don't look for it--and inevitably find it.\n\nOr that things can go up so high in hurricanes that they stay up\nindefinitely--but may, after a while, be shaken down by storms. Over and\nover have we noted the occurrence of strange falls in storms. So then\nthat the turtle and the piece of alabaster may have had far different\norigins--from different worlds, perhaps--have entered a region of\nsuspension over this earth--wafting near each other--long\nduration--final precipitation by atmospheric disturbance--with hail--or\nthat hailstones, too, when large, are phenomena of suspension of long\nduration: that it is highly unacceptable that the very large ones could\nbecome so great only in falling from the clouds.\n\nOver and over has the note of disagreeableness, or of putrefaction, been\nstruck--long duration. Other indications of long duration.\n\nI think of a region somewhere above this earth's surface in which\ngravitation is inoperative and is not governed by the square of the\ndistance--quite as magnetism is negligible at a very short distance from\na magnet. Theoretically the attraction of a magnet should decrease with\nthe square of the distance, but the falling-off is found to be almost\nabrupt at a short distance.\n\nI think that things raised from this earth's surface to that region have\nbeen held there until shaken down by storms--\n\nThe Super-Sargasso Sea.\n\nDerelicts, rubbish, old cargoes from inter-planetary wrecks; things cast\nout into what is called space by convulsions of other planets, things\nfrom the times of the Alexanders, Caesars and Napoleons of Mars and\nJupiter and Neptune; things raised by this earth's cyclones: horses and\nbarns and elephants and flies and dodoes, moas, and pterodactyls; leaves\nfrom modern trees and leaves of the Carboniferous era--all, however,\ntending to disintegrate into homogeneous-looking muds or dusts, red or\nblack or yellow--treasure-troves for the palaeontologists and for the\narchaeologists--accumulations of centuries--cyclones of Egypt, Greece,\nand Assyria--fishes dried and hard, there a short time: others there\nlong enough to putrefy--\n\nBut the omnipresence of Heterogeneity--or living fishes, also--ponds of\nfresh water: oceans of salt water.\n\nAs to the Law of Gravitation, I prefer to take one simple stand:\n\nOrthodoxy accepts the correlation and equivalence of forces:\n\nGravitation is one of these forces.\n\nAll other forces have phenomena of repulsion and of inertness\nirrespective of distance, as well as of attraction.\n\nBut Newtonian Gravitation admits attraction only:\n\nThen Newtonian Gravitation can be only one-third acceptable even to the\northodox, or there is denial of the correlation and equivalence of\nforces.\n\nOr still simpler:\n\nHere are the data.\n\nMake what you will, yourself, of them.\n\nIn our Intermediatist revolt against homogeneous, or positive,\nexplanations, or our acceptance that the all-sufficing cannot be less\nthan universality, besides which, however, there would be nothing to\nsuffice, our expression upon the Super-Sargasso Sea, though it\nharmonizes with data of fishes that fall as if from a stationary\nsource--and, of course, with other data, too--is inadequate to account\nfor two peculiarities of the falls of frogs:\n\nThat never has a fall of tadpoles been reported;\n\nThat never has a fall of full-grown frogs been reported--\n\nAlways frogs a few months old.\n\nIt sounds positive, but if there be such reports they are somewhere out\nof my range of reading.\n\nBut tadpoles would be more likely to fall from the sky than would\nfrogs, little or big, if such falls be attributed to whirlwinds; and\nmore likely to fall from the Super-Sargasso Sea if, though very\ntentatively and provisionally, we accept the Super-Sargasso Sea.\n\nBefore we take up an especial expression upon the fall of immature and\nlarval forms of life to this earth, and the necessity then of conceiving\nof some factor besides mere stationariness or suspension or stagnation,\nthere are other data that are similar to data of falls of fishes.\n\n_Science Gossip_, 1886-238:\n\nThat small snails, of a land species, had fallen near Redruth, Cornwall,\nJuly 8, 1886, \"during a heavy thunderstorm\": roads and fields strewn\nwith them, so that they were gathered up by the hatful: none seen to\nfall by the writer of this account: snails said to be \"quite different\nto any previously known in this district.\"\n\nBut, upon page 282, we have better orthodoxy. Another correspondent\nwrites that he had heard of the supposed fall of snails: that he had\nsupposed that all such stories had gone the way of witch stories; that,\nto his astonishment, he had read an account of this absurd story in a\nlocal newspaper of \"great and deserved repute.\"\n\n\"I thought I should for once like to trace the origin of one of these\nfabulous tales.\"\n\nOur own acceptance is that justice cannot be in an intermediate\nexistence, in which there can be approximation only to justice or to\ninjustice; that to be fair is to have no opinion at all; that to be\nhonest is to be uninterested; that to investigate is to admit prejudice;\nthat nobody has ever really investigated anything, but has always sought\npositively to prove or to disprove something that was conceived of, or\nsuspected, in advance.\n\n\"As I suspected,\" says this correspondent, \"I found that the snails were\nof a familiar land-species\"--that they had been upon the ground \"in the\nfirst place.\"\n\nHe found that the snails had appeared after the rain: that \"astonished\nrustics had jumped to the conclusion that they had fallen.\"\n\nHe met one person who said that he had seen the snails fall.\n\n\"This was his error,\" says the investigator.\n\nIn the _Philosophical Magazine_, 58-310, there is an account of snails\nsaid to have fallen at Bristol in a field of three acres, in such\nquantities that they were shoveled up. It is said that the snails \"may\nbe considered as a local species.\" Upon page 457, another correspondent\nsays that the numbers had been exaggerated, and that in his opinion they\nhad been upon the ground in the first place. But that there had been\nsome unusual condition aloft comes out in his observation upon \"the\ncurious azure-blue appearance of the sun, at the time.\"\n\n_Nature_, 47-278:\n\nThat, according to _Das Wetter_, December, 1892, upon Aug. 9, 1892, a\nyellow cloud appeared over Paderborn, Germany. From this cloud, fell a\ntorrential rain, in which were hundreds of mussels. There is no mention\nof whatever may have been upon the ground in the first place, nor of a\nwhirlwind.\n\nLizards--said to have fallen on the sidewalks of Montreal, Canada, Dec.\n28, 1857. (_Notes and Queries_, 8-6-104.)\n\nIn the _Scientific American_, 3-112, a correspondent writes, from South\nGranville, N.Y., that, during a heavy shower, July 3, 1860, he heard a\npeculiar sound at his feet, and looking down, saw a snake lying as if\nstunned by a fall. It then came to life. Gray snake, about a foot long.\n\nThese data have any meaning or lack of meaning or degree of damnation\nyou please: but, in the matter of the fall that occurred at Memphis,\nTennessee, occur some strong significances. Our quasi-reasoning upon\nthis subject applies to all segregations so far considered.\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, Jan. 15, 1877:\n\nThat, in Memphis, Tenn., Jan. 15, 1877, rather strictly localized, or\n\"in a space of two blocks,\" and after a violent storm in which the rain\n\"fell in torrents,\" snakes were found. They were crawling on sidewalks,\nin yards, and in streets, and in masses--but \"none were found on roofs\nor any other elevation above ground\" and \"none were seen to fall.\"\n\nIf you prefer to believe that the snakes had always been there, or had\nbeen upon the ground in the first place, and that it was only that\nsomething occurred to call special attention to them, in the streets of\nMemphis, Jan. 15, 1877--why, that's sensible: that's the common sense\nthat has been against us from the first.\n\nIt is not said whether the snakes were of a known species or not, but\nthat \"when first seen, they were of a dark brown, almost black.\"\nBlacksnakes, I suppose.\n\nIf we accept that these snakes did fall, even though not seen to fall by\nall the persons who were out sight-seeing in a violent storm, and had\nnot been in the streets crawling loose or in thick tangled masses, in\nthe first place:\n\nIf we try to accept that these snakes had been raised from some other\npart of this earth's surface in a whirlwind:\n\nIf we try to accept that a whirlwind could segregate them--\n\nWe accept the segregation of other objects raised in that whirlwind.\n\nThen, near the place of origin, there would have been a fall of heavier\nobjects that had been snatched up with the snakes--stones, fence rails,\nlimbs of trees. Say that the snakes occupied the next gradation, and\nwould be the next to fall. Still farther would there have been separate\nfalls of lightest objects: leaves, twigs, tufts of grass.\n\nIn the _Monthly Weather Review_ there is no mention of other falls said\nto have occurred anywhere in January, 1877.\n\nAgain ours is the objection against such selectiveness by a whirlwind.\nConceivably a whirlwind could scoop out a den of hibernating snakes,\nwith stones and earth and an infinitude of other debris, snatching up\ndozens of snakes--I don't know how many to a den--hundreds maybe--but,\naccording to the account of this occurrence in the _New York Times_,\nthere were thousands of them; alive; from one foot to eighteen inches in\nlength. The _Scientific American_, 36-86, records the fall, and says\nthat there were thousands of them. The usual whirlwind-explanation is\ngiven--\"but in what locality snakes exist in such abundance is yet a\nmystery.\"\n\nThis matter of enormousness of numbers suggests to me something of a\nmigratory nature--but that snakes in the United States do not migrate in\nthe month of January, if ever.\n\nAs to falls or flutterings of winged insects from the sky, prevailing\nnotions of swarming would seem explanatory enough: nevertheless, in\ninstances of ants, there are some peculiar circumstances.\n\n_L'Astronomie_, 1889-353:\n\nFall of fishes, June 13, 1889, in Holland; ants, Aug. 1, 1889,\nStrasbourg; little toads, Aug. 2, 1889, Savoy.\n\nFall of ants, Cambridge, England, summer of 1874--\"some were wingless.\"\n(_Scientific American_, 30-193.) Enormous fall of ants, Nancy, France,\nJuly 21, 1887--\"most of them were wingless.\" (_Nature_, 36-349.) Fall of\nenormous, unknown ants--size of wasps--Manitoba, June, 1895. (_Sci.\nAmer._, 72-385.)\n\nHowever, our expression will be:\n\nThat wingless, larval forms of life, in numbers so enormous that\nmigration from some place external to this earth is suggested, have\nfallen from the sky.\n\nThat these \"migrations\"--if such can be our acceptance--have occurred at\na time of hibernation and burial far in the ground of larvae in the\nnorthern latitudes of this earth; that there is significance in\nrecurrence of these falls in the last of January--or that we have the\nsquare of an incredibility in such a notion as that of selection of\nlarvae by whirlwinds, compounded with selection of the last of January.\n\nI accept that there are \"snow worms\" upon this earth--whatever their\norigin may have been. In the _Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philadelphia_,\n1899-125, there is a description of yellow worms and black worms that\nhave been found together on glaciers in Alaska. Almost positively were\nthere no other forms of insect-life upon these glaciers, and there was\nno vegetation to support insect-life, except microscopic organisms.\nNevertheless the description of this probably polymorphic species fits a\ndescription of larvae said to have fallen in Switzerland, and less\ndefinitely fits another description. There is no opposition here, if our\ndata of falls are clear. Frogs of every-day ponds look like frogs said\nto have fallen from the sky--except the whitish frogs of Birmingham.\nHowever, all falls of larvae have not positively occurred in the last of\nJanuary:\n\nLondon _Times_, April 14, 1837:\n\nThat, in the parish of Bramford Speke, Devonshire, a large number of\nblack worms, about three-quarters of an inch in length, had fallen in a\nsnowstorm.\n\nIn Timb's _Year Book_, 1877-26, it is said that, in the winter of 1876,\nat Christiania, Norway, worms were found crawling upon the ground. The\noccurrence is considered a great mystery, because the worms could not\nhave come up from the ground, inasmuch as the ground was frozen at the\ntime, and because they were reported from other places, also, in Norway.\n\nImmense number of black insects in a snowstorm, in 1827, at Pakroff,\nRussia. (_Scientific American_, 30-193.)\n\nFall, with snow, at Orenburg, Russia, Dec. 14, 1830, of a multitude of\nsmall, black insects, said to have been gnats, but also said to have had\nflea-like motions. (_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-22-375.)\n\nLarge number of worms found in a snowstorm, upon the surface of snow\nabout four inches thick, near Sangerfield, N.Y., Nov. 18, 1850\n(_Scientific American_, 6-96). The writer thinks that the worms had been\nbrought to the surface of the ground by rain, which had fallen\npreviously.\n\n_Scientific American_, Feb. 21, 1891:\n\n\"A puzzling phenomenon has been noted frequently in some parts of the\nValley Bend District, Randolph County, Va., this winter. The crust of\nthe snow has been covered two or three times with worms resembling the\nordinary cut worms. Where they come from, unless they fall with the snow\nis inexplicable.\" In the _Scientific American_, March 7, 1891, the\nEditor says that similar worms had been seen upon the snow near Utica,\nN.Y., and in Oneida and Herkimer Counties; that some of the worms had\nbeen sent to the Department of Agriculture at Washington. Again two\nspecies, or polymorphism. According to Prof. Riley, it was not\npolymorphism, \"but two distinct species\"--which, because of our data, we\ndoubt. One kind was larger than the other: color-differences not\ndistinctly stated. One is called the larvae of the common soldier beetle\nand the other \"seems to be a variety of the bronze cut worm.\" No attempt\nto explain the occurrence in snow.\n\nFall of great numbers of larvae of beetles, near Mortagne, France, May,\n1858. The larvae were inanimate as if with cold. (_Annales Societe\nEntomologique de France_, 1858.)\n\n_Trans. Ent. Soc. of London_, 1871-183, records \"snowing of larvae,\" in\nSilesia, 1806; \"appearance of many larvae on the snow,\" in Saxony,\n1811; \"larvae found alive on the snow,\" 1828; larvae and snow which\n\"fell together,\" in the Eifel, Jan. 30, 1847; \"fall of insects,\" Jan.\n24, 1849, in Lithuania; occurrence of larvae estimated at 300,000 on the\nsnow in Switzerland, in 1856. The compiler says that most of these\nlarvae live underground, or at the roots of trees; that whirlwinds\nuproot trees, and carry away the larvae--conceiving of them as not held\nin masses of frozen earth--all as neatly detachable as currants in\nsomething. In the _Revue et Magasin de Zoologie_, 1849-72, there is an\naccount of the fall in Lithuania, Jan. 24, 1849--that black larvae had\nfallen in enormous numbers.\n\nLarvae thought to have been of beetles, but described as \"caterpillars,\"\nnot seen to fall, but found crawling on the snow, after a snowstorm, at\nWarsaw, Jan. 20, 1850. (_All the Year Round_, 8-253.)\n\nFlammarion (_The Atmosphere_, p. 414) tells of a fall of larvae that\noccurred Jan. 30, 1869, in a snowstorm, in Upper Savoy: \"They could not\nhave been hatched in the neighborhood, for, during the days preceding,\nthe temperature had been very low\"; said to have been of a species\ncommon in the south of France. In _La Science Pour Tous_, 14-183, it is\nsaid that with these larvae there were developed insects.\n\n_L'Astronomie_, 1890-313:\n\nThat, upon the last of January, 1890, there fell, in a great tempest, in\nSwitzerland, incalculable numbers of larvae: some black and some yellow;\nnumbers so great that hosts of birds were attracted.\n\nAltogether we regard this as one of our neatest expressions for external\norigins and against the whirlwind explanation. If an exclusionist says\nthat, in January, larvae were precisely and painstakingly picked out of\nfrozen ground, in incalculable numbers, he thinks of a tremendous\nforce--disregarding its refinements: then if origin and precipitation be\nnot far apart, what becomes of an infinitude of other debris, conceiving\nof no time for segregation?\n\nIf he thinks of a long translation--all the way from the south of France\nto Upper Savoy, he may think then of a very fine sorting over by\ndifferences of specific gravity--but in such a fine selection, larvae\nwould be separated from developed insects.\n\nAs to differences in specific gravity--the yellow larvae that fell in\nSwitzerland January, 1890, were three times the size of the black larvae\nthat fell with them. In accounts of this occurrence, there is no denial\nof the fall.\n\nOr that a whirlwind never brought them together and held them together\nand precipitated them and only them together--\n\nThat they came from Genesistrine.\n\nThere's no escape from it. We'll be persecuted for it. Take it or leave\nit--\n\nGenesistrine.\n\nThe notion is that there is somewhere aloft a place of origin of life\nrelatively to this earth. Whether it's the planet Genesistrine, or the\nmoon, or a vast amorphous region super-jacent to this earth, or an\nisland in the Super-Sargasso Sea, should perhaps be left to the\nresearches of other super--or extra--geographers. That the first\nunicellular organisms may have come here from Genesistrine--or that men\nor anthropomorphic beings may have come here before amoebae: that, upon\nGenesistrine, there may have been an evolution expressible in\nconventional biologic terms, but that evolution upon this earth has\nbeen--like evolution in modern Japan--induced by external influences;\nthat evolution, as a whole, upon this earth, has been a process of\npopulation by immigration or by bombardment. Some notes I have upon\nremains of men and animals encysted, or covered with clay or stone, as\nif fired here as projectiles, I omit now, because it seems best to\nregard the whole phenomenon as a tropism--as a geotropism--probably\natavistic, or vestigial, as it were, or something still continuing long\nafter expiration of necessity; that, once upon a time, all kinds of\nthings came here from Genesistrine, but that now only a few kinds of\nbugs and things, at long intervals, feel the inspiration.\n\nNot one instance have we of tadpoles that have fallen to this earth. It\nseems reasonable that a whirlwind could scoop up a pond, frogs and all,\nand cast down the frogs somewhere else: but, then, more reasonable that\na whirlwind could scoop up a pond, tadpoles and all--because tadpoles\nare more numerous in their season than are the frogs in theirs: but the\ntadpole-season is earlier in the spring, or in a time that is more\ntempestuous. Thinking in terms of causation--as if there were real\ncauses--our notion is that, if X is likely to cause Y, but is more\nlikely to cause Z, but does not cause Z, X is not the cause of Y. Upon\nthis quasi-sorites, we base our acceptance that the little frogs that\nhave fallen to this earth are not products of whirlwinds: that they came\nfrom externality, or from Genesistrine.\n\nI think of Genesistrine in terms of biologic mechanics: not that\nsomewhere there are persons who collect bugs in or about the last of\nJanuary and frogs in July and August, and bombard this earth, any more\nthan do persons go through northern regions, catching and collecting\nbirds, every autumn, then casting them southward.\n\nBut atavistic, or vestigial, geotropism in Genesistrine--or a million\nlarvae start crawling, and a million little frogs start hopping--knowing\nno more what it's all about than we do when we crawl to work in the\nmorning and hop away at night.\n\nI should say, myself, that Genesistrine is a region in the\nSuper-Sargasso Sea, and that parts of the Super-Sargasso Sea have\nrhythms of susceptibility to this earth's attraction.\n\n\n\n\n8\n\n\nI accept that, when there are storms, the damnedest of excluded,\nexcommunicated things--things that are leprous to the faithful--are\nbrought down--from the Super-Sargasso Sea--or from what for convenience\nwe call the Super-Sargasso Sea--which by no means has been taken into\nfull acceptance yet.\n\nThat things are brought down by storms, just as, from the depths of the\nsea things are brought up by storms. To be sure it is orthodoxy that\nstorms have little, if any, effect below the waves of the ocean--but--of\ncourse--only to have an opinion is to be ignorant of, or to disregard a\ncontradiction, or something else that modifies an opinion out of\ndistinguishability.\n\n_Symons' Meteorological Magazine_, 47-180:\n\nThat, along the coast of New Zealand, in regions not subject to\nsubmarine volcanic action, deep-sea fishes are often brought up by\nstorms.\n\nIron and stones that fall from the sky; and atmospheric disturbances:\n\n\"There is absolutely no connection between the two phenomena.\"\n(_Symons._)\n\nThe orthodox belief is that objects moving at planetary velocity would,\nupon entering this earth's atmosphere, be virtually unaffected by\nhurricanes; might as well think of a bullet swerved by someone fanning\nhimself. The only trouble with the orthodox reasoning is the usual\ntrouble--its phantom-dominant--its basing upon a myth--data we've had,\nand more we'll have, of things in the sky having no independent\nvelocity.\n\nThere are so many storms and so many meteors and meteorites that it\nwould be extraordinary if there were no concurrences. Nevertheless so\nmany of these concurrences are listed by Prof. Baden-Powell (_Rept.\nBrit. Assoc._, 1850-54) that one--notices.\n\nSee _Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1860--other instances.\n\nThe famous fall of stones at Siena, Italy, 1794--\"in a violent storm.\"\n\nSee _Greg's Catalogues_--many instances. One that stands out is--\"bright\nball of fire and light in a hurricane in England, Sept. 2, 1786.\" The\nremarkable datum here is that this phenomenon was visible forty minutes.\nThat's about 800 times the duration that the orthodox give to meteors\nand meteorites.\n\nSee the _Annual Register_--many instances.\n\nIn _Nature_, Oct. 25, 1877, and the London _Times_, Oct. 15, 1877,\nsomething that fell in a gale of Oct. 14, 1877, is described as a \"huge\nball of green fire.\" This phenomenon is described by another\ncorrespondent, in _Nature_, 17-10, and an account of it by another\ncorrespondent was forwarded to _Nature_ by W.F. Denning.\n\nThere are so many instances that some of us will revolt against the\ninsistence of the faithful that it is only coincidence, and accept that\nthere is connection of the kind called causal. If it is too difficult to\nthink of stones and metallic masses swerved from their courses by\nstorms, if they move at high velocity, we think of low velocity, or of\nthings having no velocity at all, hovering a few miles above this earth,\ndislodged by storms, and falling luminously.\n\nBut the resistance is so great here, and \"coincidence\" so insisted upon\nthat we'd better have some more instances:\n\nAerolite in a storm at St. Leonards-on-sea, England, Sept. 17, 1885--no\ntrace of it found (_Annual Register_, 1885); meteorite in a gale, March\n1, 1886, described in the _Monthly Weather Review_, March, 1886;\nmeteorite in a thunderstorm, off coast of Greece, Nov. 19, 1899\n(_Nature_, 61-111); fall of a meteorite in a storm, July 7, 1883, near\nLachine, Quebec (_Monthly Weather Review_, July, 1883); same phenomenon\nnoted in _Nature_, 28-319; meteorite in a whirlwind, Sweden, Sept. 24,\n1883 (_Nature_, 29-15).\n\n_London Roy. Soc. Proc._, 6-276:\n\nA triangular cloud that appeared in a storm, Dec. 17, 1852; a red\nnucleus, about half the apparent diameter of the moon, and a long tail;\nvisible 13 minutes; explosion of the nucleus.\n\nNevertheless, in _Science Gossip_, n.s., 6-65, it is said that, though\nmeteorites have fallen in storms, no connection is supposed to exist\nbetween the two phenomena, except by the ignorant peasantry.\n\nBut some of us peasants have gone through the _Report of the British\nAssociation_, 1852. Upon page 239, Dr. Buist, who had never heard of the\nSuper-Sargasso Sea, says that, though it is difficult to trace\nconnection between the phenomena, three aerolites had fallen in five\nmonths, in India, during thunderstorms, in 1851 (may have been 1852).\nFor accounts by witnesses, see page 229 of the _Report_.\n\nOr--we are on our way to account for \"thunderstones.\"\n\nIt seems to me that, very strikingly here, is borne out the general\nacceptance that ours is only an intermediate existence, in which there\nis nothing fundamental, or nothing final to take as a positive standard\nto judge by.\n\nPeasants believed in meteorites.\n\nScientists excluded meteorites.\n\nPeasants believe in \"thunderstones.\"\n\nScientists exclude \"thunderstones.\"\n\nIt is useless to argue that peasants are out in the fields, and that\nscientists are shut up in laboratories and lecture rooms. We cannot take\nfor a real base that, as to phenomena with which they are more\nfamiliar, peasants are more likely to be right than are scientists: a\nhost of biologic and meteorologic fallacies of peasants rises against\nus.\n\nI should say that our \"existence\" is like a bridge--except that that\ncomparison is in static terms--but like the Brooklyn Bridge, upon which\nmultitudes of bugs are seeking a fundamental--coming to a girder that\nseems firm and final--but the girder is built upon supports. A support\nthen seems final. But it is built upon underlying structures. Nothing\nfinal can be found in all the bridge, because the bridge itself is not a\nfinal thing in itself, but is a relationship between Manhattan and\nBrooklyn. If our \"existence\" is a relationship between the Positive\nAbsolute and the Negative Absolute, the quest for finality in it is\nhopeless: everything in it must be relative, if the \"whole\" is not a\nwhole, but is, itself, a relation.\n\nIn the attitude of Acceptance, our pseudo-base is:\n\nCells of an embryo are in the reptilian era of the embryo;\n\nSome cells feel stimuli to take on new appearances.\n\nIf it be of the design of the whole that the next era be mammalian,\nthose cells that turn mammalian will be sustained against resistance, by\ninertia, of all the rest, and will be relatively right, though not\nfinally right, because they, too, in time will have to give way to\ncharacters of other eras of higher development.\n\nIf we are upon the verge of a new era, in which Exclusionism must be\noverthrown, it will avail thee not to call us base-born and frowsy\npeasants.\n\nIn our crude, bucolic way, we now offer an outrage upon common sense\nthat we think will some day be an unquestioned commonplace:\n\nThat manufactured objects of stone and iron have fallen from the sky:\n\nThat they have been brought down from a state of suspension, in a region\nof inertness to this earth's attraction, by atmospheric disturbances.\n\nThe \"thunderstone\" is usually \"a beautifully polished, wedge-shaped\npiece of greenstone,\" says a writer in the _Cornhill Magazine_, 50-517.\nIt isn't: it's likely to be of almost any kind of stone, but we call\nattention to the skill with which some of them have been made. Of\ncourse this writer says it's all superstition. Otherwise he'd be one of\nus crude and simple sons of the soil.\n\nConventional damnation is that stone implements, already on the\nground--\"on the ground in the first place\"--are found near where\nlightning was seen to strike: that are supposed by astonished rustics,\nor by intelligence of a low order, to have fallen in or with lightning.\n\nThroughout this book, we class a great deal of science with bad fiction.\nWhen is fiction bad, cheap, low? If coincidence is overworked. That's\none way of deciding. But with single writers coincidence seldom is\noverworked: we find the excess in the subject at large. Such a writer as\nthe one of the _Cornhill Magazine_ tells us vaguely of beliefs of\npeasants: there is no massing of instance after instance after instance.\nHere ours will be the method of mass-formation.\n\nConceivably lightning may strike the ground near where there was a\nwedge-shaped object in the first place: again and again and again:\nlightning striking ground near wedge-shaped object in China; lightning\nstriking ground near wedge-shaped object in Scotland; lightning striking\nground near wedge-shaped object in Central Africa: coincidence in\nFrance; coincidence in Java; coincidence in South America--\n\nWe grant a great deal but note a tendency to restlessness. Nevertheless\nthis is the psycho-tropism of science to all \"thunderstones\" said to\nhave fallen luminously.\n\nAs to greenstone, it is in the island of Jamaica, where the notion is\ngeneral that axes of a hard greenstone fall from the sky--\"during the\nrains.\" (_Jour. Inst. Jamaica_, 2-4.) Some other time we shall inquire\ninto this localization of objects of a specific material. \"They are of a\nstone nowhere else to be found in Jamaica.\" (_Notes and Queries_,\n2-8-24.)\n\nIn my own tendency to exclude, or in the attitude of one peasant or\nsavage who thinks he is not to be classed with other peasants or\nsavages, I am not very much impressed with what natives think. It would\nbe hard to tell why. If the word of a Lord Kelvin carries no more\nweight, upon scientific subjects, than the word of a Sitting Bull,\nunless it be in agreement with conventional opinion--I think it must be\nbecause savages have bad table manners. However, my snobbishness, in\nthis respect, loosens up somewhat before very widespread belief by\nsavages and peasants. And the notion of \"thunderstones\" is as wide as\ngeography itself.\n\nThe natives of Burma, China, Japan, according to Blinkenberg (_Thunder\nWeapons_, p. 100)--not, of course, that Blinkenberg accepts one word of\nit--think that carved stone objects have fallen from the sky, because\nthey think they have seen such objects fall from the sky. Such objects\nare called \"thunderbolts\" in these countries. They are called\n\"thunderstones\" in Moravia, Holland, Belgium, France, Cambodia, Sumatra,\nand Siberia. They're called \"storm stones\" in Lausitz; \"sky arrows\" in\nSlavonia; \"thunder axes\" in England and Scotland; \"lightning stones\" in\nSpain and Portugal; \"sky axes\" in Greece; \"lightning flashes\" in Brazil;\n\"thunder teeth\" in Amboina.\n\nThe belief is as widespread as is belief in ghosts and witches, which\nonly the superstitious deny today.\n\nAs to beliefs by North American Indians, Tyler gives a list of\nreferences (_Primitive Culture_, 2-237). As to South American\nIndians--\"Certain stone hatchets are said to have fallen from the\nheavens.\" (_Jour. Amer. Folk Lore_, 17-203.)\n\nIf you, too, revolt against coincidence after coincidence after\ncoincidence, but find our interpretation of \"thunderstones\" just a\nlittle too strong or rich for digestion, we recommend the explanation of\none, Tallius, written in 1649:\n\n\"The naturalists say they are generated in the sky by fulgurous\nexhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumfused humor.\"\n\nOf course the paper in the _Cornhill Magazine_ was written with no\nintention of trying really to investigate this subject, but to deride\nthe notion that worked-stone objects have ever fallen from the sky. A\nwriter in the _Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-21-325, read this paper and thinks\nit remarkable \"that any man of ordinary reasoning powers should write a\npaper to prove that thunderbolts do not exist.\"\n\nI confess that we're a little flattered by that.\n\nOver and over:\n\n\"It is scarcely necessary to suggest to the intelligent reader that\nthunderstones are a myth.\"\n\nWe contend that there is a misuse of a word here: we admit that only we\nare intelligent upon this subject, if by intelligence is meant the\ninquiry of inequilibrium, and that all other intellection is only\nmechanical reflex--of course that intelligence, too, is mechanical, but\nless orderly and confined: less obviously mechanical--that as an\nacceptance of ours becomes firmer and firmer-established, we pass from\nthe state of intelligence to reflexes in ruts. An odd thing is that\nintelligence is usually supposed to be creditable. It may be in the\nsense that it is mental activity trying to find out, but it is\nconfession of ignorance. The bees, the theologians, the dogmatic\nscientists are the intellectual aristocrats. The rest of us are\nplebeians, not yet graduated to Nirvana, or to the instinctive and suave\nas differentiated from the intelligent and crude.\n\nBlinkenberg gives many instances of the superstition of \"thunderstones\"\nwhich flourishes only where mentality is in a lamentable state--or\nuniversally. In Malacca, Sumatra, and Java, natives say that stone axes\nhave often been found under trees that have been struck by lightning.\nBlinkenberg does not dispute this, but says it is coincidence: that the\naxes were of course upon the ground in the first place: that the natives\njumped to the conclusion that these carved stones had fallen in or with\nlightning. In Central Africa, it is said that often have wedge-shaped,\nhighly polished objects of stone, described as \"axes,\" been found\nsticking in trees that have been struck by lightning--or by what seemed\nto be lightning. The natives, rather like the unscientific persons of\nMemphis, Tenn., when they saw snakes after a storm, jumped to the\nconclusion that the \"axes\" had not always been sticking in the trees.\nLivingstone (_Last Journal_, pages 83, 89, 442, 448) says that he had\nnever heard of stone implements used by natives of Africa. A writer in\nthe _Report of the Smithsonian Institution_, 1877-308, says that there\nare a few.\n\nThat they are said, by the natives, to have fallen in thunderstorms.\n\nAs to luminosity, it is my lamentable acceptance that bodies falling\nthrough this earth's atmosphere, if not warmed even, often fall with a\nbrilliant light, looking like flashes of lightning. This matter seems\nimportant: we'll take it up later, with data. In Prussia, two stone\naxes were found in the trunks of trees, one under the bark.\n(Blinkenberg, _Thunder Weapons_, p. 100.)\n\nThe finders jumped to the conclusion that the axes had fallen there.\n\nAnother stone ax--or wedge-shaped object of worked stone--said to have\nbeen found in a tree that had been struck by something that looked like\nlightning. (_Thunder Weapons_, p. 71.)\n\nThe finder jumped to the conclusion.\n\nStory told by Blinkenberg, of a woman, who lived near Kulsbjaergene,\nSweden, who found a flint near an old willow--\"near her house.\" I\nemphasize \"near her house\" because that means familiar ground. The\nwillow had been split by something.\n\nShe jumped.\n\nCow killed by lightning, or by what looked like lightning (Isle of Sark,\nnear Guernsey). The peasant who owned the cow dug up the ground at the\nspot and found a small greenstone \"ax.\" Blinkenberg says that he jumped\nto the conclusion that it was this object that had fallen luminously,\nkilling the cow.\n\n_Reliquary_, 1867-208:\n\nA flint ax found by a farmer, after a severe storm--described as a\n\"fearful storm\"--by a signal staff, which had been split by something. I\nshould say that nearness to a signal staff may be considered familiar\nground.\n\nWhether he jumped, or arrived at the conclusion by a more leisurely\nprocess, the farmer thought that the flint object had fallen in the\nstorm.\n\nIn this instance we have a lamentable scientist with us. It's impossible\nto have positive difference between orthodoxy and heresy: somewhere\nthere must be a merging into each other, or an overlapping.\nNevertheless, upon such a subject as this, it does seem a little\nshocking. In most works upon meteorites, the peculiar, sulphurous odor\nof things that fall from the sky is mentioned. Sir John Evans (_Stone\nImplements_, p. 57) says--with extraordinary reasoning powers, if he\ncould never have thought such a thing with ordinary reasoning\npowers--that this flint object \"proved to have been the bolt, by its\npeculiar smell when broken.\"\n\nIf it did so prove to be, that settles the whole subject. If we prove\nthat only one object of worked stone has fallen from the sky, all piling\nup of further reports is unnecessary. However, we have already taken the\nstand that nothing settles anything; that the disputes of ancient Greece\nare no nearer solution now than they were several thousand years\nago--all because, in a positive sense, there is nothing to prove or\nsolve or settle. Our object is to be more nearly real than our\nopponents. Wideness is an aspect of the Universal. We go on widely.\nAccording to us the fat man is nearer godliness than is the thin man.\nEat, drink, and approximate to the Positive Absolute. Beware of\nnegativeness, by which we mean indigestion.\n\nThe vast majority of \"thunderstones\" are described as \"axes,\" but\nMeunier (_La Nature_, 1892-2-381) tells of one that was in his\npossession; said to have fallen at Ghardia, Algeria, contrasting\n\"profoundment\" (pear-shaped) with the angular outlines of ordinary\nmeteorites. The conventional explanation that it had been formed as a\ndrop of molten matter from a larger body seems reasonable to me; but\nwith less agreeableness I note its fall in a thunderstorm, the datum\nthat turns the orthodox meteorologist pale with rage, or induces a\nslight elevation of his eyebrows, if you mention it to him.\n\nMeunier tells of another \"thunderstone\" said to have fallen in North\nAfrica. Meunier, too, is a little lamentable here: he quotes a soldier\nof experience that such objects fall most frequently in the deserts of\nAfrica.\n\nRather miscellaneous now:\n\n\"Thunderstone\" said to have fallen in London, April, 1876: weight about\n8 pounds: no particulars as to shape (Timb's _Year Book_, 1877-246).\n\n\"Thunderstone\" said to have fallen at Cardiff, Sept. 26, 1916 (London\n_Times_, Sept. 28, 1916). According to _Nature_, 98-95, it was\ncoincidence; only a lightning flash had been seen.\n\nStone that fell in a storm, near St. Albans, England: accepted by the\nMuseum of St. Albans; said, at the British Museum, not to be of \"true\nmeteoritic material.\" (_Nature_, 80-34.)\n\nLondon _Times_, April 26, 1876:\n\nThat, April 20, 1876, near Wolverhampton, fell a mass of meteoritic iron\nduring a heavy fall of rain. An account of this phenomenon in _Nature_,\n14-272, by H.S. Maskelyne, who accepts it as authentic. Also, see\n_Nature_, 13-531.\n\nFor three other instances, see the _Scientific American_, 47-194; 52-83;\n68-325.\n\nAs to wedge-shape larger than could very well be called an \"ax\":\n\n_Nature_, 30-300:\n\nThat, May 27, 1884, at Tysnas, Norway, a meteorite had fallen: that the\nturf was torn up at the spot where the object had been supposed to have\nfallen; that two days later \"a very peculiar stone\" was found near by.\nThe description is--\"in shape and size very like the fourth part of a\nlarge Stilton cheese.\"\n\nIt is our acceptance that many objects and different substances have\nbeen brought down by atmospheric disturbance from what--only as a matter\nof convenience now, and until we have more data--we call the\nSuper-Sargasso Sea; however, our chief interest is in objects that have\nbeen shaped by means similar to human handicraft.\n\nDescription of the \"thunderstones\" of Burma (_Proc. Asiatic Soc. of\nBengal_, 1869-183): said to be of a kind of stone unlike any other found\nin Burma; called \"thunderbolts\" by the natives. I think there's a good\ndeal of meaning in such expressions as \"unlike any other found in\nBurma\"--but that if they had said anything more definite, there would\nhave been unpleasant consequences to writers in the 19th century.\n\nMore about the \"thunderstones\" of Burma, in the _Proc. Soc. Antiq. of\nLondon_, 2-3-97. One of them, described as an \"adze,\" was exhibited by\nCaptain Duff, who wrote that there was no stone like it in its\nneighborhood.\n\nOf course it may not be very convincing to say that because a stone is\nunlike neighboring stones it had foreign origin--also we fear it is a\nkind of plagiarism: we got it from the geologists, who demonstrate by\nthis reasoning the foreign origin of erratics. We fear we're a little\ngross and scientific at times.\n\nBut it's my acceptance that a great deal of scientific literature must\nbe read between the lines. It's not everyone who has the lamentableness\nof a Sir John Evans. Just as a great deal of Voltaire's meaning was\ninter-linear, we suspect that a Captain Duff merely hints rather than\nto risk having a Prof. Lawrence Smith fly at him and call him \"a\nhalf-insane man.\" Whatever Captain Duff's meaning may have been, and\nwhether he smiled like a Voltaire when he wrote it, Captain Duff writes\nof \"the extremely soft nature of the stone, rendering it equally useless\nas an offensive or defensive weapon.\"\n\nStory, by a correspondent, in _Nature_, 34-53, of a Malay, of\n\"considerable social standing\"--and one thing about our data is that,\ndamned though they be, they do so often bring us into awful good\ncompany--who knew of a tree that had been struck, about a month before,\nby something in a thunderstorm. He searched among the roots of this tree\nand found a \"thunderstone.\" Not said whether he jumped or leaped to the\nconclusion that it had fallen: process likely to be more leisurely in\ntropical countries. Also I'm afraid his way of reasoning was not very\noriginal: just so were fragments of the Bath-furnace meteorite, accepted\nby orthodoxy, discovered.\n\nWe shall now have an unusual experience. We shall read of some reports\nof extraordinary circumstances that were investigated by a man of\nscience--not of course that they were really investigated by him, but\nthat his phenomena occupied a position approximating higher to real\ninvestigation than to utter neglect. Over and over we read of\nextraordinary occurrences--no discussion; not even a comment afterward\nfindable; mere mention occasionally--burial and damnation.\n\nThe extraordinary and how quickly it is hidden away.\n\nBurial and damnation, or the obscurity of the conspicuous.\n\nWe did read of a man who, in the matter of snails, did travel some\ndistance to assure himself of something that he had suspected in\nadvance; and we remember Prof. Hitchcock, who had only to smite Amherst\nwith the wand of his botanical knowledge, and lo! two fungi sprang up\nbefore night; and we did read of Dr. Gray and his thousands of fishes\nfrom one pailful of water--but these instances stand out; more\nfrequently there was no \"investigation.\" We now have a good many\nreported occurrences that were \"investigated.\" Of things said to have\nfallen from the sky, we make, in the usual scientific way, two\ndivisions: miscellaneous objects and substances, and symmetric objects\nattributable to beings like human beings, sub-dividing into--wedges,\nspheres, and disks.\n\n_Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 14-207:\n\nThat, July 2, 1866, a correspondent to a London newspaper wrote that\nsomething had fallen from the sky, during a thunderstorm of June 30,\n1866, at Netting Hill. Mr. G.T. Symons, of _Symons' Meteorological\nMagazine_, investigated, about as fairly, and with about as unprejudiced\na mind, as anything ever has been investigated.\n\nHe says that the object was nothing but a lump of coal: that next door\nto the home of the correspondent coal had been unloaded the day before.\nWith the uncanny wisdom of the stranger upon unfamiliar ground that we\nhave noted before, Mr. Symons saw that the coal reported to have fallen\nfrom the sky, and the coal unloaded more prosaically the day before,\nwere identical. Persons in the neighborhood, unable to make this simple\nidentification, had bought from the correspondent pieces of the object\nreported to have fallen from the sky. As to credulity, I know of no\nlimits for it--but when it comes to paying out money for credulity--oh,\nno standards to judge by, of course--just the same--\n\nThe trouble with efficiency is that it will merge away into excess. With\nwhat seems to me to be super-abundance of convincingness, Mr. Symons\nthen lugs another character into his little comedy:\n\nThat it was all a hoax by a chemist's pupil, who had filled a capsule\nwith an explosive, and \"during the storm had thrown the burning mass\ninto the gutter, so making an artificial thunderbolt.\"\n\nOr even Shakespeare, with all his inartistry, did not lug in King Lear\nto make Hamlet complete.\n\nWhether I'm lugging in something that has no special meaning, myself, or\nnot, I find that this storm of June 30, 1866, was peculiar. It is\ndescribed in the London _Times_, July 2, 1866: that \"during the storm,\nthe sky in many places remained partially clear while hail and rain were\nfalling.\" That may have more meaning when we take up the possible\nextra-mundane origin of some hailstones, especially if they fall from a\ncloudless sky. Mere suggestion, not worth much, that there may have been\nfalls of extra-mundane substances, in London, June 30, 1866.\n\nClinkers, said to have fallen, during a storm, at Kilburn, July 5, 1877:\n\nAccording to the _Kilburn Times_, July 7, 1877, quoted by Mr. Symons, a\nstreet had been \"literally strewn,\" during the storm, with a mass of\nclinkers, estimated at about two bushels: sizes from that of a walnut to\nthat of a man's hand--\"pieces of the clinkers can be seen at the\n_Kilburn Times_ office.\"\n\nIf these clinkers, or cinders, were refuse from one of the\nsuper-mercantile constructions from which coke and coal and ashes\noccasionally fall to this earth, or, rather, to the Super-Sargasso Sea,\nfrom which dislodgment by tempests occurs, it is intermediatistic to\naccept that they must merge away somewhere with local phenomena of the\nscene of precipitation. If a red-hot stove should drop from a cloud into\nBroadway, someone would find that at about the time of the occurrence, a\nmoving van had passed, and that the moving men had tired of the stove,\nor something--that it had not been really red-hot, but had been rouged\ninstead of blacked, by some absent-minded housekeeper. Compared with\nsome of the scientific explanations that we have encountered, there's\nconsiderable restraint, I think, in that one.\n\nMr. Symons learned that in the same street--he emphasizes that it was a\nshort street--there was a fire-engine station. I had such an impression\nof him hustling and bustling around at Notting Hill, searching cellars\nuntil he found one with newly arrived coal in it; ringing door bells,\nexciting a whole neighborhood, calling up to second-story windows,\nstopping people in the streets, hotter and hotter on the trail of a\nwretched imposter of a chemist's pupil. After his efficiency at Notting\nHill, we'd expect to hear that he went to the station, and--something\nlike this:\n\n\"It is said that clinkers fell, in your street, at about ten minutes\npast four o'clock, afternoon of July fifth. Will you look over your\nrecords and tell me where your engine was at about ten minutes past\nfour, July fifth?\"\n\nMr. Symons says:\n\n\"I think that most probably they had been raked out of the steam\nfire-engine.\"\n\nJune 20, 1880, it was reported that a \"thunderstone\" had struck the\nhouse at 180 Oakley Street, Chelsea, falling down the chimney, into the\nkitchen grate.\n\nMr. Symons investigated.\n\nHe describes the \"thunderstone\" as an \"agglomeration of brick, soot,\nunburned coal, and cinder.\"\n\nHe says that, in his opinion, lightning had flashed down the chimney,\nand had fused some of the brick of it.\n\nHe does think it remarkable that the lightning did not then scatter the\ncontents of the grate, which were disturbed only as if a heavy body had\nfallen. If we admit that climbing up the chimney to find out is too\nrigorous a requirement for a man who may have been large, dignified and\nsubject to expansions, the only unreasonableness we find in what he\nsays--as judged by our more modern outlook, is:\n\n\"I suppose that no one would suggest that bricks are manufactured in the\natmosphere.\"\n\nSounds a little unreasonable to us, because it is so of the positivistic\nspirit of former times, when it was not so obvious that the highest\nincredibility and laughability must merge away with the \"proper\"--as the\n_Sci. Am. Sup._ would say. The preposterous is always interpretable in\nterms of the \"proper,\" with which it must be continuous--or--clay-like\nmasses such as have fallen from the sky--tremendous heat generated by\ntheir velocity--they bake--bricks.\n\nWe begin to suspect that Mr. Symons exhausted himself at Notting Hill.\nIt's a warning to efficiency-fanatics.\n\nThen the instance of three lumps of earthy matter, found upon a\nwell-frequented path, after a thunderstorm, at Reading, July 3, 1883.\nThere are so many records of the fall of earthy matter from the sky that\nit would seem almost uncanny to find resistance here, were we not so\naccustomed to the uncompromising stands of orthodoxy--which, in our\nmetaphysics, represent good, as attempts, but evil in their\ninsufficiency. If I thought it necessary, I'd list one hundred and fifty\ninstances of earthy matter said to have fallen from the sky. It is his\nantagonism to atmospheric disturbance associated with the fall of things\nfrom the sky that blinds and hypnotizes a Mr. Symons here. This especial\nMr. Symons rejects the Reading substance because it was not \"of true\nmeteoritic material.\" It's uncanny--or it's not uncanny at all, but\nuniversal--if you don't take something for a standard of opinion, you\ncan't have any opinion at all: but, if you do take a standard, in some\nof its applications it must be preposterous. The carbonaceous\nmeteorites, which are unquestioned--though avoided, as we have seen--by\northodoxy, are more glaringly of untrue meteoritic material than was\nthis substance of Reading. Mr. Symons says that these three lumps were\nupon the ground \"in the first place.\"\n\nWhether these data are worth preserving or not, I think that the appeal\nthat this especial Mr. Symons makes is worthy of a place in the museum\nwe're writing. He argues against belief in all external origins \"for our\ncredit as Englishmen.\" He is a patriot, but I think that these\nforeigners had a small chance \"in the first place\" for hospitality from\nhim.\n\nThen comes a \"small lump of iron (two inches in diameter)\" said to have\nfallen, during a thunderstorm, at Brixton, Aug. 17, 1887. Mr. Symons\nsays: \"At present I cannot trace it.\"\n\nHe was at his best at Notting Hill: there's been a marked falling off in\nhis later manner:\n\nIn the London _Times_, Feb. 1, 1888, it is said that a roundish object\nof iron had been found, \"after a violent thunderstorm,\" in a garden at\nBrixton, Aug. 17, 1887. It was analyzed by a chemist, who could not\nidentify it as true meteoritic material. Whether a product of\nworkmanship like human workmanship or not, this object is described as\nan oblate spheroid, about two inches across its major diameter. The\nchemist's name and address are given: Mr. J. James Morgan: Ebbw Vale.\n\nGarden--familiar ground--I suppose that in Mr. Symons' opinion this\nsymmetric object had been upon the ground \"in the first place,\" though\nhe neglects to say this. But we do note that he described this object as\na \"lump,\" which does not suggest the spheroidal or symmetric. It is our\nnotion that the word \"lump\" was, because of its meaning of\namorphousness, used purposely to have the next datum stand alone,\nremote, without similars. If Mr. Symons had said that there had been a\nreport of another round object that had fallen from the sky, his readers\nwould be attracted by an agreement. He distracts his readers by\ndescribing in terms of the unprecedented--\n\n\"Iron cannon ball.\"\n\nIt was found in a manure heap, in Sussex, after a thunderstorm.\n\nHowever, Mr. Symons argues pretty reasonably, it seems to me, that,\ngiven a cannon ball in a manure heap, in the first place, lightning\nmight be attracted by it, and, if seen to strike there, the untutored\nmind, or mentality below the average, would leap or jump, or proceed\nwith less celerity, to the conclusion that the iron object had fallen.\n\nExcept that--if every farmer isn't upon very familiar ground--or if\nevery farmer doesn't know his own manure heap as well as Mr. Symons knew\nhis writing desk--\n\nThen comes the instance of a man, his wife, and his three daughters, at\nCasterton, Westmoreland, who were looking out at their lawn, during a\nthunderstorm, when they \"considered,\" as Mr. Symons expresses it, that\nthey saw a stone fall from the sky, kill a sheep, and bury itself in the\nground.\n\nThey dug.\n\nThey found a stone ball.\n\nSymons:\n\nCoincidence. It had been there in the first place.\n\nThis object was exhibited at a meeting of the Royal Meteorological\nSociety by Mr. C. Carus-Wilson. It is described in the _Journal's_ list\nof exhibits as a \"sandstone\" ball. It is described as \"sandstone\" by Mr.\nSymons.\n\nNow a round piece of sandstone may be almost anywhere in the ground--in\nthe first place--but, by our more or less discreditable habit of prying\nand snooping, we find that this object was rather more complex and of\nmaterial less commonplace. In snooping through _Knowledge_, Oct. 9,\n1885, we read that this \"thunderstone\" was in the possession of Mr. C.\nCarus-Wilson, who tells the story of the witness and his family--the\nsheep killed, the burial of something in the earth, the digging, and the\nfinding. Mr. C. Carus-Wilson describes the object as a ball of hard,\nferruginous quartzite, about the size of a cocoanut, weight about twelve\npounds. Whether we're feeling around for significance or not, there is a\nsuggestion not only of symmetry but of structure in this object: it had\nan external shell, separated from a loose nucleus. Mr. Carus-Wilson\nattributes this cleavage to unequal cooling of the mass.\n\nMy own notion is that there is very little deliberate misrepresentation\nin the writings of scientific men: that they are quite as guiltless in\nintent as are other hypnotic subjects. Such a victim of induced belief\nreads of a stone ball said to have fallen from the sky. Mechanically in\nhis mind arise impressions of globular lumps, or nodules, of sandstone,\nwhich are common almost everywhere. He assimilates the reported fall\nwith his impressions of objects in the ground, in the first place. To an\nintermediatist, the phenomena of intellection are only phenomena of\nuniversal process localized in human minds. The process called\n\"explanation\" is only a local aspect of universal assimilation. It looks\nlike materialism: but the intermediatist holds that interpretation of\nthe immaterial, as it is called, in terms of the material, as it is\ncalled, is no more rational than interpretation of the \"material\" in\nterms of the \"immaterial\": that there is in quasi-existence neither the\nmaterial nor the immaterial, but approximations one way or the other.\nBut so hypnotic quasi-reasons: that globular lumps of sandstone are\ncommon. Whether he jumps or leaps, or whether only the frowsy and\nbase-born are so athletic, his is the impression, by assimilation, that\nthis especial object is a ball of sandstone. Or human mentality: its\ninhabitants are conveniences. It may be that Mr. Symons' paper was\nwritten before this object was exhibited to the members of the Society,\nand with the charity with which, for the sake of diversity, we\nintersperse our malices, we are willing to accept that he \"investigated\"\nsomething that he had never seen. But whoever listed this object was\nuncareful: it is listed as \"sandstone.\"\n\nWe're making excuses for them.\n\nReally--as it were--you know, we're not quite so damned as we were.\n\nOne does not apologize for the gods and at the same time feel quite\nutterly prostrate before them.\n\nIf this were a real existence, and all of us real persons, with real\nstandards to judge by, I'm afraid we'd have to be a little severe with\nsome of these Mr. Symonses. As it is, of course, seriousness seems out\nof place.\n\nWe note an amusing little touch in the indefinite allusion to \"a man,\"\nwho with his un-named family, had \"considered\" that he had seen a stone\nfall. The \"man\" was the Rev. W. Carus-Wilson, who was well-known in his\nday.\n\nThe next instance was reported by W.B. Tripp, F.R.M.S.--that, during a\nthunderstorm, a farmer had seen the ground in front of him plowed up by\nsomething that was luminous.\n\nDug.\n\nBronze ax.\n\nMy own notion is that an expedition to the North Pole could not be so\nurgent as that representative scientists should have gone to that farmer\nand there spent a summer studying this one reported occurrence. As it\nis--un-named farmer--somewhere--no date. The thing must stay damned.\n\nAnother specimen for our museum is a comment in _Nature_ upon these\nobjects: that they are \"of an amusing character, thus clearly showing\nthat they were of terrestrial, and not a celestial, character.\" Just why\ncelestiality, or that of it which, too, is only of Intermediateness\nshould not be quite as amusing as terrestriality is beyond our reasoning\npowers, which we have agreed are not ordinary. Of course there is\nnothing amusing about wedges and spheres at all--or Archimedes and\nEuclid are humorists. It is that they were described derisively. If\nyou'd like a little specimen of the standardization of orthodox\nopinion--\n\n_Amer. Met. Jour._, 4-589:\n\n\"They are of an amusing character, thus clearly showing that they were\nof a terrestrial and not a celestial character.\"\n\nI'm sure--not positively, of course--that we've tried to be as easygoing\nand lenient with Mr. Symons as his obviously scientific performance\nwould permit. Of course it may be that sub-consciously we were\nprejudiced against him, instinctively classing him with St. Augustine,\nDarwin, St. Jerome, and Lyell. As to the \"thunderstones,\" I think that\nhe investigated them mostly \"for the credit of Englishmen,\" or in the\nspirit of the Royal Krakatoa Committee, or about as the commission from\nthe French Academy investigated meteorites. According to a writer in\n_Knowledge_, 5-418, the Krakatoa Committee attempted not in the least to\nprove what had caused the atmospheric effects of 1883, but to\nprove--that Krakatoa did it.\n\nAltogether I should think that the following quotation should be\nenlightening to anyone who still thinks that these occurrences were\ninvestigated not to support an opinion formed in advance:\n\nIn opening his paper, Mr. Symons says that he undertook his\ninvestigation as to the existence of \"thunderstones,\" or \"thunderbolts\"\nas he calls them--\"feeling certain that there was a weak point\nsomewhere, inasmuch as 'thunderbolts' have no existence.\"\n\nWe have another instance of the reported fall of a \"cannon ball.\" It\noccurred prior to Mr. Symons' investigations, but is not mentioned by\nhim. It was investigated, however. In the _Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin._,\n3-147, is the report of a \"thunderstone,\" \"supposed to have fallen in\nHampshire, Sept., 1852.\" It was an iron cannon ball, or it was a \"large\nnodule of iron pyrites or bisulphuret of iron.\" No one had seen it fall.\nIt had been noticed, upon a garden path, for the first time, after a\nthunderstorm. It was only a \"supposed\" thing, because--\"It had not the\ncharacter of any known meteorite.\"\n\nIn the London _Times_, Sept. 16, 1852, appears a letter from Mr. George\nE. Bailey, a chemist of Andover, Hants. He says that, in a very heavy\nthunderstorm, of the first week of September, 1852, this iron object,\nhad fallen in the garden of Mr. Robert Dowling, of Andover; that it had\nfallen upon a path \"within six yards of the house.\" It had been picked\nup \"immediately\" after the storm by Mrs. Dowling. It was about the size\nof a cricket ball: weight four pounds. No one had seen it fall. In the\n_Times_, Sept. 15, 1852, there is an account of this thunderstorm, which\nwas of unusual violence.\n\nThere are some other data relative to the ball of quartz of\nWestmoreland. They're poor things. There's so little to them that they\nlook like ghosts of the damned. However, ghosts, when multiplied, take\non what is called substantiality--if the solidest thing conceivable, in\nquasi-existence, is only concentrated phantomosity. It is not only that\nthere have been other reports of quartz that has fallen from the sky;\nthere is another agreement. The round quartz object of Westmoreland, if\nbroken open and separated from its loose nucleus, would be a round,\nhollow, quartz object. My pseudo-position is that two reports of similar\nextraordinary occurrences, one from England and one from Canada--are\ninteresting.\n\n_Proc. Canadian Institute_, 3-7-8:\n\nThat, at the meeting of the Institute, of Dec. 1, 1888, one of the\nmembers, Mr. J.A. Livingstone, exhibited a globular quartz body which he\nasserted had fallen from the sky. It had been split open. It was hollow.\n\nBut the other members of the Institute decided that the object was\nspurious, because it was not of \"true meteoritic material.\"\n\nNo date; no place mentioned; we note the suggestion that it was only a\ngeode, which had been upon the ground in the first place. Its\ncrystalline lining was geode-like.\n\nQuartz is upon the \"index prohibitory\" of Science. A monk who would read\nDarwin would sin no more than would a scientist who would admit that,\nexcept by the \"up and down\" process, quartz has ever fallen from the\nsky--but Continuity: it is not excommunicated if part of or incorporated\nin a baptized meteorite--St. Catherine's of Mexico, I think. It's as\nepicurean a distinction as any ever made by theologians. Fassig lists a\nquartz pebble, found in a hailstone (_Bibliography_, part 2-355). \"Up\nand down,\" of course. Another object of quartzite was reported to have\nfallen, in the autumn of 1880, at Schroon Lake, N.Y.--said in the\n_Scientific American_, 43-272 to be a fraud--it was not--the usual.\nAbout the first of May, 1899, the newspapers published a story of a\n\"snow-white\" meteorite that had fallen, at Vincennes, Indiana. The\nEditor of the _Monthly Weather Review_ (issue of April, 1899) requested\nthe local observer, at Vincennes, to investigate. The Editor says that\nthe thing was only a fragment of a quartz boulder. He says that anyone\nwith at least a public school education should know better than to write\nthat quartz has ever fallen from the sky.\n\n_Notes and Queries_, 2-8-92:\n\nThat, in the Leyden Museum of Antiquities, there is a disk of quartz: 6\ncentimeters by 5 millimeters by about 5 centimeters; said to have fallen\nupon a plantation in the Dutch West Indies, after a meteoric explosion.\n\nBricks.\n\nI think this is a vice we're writing. I recommend it to those who have\nhankered for a new sin. At first some of our data were of so frightful\nor ridiculous mien as to be hated, or eyebrowed, was only to be seen.\nThen some pity crept in? I think that we can now embrace bricks.\n\nThe baked-clay-idea was all right in its place, but it rather lacks\ndistinction, I think. With our minds upon the concrete boats that have\nbeen building terrestrially lately, and thinking of wrecks that may\noccur to some of them, and of a new material for the deep-sea fishes to\ndisregard--\n\nObject that fell at Richland, South Carolina--yellow to gray--said to\nlook like a piece of brick. (_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 2-34-298.)\n\nPieces of \"furnace-made brick\" said to have fallen--in a hailstorm--at\nPadua, August, 1834. (_Edin. New Phil. Jour._, 19-87.) The writer\noffered an explanation that started another convention: that the\nfragments of brick had been knocked from buildings by the hailstones.\nBut there is here a concomitant that will be disagreeable to anyone who\nmay have been inclined to smile at the now digestible--enough notion\nthat furnace-made bricks have fallen from the sky. It is that in some of\nthe hailstones--two per cent of them--that were found with the pieces of\nbrick, was a light grayish powder.\n\n_Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society_, 337-365:\n\nPadre Sechi explains that a stone said to have fallen, in a\nthunderstorm, at Supino, Italy, September, 1875, had been knocked from a\nroof.\n\n_Nature_, 33-153:\n\nThat it had been reported that a good-sized stone, of form clearly\nartificial, had fallen at Naples, November, 1885. The stone was\ndescribed by two professors of Naples, who had accepted it as\ninexplicable but veritable. They were visited by Dr. H. Johnstone-Lavis,\nthe correspondent to _Nature_, whose investigations had convinced him\nthat the object was a \"shoemaker's lapstone.\"\n\nNow to us of the initiated, or to us of the wider outlook, there is\nnothing incredible in the thought of shoemakers in other worlds--but I\nsuspect that this characterization is tactical.\n\nThis object of worked stone, or this shoemaker's lapstone, was made of\nVesuvian lava, Dr. Johnstone-Lavis thinks: most probably of lava of the\nflow of 1631, from the La Scala quarries. We condemn \"most probably\" as\nbad positivism. As to the \"men of position,\" who had accepted that this\nthing had fallen from the sky--\"I have now obliged them to admit their\nmistake,\" says Dr. Johnstone-Lavis--or it's always the stranger in\nNaples who knows La Scala lava better than the natives know it.\n\nExplanation:\n\nThat the thing had been knocked from, or thrown from, a roof.\n\nAs to attempt to trace the occurrence to any special roof--nothing said\nupon that subject. Or that Dr. Johnstone-Lavis called a carved stone a\n\"lapstone,\" quite as Mr. Symons called a spherical object a \"cannon\nball\": bent upon a discrediting incongruity:\n\nShoemaking and celestiality.\n\nIt is so easy to say that axes, or wedge-shaped stones found on the\nground, were there in the first place, and that it is only coincidence\nthat lightning should strike near one--but the credibility of\ncoincidences decreases as the square root of their volume, I think. Our\nmassed instances speak too much of coincidences of coincidences. But the\naxes, or wedge-shaped objects that have been found in trees, are more\ndifficult for orthodoxy. For instance, Arago accepts that such finds\nhave occurred, but he argues that, if wedge-shaped stones have been\nfound in tree trunks, so have toads been found in tree trunks--did the\ntoads fall there?\n\nNot at all bad for a hypnotic.\n\nOf course, in our acceptance, the Irish are the Chosen People. It's\nbecause they are characteristically best in accord with the underlying\nessence of quasi-existence. M. Arago answers a question by asking\nanother question. That's the only way a question can be answered in our\nHibernian kind of an existence.\n\nDr. Bodding argued with the natives of the Santal Parganas, India, who\nsaid that cut and shaped stones had fallen from the sky, some of them\nlodging in tree trunks. Dr. Bodding, with orthodox notions of velocity\nof falling bodies, having missed, I suppose, some of the notes I have\nupon large hailstones, which, for size, have fallen with astonishingly\nlow velocity, argued that anything falling from the sky would be\n\"smashed to atoms.\" He accepts that objects of worked stone have been\nfound in tree trunks, but he explains:\n\nThat the Santals often steal trees, but do not chop them down in the\nusual way, because that would be to make too much noise: they insert\nstone wedges, and hammer them instead: then, if they should be caught,\nwedges would not be the evidence against them that axes would be.\n\nOr that a scientific man can't be desperate and reasonable too.\n\nOr that a pickpocket, for instance, is safe, though caught with his hand\nin one's pocket, if he's gloved, say: because no court in the land would\nregard a gloved hand in the same way in which a bare hand would be\nregarded.\n\nThat there's nothing but intermediateness to the rational and the\npreposterous: that this status of our own ratiocinations is perceptible\nwherein they are upon the unfamiliar.\n\nDr. Bodding collected 50 of these shaped stones, said to have fallen\nfrom the sky, in the course of many years. He says that the Santals are\na highly developed race, and for ages have not used stone\nimplements--except in this one nefarious convenience to him.\n\nAll explanations are localizations. They fade away before the universal.\nIt is difficult to express that black rains in England do not originate\nin the smoke of factories--less difficult to express that black rains of\nSouth Africa do not. We utter little stress upon the absurdity of Dr.\nBedding's explanation, because, if anything's absurd everything's\nabsurd, or, rather, has in it some degree or aspect of absurdity, and\nwe've never had experience with any state except something somewhere\nbetween ultimate absurdity and final reasonableness. Our acceptance is\nthat Dr. Bedding's elaborate explanation does not apply to cut-stone\nobjects found in tree trunks in other lands: we accept that for the\ngeneral, a local explanation is inadequate.\n\nAs to \"thunderstones\" not said to have fallen luminously, and not said\nto have been found sticking in trees, we are told by faithful hypnotics\nthat astonished rustics come upon prehistoric axes that have been washed\ninto sight by rains, and jump to the conclusion that the things have\nfallen from the sky. But simple rustics come upon many prehistoric\nthings: scrapers, pottery, knives, hammers. We have no record of\nrusticity coming upon old pottery after a rain, reporting the fall of a\nbowl from the sky.\n\nJust now, my own acceptance is that wedge-shaped stone objects, formed\nby means similar to human workmanship, have often fallen from the sky.\nMaybe there are messages upon them. My acceptance is that they have been\ncalled \"axes\" to discredit them: or the more familiar a term, the higher\nthe incongruity with vague concepts of the vast, remote, tremendous,\nunknown.\n\nIn _Notes and Queries_, 2-8-92, a writer says that he had a\n\"thunderstone,\" which he had brought from Jamaica. The description is of\na wedge-shaped object; not of an ax:\n\n\"It shows no mark of having been attached to a handle.\"\n\nOf ten \"thunderstones,\" figured upon different pages in Blinkenberg's\nbook, nine show no sign of ever having been attached to a handle: one is\nperforated.\n\nBut in a report by Dr. C. Leemans, Director of the Leyden Museum of\nAntiquities, objects, said by the Japanese to have fallen from the sky,\nare alluded to throughout as \"wedges.\" In the _Archaeologic Journal_,\n11-118, in a paper upon the \"thunderstones\" of Java, the objects are\ncalled \"wedges\" and not \"axes.\"\n\nOur notion is that rustics and savages call wedge-shaped objects that\nfall from the sky, \"axes\": that scientific men, when it suits their\npurposes, can resist temptations to prolixity and pedantry, and adopt\nthe simple: that they can be intelligible when derisive.\n\nAll of which lands us in a confusion, worse, I think, than we were in\nbefore we so satisfactorily emerged from the distresses of--butter and\nblood and ink and paper and punk and silk. Now it's cannon balls and\naxes and disks--if a \"lapstone\" be a disk--it's a flat stone, at any\nrate.\n\nA great many scientists are good impressionists: they snub the\nimpertinences of details. Had he been of a coarse, grubbing nature, I\nthink Dr. Bodding could never have so simply and beautifully explained\nthe occurrence of stone wedges in tree trunks. But to a realist, the\nstory would be something like this:\n\nA man who needed a tree, in a land of jungles, where, for some unknown\nreason, everyone's very selfish with his trees, conceives that hammering\nstone wedges makes less noise than does the chopping of wood: he and his\ndescendants, in a course of many years, cut down trees with wedges, and\nescape penalty, because it never occurs to a prosecutor that the head of\nan ax is a wedge.\n\nThe story is like every other attempted positivism--beautiful and\ncomplete, until we see what it excludes or disregards; whereupon it\nbecomes the ugly and incomplete--but not absolutely, because there is\nprobably something of what is called foundation for it. Perhaps a\nmentally incomplete Santal did once do something of the kind. Story told\nto Dr. Bodding: in the usual scientific way, he makes a dogma of an\naberration.\n\nOr we did have to utter a little stress upon this matter, after all.\nThey're so hairy and attractive, these scientists of the 19th century.\nWe feel the zeal of a Sitting Bull when we think of their scalps. We\nshall have to have an expression of our own upon this confusing subject.\nWe have expressions: we don't call them explanations: we've discarded\nexplanations with beliefs. Though everyone who scalps is, in the oneness\nof allness, himself likely to be scalped, there is such a discourtesy to\nan enemy as the wearing of wigs.\n\nCannon balls and wedges, and what may they mean?\n\nBombardments of this earth--\n\nAttempts to communicate--\n\nOr visitors to this earth, long ago--explorers from the moon--taking\nback with them, as curiosities, perhaps, implements of this earth's\nprehistoric inhabitants--a wreck--a cargo of such things held for ages\nin suspension in the Super-Sargasso Sea--falling, or shaken, down\noccasionally by storms--\n\nBut, by preponderance of description, we cannot accept that\n\"thunderstones\" ever were attached to handles, or are prehistoric axes--\n\nAs to attempts to communicate with this earth by means of wedge-shaped\nobjects especially adapted to the penetration of vast, gelatinous areas\nspread around this earth--\n\nIn the _Proc. Roy. Irish Acad._, 9-337, there is an account of a stone\nwedge that fell from the sky, near Cashel, Tipperary, Aug. 2, 1865. The\nphenomenon is not questioned, but the orthodox preference is to call it,\nnot ax-like, nor wedge-shaped, but \"pyramidal.\" For data of other\npyramidal stones said to have fallen from the sky, see _Rept. Brit.\nAssoc._, 1861-34. One fell at Segowolee, India, March 6, 1853. Of the\nobject that fell at Cashel, Dr. Haughton says in the _Proceedings_: \"A\nsingular feature is observable in this stone, that I have never seen in\nany other:--the rounded edges of the pyramid are sharply marked by lines\non the black crust, as perfect as if made by a ruler.\" Dr. Haughton's\nidea is that the marks may have been made by \"some peculiar tension in\nthe cooling.\" It must have been very peculiar, if in all aerolites not\nwedge-shaped, no such phenomenon had ever been observed. It merges away\nwith one or two instances known, after Dr. Haughton's time, of seeming\nstratification in meteorites. Stratification in meteorites, however, is\ndenied by the faithful.\n\nI begin to suspect something else.\n\nA whopper is coming.\n\nLater it will be as reasonable, by familiarity, as anything else ever\nsaid.\n\nIf someone should study the stone of Cashel, as Champollion studied the\nRosetta stone, he might--or, rather, would inevitably--find meaning in\nthose lines, and translate them into English--\n\nNevertheless I begin to suspect something else: something more subtle\nand esoteric than graven characters upon stones that have fallen from\nthe sky, in attempts to communicate. The notion that other worlds are\nattempting to communicate with this world is widespread: my own notion\nis that it is not attempt at all--that it was achievement centuries ago.\n\nI should like to send out a report that a \"thunderstone\" had fallen,\nsay, somewhere in New Hampshire--\n\nAnd keep track of every person who came to examine that stone--trace\ndown his affiliations--keep track of him--\n\nThen send out a report that a \"thunderstone\" had fallen at Stockholm,\nsay--\n\nWould one of the persons who had gone to New Hampshire, be met again in\nStockholm? But--what if he had no anthropological, lapidarian, or\nmeteorological affiliations--but did belong to a secret society--\n\nIt is only a dawning credulity.\n\nOf the three forms of symmetric objects that have, or haven't, fallen\nfrom the sky, it seems to me that the disk is the most striking. So\nfar, in this respect, we have been at our worst--possibly that's pretty\nbad--but \"lapstones\" are likely to be of considerable variety of form,\nand something that is said to have fallen at sometime somewhere in the\nDutch West Indies is profoundly of the unchosen.\n\nNow we shall have something that is high up in the castes of the\naccursed:\n\n_Comptes Rendus_, 1887-182:\n\nThat, upon June 20, 1887, in a \"violent storm\"--two months before the\nreported fall of the symmetric iron object of Brixton--a small stone had\nfallen from the sky at Tarbes, France: 13 millimeters in diameter; 5\nmillimeters thick; weight 2 grammes. Reported to the French Academy by\nM. Sudre, professor of the Normal School, Tarbes.\n\nThis time the old convenience \"there in the first place\" is too greatly\nresisted--the stone was covered with ice.\n\nThis object had been cut and shaped by means similar to human hands and\nhuman mentality. It was a disk of worked stone--\"tres regulier.\" \"Il a\nete assurement travaille.\"\n\nThere's not a word as to any known whirlwind anywhere: nothing of other\nobjects or debris that fell at or near this date, in France. The thing\nhad fallen alone. But as mechanically as any part of a machine responds\nto its stimulus, the explanation appears in _Comptes Rendus_ that this\nstone had been raised by a whirlwind and then flung down.\n\nIt may be that in the whole nineteenth century no event more important\nthan this occurred. In _La Nature_, 1887, and in _L'Annee Scientifique_,\n1887, this occurrence is noted. It is mentioned in one of the summer\nnumbers of _Nature_, 1887. Fassig lists a paper upon it in the _Annuaire\nde Soc. Met._, 1887.\n\nNot a word of discussion.\n\nNot a subsequent mention can I find.\n\nOur own expression:\n\nWhat matters it how we, the French Academy, or the Salvation Army may\nexplain?\n\nA disk of worked stone fell from the sky, at Tarbes, France, June 20,\n1887.\n\n\n\n\n9\n\n\nMy own pseudo-conclusion:\n\nThat we've been damned by giants sound asleep, or by great scientific\nprinciples and abstractions that cannot realize themselves: that little\nharlots have visited their caprices upon us; that clowns, with buckets\nof water from which they pretend to cast thousands of good-sized fishes\nhave anathematized us for laughing disrespectfully, because, as with all\nclowns, underlying buffoonery is the desire to be taken seriously; that\npale ignorances, presiding over microscopes by which they cannot\ndistinguish flesh from nostoc or fishes' spawn or frogs' spawn, have\nvisited upon us their wan solemnities. We've been damned by corpses and\nskeletons and mummies, which twitch and totter with pseudo-life derived\nfrom conveniences.\n\nOr there is only hypnosis. The accursed are those who admit they're the\naccursed.\n\nIf we be more nearly real we are reasons arraigned before a jury of\ndream-phantasms.\n\nOf all meteorites in museums, very few were seen to fall. It is\nconsidered sufficient grounds for admission if specimens can't be\naccounted for in any way other than that they fell from the sky--as if\nin the haze of uncertainty that surrounds all things, or that is the\nessence of everything, or in the merging away of everything into\nsomething else, there could be anything that could be accounted for in\nonly one way. The scientist and the theologian reason that if something\ncan be accounted for in only one way, it is accounted for in that\nway--or logic would be logical, if the conditions that it imposes, but,\nof course, does not insist upon, could anywhere be found in\nquasi-existence. In our acceptance, logic, science, art, religion are,\nin our \"existence,\" premonitions of a coming awakening, like dawning\nawarenesses of surroundings in the mind of a dreamer.\n\nAny old chunk of metal that measures up to the standard of \"true\nmeteoritic material\" is admitted by the museums. It may seem incredible\nthat modern curators still have this delusion, but we suspect that the\ndate on one's morning newspaper hasn't much to do with one's modernity\nall day long. In reading Fletcher's catalogue, for instance, we learn\nthat some of the best-known meteorites were \"found in draining a\nfield\"--\"found in making a road\"--\"turned up by the plow\" occurs a dozen\ntimes. Someone fishing in Lake Okeechobee, brought up an object in his\nfishing net. No meteorite had ever been seen to fall near it. The U.S.\nNational Museum accepts it.\n\nIf we have accepted only one of the data of \"untrue meteoritic\nmaterial\"--one instance of \"carbonaceous\" matter--if it be too difficult\nto utter the word \"coal\"--we see that in this inclusion-exclusion, as in\nevery other means of forming an opinion, false inclusion and false\nexclusion have been practiced by curators of museums.\n\nThere is something of ultra-pathos--of cosmic sadness--in this universal\nsearch for a standard, and in belief that one has been revealed by\neither inspiration or analysis, then the dogged clinging to a poor sham\nof a thing long after its insufficiency has been shown--or renewed hope\nand search for the special that can be true, or for something local that\ncould also be universal. It's as if \"true meteoritic material\" were a\n\"rock of ages\" to some scientific men. They cling. But clingers cannot\nhold out welcoming arms.\n\nThe only seemingly conclusive utterance, or seemingly substantial thing\nto cling to, is a product of dishonesty, ignorance, or fatigue. All\nsciences go back and back, until they're worn out with the process, or\nuntil mechanical reaction occurs: then they move forward--as it were.\nThen they become dogmatic, and take for bases, positions that were only\npoints of exhaustion. So chemistry divided and sub-divided down to\natoms; then, in the essential insecurity of all quasi-constructions, it\nbuilt up a system, which, to anyone so obsessed by his own hypnoses that\nhe is exempt to the chemist's hypnoses, is perceptibly enough an\nintellectual anaemia built upon infinitesimal debilities.\n\nIn _Science_, n.s., 31-298, E.D. Hovey, of the American Museum of\nNatural History, asserts or confesses that often have objects of\nmaterial such as fossiliferous limestone and slag been sent to him He\nsays that these things have been accompanied by assurances that they\nhave been seen to fall on lawns, on roads, in front of houses.\n\nThey are all excluded. They are not of true meteoritic material. They\nwere on the ground in the first place. It is only by coincidence that\nlightning has struck, or that a real meteorite, which was unfindable,\nhas struck near objects of slag and limestone.\n\nMr. Hovey says that the list might be extended indefinitely. That's a\ntantalizing suggestion of some very interesting stuff--\n\nHe says:\n\n\"But it is not worth while.\"\n\nI'd like to know what strange, damned, excommunicated things have been\nsent to museums by persons who have felt convinced that they had seen\nwhat they may have seen, strongly enough to risk ridicule, to make up\nbundles, go to express offices, and write letters. I accept that over\nthe door of every museum, into which such things enter, is written:\n\n\"Abandon Hope.\"\n\nIf a Mr. Symons mentions one instance of coal, or of slag or cinders,\nsaid to have fallen from the sky, we are not--except by association with\nthe \"carbonaceous\" meteorites--strong in our impression that coal\nsometimes falls to this earth from coal-burning super-constructions up\nsomewhere--\n\nIn _Comptes Rendus_, 91-197, M. Daubree tells the same story. Our\nacceptance, then, is that other curators could tell this same story.\nThen the phantomosity of our impression substantiates proportionately to\nits multiplicity. M. Daubree says that often have strange damned things\nbeen sent to the French museums, accompanied by assurances that they had\nbeen seen to fall from the sky. Especially to our interest, he mentions\ncoal and slag.\n\nExcluded.\n\nBuried un-named and undated in Science's potter's field.\n\nI do not say that the data of the damned should have the same rights as\nthe data of the saved. That would be justice. That would be of the\nPositive Absolute, and, though the ideal of, a violation of, the very\nessence of quasi-existence, wherein only to have the appearance of being\nis to express a preponderance of force one way or another--or\ninequilibrium, or inconsistency, or injustice.\n\nOur acceptance is that the passing away of exclusionism is a phenomenon\nof the twentieth century: that gods of the twentieth century will\nsustain our notions be they ever so unwashed and frowsy. But, in our own\nexpressions, we are limited, by the oneness of quasiness, to the very\nsame methods by which orthodoxy established and maintains its now sleek,\nsuave preposterousnesses. At any rate, though we are inspired by an\nespecial subtle essence--or imponderable, I think--that pervades the\ntwentieth century, we have not the superstition that we are offering\nanything as a positive fact. Rather often we have not the delusion that\nwe're any less superstitious and credulous than any logician, savage,\ncurator, or rustic.\n\nAn orthodox demonstration, in terms of which we shall have some\nheresies, is that if things found in coal could have got there only by\nfalling there--they fell there.\n\nSo, in the _Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc. Mems._, 2-9-306, it is argued\nthat certain roundish stones that have been found in coal are \"fossil\naerolites\": that they had fallen from the sky, ages ago, when the coal\nwas soft, because the coal had closed around them, showing no sign of\nentrance.\n\n_Proc. Soc. of Antiq. of Scotland_, 1-1-121:\n\nThat, in a lump of coal, from a mine in Scotland, an iron instrument had\nbeen found--\n\n\"The interest attaching to this singular relic arises from the fact of\nits having been found in the heart of a piece of coal, seven feet under\nthe surface.\"\n\nIf we accept that this object of iron was of workmanship beyond the\nmeans and skill of the primitive men who may have lived in Scotland when\ncoal was forming there--\n\n\"The instrument was considered to be modern.\"\n\nThat our expression has more of realness, or higher approximation to\nrealness, than has the attempt to explain that is made in the\n_Proceedings_:\n\nThat in modern times someone may have bored for coal, and that his drill\nmay have broken off in the coal it had penetrated.\n\nWhy he should have abandoned such easily accessible coal, I don't know.\nThe important point is that there was no sign of boring: that this\ninstrument was in a lump of coal that had closed around it so that its\npresence was not suspected, until the lump of coal was broken.\n\nNo mention can I find of this damned thing in any other publication. Of\ncourse there is an alternative here: the thing may not have fallen from\nthe sky: if in coal-forming times, in Scotland, there were, indigenous\nto this earth, no men capable of making such an iron instrument, it may\nhave been left behind by visitors from other worlds.\n\nIn an extraordinary approximation to fairness and justice, which is\npermitted to us, because we are quite as desirous to make acceptable\nthat nothing can be proved as we are to sustain our own expressions, we\nnote:\n\nThat in _Notes and Queries_, 11-1-408, there is an account of an ancient\ncopper seal, about the size of a penny, found in chalk, at a depth of\nfrom five to six feet, near Bredenstone, England. The design upon it is\nsaid to be of a monk kneeling before a virgin and child: a legend upon\nthe margin is said to be: \"St. Jordanis Monachi Spaldingie.\"\n\nI don't know about that. It looks very desirable--undesirable to us.\n\nThere's a wretch of an ultra-frowsy thing in the _Scientific American_,\n7-298, which we condemn ourselves, if somewhere, because of the oneness\nof allness, the damned must also be the damning. It's a newspaper story:\nthat about the first of June, 1851, a powerful blast, near Dorchester,\nMass., cast out from a bed of solid rock a bell-shaped vessel of an\nunknown metal: floral designs inlaid with silver; \"art of some cunning\nworkman.\" The opinion of the Editor of the _Scientific American_ is that\nthe thing had been made by Tubal Cain, who was the first inhabitant of\nDorchester. Though I fear that this is a little arbitrary, I am not\ndisposed to fly rabidly at every scientific opinion.\n\n_Nature_, 35-36:\n\nA block of metal found in coal, in Austria, 1885. It is now in the\nSalsburg museum.\n\nThis time we have another expression. Usually our intermediatist attack\nupon provincial positivism is: Science, in its attempted positivism\ntakes something such as \"true meteoritic material\" as a standard of\njudgment; but carbonaceous matter, except for its relative infrequency,\nis just as veritable a standard of judgment; carbonaceous matter merges\naway into such a variety of organic substances, that all standards are\nreduced to indistinguishability: if, then, there is no real standard\nagainst us, there is no real resistance to our own acceptances. Now our\nintermediatism is: Science takes \"true meteoritic material\" as a\nstandard of admission; but now we have an instance that quite as truly\nmakes \"true meteoritic material\" a standard of exclusion; or, then, a\nthing that denies itself is no real resistance to our own\nacceptances--this depending upon whether we have a datum of something of\n\"true meteoritic material\" that orthodoxy can never accept fell from the\nsky.\n\nWe're a little involved here. Our own acceptance is upon a carved,\ngeometric thing that, if found in a very old deposit, antedates human\nlife, except, perhaps, very primitive human life, as an indigenous\nproduct of this earth: but we're quite as much interested in the dilemma\nit made for the faithful.\n\nIt is of \"true meteoritic material.\" _L'Astronomie_, 1887-114, it is\nsaid that, though so geometric, its phenomena so characteristic of\nmeteorites exclude the idea that it was the work of man.\n\nAs to the deposit--Tertiary coal.\n\nComposition--iron, carbon, and a small quantity of nickel.\n\nIt has the pitted surface that is supposed by the faithful to be\ncharacteristic of meteorites.\n\nFor a full account of this subject, see _Comptes Rendus_, 103-702. The\nscientists who examined it could reach no agreement. They bifurcated:\nthen a compromise was suggested; but the compromise is a product of\ndisregard:\n\nThat it was of true meteoritic material, and had not been shaped by man;\n\nThat it was not of true meteoritic material, but telluric iron that had\nbeen shaped by man:\n\nThat it was true meteoritic material that had fallen from the sky, but\nhad been shaped by man, after its fall.\n\nThe data, one or more of which must be disregarded by each of these\nthree explanations, are: \"true meteoritic material\" and surface markings\nof meteorites; geometric form; presence in an ancient deposit; material\nas hard as steel; absence upon this earth, in Tertiary times, of men who\ncould work in material as hard as steel. It is said that, though of\n\"true meteoritic material,\" this object is virtually a steel object.\n\nSt. Augustine, with his orthodoxy, was never in--well, very much\nworse--difficulties than are the faithful here. By due disregard of a\ndatum or so, our own acceptance that it was a steel object that had\nfallen from the sky to this earth, in Tertiary times, is not forced upon\none. We offer ours as the only synthetic expression. For instance, in\n_Science Gossip_, 1887-58, it is described as a meteorite: in this\naccount there is nothing alarming to the pious, because, though\neverything else is told, its geometric form is not mentioned.\n\nIt's a cube. There is a deep incision all around it. Of its faces, two\nthat are opposite are rounded.\n\nThough I accept that our own expression can only rather approximate to\nTruth, by the wideness of its inclusions, and because it seems, of four\nattempts, to represent the only complete synthesis, and can be nullified\nor greatly modified by data that we, too, have somewhere disregarded,\nthe only means of nullification that I can think of would be\ndemonstration that this object is a mass of iron pyrites, which\nsometimes forms geometrically. But the analysis mentions not a trace of\nsulphur. Of course our weakness, or impositiveness, lies in that, by\nanyone to whom it would be agreeable to find sulphur in this thing,\nsulphur would be found in it--by our own intermediatism there is some\nsulphur in everything, or sulphur is only a localization or emphasis of\nsomething that, unemphasized, is in all things.\n\nSo there have, or haven't, been found upon this earth things that fell\nfrom the sky, or that were left behind by extra-mundane visitors to this\nearth--\n\nA yarn in the London _Times_, June 22, 1844: that some workmen,\nquarrying rock, close to the Tweed, about a quarter of a mile below\nRutherford Mills, discovered a gold thread embedded in the stone at a\ndepth of 8 feet: that a piece of the gold thread had been sent to the\noffice of the _Kelso Chronicle_.\n\nPretty little thing; not at all frowsy; rather damnable.\n\nLondon _Times_, Dec. 24, 1851:\n\nThat Hiram De Witt, of Springfield, Mass., returning from California,\nhad brought with him a piece of auriferous quartz about the size of a\nman's fist. It was accidentally dropped--split open--nail in it. There\nwas a cut-iron nail, size of a six-penny nail, slightly corroded. \"It\nwas entirely straight and had a perfect head.\"\n\nOr--California--ages ago, when auriferous quartz was\nforming--super-carpenter, million of miles or so up in the air--drops a\nnail.\n\nTo one not an intermediatist, it would seem incredible that this datum,\nnot only of the damned, but of the lowest of the damned, or of the\njournalistic caste of the accursed, could merge away with something else\ndamned only by disregard, and backed by what is called \"highest\nscientific authority\"--\n\nCommunication by Sir David Brewster (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1845-51):\n\nThat a nail had been found in a block of stone from Kingoodie Quarry,\nNorth Britain. The block in which the nail was found was nine inches\nthick, but as to what part of the quarry it had come from, there is no\nevidence--except that it could not have been from the surface. The\nquarry had been worked about twenty years. It consisted of alternate\nlayers of hard stone and a substance called \"till.\" The point of the\nnail, quite eaten with rust, projected into some \"till,\" upon the\nsurface of the block of stone. The rest of the nail lay upon the surface\nof the stone to within an inch of the head--that inch of it was embedded\nin the stone.\n\nAlthough its caste is high, this is a thing profoundly of the\ndamned--sort of a Brahmin as regarded by a Baptist. Its case was stated\nfairly; Brewster related all circumstances available to him--but there\nwas no discussion at the meeting of the British Association: no\nexplanation was offered--\n\nNevertheless the thing can be nullified--\n\nBut the nullification that we find is as much against orthodoxy in one\nrespect as it is against our own expression that inclusion in quartz or\nsandstone indicates antiquity--or there would have to be a revision of\nprevailing dogmas upon quartz and sandstone and age indicated by them,\nif the opposing data should be accepted. Of course it may be contended\nby both the orthodox and us heretics that the opposition is only a yarn\nfrom a newspaper. By an odd combination, we find our two lost souls that\nhave tried to emerge, chucked back to perdition by one blow:\n\n_Pop. Sci. News_, 1884-41:\n\nThat, according to the _Carson Appeal_, there had been found in a mine,\nquartz crystals that could have had only 15 years in which to form:\nthat, where a mill had been built, sandstone had been found, when the\nmill was torn down, that had hardened in 12 years: that in this\nsandstone was a piece of wood \"with a nail in it.\"\n\n_Annals of Scientific Discovery_, 1853-71:\n\nThat, at the meeting of the British Association, 1853, Sir David\nBrewster had announced that he had to bring before the meeting an object\n\"of so incredible a nature that nothing short of the strongest evidence\nwas necessary to render the statement at all probable.\"\n\nA crystal lens had been found in the treasure-house at Nineveh.\n\nIn many of the temples and treasure houses of old civilizations upon\nthis earth have been preserved things that have fallen from the sky--or\nmeteorites.\n\nAgain we have a Brahmin. This thing is buried alive in the heart of\npropriety: it is in the British Museum.\n\nCarpenter, in _The Microscope and Its Revelations_, gives two drawings\nof it. Carpenter argues that it is impossible to accept that optical\nlenses had ever been made by the ancients. Never occurred to\nhim--someone a million miles or so up in the air--looking through his\ntelescope--lens drops out.\n\nThis does not appeal to Carpenter: he says that this object must have\nbeen an ornament.\n\nAccording to Brewster, it was not an ornament, but \"a true optical\nlens.\"\n\nIn that case, in ruins of an old civilization upon this earth, has been\nfound an accursed thing that was, acceptably, not a product of any old\ncivilization indigenous to this earth.\n\n\n\n\n10\n\n\nEarly explorers have Florida mixed up with Newfoundland. But the\nconfusion is worse than that still earlier. It arises from simplicity.\nVery early explorers think that all land westward is one land, India:\nawareness of other lands as well as India comes as a slow process. I do\nnot now think of things arriving upon this earth from some especial\nother world. That was my notion when I started to collect our data. Or,\nas is a commonplace of observation, all intellection begins with the\nillusion of homogeneity. It's one of Spencer's data: we see\nhomogeneousness in all things distant, or with which we have small\nacquaintance. Advance from the relatively homogeneous to the relatively\nheterogeneous is Spencerian Philosophy--like everything else, so-called:\nnot that it was really Spencer's discovery, but was taken from von Baer,\nwho, in turn, was continuous with preceding evolutionary speculation.\nOur own expression is that all things are acting to advance to the\nhomogeneous, or are trying to localize Homogeneousness. Homogeneousness\nis an aspect of the Universal, wherein it is a state that does not merge\naway into something else. We regard homogeneousness as an aspect of\npositiveness, but it is our acceptance that infinite frustrations of\nattempts to positivize manifest themselves in infinite heterogeneity: so\nthat though things try to localize homogeneousness they end up in\nheterogeneity so great that it amounts to infinite dispersion or\nindistinguishability.\n\nSo all concepts are little attempted positivenesses, but soon have to\ngive in to compromise, modification, nullification, merging away into\nindistinguishability--unless, here and there, in the world's history,\nthere may have been a super-dogmatist, who, for only an infinitesimal of\ntime, has been able to hold out against heterogeneity or modification or\ndoubt or \"listening to reason,\" or loss of identity--in which\ncase--instant translation to heaven or the Positive Absolute.\n\nOdd thing about Spencer is that he never recognized that \"homogeneity,\"\n\"integration,\" and \"definiteness\" are all words for the same state, or\nthe state that we call \"positiveness.\" What we call his mistake is in\nthat he regarded \"homogeneousness\" as negative.\n\nI began with a notion of some one other world, from which objects and\nsubstances have fallen to this earth; which had, or which, to less\ndegree, has a tutelary interest in this earth; which is now attempting\nto communicate with this earth--modifying, because of data which will\npile up later, into acceptance that some other world is not attempting\nbut has been, for centuries, in communication with a sect, perhaps, or a\nsecret society, or certain esoteric ones of this earth's inhabitants.\n\nI lose a great deal of hypnotic power in not being able to concentrate\nattention upon some one other world.\n\nAs I have admitted before I'm intelligent, as contrasted with the\northodox. I haven't the aristocratic disregard of a New York curator or\nan Eskimo medicine-man.\n\nI have to dissipate myself in acceptance of a host of other worlds: size\nof the moon, some of them: one of them, at least--tremendous thing:\nwe'll take that up later. Vast, amorphous aerial regions, to which such\ndefinite words as \"worlds\" and \"planets\" seem inapplicable. And\nartificial constructions that I have called \"super-constructions\": one\nof them about the size of Brooklyn, I should say, offhand. And one or\nmore of them wheel-shaped things a goodly number of square miles in\narea.\n\nI think that earlier in this book, before we liberalized into embracing\neverything that comes along, your indignation, or indigestion would have\nexpressed in the notion that, if this were so, astronomers would have\nseen these other worlds and regions and vast geometric constructions.\nYou'd have had that notion: you'd have stopped there.\n\nBut the attempt to stop is saying \"enough\" to the insatiable. In cosmic\npunctuation there are no periods: illusion of periods is incomplete view\nof colons and semi-colons.\n\nWe can't stop with the notion that if there were such phenomena,\nastronomers would have seen them. Because of our experience with\nsuppression and disregard, we suspect, before we go into the subject at\nall, that astronomers have seen them; that navigators and meteorologists\nhave seen them; that individual scientists and other trained observers\nhave seen them many times--\n\nThat it is the System that has excluded data of them.\n\nAs to the Law of Gravitation, and astronomers' formulas, remember that\nthese formulas worked out in the time of Laplace as well as they do now.\nBut there are hundreds of planetary bodies now known that were then not\nknown. So a few hundred worlds more of ours won't make any difference.\nLaplace knew of about only thirty bodies in this solar system: about six\nhundred are recognized now--\n\nWhat are the discoveries of geology and biology to a theologian?\n\nHis formulas still work out as well as they ever did.\n\nIf the Law of Gravitation could be stated as a real utterance, it might\nbe a real resistance to us. But we are told only that gravitation is\ngravitation. Of course to an intermediatist, nothing can be defined\nexcept in terms of itself--but even the orthodox, in what seems to me to\nbe the innate premonitions of realness, not founded upon experience,\nagree that to define a thing in terms of itself is not real definition.\nIt is said that by gravitation is meant the attraction of all things\nproportionately to mass and inversely as the square of the distance.\nMass would mean inter-attraction holding together final particles, if\nthere were final particles. Then, until final particles be discovered,\nonly one term of this expression survives, or mass is attraction. But\ndistance is only extent of mass, unless one holds out for absolute\nvacuum among planets, a position against which we could bring a host of\ndata. But there is no possible means of expressing that gravitation is\nanything other than attraction. So there is nothing to resist us but\nsuch a phantom as--that gravitation is the gravitation of all\ngravitations proportionately to gravitation and inversely as the square\nof gravitation. In a quasi-existence, nothing more sensible than this\ncan be said upon any so-called subject--perhaps there are higher\napproximations to ultimate sensibleness.\n\nNevertheless we seem to have a feeling that with the System against us\nwe have a kind of resistance here. We'd have felt so formerly, at any\nrate: I think the Dr. Grays and Prof. Hitchcocks have modified our\ntrustfulness toward indistinguishability. As to the perfection of this\nSystem that quasi-opposes us and the infallibility of its\nmathematics--as if there could be real mathematics in a mode of seeming\nwhere twice two are not four--we've been told over and over of their\nvindication in the discovery of Neptune.\n\nI'm afraid that the course we're taking will turn out like every other\ndevelopment. We began humbly, admitting that we're of the damned--\n\nBut our eyebrows--\n\nJust a faint flicker in them, or in one of them, every time we hear of\nthe \"triumphal discovery of Neptune\"--this \"monumental achievement of\ntheoretical astronomy,\" as the text-books call it.\n\nThe whole trouble is that we've looked it up.\n\nThe text-books omit this:\n\nThat, instead of the orbit of Neptune agreeing with the calculations of\nAdams and Leverrier, it was so different--that Leverrier said that it\nwas not the planet of his calculations.\n\nLater it was thought best to say no more upon that subject.\n\nThe text-books omit this:\n\nThat, in 1846, everyone who knew a sine from a cosine was out sining and\ncosining for a planet beyond Uranus.\n\nTwo of them guessed right.\n\nTo some minds, even after Leverrier's own rejection of Neptune, the word\n\"guessed\" may be objectionable--but, according to Prof. Peirce, of\nHarvard, the calculations of Adams and Leverrier would have applied\nquite as well to positions many degrees from the position of Neptune.\n\nOr for Prof. Peirce's demonstration that the discovery of Neptune was\nonly a \"happy accident,\" see _Proc. Amer. Acad. Sciences_, 1-65.\n\nFor references, see Lowell's _Evolution of Worlds_.\n\nOr comets: another nebulous resistance to our own notions. As to\neclipses, I have notes upon several of them that did not occur upon\nscheduled time, though with differences only of seconds--and one\ndelightful lost soul, deep-buried, but buried in the ultra-respectable\nrecords of the Royal Astronomical Society, upon an eclipse that did not\noccur at all. That delightful, ultra-sponsored thing of perdition is too\ngood and malicious to be dismissed with passing notice: we'll have him\nlater.\n\nThroughout the history of astronomy, every comet that has come back upon\npredicted time--not that, essentially, there was anything more abstruse\nabout it than is a prediction that you can make of a postman's\nperiodicities tomorrow--was advertised for all it was worth. It's the\nway reputations are worked up for fortune-tellers by the faithful. The\ncomets that didn't come back--omitted or explained. Or Encke's comet. It\ncame back slower and slower. But the astronomers explained. Be almost\nabsolutely sure of that: they explained. They had it all worked out and\nformulated and \"proved\" why that comet was coming back slower and\nslower--and there the damn thing began coming faster and faster.\n\nHalley's comet.\n\nAstronomy--\"the perfect science, as we astronomers like to call it.\"\n(Jacoby.)\n\nIt's my own notion that if, in a real existence, an astronomer could not\ntell one longitude from another, he'd be sent back to this purgatory of\nours until he could meet that simple requirement.\n\nHalley was sent to the Cape of Good Hope to determine its longitude. He\ngot it degrees wrong. He gave to Africa's noble Roman promontory a\nretrousse twist that would take the pride out of any Kaffir.\n\nWe hear everlastingly of Halley's comet. It came back--maybe. But,\nunless we look the matter up in contemporaneous records, we hear nothing\nof--the Leonids, for instance. By the same methods as those by which\nHalley's comet was predicted, the Leonids were predicted. November,\n1898--no Leonids. It was explained. They had been perturbed. They would\nappear in November, 1899. November, 1899--November, 1900--no Leonids.\n\nMy notion of astronomic accuracy:\n\nWho could not be a prize marksman, if only his hits be recorded?\n\nAs to Halley's comet, of 1910--everybody now swears he saw it. He has to\nperjure himself: otherwise he'd be accused of having no interest in\ngreat, inspiring things that he's never given any attention to.\n\nRegard this:\n\nThat there never is a moment when there is not some comet in the sky.\nVirtually there is no year in which several new comets are not\ndiscovered, so plentiful are they. Luminous fleas on a vast black\ndog--in popular impressions, there is no realization of the extent to\nwhich this solar system is flea-bitten.\n\nIf a comet have not the orbit that astronomers have\npredicted--perturbed. If--like Halley's comet--it be late--even a year\nlate--perturbed. When a train is an hour late, we have small opinion of\nthe predictions of timetables. When a comet's a year late, all we ask\nis--that it be explained. We hear of the inflation and arrogance of\nastronomers. My own acceptance is not that they are imposing upon us:\nthat they are requiting us. For many of us priests no longer function to\ngive us seeming rapport with Perfection, Infallibility--the Positive\nAbsolute. Astronomers have stepped forward to fill a vacancy--with\nquasi-phantomosity--but, in our acceptance, with a higher approximation\nto substantiality than had the attenuations that preceded them. I should\nsay, myself, that all that we call progress is not so much response to\n\"urge\" as it is response to a hiatus--or if you want something to grow\nsomewhere, dig out everything else in its area. So I have to accept that\nthe positive assurances of astronomers are necessary to us, or the\nblunderings, evasions and disguises of astronomers would never be\ntolerated: that, given such latitude as they are permitted to take, they\ncould not be very disastrously mistaken. Suppose the comet called\nHalley's had not appeared--\n\nEarly in 1910, a far more important comet than the anaemic luminosity\nsaid to be Halley's, appeared. It was so brilliant that it was visible\nin daylight. The astronomers would have been saved anyway. If this other\ncomet did not have the predicted orbit--perturbation. If you're going to\nConey Island, and predict there'll be a special kind of a pebble on the\nbeach, I don't see how you can disgrace yourself, if some other pebble\nwill do just as well--because the feeble thing said to have been seen in\n1910 was no more in accord with the sensational descriptions given out\nby astronomers in advance than is a pale pebble with a brick-red\nboulder.\n\nI predict that next Wednesday, a large Chinaman, in evening clothes,\nwill cross Broadway, at 42nd Street, at 9 P.M. He doesn't, but a\ntubercular Jap in a sailor's uniform does cross Broadway, at 35th\nStreet, Friday, at noon. Well, a Jap is a perturbed Chinaman, and\nclothes are clothes.\n\nI remember the terrifying predictions made by the honest and credulous\nastronomers, who must have been themselves hypnotized, or they could not\nhave hypnotized the rest of us, in 1909. Wills were made. Human life\nmight be swept from this planet. In quasi-existence, which is\nessentially Hibernian, that would be no reason why wills should not be\nmade. The less excitable of us did expect at least some pretty good\nfireworks.\n\nI have to admit that it is said that, in New York, a light was seen in\nthe sky.\n\nIt was about as terrifying as the scratch of a match on the seat of some\nbreeches half a mile away.\n\nIt was not on time.\n\nThough I have heard that a faint nebulosity, which I did not see,\nmyself, though I looked when I was told to look, was seen in the sky, it\nappeared several days after the time predicted.\n\nA hypnotized host of imbeciles of us: told to look up at the sky: we\ndid--like a lot of pointers hypnotized by a partridge.\n\nThe effect:\n\nAlmost everybody now swears that he saw Halley's comet, and that it was\na glorious spectacle.\n\nAn interesting circumstance here is that seemingly we are trying to\ndiscredit astronomers because astronomers oppose us--that's not my\nimpression. We shall be in the Brahmin caste of the hell of the\nBaptists. Almost all our data, in some regiments of this procession, are\nobservations by astronomers, few of them mere amateur astronomers. It is\nthe System that opposes us. It is the System that is suppressing\nastronomers. I think we pity them in their captivity. Ours is not\nmalice--in a positive sense. It's chivalry--somewhat. Unhappy\nastronomers looking out from high towers in which they are\nimprisoned--we appear upon the horizon.\n\nBut, as I have said, our data do not relate to some especial other\nworld. I mean very much what a savage upon an ocean island might\nvaguely think of in his speculations--not upon some other land, but\ncomplexes of continents and their phenomena: cities, factories in\ncities, means of communication--\n\nNow all the other savages would know of a few vessels sailing in their\nregular routes, passing this island in regularized periodicities. The\ntendency in these minds would be expression of the universal tendency\ntoward positivism--or Completeness--or conviction that these few\nregularized vessels constituted all. Now I think of some especial savage\nwho suspects otherwise--because he's very backward and unimaginative and\ninsensible to the beautiful ideals of the others: not piously occupied,\nlike the others, in bowing before impressive-looking sticks of wood;\ndishonestly taking time for his speculations, while the others are\npatriotically witch-finding. So the other higher and nobler savages know\nabout the few regularized vessels: know when to expect them; have their\nperiodicities all worked out; just about when vessels will pass, or\neclipse each other--explaining that all vagaries were due to atmospheric\nconditions.\n\nThey'd come out strong in explaining.\n\nYou can't read a book upon savages without noting what resolute\nexplainers they are.\n\nThey'd say that all this mechanism was founded upon the mutual\nattraction of the vessels--deduced from the fall of a monkey from a palm\ntree--or, if not that, that devils were pushing the vessels--something\nof the kind.\n\nStorms.\n\nDebris, not from these vessels, cast up by the waves.\n\nDisregarded.\n\nHow can one think of something and something else, too?\n\nI'm in the state of mind of a savage who might find upon a shore, washed\nup by the same storm, buoyant parts of a piano and a paddle that was\ncarved by cruder hands than his own: something light and summery from\nIndia, and a fur overcoat from Russia--or all science, though\napproximating wider and wider, is attempt to conceive of India in terms\nof an ocean island, and of Russia in terms of India so interpreted.\nThough I am trying to think of Russia and India in world-wide terms, I\ncannot think that that, or the universalizing of the local, is cosmic\npurpose. The higher idealist is the positivist who tries to localize\nthe universal, and is in accord with cosmic purpose: the super-dogmatist\nof a local savage who can hold out, without a flurry of doubt, that a\npiano washed up on a beach is the trunk of a palm tree that a shark has\nbitten, leaving his teeth in it. So we fear for the soul of Dr. Gray,\nbecause he did not devote his whole life to that one stand that, whether\npossible or inconceivable, thousands of fishes had been cast from one\nbucket.\n\nSo, unfortunately for myself, if salvation be desirable, I look out\nwidely but amorphously, indefinitely and heterogeneously. If I say I\nconceive of another world that is now in secret communication with\ncertain esoteric inhabitants of this earth, I say I conceive of still\nother worlds that are trying to establish communication with all the\ninhabitants of this earth. I fit my notions to the data I find. That is\nsupposed to be the right and logical and scientific thing to do; but it\nis no way to approximate to form, system, organization. Then I think I\nconceive of other worlds and vast structures that pass us by, within a\nfew miles, without the slightest desire to communicate, quite as tramp\nvessels pass many islands without particularizing one from another. Then\nI think I have data of a vast construction that has often come to this\nearth, dipped into an ocean, submerged there a while, then going\naway--Why? I'm not absolutely sure. How would an Eskimo explain a\nvessel, sending ashore for coal, which is plentiful upon some Arctic\nbeaches, though of unknown use to the natives, then sailing away, with\nno interest in the natives?\n\nA great difficulty in trying to understand vast constructions that show\nno interest in us:\n\nThe notion that we must be interesting.\n\nI accept that, though we're usually avoided, probably for moral reasons,\nsometimes this earth has been visited by explorers. I think that the\nnotion that there have been extra-mundane visitors to China, within what\nwe call the historic period, will be only ordinarily absurd, when we\ncome to that datum.\n\nI accept that some of the other worlds are of conditions very similar to\nour own. I think of others that are very different--so that visitors\nfrom them could not live here--without artificial adaptations.\n\nHow some of them could breathe our attenuated air, if they came from a\ngelatinous atmosphere--\n\nMasks.\n\nThe masks that have been found in ancient deposits.\n\nMost of them are of stone, and are said to have been ceremonial regalia\nof savages--\n\nBut the mask that was found in Sullivan County, Missouri, in 1879\n(_American Antiquarian_, 3-336).\n\nIt is made of iron and silver.\n\n\n\n\n11\n\n\nOne of the damnedest in our whole saturnalia of the accursed--\n\nBecause it is hopeless to try to shake off an excommunication only by\nsaying that we're damned by blacker things than ourselves; and that the\ndamned are those who admit they're of the damned. Inertia and hypnosis\nare too strong for us. We say that: then we go right on admitting we're\nof the damned. It is only by being more nearly real that we can sweep\naway the quasi-things that oppose us. Of course, as a whole, we have\nconsiderable amorphousness, but we are thinking now of \"individual\"\nacceptances. Wideness is an aspect of Universalness or Realness. If our\nsyntheses disregard fewer data than do opposing syntheses--which are\noften not syntheses at all, but mere consideration of some one\ncircumstance--less widely synthetic things fade away before us. Harmony\nis an aspect of the Universal, by which we mean Realness. If we\napproximate more highly to harmony among the parts of an expression and\nto all available circumstances of an occurrence, the self-contradictors\nturn hazy. Solidity is an aspect of realness. We pile them up, and we\npile them up, or they pass and pass and pass: things that bulk large as\nthey march by, supporting and solidifying one another--\n\nAnd still, and for regiments to come, hypnosis and inertia rule us--\n\nOne of the damnedest of our data:\n\nIn the _Scientific American_, Sept. 10, 1910, Charles F. Holder writes:\n\n\"Many years ago, a strange stone resembling a meteorite, fell into the\nValley of the Yaqui, Mexico, and the sensational story went from one end\nto the other of the country that a stone bearing human inscriptions had\ndescended to the earth.\"\n\nThe bewildering observation here is Mr. Holder's assertion that this\nstone did fall. It seems to me that he must mean that it fell by\ndislodgment from a mountainside into a valley--but we shall see that it\nwas such a marked stone that very unlikely would it have been unknown to\ndwellers in a valley, if it had been reposing upon a mountainside above\nthem. It may have been carelessness: intent may have been to say that a\nsensational story of a strange stone said to have fallen, etc.\n\nThis stone was reported by Major Frederick Burnham, of the British Army.\nLater Major Burnham revisited it, and Mr. Holder accompanied him, their\npurpose to decipher the inscriptions upon it, if possible.\n\n\"This stone was a brown, igneous rock, its longest axis about eight\nfeet, and on the eastern face, which had an angle of about forty-five\ndegrees, was the deep-cut inscription.\"\n\nMr. Holder says that he recognized familiar Mayan symbols in the\ninscription. His method was the usual method by which anything can be\n\"identified\" as anything else: that is to pick out whatever is agreeable\nand disregard the rest. He says that he has demonstrated that most of\nthe symbols are Mayan. One of our intermediatist pseudo-principles is\nthat any way of demonstrating anything is just as good a way of\ndemonstrating anything else. By Mr. Holder's method we could demonstrate\nthat we're Mayan--if that should be a source of pride to us. One of the\ncharacters upon this stone is a circle within a circle--similar\ncharacter found by Mr. Holder is a Mayan manuscript. There are two 6's.\n6's can be found in Mayan manuscripts. A double scroll. There are dots\nand there are dashes. Well, then, we, in turn, disregard the circle\nwithin a circle and the double scroll and emphasize that 6's occur in\nthis book, and that dots are plentiful, and would be more plentiful if\nit were customary to use the small \"i\" for the first personal\npronoun--that when it comes to dashes--that's demonstrated: we're Mayan.\n\nI suppose the tendency is to feel that we're sneering at some valuable\narchaeologic work, and that Mr. Holder did make a veritable\nidentification.\n\nHe writes:\n\n\"I submitted the photographs to the Field Museum and the Smithsonian and\none or two others, and, to my surprise, the reply was that they could\nmake nothing out of it.\"\n\nOur indefinite acceptance, by preponderance of three or four groups of\nmuseum-experts against one person, is that a stone bearing inscriptions\nunassimilable with any known language upon this earth, is said to have\nfallen from the sky. Another poor wretch of an outcast belonging here is\nnoted in the _Scientific American_, 48-261: that, of an object, or a\nmeteorite, that fell Feb. 16, 1883, near Brescia, Italy, a false report\nwas circulated that one of the fragments bore the impress of a hand.\nThat's all that is findable by me upon this mere gasp of a thing.\nIntermediatistically, my acceptance is that, though in the course of\nhuman history, there have been some notable approximations, there never\nhas been a real liar: that he could not survive in intermediateness,\nwhere everything merges away or has its pseudo-base in something\nelse--would be instantly translated to the Negative Absolute. So my\nacceptance is that, though curtly dismissed, there was something to base\nupon in this report; that there were unusual markings upon this object.\nOf course that is not to jump to the conclusion that they were cuneiform\ncharacters that looked like finger-prints.\n\nAltogether, I think that in some of our past expressions, we must have\nbeen very efficient, if the experience of Mr. Symons be typical, so\nindefinite are we becoming here. Just here we are interested in many\nthings that have been found, especially in the United States, which\nspeak of a civilization, or of many civilizations not indigenous to\nthis earth. One trouble is in trying to decide whether they fell here\nfrom the sky, or were left behind by visitors from other worlds. We have\na notion that there have been disasters aloft, and that coins have\ndropped here: that inhabitants of this earth found them or saw them\nfall, and then made coins imitatively: it may be that coins were\nshowered here by something of a tutelary nature that undertook to\nadvance us from the stage of barter to the use of a medium. If coins\nshould be identified as Roman coins, we've had so much experience with\n\"identifications\" that we know a phantom when we see one--but, even so,\nhow could Roman coins have got to North America--far in the interior of\nNorth America--or buried under the accumulation of centuries of\nsoil--unless they did drop from--wherever the first Romans came from?\nIgnatius Donnelly, in _Atlantis_, gives a list of objects that have been\nfound in mounds that are supposed to antedate all European influence in\nAmerica: lathe-made articles, such as traders--from somewhere--would\nsupply to savages--marks of the lathe said to be unmistakable. Said to\nbe: of course we can't accept that anything is unmistakable. In the\n_Rept. Smithson. Inst._, 1881-619, there is an account, by Charles C.\nJones, of two silver crosses that were found in Georgia. They are\nskillfully made, highly ornamented crosses, but are not conventional\ncrucifixes: all arms of equal length. Mr. Jones is a good\npositivist--that De Sota had halted at the \"precise\" spot where these\ncrosses were found. But the spirit of negativeness that lurks in all\nthings said to be \"precise\" shows itself in that upon one of these\ncrosses is an inscription that has no meaning in Spanish or any other\nknown, terrestrial language:\n\n\"IYNKICIDU,\" according to Mr. Jones. He thinks that this is a name, and\nthat there is an aboriginal ring to it, though I should say, myself,\nthat he was thinking of the far-distant Incas: that the Spanish donor\ncut on the cross the name of an Indian to whom it was presented. But we\nlook at the inscription ourselves and see that the letters said to be\n\"C\" and \"D\" are turned the wrong way, and that the letter said to be \"K\"\nis not only turned the wrong way, but is upside down.\n\nIt is difficult to accept that the remarkable, the very extensive,\ncopper mines in the region of Lake Superior were ever the works of\nAmerican aborigines. Despite the astonishing extent of these mines,\nnothing has ever been found to indicate that the region was ever\ninhabited by permanent dwellers-- \"... not a vestige of a dwelling, a\nskeleton, or a bone has been found.\" The Indians have no traditions\nrelating to the mines. (_Amer. Antiquarian_, 25-258.) I think that we've\nhad visitors: that they have come here for copper, for instance. As to\nother relics of them--but we now come upon frequency of a merger that\nhas not so often appeared before:\n\nFraudulency.\n\nHair called real hair--then there are wigs. Teeth called real\nteeth--then there are false teeth. Official money--counterfeit money.\nIt's the bane of psychic research. If there be psychic phenomena, there\nmust be fraudulent psychic phenomena. So desperate is the situation here\nthat Carrington argues that, even if Palladino be caught cheating, that\nis not to say that all her phenomena are fraudulent. My own version is:\nthat nothing indicates anything, in a positive sense, because, in a\npositive sense, there is nothing to be indicated. Everything that is\ncalled true must merge away indistinguishably into something called\nfalse. Both are expressions of the same underlying quasiness, and are\ncontinuous. Fraudulent antiquarian relics are very common, but they are\nnot more common than are fraudulent paintings.\n\nW.S. Forest, _Historical Sketches of Norfolk, Virginia_:\n\nThat, in September, 1833, when some workmen, near Norfolk, were boring\nfor water, a coin was drawn up from a depth of about 30 feet. It was\nabout the size of an English shilling, but oval--an oval disk, if not a\ncoin. The figures upon it were distinct, and represented \"a warrior or\nhunter and other characters, apparently of Roman origin.\"\n\nThe means of exclusion would probably be--men digging a hole--no one\nelse looking: one of them drops a coin into the hole--as to where he got\na strange coin, remarkable in shape even--that's disregarded. Up comes\nthe coin--expressions of astonishment from the evil one who had dropped\nit.\n\nHowever, the antiquarians have missed this coin. I can find no other\nmention of it.\n\nAnother coin. Also a little study in the genesis of a prophet.\n\nIn the _American Antiquarian_, 16-313, is copied a story by a\ncorrespondent to the _Detroit News_, of a copper coin about the size of\na two-cent piece, said to have been found in a Michigan mound. The\nEditor says merely that he does not endorse the find. Upon this slender\nbasis, he buds out, in the next number of the _Antiquarian_:\n\n\"The coin turns out, as we predicted, to be a fraud.\"\n\nYou can imagine the scorn of Elijah, or any of the old more nearly real\nprophets.\n\nOr all things are tried by the only kind of jurisprudence we have in\nquasi-existence:\n\nPresumed to be innocent until convicted--but they're guilty.\n\nThe Editor's reasoning is as phantom-like as my own, or St. Paul's, or\nDarwin's. The coin is condemned because it came from the same region\nfrom which, a few years before, had come pottery that had been called\nfraudulent. The pottery had been condemned because it was condemnable.\n\n_Scientific American_, June 17, 1882:\n\nThat a farmer, in Cass Co., Ill., had picked up, on his farm, a bronze\ncoin, which was sent to Prof. F.F. Hilder, of St. Louis, who identified\nit as a coin of Antiochus IV. Inscription said to be in ancient Greek\ncharacters: translated as \"King Antiochus Epiphanes (Illustrious) the\nVictorius.\" Sounds quite definite and convincing--but we have some more\ntranslations coming.\n\nIn the _American Pioneer_, 2-169, are shown two faces of a copper coin,\nwith characters very much like those upon the Grave Creek stone--which,\nwith translations, we'll take up soon. This coin is said to have been\nfound in Connecticut, in 1843.\n\n_Records of the Past_, 12-182:\n\nThat, early in 1913, a coin, said to be a Roman coin, was reported as\ndiscovered in an Illinois mound. It was sent to Dr. Emerson, of the Art\nInstitute, of Chicago. His opinion was that the coin is \"of the rare\nmintage of Domitius Domitianus, Emperor in Egypt.\" As to its discovery\nin an Illinois mound, Dr. Emerson disclaims responsibility. But what\nstrikes me here is that a joker should not have been satisfied with an\nordinary Roman coin. Where did he get a rare coin, and why was it not\nmissed from some collection? I have looked over numismatic journals\nenough to accept that the whereabouts of every rare coin in anyone's\npossession is known to coin-collectors. Seems to me nothing left but to\ncall this another \"identification.\"\n\n_Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc._, 12-224:\n\nThat, in July, 1871, a letter was received from Mr. Jacob W. Moffit, of\nChillicothe, Ill., enclosing a photograph of a coin, which he said had\nbeen brought up, by him, while boring, from a depth of 120 feet.\n\nOf course, by conventional scientific standards, such depth has some\nextraordinary meaning. Palaeontologists, geologists, and archaeologists\nconsider themselves reasonable in arguing ancient origin of the\nfar-buried. We only accept: depth is a pseudo-standard with us; one\nearthquake could bury a coin of recent mintage 120 feet below the\nsurface.\n\nAccording to a writer in the _Proceedings_, the coin is uniform in\nthickness, and had never been hammered out by savages--\"there are other\ntokens of the machine shop.\"\n\nBut, according to Prof. Leslie, it is an astrologic amulet. \"There are\nupon it the signs of Pisces and Leo.\"\n\nOr, with due disregard, you can find signs of your great-grand-mother,\nor of the Crusades, or of the Mayans, upon anything that ever came from\nChillicothe or from a five and ten cent store. Anything that looks like\na cat and a goldfish looks like Leo and Pisces: but, by due suppressions\nand distortions there's nothing that can't be made to look like a cat\nand a goldfish. I fear me we're turning a little irritable here. To be\ndamned by slumbering giants and interesting little harlots and clowns\nwho rank high in their profession is at least supportable to our vanity;\nbut, we find that the anthropologists are of the slums of the divine, or\nof an archaic kindergarten of intellectuality, and it is very\nunflattering to find a mess of moldy infants sitting in judgment upon\nus.\n\nProf. Leslie then finds, as arbitrarily as one might find that some\njoker put the Brooklyn Bridge where it is, that \"the piece was placed\nthere as a practical joke, though not by its present owner; and is a\nmodern fabrication, perhaps of the sixteenth century, possibly\nHispano-American or French-American origin.\"\n\nIt's sheer, brutal attempt to assimilate a thing that may or may not\nhave fallen from the sky, with phenomena admitted by the anthropologic\nsystem: or with the early French or Spanish explorers of Illinois.\nThough it is ridiculous in a positive sense to give reasons, it is more\nacceptable to attempt reasons more nearly real than opposing reasons. Of\ncourse, in his favor, we note that Prof. Leslie qualifies his notions.\nBut his disregards are that there is nothing either French or Spanish\nabout this coin. A legend upon it is said to be \"somewhere between\nArabic and Phoenician, without being either.\" Prof. Winchell (_Sparks\nfrom a Geologist's Hammer_, p. 170) says of the crude designs upon this\ncoin, which was in his possession--scrawls of an animal and of a\nwarrior, or of a cat and a goldfish, whichever be convenient--that they\nhad been neither stamped nor engraved, but \"looked as if etched with an\nacid.\" That is a method unknown in numismatics of this earth. As to the\ncrudity of design upon this coin, and something else--that, though the\n\"warrior\" may be, by due disregards, either a cat or a goldfish, we have\nto note that his headdress is typical of the American Indian--could be\nexplained, of course, but for fear that we might be instantly translated\nto the Positive Absolute, which may not be absolutely desirable, we\nprefer to have some flaws or negativeness in our own expressions.\n\nData of more than the thrice-accursed:\n\nTablets of stone, with the ten commandments engraved upon them, in\nHebrew, said to have been found in mounds in the United States:\n\nMasonic emblems said to have been found in mounds in the United States.\n\nWe're upon the borderline of our acceptances, and we're amorphous in the\nuncertainties and mergings of our outline. Conventionally, or, with no\nreal reason for so doing, we exclude these things, and then, as grossly\nand arbitrarily and irrationally--though our attempt is always to\napproximate away from these negative states--as ever a Kepler, Newton,\nor Darwin made his selections, without which he could not have seemed\nto be, at all, because every one of them is now seen to be an illusion,\nwe accept that other lettered things have been found in mounds in the\nUnited States. Of course we do what we can to make the selection seem\nnot gross and arbitrary and irrational. Then, if we accept that\ninscribed things of ancient origin have been found in the United States;\nthat cannot be attributed to any race indigenous to the western\nhemisphere; that are not in any language ever heard of in the eastern\nhemisphere--there's nothing to it but to turn non-Euclidian and try to\nconceive of a third \"hemisphere,\" or to accept that there has been\nintercourse between the western hemisphere and some other world.\n\nBut there is a peculiarity to these inscribed objects. They remind me of\nthe records left, by Sir John Franklin, in the Arctic; but, also, of\nattempts made by relief expeditions to communicate with the Franklin\nexpedition. The lost explorers cached their records--or concealed them\nconspicuously in mounds. The relief expeditions sent up balloons, from\nwhich messages were dropped broadcast. Our data are of things that have\nbeen cached, and of things that seem to have been dropped--\n\nOr a Lost Expedition from--Somewhere.\n\nExplorers from somewhere, and their inability to return--then, a long,\nsentimental, persistent attempt, in the spirit of our own Arctic\nrelief-expeditions--at least to establish communication--\n\nWhat if it may have succeeded?\n\nWe think of India--the millions of natives who are ruled by a small band\nof esoterics--only because they receive support and direction\nfrom--somewhere else--or from England.\n\nIn 1838, Mr. A.B. Tomlinson, owner of the great mound at Grave Creek,\nWest Virginia, excavated the mound. He said that, in the presence of\nwitnesses, he had found a small, flat, oval stone--or disk--upon which\nwere engraved alphabetic characters.\n\nCol. Whittelsey, an expert in these matters, says that the stone is now\n\"universally regarded by archaeologists as a fraud\": that, in his\nopinion, Mr. Tomlinson had been imposed upon.\n\nAvebury, _Prehistoric Times_, p. 271:\n\n\"I mention it because it has been the subject of much discussion, but\nit is now generally admitted to be a fraud. It is inscribed with Hebrew\ncharacters, but the forger has copied the modern instead of the ancient\nform of the letters.\"\n\nAs I have said, we're as irritable here, under the oppressions of the\nanthropologists as ever were slaves in the south toward superiorities\nfrom \"poor white trash.\" When we finally reverse our relative positions\nwe shall give lowest place to the anthropologists. A Dr. Gray does at\nleast look at a fish before he conceives of a miraculous origin for it.\nWe shall have to submerge Lord Avebury far below him--if we accept that\nthe stone from Grave Creek is generally regarded as a fraud by eminent\nauthorities who did not know it from some other object--or, in general,\nthat so decided an opinion must be the product of either deliberate\ndisregard or ignorance or fatigue. The stone belongs to a class of\nphenomena that is repulsive to the System. It will not assimilate with\nthe System. Let such an object be heard of by such a systematist as\nAvebury, and the mere mention of it is as nearly certainly the stimulus\nto a conventional reaction as is a charged body to an electroscope or a\nglass of beer to a prohibitionist. It is of the ideals of Science to\nknow one object from another before expressing an opinion upon a thing,\nbut that is not the spirit of universal mechanics:\n\nA thing. It is attractive or repulsive. Its conventional reaction\nfollows.\n\nBecause it is not the stone from Grave Creek that is in Hebrew\ncharacters, either ancient or modern: it is a stone from Newark, Ohio,\nof which the story is told that a forger made this mistake of using\nmodern instead of ancient Hebrew characters. We shall see that the\ninscription upon the Grave Creek stone is not in Hebrew.\n\nOr all things are presumed to be innocent, but are supposed to be\nguilty--unless they assimilate.\n\nCol. Whittelsey (_Western Reserve Historical Tracts, No. 33_) says that\nthe Grave Creek stone was considered a fraud by Wilson, Squires, and\nDavis. Then he comes to the Congress of Archaeologists at Nancy, France,\n1875. It is hard for Col. Whittelsey to admit that, at this meeting,\nwhich sounds important, the stone was endorsed. He reminds us of Mr.\nSymons, and \"the man\" who \"considered\" that he saw something. Col.\nWhittelsey's somewhat tortuous expression is that the finder of the\nstone \"so imposed his views\" upon the congress that it pronounced the\nstone genuine.\n\nAlso the stone was examined by Schoolcraft. He gave his opinion for\ngenuineness.\n\nOr there's only one process, and \"see-saw\" is one of its aspects. Three\nor four fat experts on the side against us. We find four or five plump\nones on our side. Or all that we call logic and reasoning ends up as\nsheer preponderance of avoirdupois.\n\nThen several philologists came out in favor of genuineness. Some of them\ntranslated the inscription. Of course, as we have said, it is our\nmethod--or the method of orthodoxy--way in which all conclusions are\nreached--to have some awfully eminent, or preponderantly plump,\nauthorities with us whenever we can--in this case, however, we feel just\na little apprehensive in being caught in such excellently obese, but\nsomewhat negativized, company:\n\nTranslation by M. Jombard:\n\n\"Thy orders are laws: thou shinest in impetuous elan and rapid chamois.\"\n\nM. Maurice Schwab:\n\n\"The chief of Emigration who reached these places (or this island) has\nfixed these characters forever.\"\n\nM. Oppert:\n\n\"The grave of one who was assassinated here. May God, to revenge him,\nstrike his murderer, cutting off the hand of his existence.\"\n\nI like the first one best. I have such a vivid impression from it of\nsomeone polishing up brass or something, and in an awful hurry. Of\ncourse the third is more dramatic--still they're all very good. They are\nperturbations of one another, I suppose.\n\nIn Tract 44, Col. Whittelsey returns to the subject. He gives the\nconclusion of Major De Helward, at the Congress of Luxembourg, 1877:\n\n\"If Prof. Read and myself are right in the conclusion that the figures\nare neither of the Runic, Phoenician, Canaanite, Hebrew, Lybian,\nCeltic, or any other alphabet-language, its importance has been greatly\nover-rated.\"\n\nObvious to a child; obvious to any mentality not helplessly subjected to\na system:\n\nThat just therein lies the importance of this object.\n\nIt is said that an ideal of science is to find out the new--but, unless\na thing be of the old, it is \"unimportant.\"\n\n\"It is not worth while.\" (Hovey.)\n\nThen the inscribed ax, or wedge, which, according to Dr. John C. Evans,\nin a communication to the American Ethnological Society, was plowed up,\nnear Pemberton, N.J., 1859. The characters upon this ax, or wedge, are\nstrikingly similar to the characters on the Grave Creek stone. Also,\nwith a little disregard here and a little more there, they look like\ntracks in the snow by someone who's been out celebrating, or like your\nhandwriting, or mine, when we think there's a certain distinction in\nillegibility. Method of disregard: anything's anything.\n\nDr. Abbott describes this object in the _Report of the Smithsonian\nInstitution_, 1875-260.\n\nHe says he has no faith in it.\n\nAll progress is from the outrageous to the commonplace. Or\nquasi-existence proceeds from rape to the crooning of lullabies. It's\nbeen interesting to me to go over various long-established periodicals\nand note controversies between attempting positivists and then\nintermediatistic issues. Bold, bad intruders of theories; ruffians with\ndishonorable intentions--the alarms of Science; her attempts to preserve\nthat which is dearer than life itself--submission--then a fidelity like\nMrs. Micawber's. So many of these ruffians, or wandering comedians that\nwere hated, or scorned, pitied, embraced, conventionalized. There's not\na notion in this book that has a more frightful, or ridiculous, mien\nthan had the notion of human footprints in rocks, when that now\nrespectabilized ruffian, or clown, was first heard from. It seems\nbewildering to one whose interests are not scientific that such rows\nshould be raised over such trifles: but the feeling of a systematist\ntoward such an intruder is just about what anyone's would be if a tramp\nfrom the street should come in, sit at one's dinner table, and say he\nbelonged there. We know what hypnosis can do: let him insist with all\nhis might that he does belong there, and one begins to suspect that he\nmay be right; that he may have higher perceptions of what's right. The\nprohibitionists had this worked out very skillfully.\n\nSo the row that was raised over the stone from Grave Creek--but time and\ncumulativeness, and the very factor we make so much of--or the power of\nmassed data. There were other reports of inscribed stones, and then,\nhalf a century later, some mounds--or caches, as we call them--were\nopened by the Rev. Mr. Gass, near the city of Davenport. (_American\nAntiquarian_, 15-73.) Several stone tablets were found. Upon one of\nthem, the letters \"TFTOWNS\" may easily be made out. In this instance we\nhear nothing of fraudulency--time, cumulativeness, the power of massed\ndata. The attempt to assimilate this datum is:\n\nThat the tablet was probably of Mormon origin.\n\nWhy?\n\nBecause, at Mendon, Ill., was found a brass plate, upon which were\nsimilar characters.\n\nWhy that?\n\nBecause that was found \"near a house once occupied by a Mormon.\"\n\nIn a real existence, a real meteorologist, suspecting that cinders had\ncome from a fire engine--would have asked a fireman.\n\nTablets of Davenport--there's not a record findable that it ever\noccurred to any antiquarian--to ask a Mormon.\n\nOther tablets were found. Upon one of them are two \"F's\" and two \"8's.\"\nAlso a large tablet, twelve inches by eight to ten inches \"with Roman\nnumerals and Arabic.\" It is said that the figure \"8\" occurs three times,\nand the figure or letter \"O\" seven times. \"With these familiar\ncharacters are others that resemble ancient alphabets, either\nPhoenecian or Hebrew.\"\n\nIt may be that the discovery of Australia, for instance, will turn out\nto be less important than the discovery and the meaning of these\ntablets--\n\nBut where will you read of them in anything subsequently published; what\nantiquarian has ever since tried to understand them, and their presence,\nand indications of antiquity, in a land that we're told was inhabited\nonly by unlettered savages?\n\nThese things that are exhumed only to be buried in some other way.\n\nAnother tablet was found, at Davenport, by Mr. Charles Harrison,\npresident of the American Antiquarian Society. \"... 8 and other\nhieroglyphics are upon this tablet.\" This time, also, fraud is not\nmentioned. My own notion is that it is very unsportsmanlike ever to\nmention fraud. Accept anything. Then explain it your way. Anything that\nassimilates with one explanation, must have assimilable relations, to\nsome degree, with all other explanations, if all explanations are\nsomewhere continuous. Mormons are lugged in again, but the attempt is\nfaint and helpless--\"because general circumstances make it difficult to\nexplain the presence of these tablets.\"\n\nAltogether our phantom resistance is mere attribution to the Mormons,\nwithout the slightest attempt to find base for the attribution. We think\nof messages that were showered upon this earth, and of messages that\nwere cached in mounds upon this earth. The similarity to the Franklin\nsituation is striking. Conceivably centuries from now, objects dropped\nfrom relief-expedition-balloons may be found in the Arctic, and\nconceivably there are still undiscovered caches left by Franklin, in the\nhope that relief expeditions would find them. It would be as incongruous\nto attribute these things to the Eskimos as to attribute tablets and\nlettered stones to the aborigines of America. Some time I shall take up\nan expression that the queer-shaped mounds upon this earth were built by\nexplorers from Somewhere, unable to get back, designed to attract\nattention from some other world, and that a vast sword-shaped mound has\nbeen discovered upon the moon--Just now we think of lettered things and\ntheir two possible significances.\n\nA bizarre little lost soul, rescued from one of the morgues of the\n_American Journal of Science_:\n\nAn account, sent by a correspondent, to Prof. Silliman, of something\nthat was found in a block of marble, taken November, 1829, from a\nquarry, near Philadelphia (_Am. J. Sci._, 1-19-361). The block was cut\ninto slabs. By this process, it is said, was exposed an indentation in\nthe stone, about one and a half inches by five-eighths of an inch. A\ngeometric indentation: in it were two definite-looking raised letters,\nlike \"I U\": only difference is that the corners of the \"U\" are not\nrounded, but are right angles. We are told that this block of stone came\nfrom a depth of seventy or eighty feet--or that, if acceptable, this\nlettering was done long, long ago. To some persons, not sated with the\ncommonness of the incredible that has to be accepted, it may seem\ngrotesque to think that an indentation in sand could have tons of other\nsand piled upon it and hardening into stone, without being pressed\nout--but the famous Nicaraguan footprints were found in a quarry under\neleven strata of solid rock. There was no discussion of this datum. We\nonly take it out for an airing.\n\nAs to lettered stones that may once upon a time have been showered upon\nEurope, if we cannot accept that the stones were inscribed by indigenous\ninhabitants of Europe, many have been found in caves--whence they were\ncarried as curiosities by prehistoric men, or as ornaments, I suppose.\nAbout the size and shape of the Grave Creek stone, or disk: \"flat and\noval and about two inches wide.\" (Sollas.) Characters painted upon them:\nfound first by M. Piette, in the cave of Mas d'Azil, Ariege. According\nto Sollas, they are marked in various directions with red and black\nlines. \"But on not a few of them, more complex characters occur, which\nin a few instances simulate some of the capital letters of the Roman\nalphabet.\" In one instance the letters \"F E I\" accompanied by no other\nmarkings to modify them, are as plain as they could be. According to\nSollas (_Ancient Hunters_, p. 95) M. Cartailhac has confirmed the\nobservations of Piette, and M. Boule has found additional examples.\n\"They offer one of the darkest problems of prehistoric times.\" (Sollas.)\n\nAs to caches in general, I should say that they are made with two\npurposes: to proclaim and to conceal; or that caches documents are\nhidden, or covered over, in conspicuous structures; at least, so are\ndesigned the cairns in the Arctic.\n\n_Trans. N.Y. Acad. of Sciences_, 11-27:\n\nThat Mr. J.H. Hooper, Bradley Co., Tenn., having come upon a curious\nstone, in some woods upon his farm, investigated. He dug. He unearthed a\nlong wall. Upon this wall were inscribed many alphabetic characters.\n\"872 characters have been examined, many of them duplicates, and a few\nimitations of animal forms, the moon, and other objects. Accidental\nimitations of oriental alphabets are numerous.\"\n\nThe part that seems significant:\n\nThat these letters had been hidden under a layer of cement.\n\nAnd still, in our own heterogeneity, or unwillingness, or inability, to\nconcentrate upon single concepts, we shall--or we sha'n't--accept that,\nthough there may have been a Lost Colony or Lost Expedition from\nSomewhere, upon this earth, and extra-mundane visitors who could never\nget back, there have been other extra-mundane visitors, who have gone\naway again--altogether quite in analogy with the Franklin Expedition and\nPeary's flittings in the Arctic--\n\nAnd a wreck that occurred to one group of them--\n\nAnd the loot that was lost overboard--\n\nThe Chinese seals of Ireland.\n\nNot the things with the big, wistful eyes that lie on ice, and that are\ntaught to balance objects on their noses--but inscribed stamps, with\nwhich to make impressions.\n\n_Proc. Roy. Irish Acad._, 1-381:\n\nA paper was read by Mr. J. Huband Smith, descriptive of about a dozen\nChinese seals that had been found in Ireland. They are all alike: each a\ncube with an animal seated upon it. \"It is said that the inscriptions\nupon them are of a very ancient class of Chinese characters.\"\n\nThe three points that have made a leper and an outcast of this\ndatum--but only in the sense of disregard, because nowhere that I know\nof is it questioned:\n\nAgreement among archaeologists that there were no relations, in the\nremote past, between China and Ireland:\n\nThat no other objects, from ancient China--virtually, I suppose--have\never been found in Ireland:\n\nThe great distances at which these seals have been found apart.\n\nAfter Mr. Smith's investigations--if he did investigate, or do more than\nrecord--many more Chinese seals were found in Ireland, and, with one\nexception, only in Ireland. In 1852, about 60 had been found. Of all\narchaeologic finds in Ireland, \"none is enveloped in greater mystery.\"\n(_Chambers' Journal_, 16-364.) According to the writer in _Chambers'\nJournal_, one of these seals was found in a curiosity shop in London.\nWhen questioned, the shopkeeper said that it had come from Ireland.\n\nIn this instance, if you don't take instinctively to our expression,\nthere is no orthodox explanation for your preference. It is the\nastonishing scattering of them, over field and forest, that has hushed\nthe explainers. In the _Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_, 10-171,\nDr. Frazer says that they \"appear to have been sown broadcast over the\ncountry in some strange way that I cannot offer solution of.\"\n\nThe struggle for expression of a notion that did not belong to Dr.\nFrazer's era:\n\n\"The invariable story of their find is what we might expect if they had\nbeen accidentally dropped....\"\n\nThree were found in Tipperary; six in Cork; three in Down; four in\nWaterford; all the rest--one or two to a county.\n\nBut one of these Chinese seals was found in the bed of the River Boyne,\nnear Clonard, Meath, when workmen were raising gravel.\n\nThat one, at least, had been dropped there.\n\n\n\n\n12\n\n\nAstronomy.\n\nAnd a watchman looking at half a dozen lanterns, where a street's been\ntorn up.\n\nThere are gas lights and kerosene lamps and electric lights in the\nneighborhood: matches flaring, fires in stoves, bonfires, house afire\nsomewhere; lights of automobiles, illuminated signs--\n\nThe watchman and his one little system.\n\nEthics.\n\nAnd some young ladies and the dear old professor of a very \"select\"\nseminary.\n\nDrugs and divorce and rape: venereal diseases, drunkenness, murder--\n\nExcluded.\n\nThe prim and the precise, or the exact, the homogeneous, the single, the\npuritanic, the mathematic, the pure, the perfect. We can have illusion\nof this state--but only by disregarding its infinite denials. It's a\ndrop of milk afloat in acid that's eating it. The positive swamped by\nthe negative. So it is in intermediateness, where only to \"be\" positive\nis to generate corresponding and, perhaps, equal negativeness. In our\nacceptance, it is, in quasi-existence, premonitory, or pre-natal, or\npre-awakening consciousness of a real existence.\n\nBut this consciousness of realness is the greatest resistance to efforts\nto realize or to become real--because it is feeling that realness has\nbeen attained. Our antagonism is not to Science, but to the attitude of\nthe sciences that they have finally realized; or to belief, instead of\nacceptance; to the insufficiency, which, as we have seen over and over,\namounts to paltriness and puerility of scientific dogmas and standards.\nOr, if several persons start out to Chicago, and get to Buffalo, and one\nbe under the delusion that Buffalo is Chicago, that one will be a\nresistance to the progress of the others.\n\nSo astronomy and its seemingly exact, little system--\n\nBut data we shall have of round worlds and spindle-shaped worlds, and\nworlds shaped like a wheel; worlds like titanic pruning hooks; worlds\nlinked together by streaming filaments; solitary worlds, and worlds in\nhordes: tremendous worlds and tiny worlds: some of them made of material\nlike the material of this earth; and worlds that are geometric\nsuper-constructions made of iron and steel--\n\nOr not only fall from the sky of ashes and cinders and coke and charcoal\nand oily substances that suggest fuel--but the masses of iron that have\nfallen upon this earth.\n\nWrecks and flotsam and fragments of vast iron constructions--\n\nOr steel. Sooner or later we shall have to take up an expression that\nfragments of steel have fallen from the sky. If fragments not of iron,\nbut of steel have fallen upon this earth--\n\nBut what would a deep-sea fish learn even if a steel plate of a wrecked\nvessel above him should drop and bump him on the nose?\n\nOur submergence in a sea of conventionality of almost impenetrable\ndensity.\n\nSometimes I'm a savage who has found something on the beach of his\nisland. Sometimes I'm a deep-sea fish with a sore nose.\n\nThe greatest of mysteries:\n\nWhy don't they ever come here, or send here, openly?\n\nOf course there's nothing to that mystery if we don't take so seriously\nthe notion--that we must be interesting. It's probably for moral reasons\nthat they stay away--but even so, there must be some degraded ones among\nthem.\n\nOr physical reasons:\n\nWhen we can specially take up that subject, one of our leading ideas, or\ncredulities, will be that near approach by another world to this world\nwould be catastrophic: that navigable worlds would avoid proximity; that\nothers that have survived have organized into protective remotenesses,\nor orbits which approximate to regularity, though by no means to the\ndegree of popular supposition.\n\nBut the persistence of the notion that we must be interesting. Bugs and\ngerms and things like that: they're interesting to us: some of them are\ntoo interesting.\n\nDangers of near approach--nevertheless our own ships that dare not\nventure close to a rocky shore can send rowboats ashore--\n\nWhy not diplomatic relations established between the United States and\nCyclorea--which, in our advanced astronomy, is the name of a remarkable\nwheel-shaped world or super-construction? Why not missionaries sent here\nopenly to convert us from our barbarous prohibitions and other taboos,\nand to prepare the way for a good trade in ultra-bibles and\nsuper-whiskeys; fortunes made in selling us cast-off super-fineries,\nwhich we'd take to like an African chief to someone's old silk hat from\nNew York or London?\n\nThe answer that occurs to me is so simple that it seems immediately\nacceptable, if we accept that the obvious is the solution of all\nproblems, or if most of our perplexities consist in laboriously and\npainfully conceiving of the unanswerable, and then looking for\nanswers--using such words as \"obvious\" and \"solution\" conventionally--\n\nOr:\n\nWould we, if we could, educate and sophisticate pigs, geese, cattle?\n\nWould it be wise to establish diplomatic relation with the hen that now\nfunctions, satisfied with mere sense of achievement by way of\ncompensation?\n\nI think we're property.\n\nI should say we belong to something:\n\nThat once upon a time, this earth was No-man's Land, that other worlds\nexplored and colonized here, and fought among themselves for possession,\nbut that now it's owned by something:\n\nThat something owns this earth--all others warned off.\n\nNothing in our own times--perhaps--because I am thinking of certain\nnotes I have--has ever appeared upon this earth, from somewhere else, so\nopenly as Columbus landed upon San Salvador, or as Hudson sailed up his\nriver. But as to surreptitious visits to this earth, in recent times, or\nas to emissaries, perhaps, from other worlds, or voyagers who have shown\nevery indication of intent to evade and avoid, we shall have data as\nconvincing as our data of oil or coal-burning aerial super-constructions.\n\nBut, in this vast subject, I shall have to do considerable neglecting or\ndisregarding, myself. I don't see how I can, in this book, take up at\nall the subject of possible use of humanity to some other mode of\nexistence, or the flattering notion that we can possibly be worth\nsomething.\n\nPigs, geese, and cattle.\n\nFirst find out that they are owned.\n\nThen find out the whyness of it.\n\nI suspect that, after all, we're useful--that among contesting\nclaimants, adjustment has occurred, or that something now has a legal\nright to us, by force, or by having paid out analogues of beads for us\nto former, more primitive, owners of us--all others warned off--that all\nthis has been known, perhaps for ages, to certain ones upon this earth,\na cult or order, members of which function like bellwethers to the rest\nof us, or as superior slaves or overseers, directing us in accordance\nwith instructions received--from Somewhere else--in our mysterious\nusefulness.\n\nBut I accept that, in the past, before proprietorship was established,\ninhabitants of a host of other worlds have--dropped here, hopped here,\nwafted, sailed, flown, motored--walked here, for all I know--been pulled\nhere, been pushed; have come singly, have come in enormous numbers; have\nvisited occasionally, have visited periodically for hunting, trading,\nreplenishing harems, mining: have been unable to stay here, have\nestablished colonies here, have been lost here; far-advanced peoples, or\nthings, and primitive peoples or whatever they were: white ones, black\nones, yellow ones--\n\nI have a very convincing datum that the ancient Britons were blue ones.\n\nOf course we are told by conventional anthropologists that they only\npainted themselves blue, but in our own advanced anthropology, they were\nveritable blue ones--\n\n_Annals of Philosophy_, 14-51:\n\nNote of a blue child born in England.\n\nThat's atavism.\n\nGiants and fairies. We accept them, of course. Or, if we pride ourselves\nupon being awfully far-advanced, I don't know how to sustain our conceit\nexcept by very largely going far back. Science of today--the\nsuperstition of tomorrow. Science of tomorrow--the superstition of\ntoday.\n\nNotice of a stone ax, 17 inches long: 9 inches across broad end. (_Proc.\nSoc. of Ants. of Scotland_, 1-9-184.)\n\n_Amer. Antiquarian_, 18-60:\n\nCopper ax from an Ohio mound: 22 inches long; weight 38 pounds.\n\n_Amer. Anthropologist_, n.s., 8-229:\n\nStone ax found at Birchwood, Wisconsin--exhibited in the collection of\nthe Missouri Historical Society--found with \"the pointed end embedded in\nthe soil\"--for all I know, may have dropped there--28 inches long, 14\nwide, 11 thick--weight 300 pounds.\n\nOr the footprints, in sandstone, near Carson, Nevada--each print 18 to\n20 inches long. (_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 3-26-139.)\n\nThese footprints are very clear and well-defined: reproduction of them\nin the _Journal_--but they assimilate with the System, like sour apples\nto other systems: so Prof. Marsh, a loyal and unscrupulous systematist,\nargues:\n\n\"The size of these footprints and specially the width between the right\nand left series, are strong evidence that they were not made by men, as\nhas been so generally supposed.\"\n\nSo these excluders. Stranglers of Minerva. Desperadoes of disregard.\nAbove all, or below all, the anthropologists. I'm inspired with a new\ninsult--someone offends me: I wish to express almost absolute contempt\nfor him--he's a systematistic anthropologist. Simply to read something\nof this kind is not so impressive as to see for one's self: if anyone\nwill take the trouble to look up these footprints, as pictured in the\n_Journal_, he will either agree with Prof. Marsh or feel that to deny\nthem is to indicate a mind as profoundly enslaved by a system as was\never the humble intellect of a medieval monk. The reasoning of this\nrepresentative phantom of the chosen, or of the spectral appearances who\nsit in judgment, or condemnation, upon us of the more nearly real:\n\nThat there never were giants upon this earth, because gigantic\nfootprints are more gigantic than prints made by men who are not giants.\n\nWe think of giants as occasional visitors to this earth. Of\ncourse--Stonehenge, for instance. It may be that, as time goes on, we\nshall have to admit that there are remains of many tremendous\nhabitations of giants upon this earth, and that their appearances here\nwere more than casual--but their bones--or the absence of their bones--\n\nExcept--that, no matter how cheerful and unsuspicious my disposition may\nbe, when I go to the American Museum of Natural History, dark cynicisms\narise the moment I come to the fossils--or old bones that have been\nfound upon this earth--gigantic things--that have been reconstructed\ninto terrifying but \"proper\" dinosaurs--but my uncheerfulness--\n\nThe dodo did it.\n\nOn one of the floors below the fossils, they have a reconstructed dodo.\nIt's frankly a fiction: it's labeled as such--but it's been\nreconstructed so cleverly and so convincingly--\n\nFairies.\n\n\"Fairy crosses.\"\n\n_Harper's Weekly_, 50-715:\n\nThat, near the point where the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny Mountains\nunite, north of Patrick County, Virginia, many little stone crosses have\nbeen found.\n\nA race of tiny beings.\n\nThey crucified cockroaches.\n\nExquisite beings--but the cruelty of the exquisite. In their diminutive\nway they were human beings. They crucified.\n\nThe \"fairy crosses,\" we are told in _Harper's Weekly_, range in weight\nfrom one-quarter of an ounce to an ounce: but it is said, in the\n_Scientific American_, 79-395, that some of them are no larger than the\nhead of a pin.\n\nThey have been found in two other states, but all in Virginia are\nstrictly localized on and along Bull Mountain.\n\nWe are reminded of the Chinese seals in Ireland.\n\nI suppose they fell there.\n\nSome are Roman crosses, some St. Andrew's, some Maltese. This time we\nare spared contact with the anthropologists and have geologists instead,\nbut I am afraid that the relief to our finer, or more nearly real,\nsensibilities will not be very great. The geologists were called upon to\nexplain the \"fairy crosses.\" Their response was the usual scientific\ntropism--\"Geologists say that they are crystals.\" The writer in\n_Harper's Weekly_ points out that this \"hold up,\" or this anaesthetic, if\ntheoretic science be little but attempt to assuage pangs of the\nunexplained, fails to account for the localized distributions of these\nobjects--which make me think of both aggregation and separation at the\nbottom of the sea, if from a wrecked ship, similar objects should fall\nin large numbers but at different times.\n\nBut some are Roman crosses, some St. Andrew's, some Maltese.\n\nConceivably there might be a mineral that would have a diversity of\ngeometric forms, at the same time restricted to some expression of the\ncross, because snowflakes, for instance, have diversity but restriction\nto the hexagon, but the guilty geologists, cold-blooded as astronomers\nand chemists and all the other deep-sea fishes--though less profoundly\nof the pseudo-saved than the wretched anthropologists--disregarded the\nvery datum--that it was wise to disregard:\n\nThat the \"fairy crosses\" are not all made of the same material.\n\nIt's the same old disregard, or it's the same old psycho-tropism, or\nprocess of assimilation. Crystals are geometric forms. Crystals are\nincluded in the System. So then \"fairy crosses\" are crystals. But that\ndifferent minerals should, in a few different regions, be inspired to\nturn into different forms of the cross--is the kind of resistance that\nwe call less nearly real than our own acceptances.\n\nWe now come to some \"cursed\" little things that are of the \"lost,\" but\nfor the \"salvation\" of which scientific missionaries have done their\ndamnedest.\n\n\"Pigmy flints.\"\n\nThey can't very well be denied.\n\nThey're lost and well known.\n\n\"Pigmy flints\" are tiny, prehistoric implements. Some of them are a\nquarter of an inch in size. England, India, France, South\nAfrica--they've been found in many parts of the world--whether showered\nthere or not. They belong high up in the froth of the accursed: they are\nnot denied, and they have not been disregarded; there is an abundant\nliterature upon this subject. One attempt to rationalize them, or\nassimilate them, or take them into the scientific fold, has been the\nnotion that they were toys of prehistoric children. It sounds\nreasonable. But, of course, by the reasonable we mean that for which the\nequally reasonable, but opposing, has not been found out--except that we\nmodify that by saying that, though nothing's finally reasonable, some\nphenomena have higher approximations to Reasonableness than have others.\nAgainst the notion of toys, the higher approximation is that where\n\"pygmy flints\" are found, all flints are pygmies--at least so in India,\nwhere, when larger implements have been found in the same place, there\nare separations by strata. (Wilson.)\n\nThe datum that, just at present, leads me to accept that these flints\nwere made by beings about the size of pickles, is a point brought out by\nProf. Wilson (_Rept. National Museum_, 1892-455):\n\nNot only that the flints are tiny but that the chipping upon them is\n\"minute.\"\n\nStruggle for expression, in the mind of a 19th-century-ite, of an idea\nthat did not belong to his era:\n\nIn _Science Gossip_, 1896-36, R.A. Galty says:\n\n\"So fine is the chipping that to see the workmanship a magnifying glass\nis necessary.\"\n\nI think that would be absolutely convincing, if there were\nanything--absolutely anything--either that tiny beings, from pickle to\ncucumber-stature, made these things, or that ordinary savages made them\nunder magnifying glasses.\n\nThe idea that we are now going to develop, or perpetrate, is rather\nintensely of the accursed, or the advanced. It's a lost soul, I\nadmit--or boast--but it fits in. Or, as conventional as ever, our own\nmethod is the scientific method of assimilating. It assimilates, if we\nthink of the inhabitants of Elvera--\n\nBy the way, I forgot to tell the name of the giant's world:\n\nMonstrator.\n\nSpindle-shaped world--about 100,000 miles along its major axis--more\ndetails to be published later.\n\nBut our coming inspiration fits in, if we think of the inhabitants of\nElvera as having only visited here: having, in hordes as dense as clouds\nof bats, come here, upon hunting excursions--for mice, I should say: for\nbees, very likely--or most likely of all, or inevitably, to convert the\nheathen here--horrified with anyone who would gorge himself with more\nthan a bean at a time; fearful for the souls of beings who would guzzle\nmore than a dewdrop at a time--hordes of tiny missionaries, determined\nthat right should prevail, determining right by their own minutenesses.\n\nThey must have been missionaries.\n\nOnly to be is motion to convert or assimilate something else.\n\nThe idea now is that tiny creatures coming here from their own little\nworld, which may be Eros, though I call it Elvera, would flit from the\nexquisite to the enormous--gulp of a fair-sized terrestrial animal--half\na dozen of them gone and soon digested. One falls into a brook--torn\naway in a mighty torrent--\n\nOr never anything but conventional, we adopt from Darwin:\n\n\"The geological records are incomplete.\"\n\nTheir flints would survive, but, as to their fragile bodies--one might\nas well search for prehistoric frost-traceries. A little\nwhirlwind--Elverean carried away a hundred yards--body never found by\nhis companions. They'd mourn for the departed. Conventional emotion to\nhave: they'd mourn. There'd have to be a funeral: there's no getting\naway from funerals. So I adopt an explanation that I take from the\nanthropologists: burial in effigy. Perhaps the Elvereans would not come\nto this earth again until many years later--another distressing\noccurrence--one little mausoleum for all burials in effigy.\n\nLondon _Times_, July 20, 1836:\n\nThat, early in July, 1836, some boys were searching for rabbits' burrows\nin the rocky formation, near Edinburgh, known as Arthur's Seat. In the\nside of a cliff, they came upon some thin sheets of slate, which they\npulled out.\n\nLittle cave.\n\nSeventeen tiny coffins.\n\nThree or four inches long.\n\nIn the coffins were miniature wooden figures. They were dressed\ndifferently both in style and material. There were two tiers of eight\ncoffins each, and a third tier begun, with one coffin.\n\nThe extraordinary datum, which has especially made mystery here:\n\nThat the coffins had been deposited singly, in the little cave, and at\nintervals of many years. In the first tier, the coffins were quite\ndecayed, and the wrappings had moldered away. In the second tier, the\neffects of age had not advanced so far. And the top coffin was quite\nrecent-looking.\n\nIn the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquarians of Scotland_,\n3-12-460, there is a full account of this find. Three of the coffins and\nthree of the figures are pictured.\n\nSo Elvera with its downy forests and its microscopic oyster shells--and\nif the Elvereans be not very far-advanced, they take baths--with sponges\nthe size of pin heads--\n\nOr that catastrophes have occurred: that fragments of Elvera have fallen\nto this earth:\n\nIn _Popular Science_, 20-83, Francis Bingham, writing of the corals and\nsponges and shells and crinoids that Dr. Hahn had asserted that he had\nfound in meteorites, says, judging by the photographs of them, that\ntheir \"notable peculiarity\" is their \"extreme smallness.\" The corals,\nfor instance, are about one-twentieth the size of terrestrial corals.\n\"They represent a veritable pygmy animal world,\" says Bingham.\n\nThe inhabitants of Monstrator and Elvera were primitives, I think, at\nthe time of their occasional visits to this earth--though, of course, in\na quasi-existence, anything that we semi-phantoms call evidence of\nanything may be just as good evidence of anything else. Logicians and\ndetectives and jurymen and suspicious wives and members of the Royal\nAstronomic Society recognize this indeterminateness, but have the\ndelusion that in the method of agreement there is final, or real\nevidence. The method is good enough for an \"existence\" that is only\nsemi-real, but also it is the method of reasoning by which witches were\nburned, and by which ghosts have been feared. I'd not like to be so\nunadvanced as to deny witches and ghosts, but I do think that there\nnever have been witches and ghosts like those of popular supposition.\nBut stories of them have been supported by astonishing fabrications of\ndetails and of different accounts in agreement.\n\nSo, if a giant left impressions of his bare feet in the ground, that is\nnot to say that he was a primitive--bulk of culture out taking the\nKneipp cure. So, if Stonehenge is a large, but only roughly geometric\nconstruction, the inattention to details by its builders--signifies\nanything you please--ambitious dwarfs or giants--if giants, that they\nwere little more than cave men, or that they were post-impressionist\narchitects from a very far-advanced civilization.\n\nIf there are other worlds, there are tutelary worlds--or that Kepler,\nfor instance, could not have been absolutely wrong: that his notion of\nan angel assigned to push along and guide each planet may not be very\nacceptable, but that, abstractedly, or in the notion of a tutelary\nrelation, we may find acceptance.\n\nOnly to be is to be tutelary.\n\nOur general expression:\n\nThat \"everything\" in Intermediateness is not a thing, but is an endeavor\nto become something--by breaking away from its continuity, or merging\naway, with all other phenomena--is an attempt to break away from the\nvery essence of a relative existence and become absolute--if it have not\nsurrendered to, or become part of, some higher attempt:\n\nThat to this process there are two aspects:\n\nAttraction, or the spirit of everything to assimilate all other\nthings--if it have not given in and subordinated to--or have not been\nassimilated by--some higher attempted system, unity, organization,\nentity, harmony, equilibrium--\n\nAnd repulsion, or the attempt of everything to exclude or disregard the\nunassimilable.\n\nUniversality of the process:\n\nAnything conceivable:\n\nA tree. It is doing all it can to assimilate substances of the soil and\nsubstances of the air, and sunshine, too, into tree-substance: obversely\nit is rejecting or excluding or disregarding that which it cannot\nassimilate.\n\nCow grazing, pig rooting, tiger stalking: planets trying, or acting, to\ncapture comets; rag pickers and the Christian religion, and a cat down\nheadfirst in a garbage can; nations fighting for more territory,\nsciences correlating the data they can, trust magnates organizing,\nchorus girl out for a little late supper--all of them stopped somewhere\nby the unassimilable. Chorus girl and the broiled lobster. If she eats\nnot shell and all she represents universal failure to positivize. Also,\nif she does she represents universal failure to positivize: her ensuing\ndisorders will translate her to the Negative Absolute.\n\nOr Science and some of our cursed hard-shelled data.\n\nOne speaks of the tutelarian as if it were something distinct in itself.\nSo one speaks of a tree, a saint, a barrel of pork, the Rocky Mountains.\nOne speaks of missionaries, as if they were positively different, or had\nidentity of their own, or were a species by themselves. To the\nIntermediatist, everything that seems to have identity is only attempted\nidentity, and every species is continuous with all other species, or\nthat which is called the specific is only emphasis upon some aspect of\nthe general. If there are cats, they're only emphasis upon universal\nfelinity. There is nothing that does not partake of that of which the\nmissionary, or the tutelary, is the special. Every conversation is a\nconflict of missionaries, each trying to convert the other, to\nassimilate, or to make the other similar to himself. If no progress be\nmade, mutual repulsion will follow.\n\nIf other worlds have ever in the past had relations with this earth,\nthey were attempted positivizations: to extend themselves, by colonies,\nupon this earth; to convert, or assimilate, indigenous inhabitants of\nthis earth.\n\nOr parent-worlds and their colonies here--\n\nSuper-Romanimus--\n\nOr where the first Romans came from.\n\nIt's as good as the Romulus and Remus story.\n\nSuper-Israelimus--\n\nOr that, despite modern reasoning upon this subject, there was once\nsomething that was super-parental or tutelary to early orientals.\n\nAzuria, which was tutelary to the early Britons:\n\nAzuria, whence came the blue Britons, whose descendants gradually\ndiluting, like blueing in a wash-tub, where a faucet's turned on, have\nbeen most emphasized of sub-tutelarians, or assimilators ever since.\n\nWorlds that were once tutelarian worlds--before this earth became\nsole property of one of them--their attempts to convert or\nassimilate--but then the state that comes to all things in their\nmissionary-frustrations--unacceptance by all stomachs of some things;\nrejection by all societies of some units; glaciers that sort over and\ncast out stones--\n\nRepulsion. Wrath of the baffled missionary. There is no other wrath. All\nrepulsion is reaction to the unassimilable.\n\nSo then the wrath of Azuria--\n\nBecause surrounding peoples of this earth would not assimilate with her\nown colonists in the part of the earth that we now call England.\n\nI don't know that there has ever been more nearly just, reasonable, or\nlogical wrath, in this earth's history--if there is no other wrath.\n\nThe wrath of Azuria, because the other peoples of this earth would not\nturn blue to suit her.\n\nHistory is a department of human delusion that interests us. We are able\nto give a little advancement to history. In the vitrified forts of a few\nparts of Europe, we find data that the Humes and Gibbons have\ndisregarded.\n\nThe vitrified forts surrounding England, but not in England.\n\nThe vitrified forts of Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, and Bohemia.\n\nOr that, once upon a time, with electric blasts, Azuria tried to swipe\nthis earth clear of the peoples who resisted her.\n\nThe vast blue bulk of Azuria appeared in the sky. Clouds turned green.\nThe sun was formless and purple in the vibrations of wrath that were\nemanating from Azuria. The whitish, or yellowish, or brownish peoples of\nScotland, Ireland, Brittany, and Bohemia fled to hilltops and built\nforts. In a real existence, hilltops, or easiest accessibility to an\naerial enemy, would be the last choice in refuges. But here, in\nquasi-existence, if we're accustomed to run to hilltops, in times of\ndanger, we run to them just the same, even with danger closest to\nhilltops. Very common in quasi-existence: attempt to escape by running\ncloser to the pursuing.\n\nThey built forts, or already had forts, on hilltops.\n\nSomething poured electricity upon them.\n\nThe stones of these forts exist to this day, vitrified, or melted and\nturned to glass.\n\nThe archaeologists have jumped from one conclusion to another, like the\n\"rapid chamois\" we read of a while ago, to account for vitrified forts,\nalways restricted by the commandment that unless their conclusions\nconformed to such tenets as Exclusionism, of the System, they would be\nexcommunicated. So archaeologists, in their medieval dread of\nexcommunication, have tried to explain vitrified forts in terms of\nterrestrial experience. We find in their insufficiencies the same old\nassimilating of all that could be assimilated, and disregard for the\nunassimilable, conventionalizing into the explanation that vitrified\nforts were made by prehistoric peoples who built vast fires--often\nremote from wood-supply--to melt externally, and to cement together, the\nstones of their constructions. But negativeness always: so within itself\na science can never be homogeneous or unified or harmonious. So Miss\nRussel, in the _Journal of the B.A.A._, has pointed out that it is\nseldom that single stones, to say nothing of long walls, of large houses\nthat are burned to the ground, are vitrified.\n\nIf we pay a little attention to this subject, ourselves, before starting\nto write upon it, which is one of the ways of being more nearly real\nthan oppositions so far encountered by us, we find:\n\nThat the stones of these forts are vitrified in no reference to\ncementing them: that they are cemented here and there, in streaks, as if\nspecial blasts had struck, or played, upon them.\n\nThen one thinks of lightning?\n\nOnce upon a time something melted, in streaks, the stones of forts on\nthe tops of hills in Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, and Bohemia.\n\nLightning selects the isolated and conspicuous.\n\nBut some of the vitrified forts are not upon tops of hills: some are\nvery inconspicuous: their walls too are vitrified in streaks.\n\nSomething once had effect, similar to lightning, upon forts, mostly on\nhills, in Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, and Bohemia.\n\nBut upon hills, all over the rest of the world, are remains of forts\nthat are not vitrified.\n\nThere is only one crime, in the local sense, and that is not to turn\nblue, if the gods are blue: but, in the universal sense, the one crime\nis not to turn the gods themselves green, if you're green.\n\n\n\n\n13\n\n\nOne of the most extraordinary of phenomena, or alleged phenomena, of\npsychic research, or alleged research--if in quasi-existence there never\nhas been real research, but only approximations to research that merge\naway, or that are continuous with, prejudice and convenience--\n\n\"Stone-throwing.\"\n\nIt's attributed to poltergeists. They're mischievous spirits.\n\nPoltergeists do not assimilate with our own present quasi-system, which\nis an attempt to correlate denied or disregarded data as phenomena of\nextra-telluric forces, expressed in physical terms. Therefore I regard\npoltergeists as evil or false or discordant or absurd--names that we\ngive to various degrees or aspects of the unassimilable, or that which\nresists attempts to organize, harmonize, systematize, or, in short, to\npositivize--names that we give to our recognitions of the negative\nstate. I don't care to deny poltergeists, because I suspect that later,\nwhen we're more enlightened, or when we widen the range of our\ncredulities, or take on more of that increase of ignorance that is\ncalled knowledge, poltergeists may become assimilable. Then they'll be\nas reasonable as trees. By reasonableness I mean that which assimilates\nwith a dominant force, or system, or a major body of thought--which is,\nitself, of course, hypnosis and delusion--developing, however, in our\nacceptance, to higher and higher approximations to realness. The\npoltergeists are now evil or absurd to me, proportionately to their\npresent unassimilableness, compounded, however, with the factor of their\npossible future assimilableness.\n\nWe lug in the poltergeists, because some of our own data, or alleged\ndata, merge away indistinguishably with data, or alleged data, of them:\n\nInstances of stones that have been thrown, or that have fallen, upon a\nsmall area, from an unseen and undetectable source.\n\nLondon _Times_, April 27, 1872:\n\n\"From 4 o'clock, Thursday afternoon, until half past eleven, Thursday\nnight, the houses, 56 and 58 Reverdy Road, Bermondsey, were assailed\nwith stones and other missiles coming from an unseen quarter. Two\nchildren were injured, every window broken, and several articles of\nfurniture were destroyed. Although there was a strong body of policemen\nscattered in the neighborhood, they could not trace the direction whence\nthe stones were thrown.\"\n\n\"Other missiles\" make a complication here. But if the expression means\ntin cans and old shoes, and if we accept that the direction could not be\ntraced because it never occurred to anyone to look upward--why, we've\nlost a good deal of our provincialism by this time.\n\nLondon _Times_, Sept. 16, 1841:\n\nThat, in the home of Mrs. Charton, at Sutton Courthouse, Sutton Lane,\nChiswick, windows had been broken \"by some unseen agent.\" Every attempt\nto detect the perpetrator failed. The mansion was detached and\nsurrounded by high walls. No other building was near it.\n\nThe police were called. Two constables, assisted by members of the\nhousehold, guarded the house, but the windows continued to be broken\n\"both in front and behind the house.\"\n\nOr the floating islands that are often stationary in the Super-Sargasso\nSea; and atmospheric disturbances that sometimes affect them, and bring\nthings down within small areas, upon this earth, from temporarily\nstationary sources.\n\nSuper-Sargasso Sea and the beaches of its floating islands from which I\nthink, or at least accept, pebbles have fallen:\n\nWolverhampton, England, June, 1860--violent storm--fall of so many\nlittle black pebbles that they were cleared away by shoveling (_La Sci.\nPour Tous_, 5-264); great number of small black stones that fell at\nBirmingham, England, August, 1858--violent storm--said to be similar to\nsome basalt a few leagues from Birmingham (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._,\n1864-37); pebbles described as \"common water-worn pebbles\" that fell at\nPalestine, Texas, July 6, 1888--\"of a formation not found near\nPalestine\" (W.H. Perry, Sergeant, Signal Corps, _Monthly Weather\nReview_, July, 1888); round, smooth pebbles at Kandahor, 1834 (_Am. J.\nSci._, 1-26-161); \"a number of stones of peculiar formation and shapes,\nunknown in this neighborhood, fell in a tornado at Hillsboro, Ill., May\n18, 1883.\" (_Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1883.)\n\nPebbles from aerial beaches and terrestrial pebbles as products of\nwhirlwinds, so merge in these instances that, though it's interesting to\nhear of things of peculiar shape that have fallen from the sky, it seems\nbest to pay little attention here, and to find phenomena of the\nSuper-Sargasso Sea remote from the merger:\n\nTo this requirement we have three adaptations:\n\nPebbles that fell where no whirlwind to which to attribute them could be\nlearned of:\n\nPebbles which fell in hail so large that incredibly could that hail have\nbeen formed in this earth's atmosphere:\n\nPebbles which fell and were, long afterward, followed by more pebbles,\nas if from some aerial, stationary source, in the same place. In\nSeptember, 1898, there was a story in a New York newspaper, of\nlightning--or an appearance of luminosity?--in Jamaica--something had\nstruck a tree: near the tree were found some small pebbles. It was said\nthat the pebbles had fallen from the sky, with the lightning. But the\ninsult to orthodoxy was that they were not angular fragments such as\nmight have been broken from a stony meteorite: that they were\n\"water-worn pebbles.\"\n\nIn the geographical vagueness of a mainland, the explanation \"up from\none place and down in another\" is always good, and is never overworked,\nuntil the instances are massed as they are in this book: but, upon this\noccasion, in the relatively small area of Jamaica, there was no\nwhirlwind findable--however \"there in the first place\" bobs up.\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, August, 1898-363:\n\nThat the government meteorologist had investigated: had reported that a\ntree had been struck by lightning, and that small water-worn pebbles had\nbeen found near the tree: but that similar pebbles could be found all\nover Jamaica.\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, September, 1915-446:\n\nProf. Fassig gives an account of a fall of hail that occurred in\nMaryland, June 22, 1915: hailstones the size of baseballs \"not at all\nuncommon.\"\n\n\"An interesting, but unconfirmed, account stated that small pebbles were\nfound at the center of some of the larger hail gathered at Annapolis.\nThe young man who related the story offered to produce the pebbles, but\nhas not done so.\"\n\nA footnote:\n\n\"Since writing this, the author states that he has received some of the\npebbles.\"\n\nWhen a young man \"produces\" pebbles, that's as convincing as anything\nelse I've ever heard of, though no more convincing than, if having told\nof ham sandwiches falling from the sky, he should \"produce\" ham\nsandwiches. If this \"reluctance\" be admitted by us, we correlate it with\na datum reported by a Weather Bureau observer, signifying that, whether\nthe pebbles had been somewhere aloft a long time or not, some of the\nhailstones that fell with them, had been. The datum is that some of\nthese hailstones were composed of from twenty to twenty-five layers\nalternately of clear ice and snow-ice. In orthodox terms I argue that a\nfair-sized hailstone falls from the clouds with velocity sufficient to\nwarm it so that it would not take on even one layer of ice. To put on\ntwenty layers of ice, I conceive of something that had not fallen at\nall, but had rolled somewhere, at a leisurely rate, for a long time.\n\nWe now have a commonplace datum that is familiar in two respects:\n\nLittle, symmetric objects of metal that fell at Orenburg, Russia,\nSeptember, 1824 (_Phil. Mag._, 4-8-463).\n\nA second fall of these objects, at Orenburg, Russia, Jan. 25, 1825\n(_Quar. Jour. Roy. Inst._, 1828-1-447).\n\nI now think of the disk of Tarbes, but when first I came upon these data\nI was impressed only with recurrence, because the objects of Orenburg\nwere described as crystals of pyrites, or sulphate of iron. I had no\nnotion of metallic objects that might have been shaped or molded by\nmeans other than crystallization, until I came to Arago's account of\nthese occurrences (_OEuvres_, 11-644). Here the analysis gives 70 per\ncent. red oxide of iron, and sulphur and loss by ignition 5 per cent. It\nseems to me acceptable that iron with considerably less than 5 per cent.\nsulphur in it is not iron pyrites--then little, rusty iron objects,\nshaped by some other means, have fallen, four months apart, at the same\nplace. M. Arago expresses astonishment at this phenomenon of recurrence\nso familiar to us.\n\nAltogether, I find opening before us, vistas of heresies to which I, for\none, must shut my eyes. I have always been in sympathy with the\ndogmatists and exclusionists: that is plain in our opening lines: that\nto seem to be is falsely and arbitrarily and dogmatically to exclude. It\nis only that exclusionists who are good in the nineteenth century are\nevil in the twentieth century. Constantly we feel a merging away into\ninfinitude; but that this book shall approximate to form, or that our\ndata shall approximate to organization, or that we shall approximate to\nintelligibility, we have to call ourselves back constantly from\nwandering off into infinitude. The thing that we do, however, is to make\nour own outline, or the difference between what we include and what we\nexclude, vague.\n\nThe crux here, and the limit beyond which we may not go--very much--is:\n\nAcceptance that there is a region that we call the Super-Sargasso\nSea--not yet fully accepted, but a provisional position that has\nreceived a great deal of support--\n\nBut is it a part of this earth, and does it revolve with and over this\nearth--\n\nOr does it flatly overlie this earth, not revolving with and over this\nearth--\n\nThat this earth does not revolve, and is not round, or roundish, at all,\nbut is continuous with the rest of its system, so that, if one could\nbreak away from the traditions of the geographers, one might walk and\nwalk, and come to Mars, and then find Mars continuous with Jupiter?\n\nI suppose some day such queries will sound absurd--the thing will be so\nobvious--\n\nBecause it is very difficult for me to conceive of little metallic\nobjects hanging precisely over a small town in Russia, for four months,\nif revolving, unattached, with a revolving earth--\n\nIt may be that something aimed at that town, and then later took another\nshot.\n\nThese are speculations that seem to me to be evil relatively to these\nearly years in the twentieth century--\n\nJust now, I accept that this earth is--not round, of course: that is\nvery old-fashioned--but roundish, or, at least, that it has what is\ncalled form of its own, and does revolve upon its axis, and in an orbit\naround the sun. I only accept these old traditional notions--\n\nAnd that above it are regions of suspension that revolve with it: from\nwhich objects fall, by disturbances of various kinds, and then, later,\nfall again, in the same place:\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1884-134:\n\nReport from the Signal Service observer, at Bismarck, Dakota:\n\nThat, at 9 o'clock, in the evening of May 22, 1884, sharp sounds were\nheard throughout the city, caused by a fall of flinty stones striking\nagainst windows.\n\nFifteen hours later another fall of flinty stones occurred at Bismarck.\n\nThere is no report of stones having fallen anywhere else.\n\nThis is a thing of the ultra-damned. All Editors of scientific\npublications read the _Monthly Weather Review_ and frequently copy from\nit. The noise made by the stones of Bismarck, rattling against those\nwindows, may be in a language that aviators will some day interpret:\nbut it was a noise entirely surrounded by silences. Of this ultra-damned\nthing, there is no mention, findable by me, in any other publication.\n\nThe size of some hailstones has worried many meteorologists--but not\ntext-book meteorologists. I know of no more serene occupation than that\nof writing text-books--though writing for the _War Cry_, of the\nSalvation Army, may be equally unadventurous. In the drowsy tranquillity\nof a text-book, we easily and unintelligently read of dust particles\naround which icy rain forms, hailstones, in their fall, then increasing\nby accretion--but in the meteorological journals, we read often of\nair-spaces nucleating hailstones--\n\nBut it's the size of the things. Dip a marble in icy water. Dip and dip\nand dip it. If you're a resolute dipper, you will, after a while, have\nan object the size of a baseball--but I think a thing could fall from\nthe moon in that length of time. Also the strata of them. The Maryland\nhailstones are unusual, but a dozen strata have often been counted.\nFerrel gives an instance of thirteen strata. Such considerations led\nProf. Schwedoff to argue that some hailstones are not, and cannot, be\ngenerated in this earth's atmosphere--that they come from somewhere\nelse. Now, in a relative existence, nothing can of itself be either\nattractive or repulsive: its effects are functions of its associations\nor implications. Many of our data have been taken from very conservative\nscientific sources: it was not until their discordant implications, or\nirreconcilabilities with the System, were perceived, that\nexcommunication was pronounced against them.\n\nProf. Schwedoff's paper was read before the British Association (_Rept.\nof 1882_, p. 453).\n\nThe implication, and the repulsiveness of the implication to the snug\nand tight little exclusionists of 1882--though we hold out that they\nwere functioning well and ably relatively to 1882--\n\nThat there is water--oceans or lakes and ponds, or rivers of it--that\nthere is water away from, and yet not far-remote from, this earth's\natmosphere and gravitation--\n\nThe pain of it:\n\nThat the snug little system of 1882 would be ousted from its\nreposefulness--\n\nA whole new science to learn:\n\nThe Science of Super-Geography--\n\nAnd Science is a turtle that says that its own shell encloses all\nthings.\n\nSo the members of the British Association. To some of them Prof.\nSchwedoff's ideas were like slaps on the back of an environment-denying\nturtle: to some of them his heresy was like an offering of meat, raw and\ndripping, to milk-fed lambs. Some of them bleated like lambs, and some\nof them turled like turtles. We used to crucify, but now we ridicule:\nor, in the loss of vigor of all progress, the spike has etherealized\ninto the laugh.\n\nSir William Thomson ridiculed the heresy, with the phantomosities of his\nera:\n\nThat all bodies, such as hailstones, if away from this earth's\natmosphere, would have to move at planetary velocity--which would be\npositively reasonable if the pronouncements of St. Isaac were anything\nbut articles of faith--that a hailstone falling through this earth's\natmosphere, with planetary velocity, would perform 13,000 times as much\nwork as would raise an equal weight of water one degree centigrade, and\ntherefore never fall as a hailstone at all; be more than\nmelted--super-volatalized--\n\nThese turls and these bleats of pedantry--though we insist that,\nrelatively to 1882, these turls and bleats should be regarded as\nrespectfully as we regard rag dolls that keep infants occupied and\nnoiseless--it is the survival of rag dolls into maturity that we object\nto--so these pious and naive ones who believed that 13,000 times\nsomething could have--that is, in quasi-existence--an exact and\ncalculable resultant, whereas there is--in quasi-existence--nothing that\ncan, except by delusion and convenience, be called a unit, in the first\nplace--whose devotions to St. Isaac required blind belief in formulas of\nfalling bodies--\n\nAgainst data that were piling up, in their own time, of slow-falling\nmeteorites; \"milk warm\" ones admitted even by Farrington and Merrill; at\nleast one icy meteorite nowhere denied by the present orthodoxy, a datum\nas accessible to Thomson, in 1882, as it is now to us, because it was an\noccurrence of 1860. Beans and needles and tacks and a magnet. Needles\nand tacks adhere to and systematize relatively to a magnet, but, if some\nbeans, too, be caught up, they are irreconcilables to this system and\ndrop right out of it. A member of the Salvation Army may hear over and\nover data that seem so memorable to an evolutionist. It seems remarkable\nthat they do not influence him--one finds that he cannot remember them.\nIt is incredible that Sir William Thomson had never heard of\nslow-falling, cold meteorites. It is simply that he had no power to\nremember such irreconcilabilities.\n\nAnd then Mr. Symons again. Mr. Symons was a man who probably did more\nfor the science of meteorology than did any other man of his time:\ntherefore he probably did more to hold back the science of meteorology\nthan did any other man of his time. In _Nature_, 41-135, Mr. Symons says\nthat Prof. Schwedoff's ideas are \"very droll.\"\n\nI think that even more amusing is our own acceptance that, not very far\nabove this earth's surface, is a region that will be the subject of a\nwhole new science--super-geography--with which we shall immortalize\nourselves in the resentments of the schoolboys of the future--\n\nPebbles and fragments of meteors and things from Mars and Jupiter and\nAzuria: wedges, delayed messages, cannon balls, bricks, nails, coal and\ncoke and charcoal and offensive old cargoes--things that coat in ice in\nsome regions and things that get into areas so warm that they\nputrefy--or that there are all the climates of geography in\nsuper-geography. I shall have to accept that, floating in the sky of\nthis earth, there often are fields of ice as extensive as those on the\nArctic Ocean--volumes of water in which are many fishes and\nfrogs--tracts of land covered with caterpillars--\n\nAviators of the future. They fly up and up. Then they get out and walk.\nThe fishing's good: the bait's right there. They find messages from\nother worlds--and within three weeks there's a big trade worked up in\nforged messages. Sometime I shall write a guide book to the\nSuper-Sargasso Sea, for aviators, but just at present there wouldn't be\nmuch call for it.\n\nWe now have more of our expression upon hail as a concomitant, or more\ndata of things that have fallen from the sky, with hail.\n\nIn general, the expression is:\n\nThese things may have been raised from some other part of the earth's\nsurface, in whirlwinds, or may not have fallen, and may have been upon\nthe ground, in the first place--but were the hailstones found with them,\nraised from some other part of the earth's surface, or were the\nhailstones upon the ground, in the first place?\n\nAs I said before, this expression is meaningless as to a few instances;\nit is reasonable to think of some coincidence between the fall of hail\nand the fall of other things: but, inasmuch as there have been a good\nmany instances,--we begin to suspect that this is not so much a book\nwe're writing as a sanitarium for overworked coincidences. If not\nconceivably could very large hailstones and lumps of ice form in this\nearth's atmosphere, and so then had to come from external regions, then\nother things in or accompanying very large hailstones and lumps of ice\ncame from external regions--which worries us a little: we may be\ninstantly translated to the Positive Absolute.\n\n_Cosmos_, 13-120, quotes a Virginia newspaper, that fishes said to have\nbeen catfishes, a foot long, some of them, had fallen, in 1853, at\nNorfolk, Virginia, with hail.\n\nVegetable debris, not only nuclear, but frozen upon the surfaces of\nlarge hailstones, at Toulouse, France, July 28, 1874. (_La Science Pour\nTous_, 1874-270.)\n\nDescription of a storm, at Pontiac, Canada, July 11, 1864, in which it\nis said that it was not hailstones that fell, but \"pieces of ice, from\nhalf an inch to over two inches in diameter\" (_Canadian Naturalist_,\n2-1-308):\n\n\"But the most extraordinary thing is that a respectable farmer, of\nundoubted veracity, says he picked up a piece of hail, or ice, in the\ncenter of which was a small green frog.\"\n\nStorm at Dubuque, Iowa, June 16, 1882, in which fell hailstones and\npieces of ice (_Monthly Weather Review_, June, 1882):\n\n\"The foreman of the Novelty Iron Works, of this city, states that in two\nlarge hailstones melted by him were found small living frogs.\" But the\npieces of ice that fell upon this occasion had a peculiarity that\nindicates--though by as bizarre an indication as any we've had yet--that\nthey had been for a long time motionless or floating somewhere. We'll\ntake that up soon.\n\n_Living Age_, 52-186:\n\nThat, June 30, 1841, fishes, one of which was ten inches long, fell at\nBoston; that, eight days later, fishes and ice fell at Derby.\n\nIn Timb's _Year Book_, 1842-275, it is said that, at Derby, the fishes\nhad fallen in enormous numbers; from half an inch to two inches long,\nand some considerably larger. In the _Athenaeum_, 1841-542, copied from\nthe Sheffield _Patriot_, it is said that one of the fishes weighed three\nounces. In several accounts, it is said that, with the fishes, fell many\nsmall frogs and \"pieces of half-melted ice.\" We are told that the frogs\nand the fishes had been raised from some other part of the earth's\nsurface, in a whirlwind; no whirlwind specified; nothing said as to what\npart of the earth's surface comes ice, in the month of July--interests\nus that the ice is described as \"half-melted.\" In the London _Times_,\nJuly 15, 1841, it is said that the fishes were sticklebacks; that they\nhad fallen with ice and small frogs, many of which had survived the\nfall. We note that, at Dunfermline, three months later (Oct. 7, 1841)\nfell many fishes, several inches in length, in a thunderstorm. (London\n_Times_, Oct. 12, 1841.)\n\nHailstones, we don't care so much about. The matter of stratification\nseems significant, but we think more of the fall of lumps of ice from\nthe sky, as possible data of the Super-Sargasso Sea:\n\nLumps of ice, a foot in circumference, Derbyshire, England, May 12, 1811\n(_Annual Register_, 1811-54); cuboidal mass, six inches in diameter,\nthat fell at Birmingham, 26 days later (Thomson, _Intro. to\nMeteorology_, p. 179); size of pumpkins, Bangalore, India, May 22, 1851\n(_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1855-35); masses of ice of a pound and a half\neach, New Hampshire, Aug. 13, 1851 (Lummis, _Meteorology_, p. 129);\nmasses of ice, size of a man's head, in the Delphos tornado (Ferrel,\n_Popular Treatise_, p. 428); large as a man's hand, killing thousands of\nsheep, Texas, May 3, 1877 (_Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1877); \"pieces\nof ice so large that they could not be grasped in one hand,\" in a\ntornado, in Colorado, June 24, 1877 (_Monthly Weather Review_, June,\n1877); lumps of ice four and a half inches long, Richmond, England, Aug.\n2, 1879 (_Symons' Met. Mag._, 14-100); mass of ice, 21 inches in\ncircumference that fell with hail, Iowa, June, 1881 (_Monthly Weather\nReview_, June, 1881); \"pieces of ice\" eight inches long, and an inch and\na half thick, Davenport, Iowa, Aug. 30, 1882 (_Monthly Weather Review_,\nAug., 1882); lump of ice size of a brick; weight two pounds, Chicago,\nJuly 12, 1883 (_Monthly Weather Review_, July, 1883); lumps of ice that\nweighed one pound and a half each, India, May (?), 1888 (_Nature_,\n37-42); lump of ice weighing four pounds, Texas, Dec. 6, 1893 (_Sc.\nAm._, 68-58); lumps of ice one pound in weight, Nov. 14, 1901, in a\ntornado, Victoria (_Meteorology of Australia_, p. 34).\n\nOf course it is our acceptance that these masses not only accompanied\ntornadoes, but were brought down to this earth by tornadoes.\n\nFlammarion, _The Atmosphere_, p. 34:\n\nBlock of ice, weighing four and a half pounds that fell at Cazorta,\nSpain, June 15, 1829; block of ice, weighing eleven pounds, at Cette,\nFrance, October, 1844; mass of ice three feet long, three feet wide, and\nmore than two feet thick, that fell, in a storm, in Hungary, May 8,\n1802.\n\n_Scientific American_, 47-119:\n\nThat, according to the _Salina Journal_, a mass of ice weighing about 80\npounds had fallen from the sky, near Salina, Kansas, August, 1882. We\nare told that Mr. W.J. Hagler, the North Santa Fe merchant became\npossessor of it, and packed it in sawdust in his store.\n\nLondon _Times_, April 7, 1860:\n\nThat, upon the 16th of March, 1860, in a snowstorm, in Upper Wasdale,\nblocks of ice, so large that at a distance they looked like a flock of\nsheep, had fallen.\n\n_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1851-32:\n\nThat a mass of ice about a cubic yard in size had fallen at Candeish,\nIndia, 1828.\n\nAgainst these data, though, so far as I know, so many of them have never\nbeen assembled together before, there is a silence upon the part of\nscientific men that is unusual. Our Super-Sargasso Sea may not be an\nunavoidable conclusion, but arrival upon this earth of ice from external\nregions does seem to be--except that there must be, be it ever so faint,\na merger. It is in the notion that these masses of ice are only\ncongealed hailstones. We have data against this notion, as applied to\nall our instances, but the explanation has been offered, and, it seems\nto me, may apply in some instances. In the _Bull. Soc. Astro. de\nFrance_, 20-245, it is said of blocks of ice the size of decanters that\nhad fallen at Tunis that they were only masses of congealed hailstones.\n\nLondon _Times_, Aug. 4, 1857.\n\nThat a block of ice, described as \"pure\" ice, weighing 25 pounds, had\nbeen found in the meadow of Mr. Warner, of Cricklewood. There had been a\nstorm the day before. As in some of our other instances, no one had seen\nthis object fall from the sky. It was found after the storm: that's all\nthat can be said about it.\n\nLetter from Capt. Blakiston, communicated by Gen. Sabine, to the Royal\nSociety (_London Roy. Soc. Proc._, 10-468):\n\nThat, Jan. 14, 1860, in a thunderstorm, pieces of ice had fallen upon\nCapt. Blakiston's vessel--that it was not hail. \"It was not hail, but\nirregular-shaped pieces of solid ice of different dimensions, up to the\nsize of half a brick.\"\n\nAccording to the _Advertiser-Scotsman_, quoted by the Edinburgh _New\nPhilosophical Magazine_, 47-371, an irregular-shaped mass of ice fell at\nOrd, Scotland, August, 1849, after \"an extraordinary peal of thunder.\"\n\nIt is said that this was homogeneous ice, except in a small part, which\nlooked like congealed hailstones.\n\nThe mass was about 20 feet in circumference.\n\nThe story, as told in the London _Times_, Aug. 14, 1849, is that, upon\nthe evening of the 13th of August, 1849, after a loud peal of thunder, a\nmass of ice said to have been 20 feet in circumference, had fallen upon\nthe estate of Mr. Moffat, of Balvullich, Ross-shire. It is said that\nthis object fell alone, or without hailstones.\n\nAltogether, though it is not so strong for the Super-Sargasso Sea, I\nthink this is one of our best expressions upon external origins. That\nlarge blocks of ice could form in the moisture of this earth's\natmosphere is about as likely as that blocks of stone could form in a\ndust whirl. Of course, if ice or water comes to this earth from external\nsources, we think of at least minute organisms in it, and on, with our\ndata, to frogs, fishes; on to anything that's thinkable, coming from\nexternal sources. It's of great importance to us to accept that large\nlumps of ice have fallen from the sky, but what we desire most--perhaps\nbecause of our interest in its archaeologic and palaeontologic\ntreasures--is now to be through with tentativeness and probation, and\nto take the Super-Sargasso Sea into full acceptance in our more advanced\nfold of the chosen of this twentieth century.\n\nIn the _Report of the British Association_, 1855-37, it is said that, at\nPoorhundur, India, Dec. 11, 1854, flat pieces of ice, many of them\nweighing several pounds--each, I suppose--had fallen from the sky. They\nare described as \"large ice-flakes.\"\n\nVast fields of ice in the Super-Arctic regions, or strata, of the\nSuper-Sargasso Sea. When they break up, their fragments are flake-like.\nIn our acceptance, there are aerial ice-fields that are remote from this\nearth; that break up, fragments grinding against one another, rolling in\nvapor and water, of different constituency in different regions, forming\nslowly as stratified hailstones--but that there are ice-fields near this\nearth, that break up into just such flat pieces of ice as cover any pond\nor river when ice of a pond or river is broken, and are sometimes soon\nprecipitated to the earth, in this familiar flat formation.\n\n_Symons' Met. Mag._, 43-154:\n\nA correspondent writes that, at Braemar, July 2, 1908, when the sky was\nclear overhead, and the sun shining, flat pieces of ice fell--from\nsomewhere. The sun was shining, but something was going on somewhere:\nthunder was heard.\n\nUntil I saw the reproduction of a photograph in the _Scientific\nAmerican_, Feb. 21, 1914, I had supposed that these ice-fields must be,\nsay, at least ten or twenty miles away from this earth, and invisible,\nto terrestrial observers, except as the blurs that have so often been\nreported by astronomers and meteorologists. The photograph published by\nthe _Scientific American_ is of an aggregation supposed to be clouds,\npresumably not very high, so clearly detailed are they. The writer says\nthat they looked to him like \"a field of broken ice.\" Beneath is a\npicture of a conventional field of ice, floating ordinarily in water.\nThe resemblance between the two pictures is striking--nevertheless, it\nseems to me incredible that the first of the photographs could be of an\naerial ice-field, or that gravitation could cease to act at only a mile\nor so from this earth's surface--\n\nUnless:\n\nThe exceptional: the flux and vagary of all things.\n\nOr that normally this earth's gravitation extends, say, ten or fifteen\nmiles outward--but that gravitation must be rhythmic.\n\nOf course, in the pseudo-formulas of astronomers, gravitation as a fixed\nquantity is essential. Accept that gravitation is a variable force, and\nastronomers deflate, with a perceptible hissing sound, into the\npunctured condition of economists, biologists, meteorologists, and all\nthe others of the humbler divinities, who can admittedly offer only\ninsecure approximations.\n\nWe refer all who would not like to hear the hiss of escaping arrogance,\nto Herbert Spencer's chapters upon the rhythm of all phenomena.\n\nIf everything else--light from the stars, heat from the sun, the winds\nand the tides; forms and colors and sizes of animals; demands and\nsupplies and prices; political opinions and chemic reactions and\nreligious doctrines and magnetic intensities and the ticking of clocks;\nand arrival and departure of the seasons--if everything else is\nvariable, we accept that the notion of gravitation as fixed and\nformulable is only another attempted positivism, doomed, like all other\nillusions of realness in quasi-existence. So it is intermediatism to\naccept that, though gravitation may approximate higher to invariability\nthan do the winds, for instance, it must be somewhere between the\nAbsolutes of Stability and Instability. Here then we are not much\nimpressed with the opposition of physicists and astronomers, fearing, a\nlittle mournfully, that their language is of expiring sibilations.\n\nSo then the fields of ice in the sky, and that, though usually so far\naway as to be mere blurs, at times they come close enough to be seen in\ndetail. For description of what I call a \"blur,\" see _Pop. Sci. News_,\nFebruary, 1884--sky, in general, unusually clear, but, near the sun, \"a\nwhite, slightly curdled haze, which was dazzlingly bright.\"\n\nWe accept that sometimes fields of ice pass between the sun and the\nearth: that many strata of ice, or very thick fields of ice, or\nsuperimposed fields would obscure the sun--that there have been\noccasions when the sun was eclipsed by fields of ice:\n\nFlammarion, _The Atmosphere_, p. 394:\n\nThat a profound darkness came upon the city of Brussels, June 18, 1839:\n\nThere fell flat pieces of ice, an inch long.\n\nIntense darkness at Aitkin, Minn., April 2, 1889: sand and \"solid chunks\nof ice\" reported to have fallen (_Science_, April 19, 1889).\n\nIn _Symons' Meteorological Magazine_, 32-172, are outlined rough-edged\nbut smooth-surfaced pieces of ice that fell at Manassas, Virginia, Aug.\n10, 1897. They look as much like the roughly broken fragments of a\nsmooth sheet of ice--as ever have roughly broken fragments of a smooth\nsheet of ice looked. About two inches across, and one inch thick. In\n_Cosmos_, 3-116, it is said that, at Rouen, July 5, 1853, fell\nirregular-shaped pieces of ice, about the size of a hand, described as\nlooking as if all had been broken from one enormous block of ice. That,\nI think, was an aerial iceberg. In the awful density, or almost absolute\nstupidity of the 19th century, it never occurred to anybody to look for\ntraces of polar bears or of seals upon these fragments.\n\nOf course, seeing what we want to see, having been able to gather these\ndata only because they are in agreement with notions formed in advance,\nwe are not so respectful to our own notions as to a similar impression\nforced upon an observer who had no theory or acceptance to support. In\ngeneral, our prejudices see and our prejudices investigate, but this\nshould not be taken as an absolute.\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, July, 1894:\n\nThat, from the Weather Bureau, of Portland, Oregon, a tornado, of June\n3, 1894, was reported.\n\nFragments of ice fell from the sky.\n\nThey averaged three to four inches square, and about an inch thick. In\nlength and breadth they had the smooth surfaces required by our\nacceptance: and, according to the writer in the _Review_, \"gave the\nimpression of a vast field of ice suspended in the atmosphere, and\nsuddenly broken into fragments about the size of the palm of the hand.\"\n\nThis datum, profoundly of what we used to call the \"damned,\" or before\nwe could no longer accept judgment, or cut and dried condemnation by\ninfants, turtles, and lambs, was copied--but without comment--in the\n_Scientific American_, 71-371.\n\nOur theology is something like this:\n\nOf course we ought to be damned--but we revolt against adjudication by\ninfants, turtles, and lambs.\n\nWe now come to some remarkable data in a rather difficult department of\nsuper-geography. Vast fields of aerial ice. There's a lesson to me in\nthe treachery of the imaginable. Most of our opposition is in the\nclearness with which the conventional, but impossible, becomes the\nimaginable, and then the resistant to modifications. After it had become\nthe conventional with me, I conceived clearly of vast sheets of ice, a\nfew miles above this earth--then the shining of the sun, and the ice\npartly melting--that note upon the ice that fell at Derby--water\ntrickling and forming icicles upon the lower surface of the ice sheet. I\nseemed to look up and so clearly visualized those icicles hanging like\nstalactites from a flat-roofed cave, in white calcite. Or I looked up at\nthe under side of an aerial ice-lump, and seemed to see a papillation\nsimilar to that observed by a calf at times. But then--but then--if\nicicles should form upon the under side of a sheet of aerial ice, that\nwould be by the falling of water toward this earth; an icicle is of\ncourse an expression of gravitation--and, if water melting from ice\nshould fall toward this earth, why not the ice itself fall before an\nicicle could have time to form? Of course, in quasi-existence, where\neverything is a paradox, one might argue that the water falls, but the\nice does not, because the ice is heavier--that is, in masses. That\nnotion, I think, belongs in a more advanced course than we are taking at\npresent.\n\nOur expression upon icicles:\n\nA vast field of aerial ice--it is inert to this earth's gravitation--but\nby universal flux and variation, part of it sags closer to this earth,\nand is susceptible to gravitation--by cohesion with the main mass, this\npart does not fall, but water melting from it does fall, and forms\nicicles--then, by various disturbances, this part sometimes falls in\nfragments that are protrusive with icicles.\n\nOf the ice that fell, some of it enclosing living frogs, at Dubuque,\nIowa, June 16, 1882, it is said (_Monthly Weather Review_, June, 1882)\nthat there were pieces from one to seventeen inches in circumference,\nthe largest weighing one pound and three-quarters--that upon some of\nthem were icicles half an inch in length. We emphasize that these\nobjects were not hailstones.\n\nThe only merger is that of knobby hailstones, or of large hailstones\nwith protuberances wrought by crystallization: but that is no merger\nwith terrestrial phenomena, and such formations are unaccountable to\northodoxy; or it is incredible that hail could so crystallize--not\nforming by accretion--in the fall of a few seconds. For an account of\nsuch hailstones, see _Nature_, 61-594. Note the size--\"some of them the\nsize of turkeys' eggs.\"\n\nIt is our expression that sometimes the icicles themselves have fallen,\nas if by concussion, or as if something had swept against the under side\nof an aerial ice floe, detaching its papillations.\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, June, 1889:\n\nThat, at Oswego, N.Y., June 11, 1889, according to the Turin (N.Y.)\n_Leader_, there fell, in a thunderstorm, pieces of ice that \"resembled\nthe fragments of icicles.\"\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, 29-506:\n\nThat on Florence Island, St. Lawrence River, Aug. 8, 1901, with ordinary\nhail, fell pieces of ice \"formed like icicles, the size and shape of\nlead pencils that had been cut into sections about three-eighths of an\ninch in length.\"\n\nSo our data of the Super-Sargasso Sea, and its Arctic region: and, for\nweeks at a time, an ice field may hang motionless over a part of this\nearth's surface--the sun has some effect upon it, but not much until\nlate in the afternoon, I should say--part of it has sagged, but is held\nup by cohesion with the main mass--whereupon we have such an occurrence\nas would have been a little uncanny to us once upon a time--or fall of\nwater from a cloudless sky, day after day, in one small part of this\nearth's surface, late in the afternoon, when the sun's rays had had time\nfor their effects:\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, October, 1886:\n\nThat, according to the Charlotte _Chronicle_, Oct. 21, 1886, for three\nweeks there had been a fall of water from the sky, in Charlotte, N.C.,\nlocalized in one particular spot, every afternoon, about three o'clock;\nthat, whether the sky was cloudy or cloudless, the water or rain fell\nupon a small patch of land between two trees and nowhere else.\n\nThis is the newspaper account, and, as such, it seems in the depths of\nthe unchosen, either by me or any other expression of the Salvation\nArmy. The account by the Signal Service observer, at Charlotte,\npublished in the _Review_, follows:\n\n\"An unusual phenomenon was witnessed on the 21st: having been informed\nthat, for some weeks prior to date, rain had been falling daily, after 3\nP.M., on a particular spot, near two trees, corner of 9th and D streets,\nI visited the place, and saw precipitation in the form of rain drops at\n4:47 and 4:55 P.M., while the sun was shining brightly. On the 22nd, I\nagain visited the place, and from 4:05 to 4:25 P.M., a light shower of\nrain fell from a cloudless sky.... Sometimes the precipitation falls\nover an area of half an acre, but always appears to center at these two\ntrees, and when lightest occurs there only.\"\n\n\n\n\n14\n\n\nWe see conventionally. It is not only that we think and act and speak\nand dress alike, because of our surrender to social attempt at Entity,\nin which we are only super-cellular. We see what it is \"proper\" that we\nshould see. It is orthodox enough to say that a horse is not a horse, to\nan infant--any more than is an orange an orange to the unsophisticated.\nIt's interesting to walk along a street sometimes and look at things and\nwonder what they'd look like, if we hadn't been taught to see horses and\ntrees and houses as horses and trees and houses. I think that to\nsuper-sight they are local stresses merging indistinguishably into one\nanother, in an all-inclusive nexus.\n\nI think that it would be credible enough to say that many times have\nMonstrator and Elvera and Azuria crossed telescopic fields of vision,\nand were not even seen--because it wouldn't be proper to see them; it\nwouldn't be respectable, and it wouldn't be respectful: it would be\ninsulting to old bones to see them: it would bring on evil influences\nfrom the relics of St. Isaac to see them.\n\nBut our data:\n\nOf vast worlds that are orbitless, or that are navigable, or that are\nadrift in inter-planetary tides and currents: the data that we shall\nhave of their approach, in modern times, within five or six miles of\nthis earth--\n\nBut then their visits, or approaches, to other planets, or to other of\nthe few regularized bodies that have surrendered to the attempted Entity\nof this solar system as a whole--\n\nThe question that we can't very well evade:\n\nHave these other worlds, or super-constructions, ever been seen by\nastronomers?\n\nI think there would not be much approximation to realness in taking\nrefuge in the notion of astronomers who stare and squint and see only\nthat which it is respectable and respectful to see. It is all very well\nto say that astronomers are hypnotics, and that an astronomer looking at\nthe moon is hypnotized by the moon, but our acceptance is that the\nbodies of this present expression often visit the moon, or cross it, or\nare held in temporary suspension near it--then some of them must often\nhave been within the diameter of an astronomer's hypnosis.\n\nOur general expression:\n\nThat, upon the oceans of this earth, there are regularized vessels, but\nalso that there are tramp vessels:\n\nThat, upon the super-ocean, there are regularized planets, but also that\nthere are tramp worlds:\n\nThat astronomers are like mercantile purists who would deny commercial\nvagabondage.\n\nOur acceptance is that vast celestial vagabonds have been excluded by\nastronomers, primarily because their irresponsibilities are an affront\nto the pure and the precise, or to attempted positivism; and secondarily\nbecause they have not been seen so very often. The planets steadily\nreflect the light of the sun: upon this uniformity a system that we call\nPrimary Astronomy has been built up; but now the subject-matter of\nAdvanced Astronomy is data of celestial phenomena that are sometimes\nlight and sometimes dark, varying like some of the satellites of\nJupiter, but with a wider range. However, light or dark, they have been\nseen and reported so often that the only important reason for their\nexclusion is--that they don't fit in.\n\nWith dark bodies that are probably external to our own solar system, I\nhave, in the provincialism that no one can escape, not much concern.\nDark bodies afloat in outer space would have been damned a few years\nago, but now they're sanctioned by Prof. Barnard--and, if he says\nthey're all right, you may think of them without the fear of doing\nsomething wrong or ridiculous--the close kinship we note so often\nbetween the evil and the absurd--I suppose by the ridiculous I mean the\nfroth of evil. The dark companion of Algol, for instance. Though that's\na clear case of celestial miscegenation, the purists, or positivists,\nadmit that's so. In the _Proceedings of the National Academy of\nScience_, 1915-394, Prof. Barnard writes of an object--he calls it an\n\"object\"--in Cephus. His idea is that there are dark, opaque bodies\noutside this solar system. But in the _Astrophysical Journal_, 1916-1,\nhe modifies into regarding them as \"dark nebulae.\" That's not so\ninteresting.\n\nWe accept that Venus, for instance, has often been visited by other\nworlds, or by super-constructions, from which come ciders and coke and\ncoal; that sometimes these things have reflected light and have been\nseen from this earth--by professional astronomers. It will be noted that\nthroughout this chapter our data are accursed Brahmins--as, by hypnosis\nand inertia, we keep on and keep on saying, just as a good many of the\nscientists of the 19th century kept on and kept on admitting the power\nof the system that preceded them--or Continuity would be smashed.\nThere's a big chance here for us to be instantaneously translated to the\nPositive Absolute--oh, well--\n\nWhat I emphasize here is that our damned data are observations by\nastronomers of the highest standing, excommunicated by astronomers of\nsimilar standing--but backed up by the dominant spirit of their era--to\nwhich all minds had to equilibrate or be negligible, unheard, submerged.\nIt would seem sometimes, in this book, as if our revolts were against\nthe dogmatisms and pontifications of single scientists of eminence. This\nis only a convenience, because it seems necessary to personify. If we\nlook over _Philosophical Transactions_, or the publications of the Royal\nAstronomical Society, for instance, we see that Herschel, for instance,\nwas as powerless as any boy stargazer, to enforce acceptance of any\nobservation of his that did not harmonize with the system that was\ngrowing up as independently of him and all other astronomers, as a phase\nin the development of an embryo compels all cells to take on appearances\nconcordantly with the design and the predetermined progress and schedule\nof the whole.\n\nVisitors to Venus:\n\nEvans, _Ways of the Planets_, p. 140:\n\nThat, in 1645, a body large enough to look like a satellite was seen\nnear Venus. Four times in the first half of the 18th century, a similar\nobservation was reported. The last report occurred in 1767.\n\nA large body has been seen--seven times, according to _Science Gossip_,\n1886-178--near Venus. At least one astronomer, Houzeau, accepted these\nobservations and named the--world, planet, super-construction--\"Neith.\"\nHis views are mentioned \"in passing, but without endorsement,\" in the\n_Trans. N.Y. Acad._, 5-249.\n\nHouzeau or someone writing for the magazine-section of a Sunday\nnewspaper--outer darkness for both alike. A new satellite in this solar\nsystem might be a little disturbing--though the formulas of Laplace,\nwhich were considered final in his day, have survived the admittance of\nfive or six hundred bodies not included in those formulas--a satellite\nto Venus might be a little disturbing, but would be explained--but a\nlarge body approaching a planet--staying awhile--going away--coming back\nsome other time--anchoring, as it were--\n\nAzuria is pretty bad, but Azuria is no worse than Neith.\n\n_Astrophysical Journal_, 1-127:\n\nA light-reflecting body, or a bright spot near Mars: seen Nov. 25, 1894,\nby Prof. Pickering and others, at the Lowell Observatory, above an\nunilluminated part of Mars--self-luminous, it would seem--thought to\nhave been a cloud--but estimated to have been about twenty miles away\nfrom the planet.\n\nLuminous spot seen moving across the disk of Mercury, in 1799, by\nHarding and Schroeter. (_Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, 38-338.)\n\nIn the first Bulletin issued by the Lowell Observatory, in 1903, Prof.\nLowell describes a body that was seen on the terminator of Mars, May\n20, 1903. On May 27, it was \"suspected.\" If still there, it had moved,\nwe are told, about 300 miles--\"probably a dust cloud.\"\n\nVery conspicuous and brilliant spots seen on the disk of Mars, October\nand November, 1911. (_Popular Astronomy_, Vol. 19, No. 10.)\n\nSo one of them accepted six or seven observations that were in\nagreement, except that they could not be regularized, upon a\nworld--planet--satellite--and he gave it a name. He named it \"Neith.\"\n\nMonstrator and Elvera and Azuria and Super-Romanimus--\n\nOr heresy and orthodoxy and the oneness of all quasiness, and our ways\nand means and methods are the very same. Or, if we name things that may\nnot be, we are not of lonely guilt in the nomenclature of absences--\n\nBut now Leverrier and \"Vulcan.\"\n\nLeverrier again.\n\nOr to demonstrate the collapsibility of a froth, stick a pin in the\nlargest bubble of it. Astronomy and inflation: and by inflation we mean\nexpansion of the attenuated. Or that the science of Astronomy is a\nphantom-film distended with myth-stuff--but always our acceptance that\nit approximates higher to substantiality than did the system that\npreceded it.\n\nSo Leverrier and the \"planet Vulcan.\"\n\nAnd we repeat, and it will do us small good to repeat. If you be of the\nmasses that the astronomers have hypnotized--being themselves\nhypnotized, or they could not hypnotize others--or that the hypnotist's\ncontrol is not the masterful power that it is popularly supposed to be,\nbut only transference of state from one hypnotic to another--\n\nIf you be of the masses that the astronomers have hypnotized, you will\nnot be able even to remember. Ten pages from here, and Leverrier and the\n\"planet Vulcan\" will have fallen from your mind, like beans from a\nmagnet, or like data of cold meteorites from the mind of a Thomson.\n\nLeverrier and the \"planet Vulcan.\"\n\nAnd much the good it will do us to repeat.\n\nBut at least temporarily we shall have an impression of a historic\nfiasco, such as, in our acceptance, could occur only in a\nquasi-existence.\n\nIn 1859, Dr. Lescarbault, an amateur astronomer, of Orgeres, France,\nannounced that, upon March 26, of that year, he had seen a body of\nplanetary size cross the sun. We are in a subject that is now as unholy\nto the present system as ever were its own subjects to the system that\npreceded it, or as ever were slanders against miracles to the preceding\nsystem. Nevertheless few text-books go so far as quite to disregard this\ntragedy. The method of the systematists is slightingly to give a few\ninstances of the unholy, and dispose of the few. If it were desirable to\nthem to deny that there are mountains upon this earth, they would record\na few observations upon some slight eminences near Orange, N.J., but say\nthat commuters, though estimable persons in several ways, are likely to\nhave their observations mixed. The text-books casually mention a few of\nthe \"supposed\" observations upon \"Vulcan,\" and then pass on.\n\nDr. Lescarbault wrote to Leverrier, who hastened to Orgeres--\n\nBecause this announcement assimilated with his own calculations upon a\nplanet between Mercury and the sun--\n\nBecause this solar system itself has never attained positiveness in the\naspect of Regularity: there are to Mercury, as there are to Neptune,\nphenomena irreconcilable with the formulas, or motions that betray\ninfluence by something else.\n\nWe are told that Leverrier \"satisfied himself as to the substantial\naccuracy of the reported observation.\" The story of this investigation\nis told in _Monthly Notices_, 20-98. It seems too bad to threaten the\nnaive little thing with our rude sophistications, but it is amusingly of\nthe ingenuousness of the age from which present dogmas have survived.\nLescarbault wrote to Leverrier. Leverrier hastened to Orgeres. But he\nwas careful not to tell Lescarbault who he was. Went right in and\n\"subjected Dr. Lescarbault to a very severe cross-examination\"--just the\nway you or I may feel at liberty to go into anybody's home and be severe\nwith people--\"pressing him hard step by step\"--just as anyone might go\ninto someone else's house and press him hard, though unknown to the\nhard-pressed one. Not until he was satisfied, did Leverrier reveal his\nidentity. I suppose Dr. Lescarbault expressed astonishment. I think\nthere's something utopian about this: it's so unlike the\nstand-offishness of New York life.\n\nLeverrier gave the name \"Vulcan\" to the object that Dr. Lescarbault had\nreported.\n\nBy the same means by which he is, even to this day, supposed--by the\nfaithful--to have discovered Neptune, he had already announced the\nprobable existence of an Intra-Mercurial body, or group of bodies. He\nhad five observations besides Lescarbault's upon something that had been\nseen to cross the sun. In accordance with the mathematical hypnoses of\nhis era, he studied these six transits. Out of them he computed elements\ngiving \"Vulcan\" a period of about 20 days, or a formula for heliocentric\nlongitude at any time.\n\nBut he placed the time of best observation away up in 1877.\n\nBut even so, or considering that he still had probably a good many years\nto live, it may strike one that he was a little rash--that is if one has\nnot gone very deep into the study of hypnoses--that, having \"discovered\"\nNeptune by a method which, in our acceptance, had no more to recommend\nit than had once equally well-thought-of methods of witch-finding, he\nshould not have taken such chances: that if he was right as to Neptune,\nbut should be wrong as to \"Vulcan,\" his average would be away below that\nof most fortune-tellers, who could scarcely hope to do business upon a\nfifty per cent. basis--all that the reasoning of a tyro in hypnoses.\n\nThe date:\n\nMarch 22, 1877.\n\nThe scientific world was up on its hind legs nosing the sky. The thing\nhad been done so authoritatively. Never a pope had said a thing with\nmore of the seeming of finality. If six observations correlated, what\nmore could be asked? The Editor of _Nature_, a week before the predicted\nevent, though cautious, said that it is difficult to explain how six\nobservers, unknown to one another, could have data that could be\nformulated, if they were not related phenomena.\n\nIn a way, at this point occurs the crisis of our whole book.\n\nFormulas are against us.\n\nBut can astronomic formulas, backed up by observations in agreement,\ntaken many years apart, calculated by a Leverrier, be as meaningless, in\na positive sense, as all other quasi-things that we have encountered so\nfar?\n\nThe preparations they made, before March 22, 1877. In England, the\nAstronomer Royal made it the expectation of his life: notified observers\nat Madras, Melbourne, Sydney, and New Zealand, and arranged with\nobservers in Chili and the United States. M. Struve had prepared for\nobservations in Siberia and Japan--\n\nMarch 22, 1877--\n\nNot absolutely, hypocritically, I think it's pathetic, myself. If anyone\nshould doubt the sincerity of Leverrier, in this matter, we note,\nwhether it has meaning or not, that a few months later he died.\n\nI think we'll take up Monstrator, though there's so much to this subject\nthat we'll have to come back.\n\nAccording to the _Annual Register_, 9-120, upon the 9th of August, 1762,\nM. de Rostan, of Basle, France, was taking altitudes of the sun, at\nLausanne. He saw a vast, spindle-shaped body, about three of the sun's\ndigits in breadth and nine in length, advancing slowly across the disk\nof the sun, or \"at no more than half the velocity with which the\nordinary solar spots move.\" It did not disappear until the 7th of\nSeptember, when it reached the sun's limb. Because of the spindle-like\nform, I incline to think of a super-Zeppelin, but another observation,\nwhich seems to indicate that it was a world, is that, though it was\nopaque, and \"eclipsed the sun,\" it had around it a kind of\nnebulosity--or atmosphere? A penumbra would ordinarily be a datum of a\nsun spot, but there are observations that indicate that this object was\nat a considerable distance from the sun:\n\nIt is recorded that another observer, at Paris, watching the sun, at\nthis time, had not seen this object:\n\nBut that M. Croste, at Sole, about forty-five German leagues northward\nfrom Lausanne, had seen it, describing the same spindle-form, but\ndisagreeing a little as to breadth. Then comes the important point: that\nhe and M. de Rostan did not see it upon the same part of the sun. This,\nthen, is parallax, and, compounded with invisibility at Paris, is great\nparallax--or that, in the course of a month, in the summer of 1762, a\nlarge, opaque, spindle-shaped body traversed the disk of the sun, but at\na great distance from the sun. The writer in the _Register_ says: \"In a\nword, we know of nothing to have recourse to, in the heavens, by which\nto explain this phenomenon.\" I suppose he was not a hopeless addict to\nexplaining. Extraordinary--we fear he must have been a man of loose\nhabits in some other respects.\n\nAs to us--\n\nMonstrator.\n\nIn the _Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, February, 1877, Leverrier, who\nnever lost faith, up to the last day, gives the six observations upon an\nunknown body of planetary size, that he had formulated:\n\nFritsche, Oct. 10, 1802; Stark, Oct. 9, 1819; De Cuppis, Oct. 30, 1839;\nSidebotham, Nov. 12, 1849; Lescarbault, March 26, 1859; Lummis, March\n20, 1862.\n\nIf we weren't so accustomed to Science in its essential aspect of\nDisregard, we'd be mystified and impressed, like the Editor of _Nature_,\nwith the formulation of these data: agreement of so many instances would\nseem incredible as a coincidence: but our acceptance is that, with just\nenough disregard, astronomers and fortune-tellers can formulate\nanything--or we'd engage, ourselves, to formulate periodicities in the\ncrowds in Broadway--say that every Wednesday morning, a tall man, with\none leg and a black eye, carrying a rubber plant, passes the Singer\nBuilding, at quarter past ten o'clock. Of course it couldn't really be\ndone, unless such a man did have such periodicity, but if some Wednesday\nmornings it should be a small child lugging a barrel, or a fat negress\nwith a week's wash, by ordinary disregard that would be prediction good\nenough for the kind of quasi-existence we're in.\n\nSo whether we accuse, or whether we think that the word \"accuse\"\nover-dignifies an attitude toward a quasi-astronomer, or mere figment in\na super-dream, our acceptance is that Leverrier never did formulate\nobservations--\n\nThat he picked out observations that could be formulated--\n\nThat of this type are all formulas--\n\nThat, if Leverrier had not been himself helplessly hypnotized, or if he\nhad had in him more than a tincture of realness, never could he have\nbeen beguiled by such a quasi-process: but that he was hypnotized, and\nso extended, or transferred, his condition to others, that upon March\n22, 1877, he had this earth bristling with telescopes, with the rigid\nand almost inanimate forms of astronomers behind them--\n\nAnd not a blessed thing of any unusuality was seen upon that day or\nsucceeding days.\n\nBut that the science of Astronomy suffered the slightest in prestige?\n\nIt couldn't. The spirit of 1877 was behind it. If, in an embryo, some\ncells should not live up to the phenomena of their era, the others will\nsustain the scheduled appearances. Not until an embryo enters the\nmammalian stage are cells of the reptilian stage false cells.\n\nIt is our acceptance that there were many equally authentic reports upon\nlarge planetary bodies that had been seen near the sun; that, of many,\nLeverrier picked out six; not then deciding that all the other\nobservations related to still other large, planetary bodies, but\narbitrarily, or hypnotically, disregarding--or heroically\ndisregarding--every one of them--that to formulate at all he had to\nexclude falsely. The denouement killed him, I think. I'm not at all\ninclined to place him with the Grays and Hitchcocks and Symonses. I'm\nnot, because, though it was rather unsportsmanlike to put the date so\nfar ahead, he did give a date, and he did stick to it with such a high\napproximation--\n\nI think Leverrier was translated to the Positive Absolute.\n\nThe disregarded:\n\nObservation, of July 26, 1819, by Gruthinson--but that was of two bodies\nthat crossed the sun together--\n\n_Nature_, 14-469:\n\nThat, according to the astronomer, J.R. Hind, Benjamin Scott, City\nChamberlain of London, and Mr. Wray, had, in 1847, seen a body similar\nto \"Vulcan\" cross the sun.\n\nSimilar observation by Hind and Lowe, March 12, 1849 (_L'Annee\nScientifique_, 1876-9).\n\n_Nature_, 14-505:\n\nBody of apparent size of Mercury, seen, Jan. 29, 1860, by F.A.R. Russell\nand four other observers, crossing the sun.\n\nDe Vico's observation of July 12, 1837 (_Observatory_, 2-424).\n\n_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1865-16:\n\nThat another amateur astronomer, M. Coumbray, of Constantinople, had\nwritten to Leverrier, that, upon the 8th of March, 1865, he had seen a\nblack point, sharply outlined, traverse the disk of the sun. It detached\nitself from a group of sun spots near the limb of the sun, and took 48\nminutes to reach the other limb. Figuring upon the diagram sent by M.\nCoumbray, a central passage would have taken a little more than an hour.\nThis observation was disregarded by Leverrier, because his formula\nrequired about four times that velocity. The point here is that these\nother observations are as authentic as those that Leverrier included;\nthat, then, upon data as good as the data of \"Vulcan,\" there must be\nother \"Vulcans\"--the heroic and defiant disregard, then, of trying to\nformulate one, omitting the others, which, by orthodox doctrine, must\nhave influenced it greatly, if all were in the relatively narrow space\nbetween Mercury and the sun.\n\nObservation upon another such body, of April 4, 1876, by M. Weber, of\nBerlin. As to this observation, Leverrier was informed by Wolf, in\nAugust, 1876 (_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1876-7). It made no difference, so\nfar as can be known, to this notable positivist.\n\nTwo other observations noted by Hind and Denning--London _Times_, Nov.\n3, 1871, and March 26, 1873.\n\n_Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, 20-100:\n\nStandacher, February, 1762; Lichtenberg, Nov. 19, 1762; Hoffman, May,\n1764; Dangos, Jan. 18, 1798; Stark, Feb. 12, 1820. An observation by\nSchmidt, Oct. 11, 1847, is said to be doubtful: but, upon page 192, it\nis said that this doubt had arisen because of a mistaken translation,\nand two other observations by Schmidt are given: Oct. 14, 1849, and Feb.\n18, 1850--also an observation by Lofft, Jan. 6, 1818. Observation by\nSteinheibel, at Vienna, April 27, 1820 (_Monthly Notices_, 1862).\n\nHaase had collected reports of twenty observations like Lescarbault's.\nThe list was published in 1872, by Wolf. Also there are other instances\nlike Gruthinsen's:\n\n_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 2-28-446:\n\nReport by Pastorff that he had seen twice in 1836, and once in 1837, two\nround spots of unequal size moving across the sun, changing position\nrelatively to each other, and taking a different course, if not orbit,\neach time: that, in 1834, he had seen similar bodies pass six times\nacross the disk of the sun, looking very much like Mercury in his\ntransits.\n\nMarch 22, 1876--\n\nBut to point out Leverrier's poverty-stricken average--or discovering\nplanets upon a fifty per cent. basis--would be to point out the low\npercentage of realness in the quasi-myth-stuff of which the whole system\nis composed. We do not accuse the text-books of omitting this fiasco,\nbut we do note that theirs is the conventional adaptation here of all\nbeguilers who are in difficulties--\n\nThe diverting of attention.\n\nIt wouldn't be possible in a real existence, with real mentality, to\ndeal with, but I suppose it's good enough for the quasi-intellects that\nstupefy themselves with text-books. The trick here is to gloss over\nLeverrier's mistake, and blame Lescarbault--he was only an amateur--had\ndelusions. The reader's attention is led against Lescarbault by a report\nfrom M. Lias, director of the Brazilian Coast Survey, who, at the time\nof Lescarbault's \"supposed\" observation had been watching the sun in\nBrazil, and, instead of seeing even ordinary sun spots, had noted that\nthe region of the \"supposed transit\" was of \"uniform intensity.\"\n\nBut the meaninglessness of all utterances in quasi-existence--\n\n\"Uniform intensity\" turns our way as much as against us--or some day\nsome brain will conceive a way of beating Newton's third law--if every\nreaction, or resistance, is, or can be, interpretable as stimulus\ninstead of resistance--if this could be done in mechanics, there's a way\nopen here for someone to own the world--specifically in this matter,\n\"uniform intensity\" means that Lescarbault saw no ordinary sun spot,\njust as much as it means that no spot at all was seen upon the sun.\nContinuing the interpretation of a resistance as an assistance, which\ncan always be done with mental forces--making us wonder what\napplications could be made with steam and electric forces--we point out\nthat invisibility in Brazil means parallax quite as truly as it means\nabsence, and, inasmuch as \"Vulcan\" was supposed to be distant from the\nsun, we interpret denial as corroboration--method of course of every\nscientist, politician, theologian, high-school debater.\n\nSo the text-books, with no especial cleverness, because no especial\ncleverness is needed, lead the reader into contempt for the amateur of\nOrgeres, and forgetfulness of Leverrier--and some other subject is taken\nup.\n\nBut our own acceptance:\n\nThat these data are as good as ever they were;\n\nThat, if someone of eminence should predict an earthquake, and if there\nshould be no earthquake at the predicted time, that would discredit the\nprophet, but data of past earthquakes would remain as good as ever they\nhad been. It is easy enough to smile at the illusion of a single\namateur--\n\nThe mass-formation:\n\nFritsche, Stark, De Cuppis, Sidebotham, Lescarbault, Lummis, Gruthinson,\nDe Vico, Scott, Wray, Russell, Hind, Lowe, Coumbray, Weber, Standacher,\nLichtenberg, Dangos, Hoffman, Schmidt, Lofft, Steinheibel, Pastorff--\n\nThese are only the observations conventionally listed relatively to an\nIntra-Mercurial planet. They are formidable enough to prevent our being\ndiverted, as if it were all the dream of a lonely amateur--but they're a\nmere advance-guard. From now on other data of large celestial bodies,\nsome dark and some reflecting light, will pass and pass and keep on\npassing--\n\nSo that some of us will remember a thing or two, after the procession's\nover--possibly.\n\nTaking up only one of the listed observations--\n\nOr our impression that the discrediting of Leverrier has nothing to do\nwith the acceptability of these data:\n\nIn the London _Times_, Jan. 10, 1860, is Benjamin Scott's account of his\nobservation:\n\nThat, in the summer of 1847, he had seen a body that had seemed to be\nthe size of Venus, crossing the sun. He says that, hardly believing the\nevidence of his sense of sight, he had looked for someone, whose hopes\nor ambitions would not make him so subject to illusion. He had told his\nlittle son, aged five years, to look through the telescope. The child\nhad exclaimed that he had seen \"a little balloon\" crossing the sun.\nScott says that he had not had sufficient self-reliance to make public\nannouncement of his remarkable observation at the time, but that, in the\nevening of the same day, he had told Dr. Dick, F.R.A.S., who had cited\nother instances. In the _Times_, Jan. 12, 1860, is published a letter\nfrom Richard Abbott, F.R.A.S.: that he remembered Mr. Scott's letter to\nhim upon this observation, at the time of the occurrence.\n\nI suppose that, at the beginning of this chapter, one had the notion\nthat, by hard scratching through musty old records we might rake up\nvague, more than doubtful data, distortable into what's called evidence\nof unrecognized worlds or constructions of planetary size--\n\nBut the high authenticity and the support and the modernity of these of\nthe accursed that we are now considering--\n\nAnd our acceptance that ours is a quasi-existence, in which above all\nother things, hopes, ambitions, emotions, motivations, stands Attempt to\nPositivize: that we are here considering an attempt to systematize that\nis sheer fanaticism in its disregard of the unsystematizable--that it\nrepresented the highest good in the 19th century--that it is mono-mania,\nbut heroic mono-mania that was quasi-divine in the 19th century--\n\nBut that this isn't the 19th century.\n\nAs a doubly sponsored Brahmin--in the regard of Baptists--the objects of\nJuly 29, 1878, stand out and proclaim themselves so that nothing but\ndisregard of the intensity of mono-mania can account for their reception\nby the system:\n\nOr the total eclipse of July 29, 1878, and the reports by Prof. Watson,\nfrom Rawlins, Wyoming, and by Prof. Swift, from Denver, Colorado: that\nthey had seen two shining objects at a considerable distance from the\nsun.\n\nIt's quite in accord with our general expression: not that there is an\nIntra-Mercurial planet, but that there are different bodies, many vast\nthings; near this earth sometimes, near the sun sometimes; orbitless\nworlds, which, because of scarcely any data of collisions, we think of\nas under navigable control--or dirigible super-constructions.\n\nProf. Watson and Prof. Swift published their observations.\n\nThen the disregard that we cannot think of in terms of ordinary, sane\nexclusions.\n\nThe text-book systematists begin by telling us that the trouble with\nthese observations is that they disagree widely: there is considerable\nrespectfulness, especially for Prof. Swift, but we are told that by\ncoincidence these two astronomers, hundreds of miles apart, were\nilluded: their observations were so different--\n\nProf. Swift (_Nature_, Sept. 19, 1878):\n\nThat his own observation was \"in close approximation to that given by\nProf. Watson.\"\n\nIn the _Observatory_, 2-161, Swift says that his observations and\nWatson's were \"confirmatory of each other.\"\n\nThe faithful try again:\n\nThat Watson and Swift mistook stars for other bodies.\n\nIn the _Observatory_, 2-193, Prof. Watson says that he had previously\ncommitted to memory all stars near the sun, down to the seventh\nmagnitude--\n\nAnd he's damned anyway.\n\nHow such exclusions work out is shown by Lockyer (_Nature_, Aug. 20,\n1878). He says: \"There is little doubt that an Intra-Mercurial planet\nhas been discovered by Prof. Watson.\"\n\nThat was before excommunication was pronounced.\n\nHe says:\n\n\"If it will fit one of Leverrier's orbits\"--\n\nIt didn't fit.\n\nIn _Nature_, 21-301, Prof. Swift says:\n\n\"I have never made a more valid observation, nor one more free from\ndoubt.\"\n\nHe's damned anyway.\n\nWe shall have some data that will not live up to most rigorous\nrequirements, but, if anyone would like to read how carefully and\nminutely these two sets of observations were made, see Prof. Swift's\ndetailed description in the _Am. Jour. Sci._, 116-313; and the\ntechnicalities of Prof. Watson's observations in _Monthly Notices_,\n38-525.\n\nOur own acceptance upon dirigible worlds, which is assuredly enough,\nmore nearly real than attempted concepts of large planets relatively\nnear this earth, moving in orbits, but visible only occasionally; which\nmore nearly approximates to reasonableness than does wholesale slaughter\nof Swift and Watson and Fritsche and Stark and De Cuppis--but our own\nacceptance is so painful to so many minds that, in another of the\ncharitable moments that we have now and then for the sake of contrast,\nwe offer relief:\n\nThe things seen high in the sky by Swift and Watson--\n\nWell, only two months before--the horse and the barn--\n\nWe go on with more observations by astronomers, recognizing that it is\nthe very thing that has given them life, sustained them, held them\ntogether, that has crushed all but the quasi-gleam of independent life\nout of them. Were they not systematized, they could not be at all,\nexcept sporadically and without sustenance. They are systematized: they\nmust not vary from the conditions of the system: they must not break\naway for themselves.\n\nThe two great commandments:\n\nThou shalt not break Continuity;\n\nThou shalt try.\n\nWe go on with these disregarded data, some of which, many of which, are\nof the highest degree of acceptability. It is the System that pulls back\nits variations, as this earth is pulling back the Matterhorn. It is the\nSystem that nourishes and rewards, and also freezes out life with the\nchill of disregard. We do note that, before excommunication is\npronounced, orthodox journals do liberally enough record unassimilable\nobservations.\n\nAll things merge away into everything else.\n\nThat is Continuity.\n\nSo the System merges away and evades us when we try to focus against it.\n\nWe have complained a great deal. At least we are not so dull as to have\nthe delusion that we know just exactly what it is that we are\ncomplaining about. We speak seemingly definitely enough of \"the System,\"\nbut we're building upon observations by members of that very system. Or\nwhat we are doing--gathering up the loose heresies of the orthodox. Of\ncourse \"the System\" fringes and ravels away, having no real outline. A\nSwift will antagonize \"the System,\" and a Lockyer will call him back;\nbut, then, a Lockyer will vary with a \"meteoric hypothesis,\" and a Swift\nwill, in turn, represent \"the System.\" This state is to us typical of\nall intermediatist phenomena; or that not conceivably is anything\nreally anything, if its parts are likely to be their own opposites at\nany time. We speak of astronomers--as if there were real\nastronomers--but who have lost their identity in a System--as if it were\na real System--but behind that System is plainly a rapport, or loss of\nidentity in the Spirit of an Era.\n\nBodies that have looked like dark bodies, and lights that may have been\nsunlight reflected from inter-planetary--objects, masses,\nconstructions--\n\nLights that have been seen upon--or near?--the moon:\n\nIn _Philosophical Transactions_, 82-27, is Herschel's report upon many\nluminous points, which he saw upon--or near?--the moon, during an\neclipse. Why they should be luminous, whereas the moon itself was dark,\nwould get us into a lot of trouble--except that later we shall, or we\nsha'n't, accept that many times have luminous objects been seen close to\nthis earth--at night.\n\nBut numerousness is a new factor, or new disturbance, to our\nexplorations--\n\nA new aspect of inter-planetary inhabitancy or occupancy--\n\nWorlds in hordes--or beings--winged beings perhaps--wouldn't astonish me\nif we should end up by discovering angels--or beings in\nmachines--argosies of celestial voyagers--\n\nIn 1783 and 1787, Herschel reported more lights on or near the moon,\nwhich he supposed were volcanic.\n\nThe word of a Herschel has had no more weight, in divergences from the\northodox, than has had the word of a Lescarbault. These observations are\nof the disregarded.\n\nBright spots seen on the moon, November, 1821 (_Proc. London Roy. Soc._,\n2-167).\n\nFor four other instances, see Loomis (_Treatise on Astronomy_, p. 174).\n\nA moving light is reported in _Phil. Trans._, 84-429. To the writer, it\nlooked like a star passing over the moon--\"which, on the next moment's\nconsideration I knew to be impossible.\" \"It was a fixed, steady light\nupon the dark part of the moon.\" I suppose \"fixed\" applies to luster.\n\nIn the _Report of the Brit. Assoc._, 1847-18, there is an observation by\nRankin, upon luminous points seen on the shaded part of the moon,\nduring an eclipse. They seemed to this observer like reflections of\nstars. That's not very reasonable: however, we have, in the _Annual\nRegister_, 1821-687, a light not referable to a star--because it moved\nwith the moon: was seen three nights in succession; reported by Capt.\nKater. See _Quart. Jour. Roy. Inst._, 12-133.\n\n_Phil. Trans._, 112-237:\n\nReport from the Cape Town Observatory: a whitish spot on the dark part\nof the moon's limb. Three smaller lights were seen.\n\nThe call of positiveness, in its aspects of singleness, or homogeneity,\nor oneness, or completeness. In data now coming, I feel it myself. A\nLeverrier studies more than twenty observations. The inclination is\nirresistible to think that they all relate to one phenomenon. It is an\nexpression of cosmic inclination. Most of the observations are so\nirreconcilable with any acceptance other than of orbitless, dirigible\nworlds that he shuts his eyes to more than two-thirds of them; he picks\nout six that can give him the illusion of completeness, or of all\nrelating to one planet.\n\nOr let it be that we have data of many dark bodies--still do we incline\nalmost irresistibly to think of one of them as the dark-body-in-chief.\nDark bodies, floating, or navigating, in inter-planetary space--and I\nconceive of one that's the Prince of Dark Bodies:\n\nMelanicus.\n\nVast dark thing with the wings of a super-bat, or jet-black\nsuper-construction; most likely one of the spores of the Evil One.\n\nThe extraordinary year, 1883:\n\nLondon _Times_, Dec. 17, 1883:\n\nExtract from a letter by Hicks Pashaw: that, in Egypt, Sept. 24, 1883,\nhe had seen, through glasses, \"an immense black spot upon the lower part\nof the sun.\"\n\nSun spot, maybe.\n\nOne night an astronomer was looking up at the sky, when something\nobscured a star, for three and a half seconds. A meteor had been seen\nnearby, but its train had been only momentarily visible. Dr. Wolf was\nthe astronomer (_Nature_, 86-528).\n\nThe next datum is one of the most sensational we have, except that there\nis very little to it. A dark object that was seen by Prof. Heis, for\neleven degrees of arc, moving slowly across the Milky Way. (Greg's\nCatalogue, _Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1867-426.)\n\nOne of our quasi-reasons for accepting that orbitless worlds are\ndirigible is the almost complete absence of data of collisions: of\ncourse, though in defiance of gravitation, they may, without direction\nlike human direction, adjust to one another in the way of vortex rings\nof smoke--a very human-like way, that is. But in _Knowledge_, February,\n1894, are two photographs of Brooks' comet that are shown as evidence of\nits seeming collision with a dark object, October, 1893. Our own wording\nis that it \"struck against something\": Prof. Barnard's is that it had\n\"entered some dense medium, which shattered it.\" For all I know it had\nknocked against merely a field of ice.\n\nMelanicus.\n\nThat upon the wings of a super-bat, he broods over this earth and over\nother worlds, perhaps deriving something from them: hovers on wings, or\nwing-like appendages, or planes that are hundreds of miles from tip to\ntip--a super-evil thing that is exploiting us. By Evil I mean that which\nmakes us useful.\n\nHe obscures a star. He shoves a comet. I think he's a vast, black,\nbrooding vampire.\n\n_Science_, July 31, 1896:\n\nThat, according to a newspaper account, Mr. W.R. Brooks, director of the\nSmith Observatory, had seen a dark round object pass rather slowly\nacross the moon, in a horizontal direction. In Mr. Brooks' opinion it\nwas a dark meteor. In _Science_, Sept. 14, 1896, a correspondent writes\nthat, in his opinion, it may have been a bird. We shall have no trouble\nwith the meteor and bird mergers, if we have observations of long\nduration and estimates of size up to hundreds of miles. As to the body\nthat was seen by Brooks, there is a note from the Dutch astronomer,\nMuller, in the _Scientific American_, 75-251, that, upon April 4, 1892,\nhe had seen a similar phenomenon. In _Science Gossip_, n.s., 3-135, are\nmore details of the Brooks object--apparent diameter about one-thirtieth\nof the moon's--moon's disk crossed in three or four seconds. The writer,\nin _Science Gossip_, says that, on June 27, 1896, at one o'clock in the\nmorning, he was looking at the moon with a 2-inch achromatic, power 44,\nwhen a long black object sailed past, from west to east, the transit\noccupying 3 or 4 seconds. He believed this object to be a bird--there\nwas, however, no fluttering motion observable in it.\n\nIn the _Astronomische Nachrichten_, No. 3477, Dr. Brendel, of\nGriefswald, Pomerania, writes that Postmaster Ziegler and other\nobservers had seen a body about 6 feet in diameter crossing the sun's\ndisk. The duration here indicates something far from the earth, and also\nfar from the sun. This thing was seen a quarter of an hour before it\nreached the sun. Time in crossing the sun was about an hour. After\nleaving the sun it was visible an hour.\n\nI think he's a vast, black vampire that sometimes broods over this earth\nand other bodies.\n\nCommunication from Dr. F.B. Harris (_Popular Astronomy_, 20-398):\n\nThat, upon the evening of Jan. 27, 1912, Dr. Harris saw, upon the moon,\n\"an intensely black object.\" He estimated it to be 250 miles long and 50\nmiles wide. \"The object resembled a crow poised, as near as anything.\"\nClouds then cut off observation.\n\nDr. Harris writes:\n\n\"I cannot but think that a very interesting and curious phenomenon\nhappened.\"\n\n\n\n\n15\n\n\nShort chapter coming now, and it's the worst of them all. I think it's\nspeculative. It's a lapse from our usual pseudo-standards. I think it\nmust mean that the preceding chapter was very efficiently done, and that\nnow by the rhythm of all quasi-things--which can't be real things, if\nthey're rhythms, because a rhythm is an appearance that turns into its\nown opposite and then back again--but now, to pay up, we're what we\nweren't. Short chapter, and I think we'll fill in with several points in\nIntermediatism.\n\nA puzzle:\n\nIf it is our acceptance that, out of the Negative Absolute, the Positive\nAbsolute is generating itself, recruiting, or maintaining, itself, via a\nthird state, or our own quasi-state, it would seem that we're trying to\nconceive of Universalness manufacturing more Universalness from\nNothingness. Take that up yourself, if you're willing to run the risk of\ndisappearing with such velocity that you'll leave an incandescent train\nbehind, and risk being infinitely happy forever, whereas you probably\ndon't want to be happy--I'll sidestep that myself, and try to be\nintelligible by regarding the Positive Absolute from the aspect of\nRealness instead of Universalness, recalling that by both Realness and\nUniversalness we mean the same state, or that which does not merge away\ninto something else, because there is nothing else. So the idea is that\nout of Unrealness, instead of Nothingness, Realness, instead of\nUniversalness, is, via our own quasi-state, manufacturing more Realness.\nJust so, but in relative terms, of course, all imaginings that\nmaterialize into machines or statues, buildings, dollars, paintings or\nbooks in paper and ink are graduations from unrealness to realness--in\nrelative terms. It would seem then that Intermediateness is a relation\nbetween the Positive Absolute and the Negative Absolute. But the\nabsolute cannot be the related--of course a confession that we can't\nreally think of it at all, if here we think of a limit to the unlimited.\nDoing the best we can, and encouraged by the reflection that we can't do\nworse than has been done by metaphysicians in the past, we accept that\nthe absolute can't be the related. So then that our quasi-state is not a\nreal relation, if nothing in it is real. On the other hand, it is not an\nunreal relation, if nothing in it is unreal. It seems thinkable that the\nPositive Absolute can, by means of Intermediateness, have a\nquasi-relation, or be only quasi-related, or be the unrelated, in final\nterms, or, at least, not be the related, in final terms.\n\nAs to free will and Intermediatism--same answer as to everything else.\nBy free will we mean Independence--or that which does not merge away\ninto something else--so, in Intermediateness, neither free-will nor\nslave-will--but a different approximation for every so-called person\ntoward one or the other of the extremes. The hackneyed way of expressing\nthis seems to me to be the acceptable way, if in Intermediateness,\nthere is only the paradoxical: that we're free to do what we have to do.\n\nI am not convinced that we make a fetish of the preposterous. I think\nour feeling is that in first gropings there's no knowing what will\nafterward be the acceptable. I think that if an early biologist heard of\nbirds that grow on trees, he should record that he had heard of birds\nthat grow on trees: then let sorting over of data occur afterward. The\none thing that we try to tone down but that is to a great degree\nunavoidable is having our data all mixed up like Long Island and Florida\nin the minds of early American explorers. My own notion is that this\nwhole book is very much like a map of North America in which the Hudson\nRiver is set down as a passage leading to Siberia. We think of\nMonstrator and Melanicus and of a world that is now in communication\nwith this earth: if so, secretly, with certain esoteric ones upon this\nearth. Whether that world's Monstrator and Monstrator's Melanicus--must\nbe the subject of later inquiry. It would be a gross thing to do: solve\nup everything now and leave nothing to our disciples.\n\nI have been very much struck with phenomena of \"cup marks.\"\n\nThey look to me like symbols of communication.\n\nBut they do not look to me like means of communication between some of\nthe inhabitants of this earth and other inhabitants of this earth.\n\nMy own impression is that some external force has marked, with symbols,\nrocks of this earth, from far away.\n\nI do not think that cup marks are inscribed communications among\ndifferent inhabitants of this earth, because it seems too unacceptable\nthat inhabitants of China, Scotland, and America should all have\nconceived of the same system.\n\nCup marks are strings of cup-like impressions in rocks. Sometimes there\nare rings around them, and sometimes they have only semi-circles. Great\nBritain, America, France, Algeria, Circassia, Palestine: they're\nvirtually everywhere--except in the far north, I think. In China, cliffs\nare dotted with them. Upon a cliff near Lake Como, there is a maze of\nthese markings. In Italy and Spain and India they occur in enormous\nnumbers.\n\nGiven that a force, say, like electric force, could, from a distance,\nmark such a substance as rocks, as, from a distance of hundreds of\nmiles, selenium can be marked by telephotographers--but I am of two\nminds--\n\nThe Lost Explorers from Somewhere, and an attempt, from Somewhere, to\ncommunicate with them: so a frenzy of showering of messages toward this\nearth, in the hope that some of them would mark rocks near the lost\nexplorers--\n\nOr that somewhere upon this earth, there is an especial rocky surface,\nor receptor, or polar construction, or a steep, conical hill, upon which\nfor ages have been received messages from some other world; but that at\ntimes messages go astray and mark substances perhaps thousands of miles\nfrom the receptor:\n\nThat perhaps forces behind the history of this earth have left upon the\nrocks of Palestine and England and India and China records that may some\nday be deciphered, of their misdirected instructions to certain esoteric\nones--Order of the Freemasons--the Jesuits--\n\nI emphasize the row-formation of cup marks:\n\nProf. Douglas (_Saturday Review_, Nov. 24, 1883):\n\n\"Whatever may have been their motive, the cup-markers showed a decided\nliking for arranging their sculpturings in regularly spaced rows.\"\n\nThat cup marks are an archaic form of inscription was first suggested by\nCanon Greenwell many years ago. But more specifically adumbratory to our\nown expression are the observations of Rivett-Carnac (_Jour. Roy.\nAsiatic Soc._, 1903-515):\n\nThat the Braille system of raised dots is an inverted arrangement of cup\nmarks: also that there are strong resemblances to the Morse code. But no\ntame and systematized archaeologist can do more than casually point out\nresemblances, and merely suggest that strings of cup marks look like\nmessages, because--China, Switzerland, Algeria, America--if messages\nthey be, there seems to be no escape from attributing one origin to\nthem--then, if messages they be, I accept one external origin, to which\nthe whole surface of this earth was accessible, for them.\n\nSomething else that we emphasize:\n\nThat rows of cup marks have often been likened to footprints.\n\nBut, in this similitude, their unilinear arrangement must be\ndisregarded--of course often they're mixed up in every way, but\narrangement in single lines is very common. It is odd that they should\nso often be likened to footprints: I suppose there are exceptional\ncases, but unless it's something that hops on one foot, or a cat going\nalong a narrow fence-top, I don't think of anything that makes\nfootprints one directly ahead of another--Cop, in a station house,\nwalking a chalk line, perhaps.\n\nUpon the Witch's Stone, near Ratho, Scotland, there are twenty-four\ncups, varying in size from one and a half to three inches in diameter,\narranged in approximately straight lines. Locally it is explained that\nthese are tracks of dogs' feet (_Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotland_, 2-4-79).\nSimilar marks are scattered bewilderingly all around the Witch's\nStone--like a frenzy of telegraphing, or like messages repeating and\nrepeating, trying to localize differently.\n\nIn Inverness-shire, cup marks are called \"fairies' footmarks.\" At\nValna's church, Norway, and St. Peter's, Ambleteuse, there are such\nmarks, said to be horses' hoofprints. The rocks of Clare, Ireland, are\nmarked with prints supposed to have been made by a mythical cow\n(_Folklore_, 21-184).\n\nWe now have such a ghost of a thing that I'd not like to be interpreted\nas offering it as a datum: it simply illustrates what I mean by the\nnotion of symbols, like cups, or like footprints, which, if like those\nof horses or cows, are the reverse of, or the negatives of, cups--of\nsymbols that are regularly received somewhere upon this earth--steep,\nconical hill, somewhere, I think--but that have often alighted in wrong\nplaces--considerably to the mystification of persons waking up some\nmorning to find them upon formerly blank spaces.\n\nAn ancient record--still worse, an ancient Chinese record--of a\ncourtyard of a palace--dwellers of the palace waking up one morning,\nfinding the courtyard marked with tracks like the footprints of an\nox--supposed that the devil did it. (_Notes and Queries_, 9-6-225.)\n\n\n\n\n16.\n\n\nAngels.\n\nHordes upon hordes of them.\n\nBeings massed like the clouds of souls, or the commingling whiffs of\nspirituality, or the exhalations of souls that Dore pictured so often.\n\nIt may be that the Milky Way is a composition of stiff, frozen,\nfinally-static, absolute angels. We shall have data of little Milky\nWays, moving swiftly; or data of hosts of angels, not absolute, or still\ndynamic. I suspect, myself, that the fixed stars are really fixed, and\nthat the minute motions said to have been detected in them are\nillusions. I think that the fixed stars are absolutes. Their twinkling\nis only the interpretation by an intermediatist state of them. I think\nthat soon after Leverrier died, a new fixed star was discovered--that,\nif Dr. Gray had stuck to his story of the thousands of fishes from one\npail of water, had written upon it, lectured upon it, taken to street\ncorners, to convince the world that, whether conceivable or not, his\nexplanation was the only true explanation: had thought of nothing but\nthis last thing at night and first thing in the morning--his\nobituary--another \"nova\" reported in _Monthly Notices_.\n\nI think that Milky Ways, of an inferior, or dynamic, order, have often\nbeen seen by astronomers. Of course it may be that the phenomena that we\nshall now consider are not angels at all. We are simply feeling around,\ntrying to find out what we can accept. Some of our data indicate hosts\nof rotund and complacent tourists in inter-planetary space--but then\ndata of long, lean, hungry ones. I think that there are, out in\ninter-planetary space, Super Tamerlanes at the head of hosts of\ncelestial ravagers--which have come here and pounced upon civilizations\nof the past, cleaning them up all but their bones, or temples and\nmonuments--for which later historians have invented exclusionist\nhistories. But if something now has a legal right to us, and can\nenforce its proprietorship, they've been warned off. It's the way of all\nexploitation. I should say that we're now under cultivation: that we're\nconscious of it, but have the impertinence to attribute it all to our\nown nobler and higher instincts.\n\nAgainst these notions is the same sense of finality that opposes all\nadvance. It's why we rate acceptance as a better adaptation than belief.\nOpposing us is the strong belief that, as to inter-planetary phenomena,\nvirtually everything has been found out. Sense of finality and illusion\nof homogeneity. But that what is called advancing knowledge is violation\nof the sense of blankness.\n\nA drop of water. Once upon a time water was considered so homogeneous\nthat it was thought of as an element. The microscope--and not only that\nthe supposititiously elementary was seen to be of infinite diversity,\nbut that in its protoplasmic life there were new orders of beings.\n\nOr the year 1491--and a European looking westward over the ocean--his\nfeeling that that suave western droop was unbreakable; that gods of\nregularity would not permit that smooth horizon to be disturbed by\ncoasts or spotted with islands. The unpleasantness of even contemplating\nsuch a state--wide, smooth west, so clean against the sky--spotted with\nislands--geographic leprosy.\n\nBut coasts and islands and Indians and bison, in the seemingly vacant\nwest: lakes, mountains, rivers--\n\nOne looks up at the sky: the relative homogeneity of the\nrelatively unexplored: one thinks of only a few kinds of phenomena.\nBut the acceptance is forced upon me that there are modes and modes\nand modes of inter-planetary existence: things as different from\nplanets and comets and meteors as Indians are from bison and prairie\ndogs: a super-geography--or celestiography--of vast stagnant regions,\nbut also of Super-Niagaras and Ultra-Mississippis: and a\nsuper-sociology--voyagers and tourists and ravagers: the hunted and the\nhunting: the super-mercantile, the super-piratic, the super-evangelical.\n\nSense of homogeneity, or our positivist illusion of the unknown--and the\nfate of all positivism.\n\nAstronomy and the academic.\n\nEthics and the abstract.\n\nThe universal attempt to formulate or to regularize--an attempt that can\nbe made only by disregarding or denying.\n\nOr all things disregard or deny that which will eventually invade and\ndestroy them--\n\nUntil comes the day when some one thing shall say, and enforce upon\nInfinitude:\n\n\"Thus far shalt thou go: here is absolute demarcation.\"\n\nThe final utterance:\n\n\"There is only I.\"\n\nIn the _Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, 11-48, there is a letter from\nthe Rev. W. Read:\n\nThat, upon the 4th of September, 1851, at 9:30 A.M., he had seen a host\nof self-luminous bodies, passing the field of his telescope, some slowly\nand some rapidly. They appeared to occupy a zone several degrees in\nbreadth. The direction of most of them was due east to west, but some\nmoved from north to south. The numbers were tremendous. They were\nobserved for six hours.\n\nEditor's note:\n\n\"May not these appearances be attributed to an abnormal state of the\noptic nerves of the observer?\"\n\nIn _Monthly Notices_, 12-38, Mr. Read answers that he had been a\ndiligent observer, with instruments of a superior order, for about 28\nyears--\"but I have never witnessed such an appearance before.\" As to\nillusion he says that two other members of his family had seen the\nobjects.\n\nThe Editor withdraws his suggestion.\n\nWe know what to expect. Almost absolutely--in an existence that is\nessentially Hibernian--we can predict the past--that is, look over\nsomething of this kind, written in 1851, and know what to expect from\nthe Exclusionists later. If Mr. Read saw a migration of dissatisfied\nangels, numbering millions, they must merge away, at least subjectively,\nwith commonplace terrestrial phenomena--of course disregarding Mr.\nRead's probable familiarity, of 28 years' duration, with the\ncommonplaces of terrestrial phenomena.\n\n_Monthly Notices_, 12-183:\n\nLetter from Rev. W.R. Dawes:\n\nThat he had seen similar objects--and in the month of September--that\nthey were nothing but seeds floating in the air.\n\nIn the _Report of the British Association_, 1852-235, there is a\ncommunication from Mr. Read to Prof. Baden-Powell:\n\nThat the objects that had been seen by him and by Mr. Dawes were not\nsimilar. He denies that he had seen seeds floating in the air. There had\nbeen little wind, and that had come from the sea, where seeds would not\nbe likely to have origin. The objects that he had seen were round and\nsharply defined, and with none of the feathery appearance of\nthistledown. He then quotes from a letter from C.B. Chalmers, F.R.A.S.,\nwho had seen a similar stream, a procession, or migration, except that\nsome of the bodies were more elongated--or lean and hungry--than\nglobular.\n\nHe might have argued for sixty-five years. He'd have impressed\nnobody--of importance. The super-motif, or dominant, of his era, was\nExclusionism, and the notion of seeds in the air assimilates--with due\ndisregards--with that dominant.\n\nOr pageantries here upon our earth, and things looking down upon us--and\nthe Crusades were only dust clouds, and glints of the sun on shining\narmor were only particles of mica in dust clouds. I think it was a\nCrusade that Read saw--but that it was right, relatively to the year\n1851, to say that it was only seeds in the wind, whether the wind blew\nfrom the sea or not. I think of things that were luminous with religious\nzeal, mixed up, like everything else in Intermediateness, with black\nmarauders and from gray to brown beings of little personal ambitions.\nThere may have been a Richard Coeur de Lion, on his way to right\nwrongs in Jupiter. It was right, relatively to 1851, to say that he was\na seed of a cabbage.\n\nProf. Coffin, U.S.N. (_Jour. Frank. Inst._, 88-151):\n\nThat, during the eclipse of August, 1869, he had noted the passage,\nacross his telescope, of several bright flakes resembling thistleblows,\nfloating in the sunlight. But the telescope was so focused that, if\nthese things were distinct, they must have been so far away from this\nearth that the difficulties of orthodoxy remain as great, one way or\nanother, no matter what we think they were--\n\nThey were \"well-defined,\" says Prof. Coffin.\n\nHenry Waldner (_Nature_, 5-304):\n\nThat, April 27, 1863, he had seen great numbers of small, shining bodies\npassing from west to east. He had notified Dr. Wolf, of the Observatory\nof Zurich, who \"had convinced himself of this strange phenomenon.\" Dr.\nWolf had told him that similar bodies had been seen by Sig. Capocci, of\nthe Capodimonte Observatory, at Naples, May 11, 1845.\n\nThe shapes were of great diversity--or different aspects of similar\nshapes?\n\nAppendages were seen upon some of them.\n\nWe are told that some were star-shaped, with transparent appendages.\n\nI think, myself, it was a Mohammed and his Hegira. May have been only\nhis harem. Astonishing sensation: afloat in space with ten million wives\naround one. Anyway, it would seem that we have considerable advantage\nhere, inasmuch as seeds are not in season in April--but the pulling back\nto earth, the bedraggling by those sincere but dull ones of some time\nago. We have the same stupidity--necessary, functioning stupidity--of\nattribution of something that was so rare that an astronomer notes only\none instance between 1845 and 1863, to an every-day occurrence--\n\nOr Mr. Waldner's assimilative opinion that he had seen only ice\ncrystals.\n\nWhether they were not very exclusive veils of a super-harem, or planes\nof a very light material, we have an impression of star-shaped things\nwith transparent appendages that have been seen in the sky.\n\nHosts of small bodies--black, this time--that were seen by the\nastronomers Herrick, Buys-Ballot, and De Cuppis (_L'Annee Scientifique_,\n1860-25); vast numbers of bodies that were seen by M. Lamey, to cross\nthe moon (_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1874-62); another instance of dark\nones; prodigious number of dark, spherical bodies reported by Messier,\nJune 17, 1777 (Arago, _OEuvres_, 9-38); considerable number of\nluminous bodies which appeared to move out from the sun, in diverse\ndirections; seen at Havana, during eclipse of the sun, May 15, 1836, by\nProf. Auber (Poey); M. Poey cites a similar instance, of Aug. 3, 1886;\nM. Lotard's opinion that they were birds (_L'Astronomie_, 1886-391);\nlarge number of small bodies crossing disk of the sun, some swiftly,\nsome slowly; most of them globular, but some seemingly triangular, and\nsome of more complicated structure; seen by M. Trouvelet, who, whether\nseeds, insects, birds, or other commonplace things, had never seen\nanything resembling these forms (_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1885-8); report\nfrom the Rio de Janeiro Observatory, of vast numbers of bodies crossing\nthe sun, some of them luminous and some of them dark, from some time in\nDecember, 1875, until Jan. 22, 1876 (_La Nature_, 1876-384).\n\nOf course, at a distance, any form is likely to look round or roundish:\nbut we point out that we have notes upon the seeming of more complex\nforms. In _L'Astronomie_, 1886-70, is recorded M. Briguiere's\nobservation, at Marseilles, April 15 and April 25, 1883, upon the\ncrossing of the sun by bodies that were irregular in form. Some of them\nmoved as if in alignment.\n\nLetter from Sir Robert Inglis to Col. Sabine (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._,\n1849-17):\n\nThat, at 3 P.M., Aug. 8, 1849, at Gais, Switzerland, Inglis had seen\nthousands and thousands of brilliant white objects, like snowflakes in a\ncloudless sky. Though this display lasted about twenty-five minutes, not\none of these seeming snowflakes was seen to fall. Inglis says that his\nservant \"fancied\" that he had seen something like wings on\nthese--whatever they were. Upon page 18, of the _Report_, Sir John\nHerschel says that, in 1845 or 1846, his attention had been attracted by\nobjects of considerable size, in the air, seemingly not far away. He had\nlooked at them through a telescope. He says that they were masses of\nhay, not less than a yard or two in diameter. Still there are some\ncircumstances that interest me. He says that, though no less than a\nwhirlwind could have sustained these masses, the air about him was calm.\n\"No doubt wind prevailed at the spot, but there was no roaring noise.\"\nNone of these masses fell within his observation or knowledge. To walk a\nfew fields away and find out more would seem not much to expect from a\nman of science, but it is one of our superstitions, that such a seeming\ntrifle is just what--by the Spirit of an Era, we'll call it--one is not\npermitted to do. If those things were not masses of hay, and if Herschel\nhad walked a little and found out, and had reported that he had seen\nstrange objects in the air--that report, in 1846, would have been as\nmisplaced as the appearance of a tail upon an embryo still in its\ngastrula era. I have noticed this inhibition in my own case many times.\nLooking back--why didn't I do this or that little thing that would have\ncost so little and have meant so much? Didn't belong to that era of my\nown development.\n\n_Nature_, 22-64:\n\nThat, at Kattenau, Germany, about half an hour before sunrise, March 22,\n1880, \"an enormous number of luminous bodies rose from the horizon, and\npassed in a horizontal direction from east to west.\" They are described\nas having appeared in a zone or belt. \"They shone with a remarkably\nbrilliant light.\"\n\nSo they've thrown lassos over our data to bring them back to earth. But\nthey're lassos that cannot tighten. We can't pull out of them: we may\nstep out of them, or lift them off. Some of us used to have an\nimpression of Science sitting in calm, just judgment: some of us now\nfeel that a good many of our data have been lynched. If a Crusade,\nperhaps from Mars to Jupiter, occur in the autumn--\"seeds.\" If a Crusade\nor outpouring of celestial vandals is seen from this earth in the\nspring--\"ice crystals.\" If we have record of a race of aerial beings,\nperhaps with no substantial habitat, seen by someone in\nIndia--\"locusts.\"\n\nThis will be disregarded:\n\nIf locusts fly high, they freeze and fall in thousands.\n\n_Nature_, 47-581:\n\nLocusts that were seen in the mountains of India, at a height of 12,750\nfeet--\"in swarms and dying by thousands.\"\n\nBut no matter whether they fly high or fly low, no one ever wonders\nwhat's in the air when locusts are passing overhead, because of the\nfalling of stragglers. I have especially looked this matter up--no\nmystery when locusts are flying overhead--constant falling of\nstragglers.\n\n_Monthly Notices_, 30-135:\n\n\"An unusual phenomenon noticed by Lieut. Herschel, Oct. 17 and 18, 1870,\nwhile observing the sun, at Bangalore, India.\"\n\nLieut. Herschel had noticed dark shadows crossing the sun--but away from\nthe sun there were luminous, moving images. For two days bodies passed\nin a continuous stream, varying in size and velocity.\n\nThe Lieutenant tries to explain, as we shall see, but he says:\n\n\"As it was, the continuous flight, for two whole days, in such numbers,\nin the upper regions of the air, of beasts that left no stragglers, is a\nwonder of natural history, if not of astronomy.\"\n\nHe tried different focusing--he saw wings--perhaps he saw planes. He\nsays that he saw upon the objects either wings or phantom-like\nappendages.\n\nThen he saw something that was so bizarre that, in the fullness of his\nnineteenth-centuriness, he writes:\n\n\"There was no longer doubt: they were locusts or flies of some sort.\"\n\nOne of them had paused.\n\nIt had hovered.\n\nThen it had whisked off.\n\nThe Editor says that at that time \"countless locusts had descended upon\ncertain parts of India.\"\n\nWe now have an instance that is extraordinary in several\nrespects--super-voyagers or super-ravagers; angels, ragamuffins,\ncrusaders, emigrants, aeronauts, or aerial elephants, or bison or\ndinosaurs--except that I think the thing had planes or wings--one of\nthem has been photographed. It may be that in the history of photography\nno more extraordinary picture than this has ever been taken.\n\n_L'Astronomie_, 1885-347:\n\nThat, at the Observatory of Zacatecas, Mexico, Aug. 12, 1883, about\n2,500 meters above sea level, were seen a large number of small luminous\nbodies, entering upon the disk of the sun. M. Bonilla telegraphed to the\nObservatories of the City of Mexico and of Puebla. Word came back that\nthe bodies were not visible there. Because of this parallax, M. Bonilla\nplaced the bodies \"relatively near the earth.\" But when we find out what\nhe called \"relatively near the earth\"--birds or bugs or hosts of a\nSuper-Tamerlane or army of a celestial Richard Coeur de Lion--our\nheresies rejoice anyway. His estimate is \"less distance than the moon.\"\n\nOne of them was photographed. See _L'Astronomie_, 1885-349. The\nphotograph shows a long body surrounded by indefinite structures, or by\nthe haze of wings or planes in motion.\n\n_L'Astronomie_, 1887-66;\n\nSigner Ricco, of the Observatory of Palermo, writes that, Nov. 30, 1880,\nat 8:30 o'clock in the morning, he was watching the sun, when he saw,\nslowly traversing its disk, bodies in two long, parallel lines, and a\nshorter, parallel line. The bodies looked winged to him. But so large\nwere they that he had to think of large birds. He thought of cranes.\n\nHe consulted ornithologists, and learned that the configuration of\nparallel lines agrees with the flight-formation of cranes. This was in\n1880: anybody now living in New York City, for instance, would tell him\nthat also it is a familiar formation of aeroplanes. But, because of data\nof focus and subtended angles, these beings or objects must have been\nhigh.\n\nSig. Ricco argues that condors have been known to fly three or four\nmiles high, and that heights reached by other birds have been estimated\nat two or three miles. He says that cranes have been known to fly so\nhigh that they have been lost to view.\n\nOur own acceptance, in conventional terms, is that there is not a bird\nof this earth that would not freeze to death at a height of more than\nfour miles: that if condors fly three or four miles high, they are birds\nthat are especially adapted to such altitudes.\n\nSig. Ricco's estimate is that these objects or beings or cranes must\nhave been at least five and a half miles high.\n\n\n\n\n17\n\n\nThe vast dark thing that looked like a poised crow of unholy dimensions.\nAssuming that I shall ever have any readers, let him, or both of them,\nif I shall ever have such popularity as that, note how dim that bold\nblack datum is at the distance of only two chapters.\n\nThe question:\n\nWas it a thing or the shadow of a thing?\n\nAcceptance either way calls not for mere revision but revolution in the\nscience of astronomy. But the dimness of the datum of only two chapters\nago. The carved stone disk of Tarbes, and the rain that fell every\nafternoon for twenty--if I haven't forgotten, myself, whether it was\ntwenty-three or twenty-five days!--upon one small area. We are all\nThomsons, with brains that have smooth and slippery, though corrugated,\nsurfaces--or that all intellection is associative--or that we remember\nthat which correlates with a dominant--and a few chapters go by, and\nthere's scarcely an impression that hasn't slid off our smooth and\nslippery brains, of Leverrier and the \"planet Vulcan.\" There are two\nways by which irreconcilables can be remembered--if they can be\ncorrelated in a system more nearly real than the system that rejects\nthem--and by repetition and repetition and repetition.\n\nVast black thing like a crow poised over the moon.\n\nThe datum is so important to us, because it enforces, in another field,\nour acceptance that dark bodies of planetary size traverse this solar\nsystem.\n\nOur position:\n\nThat the things have been seen:\n\nAlso that their shadows have been seen.\n\nVast black thing poised like a crow over the moon. So far it is a single\ninstance. By a single instance, we mean the negligible.\n\nIn _Popular Science_, 34-158, Serviss tells of a shadow that Schroeter\nsaw, in 1788, in the lunar Alps. First he saw a light. But then, when\nthis region was illuminated, he saw a round shadow where the light had\nbeen.\n\nOur own expression:\n\nThat he saw a luminous object near the moon: that that part of the moon\nbecame illuminated, and the object was lost to view; but that then its\nshadow underneath was seen.\n\nServiss explains, of course. Otherwise he'd not be Prof. Serviss. It's a\nlittle contest in relative approximations to realness. Prof. Serviss\nthinks that what Schroeter saw was the \"round\" shadow of a mountain--in\nthe region that had become lighted. He assumes that Schroeter never\nlooked again to see whether the shadow could be attributed to a\nmountain. That's the crux: conceivably a mountain could cast a\nround--and that means detached--shadow, in the lighted part of the moon.\nProf. Serviss could, of course, explain why he disregards the light in\nthe first place--maybe it had always been there \"in the first place.\" If\nhe couldn't explain, he'd still be an amateur.\n\nWe have another datum. I think it is more extraordinary than--\n\nVast thing, black and poised, like a crow, over the moon.\n\nBut only because it's more circumstantial, and because it has\ncorroboration, do I think it more extraordinary than--\n\nVast poised thing, black as a crow, over the moon.\n\nMr. H.C. Russell, who was usually as orthodox as anybody, I suppose--at\nleast, he wrote \"F.R.A.S.\" after his name--tells in the _Observatory_,\n2-374, one of the wickedest, or most preposterous, stories that we have\nso far exhumed:\n\nThat he and another astronomer, G.D. Hirst, were in the Blue fountains,\nnear Sydney, N.S.W., and Mr. Hirst was looking at the moon--\n\nHe saw on the moon what Russell calls \"one of those remarkable facts,\nwhich being seen should be recorded, although no explanation can at\npresent be offered.\"\n\nThat may be so. It is very rarely done. Our own expression upon\nevolution by successive dominants and their correlates is against it. On\nthe other hand, we express that every era records a few observations out\nof harmony with it, but adumbratory or preparatory to the spirit of\neras still to come. It's very rarely done. Lashed by the phantom-scourge\nof a now passing era, the world of astronomers is in a state of\nterrorism, though of a highly attenuated, modernized, devitalized kind.\nLet an astronomer see something that is not of the conventional,\ncelestial sights, or something that it is \"improper\" to see--his very\ndignity is in danger. Some one of the corralled and scourged may stick a\nsmile into his back. He'll be thought of unkindly.\n\nWith a hardihood that is unusual in his world of ethereal\nsensitivenesses, Russell says, of Hirst's observation:\n\n\"He found a large part of it covered with a dark shade, quite as dark as\nthe shadow of the earth during an eclipse of the moon.\"\n\nBut the climax of hardihood or impropriety or wickedness,\npreposterousness or enlightenment:\n\n\"One could hardly resist the conviction that it was a shadow, yet it\ncould not be the shadow of any known body.\"\n\nRichard Proctor was a man of some liberality. After a while we shall\nhave a letter, which once upon a time we'd have called delirious--don't\nknow that we could read such a thing now, for the first time, without\nincredulous laughter--which Mr. Proctor permitted to be published in\n_Knowledge_. But a dark, unknown world that could cast a shadow upon a\nlarge part of the moon, perhaps extending far beyond the limb of the\nmoon; a shadow as deep as the shadow of this earth--\n\nToo much for Mr. Proctor's politeness.\n\nI haven't read what he said, but it seems to have been a little coarse.\nRussell says that Proctor \"freely used\" his name in the _Echo_, of March\n14, 1879, ridiculing this observation which had been made by Russell as\nwell as Hirst. If it hadn't been Proctor, it would have been someone\nelse--but one notes that the attack came out in a newspaper. There is no\ndiscussion of this remarkable subject, no mention in any other\nastronomic journal. The disregard was almost complete--but we do note\nthat the columns of the _Observatory_ were open to Russell to answer\nProctor.\n\nIn the answer, I note considerable intermediateness. Far back in 1879,\nit would have been a beautiful positivism, if Russell had said--\n\n\"There was a shadow on the moon. Absolutely it was cast by an unknown\nbody.\"\n\nAccording to our religion, if he had then given all his time to the\nmaintaining of this one stand, of course breaking all friendships, all\nties with his fellow astronomers, his apotheosis would have occurred,\ngreatly assisted by means well known to quasi-existence when its\ncompromises and evasions, and phenomena that are partly this and partly\nthat, are flouted by the definite and uncompromising. It would be\nimpossible in a real existence, but Mr. Russell, of quasi-existence,\nsays that he did resist the conviction; that he had said that one could\n\"hardly resist\"; and most of his resentment is against Mr. Proctor's\nthinking that he had not resisted. It seems too bad--if apotheosis be\ndesirable.\n\nThe point in Intermediatism here is:\n\nNot that to adapt to the conditions of quasi-existence is to have what\nis called success in quasi-existence, but is to lose one's soul--\n\nBut is to lose \"one's\" chance of attaining soul, self, or entity.\n\nOne indignation quoted from Proctor interests us:\n\n\"What happens on the moon may at any time happen to this earth.\"\n\nOr:\n\nThat is just the teaching of this department of Advanced Astronomy:\n\nThat Russell and Hirst saw the sun eclipsed relatively to the moon by a\nvast dark body:\n\nThat many times have eclipses occurred relatively to this earth, by\nvast, dark bodies:\n\nThat there have been many eclipses that have not been recognized as\neclipses by scientific kindergartens.\n\nThere is a merger, of course. We'll take a look at it first--that, after\nall, it may have been a shadow that Hirst and Russell saw, but the only\nsignificance is that the sun was eclipsed relatively to the moon by a\ncosmic haze of some kind, or a swarm of meteors close together, or a\ngaseous discharge left behind by a comet. My own acceptance is that\nvagueness of shadow is a function of vagueness of intervention; that a\nshadow as dense as the shadow of this earth is cast by a body denser\nthan hazes and swarms. The information seems definite enough in this\nrespect--\"quite as dark as the shadow of this earth during the eclipse\nof the moon.\"\n\nThough we may not always be as patient toward them as we should be, it\nis our acceptance that the astronomic primitives have done a great deal\nof good work: for instance, in the allaying of fears upon this earth.\nSometimes it may seem as if all science were to us very much like what a\nred flag is to bulls and anti-socialists. It's not that: it's more like\nwhat unsquare meals are to bulls and anti-socialists--not the\nscientific, but the insufficient. Our acceptance is that Evil is the\nnegative state, by which we mean the state of maladjustment, discord,\nugliness, disorganization, inconsistency, injustice, and so on--as\ndetermined in Intermediateness, not by real standards, but only by\nhigher approximations to adjustment, harmony, beauty, organization,\nconsistency, justice, and so on. Evil is outlived virtue, or incipient\nvirtue that has not yet established itself, or any other phenomenon that\nis not in seeming adjustment, harmony, consistency with a dominant. The\nastronomers have functioned bravely in the past. They've been good for\nbusiness: the big interests think kindly, if at all, of them. It's bad\nfor trade to have an intense darkness come upon an unaware community and\nfrighten people out of their purchasing values. But if an obscuration be\nforetold, and if it then occur--may seem a little uncanny--only a\nshadow--and no one who was about to buy a pair of shoes runs home\npanic-stricken and saves the money.\n\nUpon general principles we accept that astronomers have\nquasi-systematized data of eclipses--or have included some and\ndisregarded others.\n\nThey have done well.\n\nThey have functioned.\n\nBut now they're negatives, or they're out of harmony--\n\nIf we are in harmony with a new dominant, or the spirit of a new era, in\nwhich Exclusionism must be overthrown; if we have data of many\nobscurations that have occurred, not only upon the moon, but upon our\nown earth, as convincing of vast intervening bodies, usually invisible,\nas is any regularized, predicted eclipse.\n\nOne looks up at the sky.\n\nIt seems incredible that, say, at the distance of the moon, there could\nbe, but be invisible, a solid body, say, the size of the moon.\n\nOne looks up at the moon, at a time when only a crescent of it is\nvisible. The tendency is to build up the rest of it in one's mind; but\nthe unillumined part looks as vacant as the rest of the sky, and it's of\nthe same blueness as the rest of the sky. There's a vast area of solid\nsubstance before one's eyes. It's indistinguishable from the sky.\n\nIn some of our little lessons upon the beauties of modesty and humility,\nwe have picked out basic arrogances--tail of a peacock, horns of a stag,\ndollars of a capitalist--eclipses of astronomers. Though I have no\ndesire for the job, I'd engage to list hundreds of instances in which\nthe report upon an expected eclipse has been \"sky overcast\" or \"weather\nunfavorable.\" In our Super-Hibernia, the unfavorable has been construed\nas the favorable. Some time ago, when we were lost, because we had not\nrecognized our own dominant, when we were still of the unchosen and\nlikely to be more malicious than we now are--because we have noted a\nsteady tolerance creeping into our attitude--if astronomers are not to\nblame, but are only correlates to a dominant--we advertised a predicted\neclipse that did not occur at all. Now, without any especial feeling,\nexcept that of recognition of the fate of all attempted absolutism, we\ngive the instance, noting that, though such an evil thing to orthodoxy,\nit was orthodoxy that recorded the non-event.\n\n_Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, 8-132:\n\n\"Remarkable appearances during the total eclipse of the moon on March\n19, 1848\":\n\nIn an extract from a letter from Mr. Forster, of Bruges, it is said\nthat, according to the writer's observations at the time of the\npredicted total eclipse, the moon shone with about three times the\nintensity of the mean illumination of an eclipsed lunar disk: that the\nBritish Consul, at Ghent, who did not know of the predicted eclipse, had\nwritten enquiring as to the \"blood-red\" color of the moon.\n\nThis is not very satisfactory to what used to be our malices. But\nthere follows another letter, from another astronomer, Walkey, who\nhad made observations at Clyst St. Lawrence: that, instead of an\neclipse, the moon became--as is printed in italics--\"most beautifully\nilluminated\" ... \"rather tinged with a deep red\"... \"the moon being\nas perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse whatever.\"\n\nI note that Chambers, in his work upon eclipses, gives Forster's letter\nin full--and not a mention of Walkey's letter.\n\nThere is no attempt in _Monthly Notices_ to explain upon the notion of\ngreater distance of the moon, and the earth's shadow falling short,\nwhich would make as much trouble for astronomers, if that were not\nforeseen, as no eclipse at all. Also there is no refuge in saying that\nvirtually never, even in total eclipses, is the moon totally dark--\"as\nperfect with light as if there had been no eclipse whatever.\" It is said\nthat at the time there had been an aurora borealis, which might have\ncaused the luminosity, without a datum that such an effect, by an\naurora, had ever been observed upon the moon.\n\nBut single instances--so an observation by Scott, in the Antarctic. The\nforce of this datum lies in my own acceptance, based upon especially\nlooking up this point, that an eclipse nine-tenths of totality has great\neffect, even though the sky be clouded.\n\nScott (_Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. ii, p. 215):\n\n\"There may have been an eclipse of the sun, Sept. 21, 1903, as the\nalmanac said, but we should, none of us, have liked to swear to the\nfact.\"\n\nThis eclipse had been set down at nine-tenths of totality. The sky was\novercast at the time.\n\nSo it is not only that many eclipses unrecognized by astronomers as\neclipses have occurred, but that intermediatism, or impositivism, breaks\ninto their own seemingly regularized eclipses.\n\nOur data of unregularized eclipses, as profound as those that are\nconventionally--or officially?--recognized, that have occurred\nrelatively to this earth:\n\nIn _Notes and Queries_ there are several allusions to intense darknesses\nthat have occurred upon this earth, quite as eclipses occur, but that\nare not referable to any known eclipsing body. Of course there is no\nsuggestion here that these darknesses may have been eclipses. My own\nacceptance is that if in the nineteenth century anyone had uttered such\na thought as that, he'd have felt the blight of a Dominant; that\nMaterialistic Science was a jealous god, excluding, as works of the\ndevil, all utterances against the seemingly uniform, regular, periodic;\nthat to defy him would have brought on--withering by ridicule--shrinking\naway by publishers--contempt of friends and family--justifiable grounds\nfor divorce--that one who would so defy would feel what unbelievers in\nrelics of saints felt in an earlier age; what befell virgins who forgot\nto keep fires burning, in a still earlier age--but that, if he'd almost\nabsolutely hold out, just the same--new fixed star reported in _Monthly\nNotices_. Altogether, the point in Positivism here is that by Dominants\nand their correlates, quasi-existence strives for the positive state,\naggregating, around a nucleus, or dominant, systematized members of a\nreligion, a science, a society--but that \"individuals\" who do not\nsurrender and submerge may of themselves highly approximate to\npositiveness--the fixed, the real, the absolute.\n\nIn _Notes and Queries_, 2-4-139, there is an account of a darkness in\nHolland, in the midst of a bright day, so intense and terrifying that\nmany panic-stricken persons lost their lives stumbling into the canals.\n\n_Gentleman's Magazine_, 33-414:\n\nA darkness that came upon London, Aug. 19, 1763, \"greater than at the\ngreat eclipse of 1748.\"\n\nHowever, our preference is not to go so far back for data. For a list of\nhistoric \"dark days,\" see Humboldt, _Cosmos_, 1-120.\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, March, 1886-79:\n\nThat, according to the _La Crosse Daily Republican_, of March 20, 1886,\ndarkness suddenly settled upon the city of Oshkosh, Wis., at 3 P.M.,\nMarch 19. In five minutes the darkness equaled that of midnight.\n\nConsternation.\n\nI think that some of us are likely to overdo our own superiority and the\nabsurd fears of the Middle Ages--\n\nOshkosh.\n\nPeople in the streets rushing in all directions--horses running\naway--women and children running into cellars--little modern touch after\nall: gas meters instead of images and relics of saints.\n\nThis darkness, which lasted from eight to ten minutes, occurred in a day\nthat had been \"light but cloudy.\" It passed from west to east, and\nbrightness followed: then came reports from towns to the west of\nOshkosh: that the same phenomenon had already occurred there. A \"wave of\ntotal darkness\" had passed from west to east.\n\nOther instances are recorded in the _Monthly Weather Review_, but, as to\nall of them, we have a sense of being pretty well-eclipsed, ourselves,\nby the conventional explanation that the obscuring body was only a very\ndense mass of clouds. But some of the instances are interesting--intense\ndarkness at Memphis, Tenn., for about fifteen minutes, at 10 A.M., Dec.\n2, 1904--\"We are told that in some quarters a panic prevailed, and that\nsome were shouting and praying and imagining that the end of the world\nhad come.\" (_M.W.R._, 32-522.) At Louisville, Ky., March 7, 1911, at\nabout 8 A.M.: duration about half an hour; had been raining moderately,\nand then hail had fallen. \"The intense blackness and general ominous\nappearance of the storm spread terror throughout the city.\" (_M.W.R._,\n39-345.)\n\nHowever, this merger between possible eclipses by unknown dark bodies\nand commonplace terrestrial phenomena is formidable.\n\nAs to darknesses that have fallen upon vast areas, conventionality\nis--smoke from forest fires. In the _U.S. Forest Service Bulletin_, No.\n117, F.G. Plummer gives a list of eighteen darknesses that have occurred\nin the United States and Canada. He is one of the primitives, but I\nshould say that his dogmatism is shaken by vibrations from the new\nDominant. His difficulty, which he acknowledges, but which he would have\ndisregarded had he written a decade or so earlier, is the profundity of\nsome of these obscurations. He says that mere smokiness cannot account\nfor such \"awe-inspiring dark days.\" So he conceives of eddies in the\nair, concentrating the smoke from forest fires. Then, in the\ninconsistency or discord of all quasi-intellection that is striving for\nconsistency or harmony, he tells of the vastness of some of these\ndarknesses. Of course Mr. Plummer did not really think upon this\nsubject, but one does feel that he might have approximated higher to\nreal thinking than by speaking of concentration and then listing data of\nenormous area, or the opposite of circumstances of concentration--because,\nof his nineteen instances, nine are set down as covering all New England.\nIn quasi-existence, everything generates or is part of its own opposite.\nEvery attempt at peace prepares the way for war; all attempts at justice\nresult in injustice in some other respect: so Mr. Plummer's attempt to\nbring order into his data, with the explanation of darkness caused by\nsmoke from forest fires, results in such confusion that he ends up by\nsaying that these daytime darknesses have occurred \"often with little\nor no turbidity of the air near the earth's surface\"--or with no evidence\nat all of smoke--except that there is almost always a forest fire\nsomewhere.\n\nHowever, of the eighteen instances, the only one that I'd bother to\ncontest is the profound darkness in Canada and northern parts of the\nUnited States, Nov. 19, 1819--which we have already considered.\n\nIts concomitants:\n\nLights in the sky;\n\nFall of a black substance;\n\nShocks like those of an earthquake.\n\nIn this instance, the only available forest fire was one to the south of\nthe Ohio River. For all I know, soot from a very great fire south of the\nOhio might fall in Montreal, Canada, and conceivably, by some freak of\nreflection, light from it might be seen in Montreal, but the earthquake\nis not assimilable with a forest fire. On the other hand, it will soon\nbe our expression that profound darkness, fall of matter from the sky,\nlights in the sky, and earthquakes are phenomena of the near approach of\nother worlds to this world. It is such comprehensiveness, as contrasted\nwith inclusion of a few factors and disregard for the rest, that we call\nhigher approximation to realness--or universalness.\n\nA darkness, of April 17, 1904, at Wimbledon, England (_Symons' Met.\nMag._, 39-69). It came from a smokeless region: no rain, no thunder;\nlasted 10 minutes; too dark to go \"even out in the open.\"\n\nAs to darknesses in Great Britain, one thinks of fogs--but in _Nature_,\n25-289, there are some observations by Major J. Herschel, upon an\nobscuration in London, Jan. 22, 1882, at 10:30 A.M., so great that he\ncould hear persons upon the opposite side of the street, but could not\nsee them--\"It was obvious that there was no fog to speak of.\"\n\n_Annual Register_, 1857-132:\n\nAn account by Charles A. Murray, British Envoy to Persia, of a darkness\nof May 20, 1857, that came upon Bagdad--\"a darkness more intense than\nordinary midnight, when neither stars nor moon are visible....\" \"After a\nshort time the black darkness was succeeded by a red, lurid gloom, such\nas I never saw in any part of the world.\"\n\n\"Panic seized the whole city.\"\n\n\"A dense volume of red sand fell.\"\n\nThis matter of sand falling seems to suggest conventional explanation\nenough, or that a simoon, heavily charged with terrestrial sand, had\nobscured the sun, but Mr. Murray, who says that he had had experience\nwith simoons, gives his opinion that \"it cannot have been a simoon.\"\n\nIt is our comprehensiveness now, or this matter of concomitants of\ndarknesses that we are going to capitalize. It is all very complicated\nand tremendous, and our own treatment can be but impressionistic, but a\nfew of the rudiments of Advanced Seismology we shall now take up--or the\nfour principal phenomena of another world's close approach to this\nworld.\n\nIf a large substantial mass, or super-construction, should enter\nthis earth's atmosphere, it is our acceptance that it would\nsometimes--depending upon velocity--appear luminous or look like a\ncloud, or like a cloud with a luminous nucleus. Later we shall have an\nexpression upon luminosity--different from the luminosity of\nincandescence--that comes upon objects falling from the sky, or entering\nthis earth's atmosphere. Now our expression is that worlds have often\ncome close to this earth, and that smaller objects--size of a haystack\nor size of several dozen skyscrapers lumped, have often hurtled through\nthis earth's atmosphere, and have been mistaken for clouds, because they\nwere enveloped in clouds--\n\nOr that around something coming from the intense cold of inter-planetary\nspace--that is of some regions: our own suspicion is that other regions\nare tropical--the moisture of this earth's atmosphere would condense\ninto a cloud-like appearance around it. In _Nature_, 20-121, there is an\naccount by Mr. S.W. Clifton, Collector of Customs, at Freemantle,\nWestern Australia, sent to the Melbourne Observatory--a clear\nday--appearance of a small black cloud, moving not very\nswiftly--bursting into a ball of fire, of the apparent size of the\nmoon--\n\nOr that something with the velocity of an ordinary meteorite could not\ncollect vapor around it, but that slower-moving objects--speed of a\nrailway train, say--may.\n\nThe clouds of tornadoes have so often been described as if they were\nsolid objects that I now accept that sometimes they are: that some\nso-called tornadoes are objects hurtling through this earth's\natmosphere, not only generating disturbances by their suctions, but\ncrushing, with their bulk, all things in their way, rising and falling\nand finally disappearing, demonstrating that gravitation is not the\npower that the primitives think it is, if an object moving at relatively\nlow velocity be not pulled to this earth, or being so momentarily\naffected, bounds away.\n\nIn Finley's _Reports on the Character of 600 Tornadoes_ very suggestive\nbits of description occur:\n\n\"Cloud bounded along the earth like a ball\"--\n\nOr that it was no meteorological phenomenon, but something very much\nlike a huge solid ball that was bounding along, crushing and carrying\nwith it everything within its field--\n\n\"Cloud bounded along, coming to the earth every eight hundred or one\nthousand yards.\"\n\nHere's an interesting bit that I got somewhere else. I offer it as a\ndatum in super-biology, which, however, is a branch of advanced science\nthat I'll not take up, restricting to things indefinitely called\n\"objects\"--\n\n\"The tornado came wriggling, jumping, whirling like a great green snake,\ndarting out a score of glistening fangs.\"\n\nThough it's interesting, I think that's sensational, myself. It may be\nthat vast green snakes sometimes rush past this earth, taking a swift\nbite wherever they can, but, as I say, that's a super-biologic\nphenomenon. Finley gives dozens of instances of tornado clouds that seem\nto me more like solid things swathed in clouds, than clouds. He notes\nthat, in the tornado at Americus, Georgia, July 18, 1881, \"a strange\nsulphurous vapor was emitted from the cloud.\" In many instances,\nobjects, or meteoritic stones, that have come from this earth's\nexternality, have had a sulphurous odor. Why a wind effect should be\nsulphurous is not clear. That a vast object from external regions\nshould be sulphurous is in line with many data. This phenomenon is\ndescribed in the _Monthly Weather Review_, July, 1881, as \"a strange\nsulphurous vapor ... burning and sickening all who approached close\nenough to breathe it.\"\n\nThe conventional explanation of tornadoes as wind-effects--which we do\nnot deny in some instances--is so strong in the United States that it is\nbetter to look elsewhere for an account of an object that has hurtled\nthrough this earth's atmosphere, rising and falling and defying this\nearth's gravitation.\n\n_Nature_, 7-112:\n\nThat, according to a correspondent to the _Birmingham Morning News_, the\npeople living near King's Sutton, Banbury, saw, about one o'clock, Dec.\n7, 1872, something like a haycock hurtling through the air. Like a\nmeteor it was accompanied by fire and a dense smoke and made a noise\nlike that of a railway train. \"It was sometimes high in the air and\nsometimes near the ground.\" The effect was tornado-like: trees and walls\nwere knocked down. It's a late day now to try to verify this story, but\na list is given of persons whose property was injured. We are told that\nthis thing then disappeared \"all at once.\"\n\nThese are the smaller objects, which may be derailed railway trains or\nbig green snakes, for all I know--but our expression upon approach to\nthis earth by vast dark bodies--\n\nThat likely they'd be made luminous: would envelop in clouds, perhaps,\nor would have their own clouds--\n\nBut that they'd quake, and that they'd affect this earth with quakes--\n\nAnd that then would occur a fall of matter from such a world, or rise of\nmatter from this earth to a nearby world, or both fall and rise, or\nexchange of matter--process known to Advanced Seismology as\ncelestio-metathesis--\n\nExcept that--if matter from some other world--and it would be like\nsomeone to get it into his head that we absolutely deny gravitation,\njust because we cannot accept orthodox dogmas--except that, if matter\nfrom another world, filling the sky of this earth, generally, as to a\nhemisphere, or locally, should be attracted to this earth, it would\nseem thinkable that the whole thing should drop here, and not merely its\nsurface-materials.\n\nObjects upon a ship's bottom. From time to time they drop to the bottom\nof the ocean. The ship does not.\n\nOr, like our acceptance upon dripping from aerial ice-fields, we think\nof only a part of a nearby world succumbing, except in being caught in\nsuspension, to this earth's gravitation, and surface-materials falling\nfrom that part--\n\nExplain or express or accept, and what does it matter? Our attitude is:\n\nHere are the data.\n\nSee for yourself.\n\nWhat does it matter what my notions may be?\n\nHere are the data.\n\nBut think for yourself, or think for myself, all mixed up we must be. A\nlong time must go by before we can know Florida from Long Island. So\nwe've had data of fishes that have fallen from our now established and\nrespectabilized Super-Sargasso Sea--which we've almost forgotten, it's\nnow so respectable--but we shall have data of fishes that have fallen\nduring earthquakes. These we accept were dragged down from ponds or\nother worlds that have been quaked, when only a few miles away, by this\nearth, some other world also quaking this earth.\n\nIn a way, or in its principle, our subject is orthodox enough. Only\ngrant proximity of other worlds--which, however, will not be a matter of\ngranting, but will be a matter of data--and one conventionally conceives\nof their surfaces quaked--even of a whole lake full of fishes being\nquaked and dragged down from one of them. The lake full of fishes may\ncause a little pain to some minds, but the fall of sand and stones is\npleasantly enough thought of. More scientific persons, or more faithful\nhypnotics than we, have taken up this subject, unpainfully, relatively\nto the moon. For instance, Perrey has gone over 15,000 records of\nearthquakes, and he has correlated many with proximities of the moon, or\nhas attributed many to the pull of the moon when nearest this earth.\nAlso there is a paper upon this subject in the _Proc. Roy. Soc. of\nCornwall_, 1845. Or, theoretically, when at its closest to this earth,\nthe moon quakes the face of this earth, and is itself quaked--but does\nnot itself fall to this earth. As to showers of matter that may have\ncome from the moon at such times--one can go over old records and find\nwhat one pleases.\n\nThat is what we now shall do.\n\nOur expressions are for acceptance only.\n\nOur data:\n\nWe take them from four classes of phenomena that have preceded or\naccompanied earthquakes:\n\nUnusual clouds, darkness profound, luminous appearances in the sky, and\nfalls of substances and objects whether commonly called meteoritic or\nnot.\n\nNot one of these occurrences fits in with principles of primitive, or\nprimary, seismology, and every one of them is a datum of a quaked body\npassing close to this earth or suspended over it. To the primitives\nthere is not a reason in the world why a convulsion of this earth's\nsurface should be accompanied by unusual sights in the sky, by darkness,\nor by the fall of substances or objects from the sky. As to phenomena\nlike these, or storms, preceding earthquakes, the irreconcilability is\nstill greater.\n\nIt was before 1860 that Perrey made his great compilation. We take most\nof our data from lists compiled long ago. Only the safe and unpainful\nhave been published in recent years--at least in ambitious, voluminous\nform. The restraining hand of the \"System\"--as we call it, whether it\nhas any real existence or not--is tight upon the sciences of today. The\nuncanniest aspect of our quasi-existence that I know of is that\neverything that seems to have one identity has also as high a seeming of\neverything else. In this oneness of allness, or continuity, the\nprotecting hand strangles; the parental stifles; love is inseparable\nfrom phenomena of hate. There is only Continuity--that is in\nquasi-existence. _Nature_, at least in its correspondents' columns,\nstill evades this protective strangulation, and the _Monthly Weather\nReview_ is still a rich field of unfaithful observation: but, in looking\nover other long-established periodicals, I have noted their glimmers of\nquasi-individuality fade gradually, after about 1860, and the surrender\nof their attempted identities to a higher attempted organization. Some\nof them, expressing Intermediateness-wide endeavor to localize the\nuniversal, or to localize self, soul, identity, entity--or positiveness\nor realness--held out until as far as 1880; traces findable up to\n1890--and then, expressing the universal process--except that here and\nthere in the world's history there may have been successful\napproximations to positiveness by \"individuals\"--who only then became\nindividuals and attained to selves or souls of their own--surrendered,\nsubmitted, became parts of a higher organization's attempt to\nindividualize or systematize into a complete thing, or to localize the\nuniversal or the attributes of the universal. After the death of Richard\nProctor, whose occasional illiberalities I'd not like to emphasize too\nmuch, all succeeding volumes of _Knowledge_ have yielded scarcely an\nunconventionality. Note the great number of times that the _American\nJournal of Science_ and the _Report of the British Association_ are\nquoted: note that, after, say, 1885, they're scarcely mentioned in these\ninspired but illicit pages--as by hypnosis and inertia, we keep on\nsaying.\n\nAbout 1880.\n\nThrottle and disregard.\n\nBut the coercion could not be positive, and many of the excommunicated\ncontinued to creep in; or, even to this day, some of the strangled are\nfaintly breathing.\n\nSome of our data have been hard to find. We could tell stories of great\nlabor and fruitless quests that would, though perhaps imperceptibly,\nstir the sympathy of a Mr. Symons. But, in this matter of concurrence of\nearthquakes with aerial phenomena, which are as unassociable with\nearthquakes, if internally caused, as falls of sand on convulsed small\nboys full of sour apples, the abundance of so-called evidence is so\ngreat that we can only sketchily go over the data, beginning with Robert\nMallet's Catalogue (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1852), omitting some\nextraordinary instances, because they occurred before the eighteenth\ncentury:\n\nEarthquake \"preceded\" by a violent tempest, England, Jan. 8,\n1704--\"preceded\" by a brilliant meteor, Switzerland, Nov. 4,\n1704--\"luminous cloud, moving at high velocity, disappearing behind the\nhorizon,\" Florence, Dec. 9, 1731--\"thick mists in the air, through which\na dim light was seen: several weeks before the shock, globes of light\nhad been seen in the air,\" Swabia, May 22, 1732--rain of earth,\nCarpentras, France, Oct. 18, 1737--a black cloud, London, March 19,\n1750--violent storm and a strange star of octagonal shape, Slavange,\nNorway, April 15, 1752--balls of fire from a streak in the sky,\nAugermannland, 1752--numerous meteorites, Lisbon, Oct. 15,\n1755--\"terrible tempests\" over and over--\"falls of hail\" and \"brilliant\nmeteors,\" instance after instance--\"an immense globe,\" Switzerland, Nov.\n2, 1761--oblong, sulphurous cloud, Germany, April, 1767--extraordinary\nmass of vapor, Boulogne, April, 1780--heavens obscured by a dark mist,\nGrenada, Aug. 7, 1804--\"strange, howling noises in the air, and large\nspots obscuring the sun,\" Palermo, Italy, April 16, 1817--\"luminous\nmeteor moving in the same direction as the shock,\" Naples, Nov. 22,\n1821--fire ball appearing in the sky: apparent size of the moon,\nThuringerwald, Nov. 29, 1831.\n\nAnd, unless you be polarized by the New Dominant, which is calling for\nrecognition of multiplicities of external things, as a Dominant, dawning\nnew over Europe in 1492, called for recognition of terrestrial\nexternality to Europe--unless you have this contact with the new, you\nhave no affinity for these data--beans that drop from a\nmagnet--irreconcilables that glide from the mind of a Thomson--\n\nOr my own acceptance that we do not really think at all; that we\ncorrelate around super-magnets that I call Dominants--a Spiritual\nDominant in one age, and responsively to it up spring monasteries, and\nthe stake and the cross are its symbols: a Materialist Dominant, and up\nspring laboratories, and microscopes and telescopes and crucibles are\nits ikons--that we're nothing but iron filings relatively to a\nsuccession of magnets that displace preceding magnets.\n\nWith no soul of your own, and with no soul of my own--except that some\nday some of us may no longer be Intermediatisms, but may hold out\nagainst the cosmos that once upon a time thousands of fishes were cast\nfrom one pail of water--we have psycho-valency for these data, if we're\nobedient slaves to the New Dominant, and repulsion to them, if we're\nmere correlates to the Old Dominant. I'm a soulless and selfless\ncorrelate to the New Dominant, myself: I see what I have to see. The\nonly inducement I can hold out, in my attempt to rake up disciples, is\nthat some day the New will be fashionable: the new correlates will sneer\nat the old correlates. After all, there is some inducement to that--and\nI'm not altogether sure it's desirable to end up as a fixed star.\n\nAs a correlate to the New Dominant, I am very much impressed with some\nof these data--the luminous object that moved in the same direction as\nan earthquake--it seems very acceptable that a quake followed this thing\nas it passed near this earth's surface. The streak that was seen in the\nsky--or only a streak that was visible of another world--and objects, or\nmeteorites, that were shaken down from it. The quake at Carpentras,\nFrance: and that, above Carpentras, was a smaller world, more violently\nquaked, so that earth was shaken down from it.\n\nBut I like best the super-wolves that were seen to cross the sun during\nthe earthquake at Palermo.\n\nThey howled.\n\nOr the loves of the worlds. The call they feel for one another. They try\nto move closer and howl when they get there.\n\nThe howls of the planets.\n\nI have discovered a new unintelligibility.\n\nIn the _Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal_--have to go away back to\n1841--days of less efficient strangulation--Sir David Milne lists\nphenomena of quakes in Great Britain. I pick out a few that indicate to\nme that other worlds were near this earth's surface:\n\nViolent storm before a shock of 1703--ball of fire \"preceding,\" 1750--a\nlarge ball of fire seen upon day following a quake, 1755--\"uncommon\nphenomenon in the air: a large luminous body, bent like a crescent,\nwhich stretched itself over the heavens, 1816--vast ball of fire,\n1750--black rains and black snows, 1755--numerous instances of upward\nprojection--or upward attraction?--during quakes--preceded by a cloud,\nvery black and lowering,\" 1795--fall of black powder, preceding a quake,\nby six hours, 1837.\n\nSome of these instances seem to me to be very striking--a smaller world:\nit is greatly racked by the attraction of this earth--black substance is\ntorn down from it--not until six hours later, after an approach still\ncloser, does this earth suffer perturbation. As to the extraordinary\nspectacle of a thing, world, super-construction, that was seen in the\nsky, in 1816, I have not yet been able to find out more. I think that\nhere our acceptance is relatively sound: that this occurrence was\ntremendously of more importance than such occurrence as, say, transits\nof Venus, upon which hundreds of papers have been written--that not\nanother mention have I found, though I have not looked so especially as\nI shall look for more data--that all but undetailed record of this\noccurrence was suppressed.\n\nAltogether we have considerable agreement here between data of vast\nmasses that do not fall to this earth, but from which substances fall,\nand data of fields of ice from which ice may not fall, but from which\nwater may drip. I'm beginning to modify: that, at a distance from this\nearth, gravitation has more effect than we have supposed, though less\neffect than the dogmatists suppose and \"prove.\" I'm coming out stronger\nfor the acceptance of a Neutral Zone--that this earth, like other\nmagnets, has a neutral zone, in which is the Super-Sargasso Sea, and in\nwhich other worlds may be buoyed up, though projecting parts may be\nsubject to this earth's attraction--\n\nBut my preference:\n\nHere are the data.\n\nI now have one of the most interesting of the new correlates. I think I\nshould have brought it in before, but, whether out of place here,\nbecause not accompanied by earthquake, or not, we'll have it. I offer it\nas an instance of an eclipse, by a vast, dark body, that has been seen\nand reported by an astronomer. The astronomer is M. Lias: the phenomenon\nwas seen by him, at Pernambuco, April 11, 1860.\n\n_Comptes Rendus_, 50-1197:\n\nIt was about noon--sky cloudless--suddenly the light of the sun was\ndiminished. The darkness increased, and, to illustrate its intensity, we\nare told that the planet Venus shone brilliant. But Venus was of low\nvisibility at this time. The observation that burns incense to the New\nDominant is:\n\nThat around the sun appeared a corona.\n\nThere are many other instances that indicate proximity of other world's\nduring earthquakes. I note a few--quake and an object in the sky, called\n\"a large, luminous meteor\" (_Quar. Jour. Roy. Inst._, 5-132); luminous\nbody in the sky, earthquake, and fall of sand, Italy, Feb. 12 and 13,\n1870 (_La Science Pour Tous_, 15-159); many reports upon luminous object\nin the sky and earthquake, Connecticut, Feb. 27, 1883 (_Monthly Weather\nReview_, February, 1883); luminous object, or meteor, in the sky, fall\nof stones from the sky, and earthquake, Italy, Jan. 20, 1891\n(_L'Astronomie_, 1891-154); earthquake and prodigious number of luminous\nbodies, or globes, in the air, Boulogne, France, June 7, 1779 (Sestier,\n\"_La Foudre_,\" 1-169); earthquake at Manila, 1863, and \"curious luminous\nappearance in the sky\" (Ponton, _Earthquakes_, p. 124).\n\nThe most notable appearance of fishes during an earthquake is that of\nRiobamba. Humboldt sketched one of them, and it's an uncanny-looking\nthing. Thousands of them appeared upon the ground during this tremendous\nearthquake. Humboldt says that they were cast up from subterranean\nsources. I think not myself, and have data for thinking not, but there'd\nbe such a row arguing back and forth that it's simpler to consider a\nclearer instance of the fall of living fishes from the sky, during an\nearthquake. I can't quite accept, myself, whether a large lake, and all\nthe fishes in it, was torn down from some other world, or a lake in the\nSuper-Sargasso Sea, distracted between two pulling worlds, was dragged\ndown to this earth--\n\nHere are the data:\n\n_La Science Pour Tous_, 6-191:\n\nFeb. 16, 1861. An earthquake at Singapore. Then came an extraordinary\ndownpour of rain--or as much water as any good-sized lake would consist\nof. For three days this rain or this fall of water came down in\ntorrents. In pools on the ground, formed by this deluge, great numbers\nof fishes were found. The writer says that he had, himself, seen nothing\nbut water fall from the sky. Whether I'm emphasizing what a deluge it\nwas or not, he says that so terrific had been the downpour that he had\nnot been able to see three steps away from him. The natives said that\nthe fishes had fallen from the sky. Three days later the pools dried up\nand many dead fishes were found, but, in the first place--though that's\nan expression for which we have an instinctive dislike--the fishes had\nbeen active and uninjured. Then follows material for another of our\nlittle studies in the phenomena of disregard. A psycho-tropism here is\nmechanically to take pen in hand and mechanically write that fishes\nfound on the ground after a heavy rainfall came from overflowing\nstreams. The writer of the account says that some of the fishes had\nbeen found in his courtyard, which was surrounded by high walls--paying\nno attention to this, a correspondent (_La Science Pour Tous_, 6-317)\nexplains that in the heavy rain a body of water had probably overflowed,\ncarrying fishes with it. We are told by the first writer that these\nfishes of Singapore were of a species that was very abundant near\nSingapore. So I think, myself, that a whole lakeful of them had been\nshaken down from the Super-Sargasso Sea, under the circumstances we have\nthought of. However, if appearance of strange fishes after an earthquake\nbe more pleasing in the sight, or to the nostrils, of the New Dominant,\nwe faithfully and piously supply that incense--An account of the\noccurrence at Singapore was read by M. de Castelnau, before the French\nAcademy. M. de Castelnau recalled that, upon a former occasion, he had\nsubmitted to the Academy the circumstance that fishes of a new species\nhad appeared at the Cape of Good Hope, after an earthquake.\n\nIt seems proper, and it will give luster to the new orthodoxy, now to\nhave an instance in which, not merely quake and fall of rocks or\nmeteorites, or quake and either eclipse or luminous appearances in the\nsky have occurred, but in which are combined all the phenomena, one or\nmore of which, when accompanying earthquake, indicate, in our\nacceptance, the proximity of another world. This time a longer duration\nis indicated than in other instances.\n\nIn the _Canadian Institute Proceedings_, 2-7-198, there is an account,\nby the Deputy Commissioner at Dhurmsalla, of the extraordinary\nDhurmsalla meteorite--coated with ice. But the combination of events\nrelated by him is still more extraordinary:\n\nThat within a few months of the fall of this meteorite there had been a\nfall of live fishes at Benares, a shower of red substance at\nFurruckabad, a dark spot observed on the disk of the sun, an earthquake,\n\"an unnatural darkness of some duration,\" and a luminous appearance in\nthe sky that looked like an aurora borealis--\n\nBut there's more to this climax:\n\nWe are introduced to a new order of phenomena:\n\nVisitors.\n\nThe Deputy Commissioner writes that, in the evening, after the fall of\nthe Dhurmsalla meteorite, or mass of stone covered with ice, he saw\nlights. Some of them were not very high. They appeared and went out and\nreappeared. I have read many accounts of the Dhurmsalla meteorite--July\n28, 1860--but never in any other of them a mention of this new\ncorrelate--something as out of place in the nineteenth century as would\nhave been an aeroplane--the invention of which would not, in our\nacceptance, have been permitted, in the nineteenth century, though\nadumbrations to it were permitted. This writer says that the lights\nmoved like fire balloons, but:\n\n\"I am sure that they were neither fire balloons, lanterns, nor bonfires,\nor any other thing of that sort, but bona fide lights in the heavens.\"\n\nIt's a subject for which we shall have to have a separate\nexpression--trespassers upon territory to which something else has a\nlegal right--perhaps someone lost a rock, and he and his friends came\ndown looking for it, in the evening--or secret agents, or emissaries,\nwho had an appointment with certain esoteric ones near Dhurmsalla--things\nor beings coming down to explore, and unable to stay down long--\n\nIn a way, another strange occurrence during an earthquake is suggested.\nThe ancient Chinese tradition--the marks like hoof marks in the ground.\nWe have thought--with a low degree of acceptance--of another world that\nmay be in secret communication with certain esoteric ones of this\nearth's inhabitants--and of messages in symbols like hoof marks that are\nsent to some receptor, or special hill, upon this earth--and of messages\nthat at times miscarry.\n\nThis other world comes close to this world--there are quakes--but\nadvantage of proximity is taken to send a message--the message, designed\nfor a receptor in India, perhaps, or in Central Europe, miscarries all\nthe way to England--marks like the marks of the Chinese tradition are\nfound upon a beach, in Cornwall, after an earthquake--\n\n_Phil. Trans._, 50-500:\n\nAfter the quake of July 15, 1757, upon the sands of Penzance, Cornwall,\nin an area of more than 100 square yards, were found marks like hoof\nprints, except that they were not crescentic. We feel a similarity, but\nnote an arbitrary disregard of our own, this time. It seems to us that\nmarks described as \"little cones surrounded by basins of equal diameter\"\nwould be like hoof prints, if hoofs printed complete circles. Other\ndisregards are that there were black specks on the tops of cones, as if\nsomething, perhaps gaseous, had issued from them; that from one of these\nformations came a gush of water as thick as a man's wrist. Of course the\nopening of springs is common in earthquakes--but we suspect, myself,\nthat the Negative Absolute is compelling us to put in this datum and its\ndisorders.\n\nThere's another matter in which the Negative Absolute seems to work\nagainst us. Though to super-chemistry, we have introduced the principle\nof celestio-metathesis, we have no good data of exchange of substances\nduring proximities. The data are all of falls and not of upward\ntranslations. Of course upward impulses are common during earthquakes,\nbut I haven't a datum upon a tree or a fish or a brick or a man that\never did go up and stay up and that never did come down again. Our\nclassic of the horse and barn occurred in what was called a whirlwind.\n\nIt is said that, in an earthquake in Calabria, paving stones shot up far\nin the air.\n\nThe writer doesn't specifically say that they came down again, but\nsomething seems to tell me they did.\n\nThe corpses of Riobamba.\n\nHumboldt reported that, in the quake of Riobamba, \"bodies were torn\nupward from graves\"; that \"the vertical motion was so strong that bodies\nwere tossed several hundred feet in the air.\"\n\nI explain.\n\nI explain that, if in the center of greatest violence of an earthquake,\nanything ever has gone up, and has kept on going up, the thoughts of the\nnearest observers were very likely upon other subjects.\n\nThe quay of Lisbon.\n\nWe are told that it went down.\n\nA vast throng of persons ran to the quay for refuge. The city of Lisbon\nwas in profound darkness. The quay and all the people on it disappeared.\nIf it and they went down--not a single corpse, not a shred of clothing,\nnot a plank of the quay, nor so much as a splinter of it ever floated to\nthe surface.\n\n\n\n\n18\n\n\nThe New Dominant.\n\nI mean \"primarily\" all that opposes Exclusionism--\n\nThat Development or Progress or Evolution is Attempt to Positivize, and\nis a mechanism by which a positive existence is recruited--that what we\ncall existence is a womb of infinitude, and is itself only\nincubatory--that eventually all attempts are broken down by the falsely\nexcluded. Subjectively, the breaking down is aided by our own sense of\nfalse and narrow limitations. So the classic and academic artists\nwrought positivist paintings, and expressed the only ideal that I am\nconscious of, though we so often hear of \"ideals\" instead of different\nmanifestations, artistically, scientifically, theologically,\npolitically, of the One Ideal. They sought to satisfy, in its artistic\naspect, cosmic craving for unity or completeness, sometimes called\nharmony, called beauty in some aspects. By disregard they sought\ncompleteness. But the light-effects that they disregarded, and their\nnarrow confinement to standardized subjects brought on the revolt of the\nImpressionists. So the Puritans tried to systematize, and they\ndisregarded physical needs, or vices, or relaxations: they were invaded\nand overthrown when their narrowness became obvious and intolerable. All\nthings strive for positiveness, for themselves, or for quasi-systems of\nwhich they are parts. Formality and the mathematic, the regular and the\nuniform are aspects of the positive state--but the Positive is the\nUniversal--so all attempted positiveness that seems to satisfy in the\naspects of formality and regularity, sooner or later disqualifies in the\naspect of wideness or universalness. So there is revolt against the\nscience of today, because the formulated utterances that were regarded\nas final truths in a past generation, are now seen to be\ninsufficiencies. Every pronouncement that has opposed our own\nacceptances has been found to be a composition like any academic\npainting: something that is arbitrarily cut off from relations with\nenvironment, or framed off from interfering and disturbing data, or\noutlined with disregards. Our own attempt has been to take in the\nincluded, but also to take in the excluded into wider expressions. We\naccept, however, that for every one of our expressions there are\nirreconcilables somewhere--that final utterance would include all\nthings. However, of such is the gossip of angels. The final is\nunutterable in quasi-existence, where to think is to include but also to\nexclude, or be not final. If we admit that for every opinion we have\nexpressed, there must somewhere be an irreconcilable, we are\nIntermediatists and not positivists; not even higher positivists. Of\ncourse it may be that some day we shall systematize and dogmatize and\nrefuse to think of anything that we may be accused of disregarding, and\nbelieve instead of merely accepting: then, if we could have a wider\nsystem, which would acknowledge no irreconcilables we'd be higher\npositivists. So long as we only accept, we are not higher positivists,\nbut our feeling is that the New Dominant, even though we have thought of\nit only as another enslavement, will be the nucleus for higher\npositivism--and that it will be the means of elevating into infinitude a\nnew batch of fixed stars--until, as a recruiting instrument, it, too,\nwill play out, and will give way to some new medium for generating\nabsoluteness. It is our acceptance that all astronomers of today have\nlost their souls, or, rather, all chance of attaining Entity, but that\nCopernicus and Kepler and Galileo and Newton, and, conceivably,\nLeverrier are now fixed stars. Some day I shall attempt to identify\nthem. In all this, I think we're quite a Moses. We point out the\nPromised Land, but, unless we be cured of our Intermediatism, will never\nbe reported in _Monthly Notices_, ourself.\n\nIn our acceptance, Dominants, in their succession, displace preceding\nDominants not only because they are more nearly positive, but because\nthe old Dominants, as recruiting mediums, play out. Our expression is\nthat the New Dominant, of Wider Inclusions, is now manifesting\nthroughout the world, and that the old Exclusionism is everywhere\nbreaking down. In physics Exclusionism is breaking down by its own\nresearches in radium, for instance, and in its speculations upon\nelectrons, or its merging away into metaphysics, and by the desertion\nthat has been going on for many years, by such men as Gurney, Crookes,\nWallace, Flammarion, Lodge, to formerly disregarded phenomena--no longer\ncalled \"spiritualism\" but now \"psychic research.\" Biology is in chaos:\nconventional Darwinites mixed up with mutationists and orthogenesists\nand followers of Wisemann, who take from Darwinism one of its\npseudo-bases, and nevertheless try to reconcile their heresies with\northodoxy. The painters are metaphysicians and psychologists. The\nbreaking down of Exclusionism in China and Japan and in the United\nStates has astonished History. The science of astronomy is going\ndownward so that, though Pickering, for instance, did speculate upon a\nTrans-Neptunian planet, and Lowell did try to have accepted heretical\nideas as to marks on Mars, attention is now minutely focused upon such\ntechnicalities as variations in shades of Jupiter's fourth satellite. I\nthink that, in general acceptance, over-refinement indicates decadence.\n\nI think that the stronghold of Inclusionism is in aeronautics. I think\nthat the stronghold of the Old Dominant, when it was new, was in the\ninvention of the telescope. Or that coincidentally with the breakdown of\nExclusionism appears the means of finding out--whether there are vast\naerial fields of ice and floating lakes full of frogs and fishes or\nnot--where carved stones and black substances and great quantities of\nvegetable matter and flesh, which may be dragons' flesh, come\nfrom--whether there are inter-planetary trade routes and vast areas\ndevastated by Super-Tamerlanes--whether sometimes there are visitors to\nthis earth--who might be pursued and captured and questioned.\n\n\n\n\n19\n\n\nI have industriously sought data for an expression upon birds, but the\nprospecting has not been very quasi-satisfactory. I think I rather\nemphasize our industriousness, because a charge likely to be brought\nagainst the attitude of Acceptance is that one who only accepts must be\none of languid interest and little application of energy. It doesn't\nseem to work out: we are very industrious. I suggest to some of our\ndisciples that they look into the matter of messages upon pigeons, of\ncourse attributed to earthly owners, but said to be undecipherable. I'd\ndo it, ourselves, only that would be selfish. That's more of the\nIntermediatism that will keep us out of the firmament: Positivism is\nabsolute egoism. But look back in the time of Andree's Polar Expedition.\nPigeons that would have no publicity ordinarily, were often reported at\nthat time.\n\nIn the _Zoologist_, 3-18-21, is recorded an instance of a bird (puffin)\nthat had fallen to the ground with a fractured head. Interesting, but\nmere speculation--but what solid object, high in the air, had that bird\nstruck against?\n\nTremendous red rain in France, Oct. 16 and 17, 1846; great storm at the\ntime, and red rain supposed to have been colored by matter swept up from\nthis earth's surface, and then precipitated (_Comptes Rendus_, 23-832).\nBut in _Comptes Rendus_, 24-625, the description of this red rain\ndiffers from one's impression of red, sandy or muddy water. It is said\nthat this rain was so vividly red and so blood-like that many persons in\nFrance were terrified. Two analyses are given (_Comptes Rendus_,\n24-812). One chemist notes a great quantity of corpuscles--whether\nblood-like corpuscles or not--in the matter. The other chemist sets down\norganic matter at 35 per cent. It may be that an inter-planetary dragon\nhad been slain somewhere, or that this red fluid, in which were many\ncorpuscles, came from something not altogether pleasant to contemplate,\nabout the size of the Catskill Mountains, perhaps--but the present\ndatum is that with this substance, larks, quail, ducks, and water hens,\nsome of them alive, fell at Lyons and Grenoble and other places.\n\nI have notes upon other birds that have fallen from the sky, but\nunaccompanied by the red rain that makes the fall of birds in France\npeculiar, and very peculiar, if it be accepted that the red substance\nwas extra-mundane. The other notes are upon birds that have fallen from\nthe sky, in the midst of storms, or of exhausted, but living, birds,\nfalling not far from a storm-area. But now we shall have an instance for\nwhich I can find no parallel: fall of dead birds, from a clear sky,\nfar-distant from any storm to which they could be attributed--so remote\nfrom any discoverable storm that--\n\nMy own notion is that, in the summer of 1896, something, or some beings,\ncame as near to this earth as they could, upon a hunting expedition;\nthat, in the summer of 1896, an expedition of super-scientists passed\nover this earth, and let down a dragnet--and what would it catch,\nsweeping through the air, supposing it to have reached not quite to this\nearth?\n\nIn the _Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1917, W.L. McAtee quotes from the\nBaton Rouge correspondence to the _Philadelphia Times_:\n\nThat, in the summer of 1896, into the streets of Baton Rouge, La., and\nfrom a \"clear sky,\" fell hundreds of dead birds. There were wild ducks\nand cat birds, woodpeckers, and \"many birds of strange plumage,\" some of\nthem resembling canaries.\n\nUsually one does not have to look very far from any place to learn of a\nstorm. But the best that could be done in this instance was to say:\n\n\"There had been a storm on the coast of Florida.\"\n\nAnd, unless he have psycho-chemic repulsion for the explanation, the\nreader feels only momentary astonishment that dead birds from a storm in\nFlorida should fall from an unstormy sky in Louisiana, and with his\nintellect greased like the plumage of a wild duck, the datum then drops\noff.\n\nOur greasy, shiny brains. That they may be of some use after all: that\nother modes of existence place a high value upon them as lubricants;\nthat we're hunted for them; a hunting expedition to this earth--the\nnewspapers report a tornado.\n\nIf from a clear sky, or a sky in which there were no driven clouds, or\nother evidences of still-continuing wind-power--or, if from a storm in\nFlorida, it could be accepted that hundreds of birds had fallen far\naway, in Louisiana, I conceive, conventionally, of heavier objects\nhaving fallen in Alabama, say, and of the fall of still heavier objects\nstill nearer the origin in Florida.\n\nThe sources of information of the Weather Bureau are widespread.\n\nIt has no records of such falls.\n\nSo a dragnet that was let down from above somewhere--\n\nOr something that I learned from the more scientific of the\ninvestigators of psychic phenomena:\n\nThe reader begins their works with prejudice against telepathy\nand everything else of psychic phenomena. The writers deny\nspirit-communication, and say that the seeming data are data of \"only\ntelepathy.\" Astonishing instances of seeming clairvoyance--\"only\ntelepathy.\" After a while the reader finds himself agreeing that it's\nonly telepathy--which, at first, had been intolerable to him.\n\nSo maybe, in 1896, a super-dragnet did not sweep through this earth's\natmosphere, gathering up all the birds within its field, the meshes then\nsuddenly breaking--\n\nOr that the birds of Baton Rouge were only from the Super-Sargasso Sea--\n\nUpon which we shall have another expression. We thought we'd settled\nthat, and we thought we'd establish that, but nothing's ever settled,\nand nothing's ever established, in a real sense, if, in a real sense,\nthere is nothing in quasiness.\n\nI suppose there had been a storm somewhere, the storm in Florida,\nperhaps, and many birds had been swept upward into the Super-Sargasso\nSea. It has frigid regions and it has tropical regions--that birds of\ndiverse species had been swept upward, into an icy region, where,\nhuddling together for warmth, they had died. Then, later, they had been\ndislodged--meteor coming along--boat--bicycle--dragon--don't know what\ndid come along--something dislodged them.\n\nSo leaves of trees, carried up there in whirlwinds, staying there years,\nages, perhaps only a few months, but then falling to this earth at an\nunseasonable time for dead leaves--fishes carried up there, some of them\ndying and drying, some of them living in volumes of water that are in\nabundance up there, or that fall sometimes in the deluges that we call\n\"cloudbursts.\"\n\nThe astronomers won't think kindly of us, and we haven't done anything\nto endear ourselves to the meteorologists--but we're weak and mawkish\nIntermediatists--several times we've tried to get the aeronauts with\nus--extraordinary things up there: things that curators of museums would\ngive up all hope of ever being fixed stars, to obtain: things left over\nfrom whirlwinds of the time of the Pharaohs, perhaps: or that Elijah did\ngo up in the sky in something like a chariot, and may not be Vega, after\nall, and that there may be a wheel or so left of whatever he went up in.\nWe basely suggest that it would bring a high price--but sell soon,\nbecause after a while there'd be thousands of them hawked around--\n\nWe weakly drop a hint to the aeronauts.\n\nIn the _Scientific American_, 33-197, there is an account of some hay\nthat fell from the sky. From the circumstances we incline to accept that\nthis hay went up, in a whirlwind, from this earth, in the first place,\nreached the Super-Sargasso Sea, and remained there a long time before\nfalling. An interesting point in this expression is the usual\nattribution to a local and coinciding whirlwind, and identification of\nit--and then data that make that local whirlwind unacceptable--\n\nThat, upon July 27, 1875, small masses of damp hay had fallen at\nMonkstown, Ireland. In the _Dublin Daily Express_, Dr. J.W. Moore had\nexplained: he had found a nearby whirlwind, to the south of Monkstown,\nthat coincided. But, according to the _Scientific American_, a similar\nfall had occurred near Wrexham, England, two days before.\n\nIn November, 1918, I made some studies upon light objects thrown into\nthe air. Armistice-day. I suppose I should have been more emotionally\noccupied, but I made notes upon torn-up papers thrown high in the air\nfrom windows of office buildings. Scraps of paper did stay together for\na while. Several minutes, sometimes.\n\n_Cosmos_, 3-4-574:\n\nThat, upon the 10th of April, 1869, at Autriche (Indre-et-Loire) a\ngreat number of oak leaves--enormous segregation of them--fell from the\nsky. Very calm day. So little wind that the leaves fell almost\nvertically. Fall lasted about ten minutes.\n\nFlammarion, in _The Atmosphere_, p. 412, tells this story.\n\nHe has to find a storm.\n\nHe does find a squall--but it had occurred upon April 3rd.\n\nFlammarion's two incredibilities are--that leaves could remain a week in\nthe air: that they could stay together a week in the air.\n\nThink of some of your own observations upon papers thrown from an\naeroplane.\n\nOur one incredibility:\n\nThat these leaves had been whirled up six months before, when they were\ncommon on the ground, and had been sustained, of course not in the air,\nbut in a region gravitationally inert; and had been precipitated by the\ndisturbances of April rains.\n\nI have no records of leaves that have so fallen from the sky in October\nor November, the season when one might expect dead leaves to be raised\nfrom one place and precipitated somewhere else. I emphasize that this\noccurred in April.\n\n_La Nature_, 1889-2-94:\n\nThat, upon April 19, 1889, dried leaves, of different species, oak, elm,\netc., fell from the sky. This day, too, was a calm day. The fall was\ntremendous. The leaves were seen to fall fifteen minutes, but, judging\nfrom the quantity on the ground, it is the writer's opinion that they\nhad already been falling half an hour. I think that the geyser of\ncorpses that sprang from Riobamba toward the sky must have been an\ninteresting sight. If I were a painter, I'd like that subject. But this\ncataract of dried leaves, too, is a study in the rhythms of the dead. In\nthis datum, the point most agreeable to us is the very point that the\nwriter in _La Nature_ emphasizes. Windlessness. He says that the surface\nof the Loire was \"absolutely smooth.\" The river was strewn with leaves\nas far as he could see.\n\n_L'Astronomie_, 1894-194:\n\nThat, upon the 7th of April, 1894, dried leaves fell at Clairvaux and\nOutre-Aube, France. The fall is described as prodigious. Half an hour.\nThen, upon the 11th, a fall of dried leaves occurred at Pontcarre.\n\nIt is in this recurrence that we found some of our opposition to the\nconventional explanation. The Editor (Flammarion) explains. He says that\nthe leaves had been caught up in a cyclone which had expended its force;\nthat the heavier leaves had fallen first. We think that that was all\nright for 1894, and that it was quite good enough for 1894. But, in\nthese more exacting days, we want to know how wind-power insufficient to\nhold some leaves in the air could sustain others four days.\n\nThe factors in this expression are unseasonableness, not for dried\nleaves, but for prodigious numbers of dried leaves; direct fall,\nwindlessness, month of April, and localization in France. The factor of\nlocalization is interesting. Not a note have I upon fall of leaves from\nthe sky, except these notes. Were the conventional explanation, or \"old\ncorrelate\" acceptable, it would seem that similar occurrences in other\nregions should be as frequent as in France. The indication is that there\nmay be quasi-permanent undulations in the Super-Sargasso Sea, or a\npronounced inclination toward France--\n\nInspiration:\n\nThat there may be a nearby world complementary to this world, where\nautumn occurs at the time that is springtime here.\n\nLet some disciple have that.\n\nBut there may be a dip toward France, so that leaves that are borne high\nthere, are more likely to be held in suspension than highflying leaves\nelsewhere. Some other time I shall take up Super-geography, and be\nguilty of charts. I think, now, that the Super-Sargasso Sea is an\noblique belt, with changing ramifications, over Great Britain, France,\nItaly, and on to India. Relatively to the United States I am not very\nclear, but think especially of the Southern States.\n\nThe preponderance of our data indicates frigid regions aloft.\nNevertheless such phenomena as putrefaction have occurred often enough\nto make super-tropical regions, also, acceptable. We shall have one more\ndatum upon the Super-Sargasso Sea. It seems to me that, by this time,\nour requirements of support and reinforcement and agreement have been\nquite as rigorous for acceptance as ever for belief: at least for full\nacceptance. By virtue of mere acceptance, we may, in some later book,\ndeny the Super-Sargasso Sea, and find that our data relate to some other\ncomplementary world instead--or the moon--and have abundant data for\naccepting that the moon is not more than twenty or thirty miles away.\nHowever, the Super-Sargasso Sea functions very well as a nucleus around\nwhich to gather data that oppose Exclusionism. That is our main motive:\nto oppose Exclusionism.\n\nOr our agreement with cosmic processes. The climax of our general\nexpression upon the Super-Sargasso Sea. Coincidentally appears something\nelse that may overthrow it later.\n\n_Notes and Queries_, 8-12-228:\n\nThat in the province of Macerata, Italy (summer of 1897?) an immense\nnumber of small, blood-colored clouds covered the sky. About an hour\nlater a storm broke, and myriad seeds fell to the ground. It is said\nthat they were identified as products of a tree found only in Central\nAfrica and the Antilles.\n\nIf--in terms of conventional reasoning--these seeds had been high in the\nair, they had been in a cold region. But it is our acceptance that these\nseeds had, for a considerable time, been in a warm region, and for a\ntime longer than is attributable to suspension by wind-power:\n\n\"It is said that a great number of the seeds were in the first stage of\ngermination.\"\n\n\n\n\n20\n\n\nThe New Dominant.\n\nInclusionism.\n\nIn it we have a pseudo-standard.\n\nWe have a datum, and we give it an interpretation, in accordance with\nour pseudo-standard. At present we have not the delusions of Absolutism\nthat may have translated some of the positivists of the nineteenth\ncentury to heaven. We are Intermediatists--but feel a lurking suspicion\nthat we may some day solidify and dogmatize and illiberalize into higher\npositivists. At present we do not ask whether something be reasonable or\npreposterous, because we recognize that by reasonableness and\npreposterousness are meant agreement and disagreement with a\nstandard--which must be a delusion--though not absolutely, of\ncourse--and must some day be displaced by a more advanced\nquasi-delusion. Scientists in the past have taken the positivist\nattitude--is this or that reasonable or unreasonable? Analyze them and\nwe find that they meant relatively to a standard, such as Newtonism,\nDaltonism, Darwinism, or Lyellism. But they have written and spoken and\nthought as if they could mean real reasonableness and real\nunreasonableness.\n\nSo our pseudo-standard is Inclusionism, and, if a datum be a correlate\nto a more widely inclusive outlook as to this earth and its externality\nand relations with externality, its harmony with Inclusionism admits it.\nSuch was the process, and such was the requirement for admission in the\ndays of the Old Dominant: our difference is in underlying\nIntermediatism, or consciousness that though we're more nearly real, we\nand our standards are only quasi--\n\nOr that all things--in our intermediate state--are phantoms in a\nsuper-mind in a dreaming state--but striving to awaken to realness.\n\nThough in some respects our own Intermediatism is unsatisfactory, our\nunderlying feeling is--\n\nThat in a dreaming mind awakening is accelerated--if phantoms in that\nmind know that they're only phantoms in a dream. Of course, they too are\nquasi, or--but in a relative sense--they have an essence of what is\ncalled realness. They are derived from experience or from\nsenes-relations, even though grotesque distortions. It seems acceptable\nthat a table that is seen when one is awake is more nearly real than a\ndreamed table, which, with fifteen or twenty legs, chases one.\n\nSo now, in the twentieth century, with a change of terms, and a change\nin underlying consciousness, our attitude toward the New Dominant is the\nattitude of the scientists of the nineteenth century to the Old\nDominant. We do not insist that our data and interpretations shall be\nas shocking, grotesque, evil, ridiculous, childish, insincere,\nlaughable, ignorant to nineteenth-centuryites as were their data and\ninterpretations to the medieval-minded. We ask only whether data and\ninterpretations correlate. If they do, they are acceptable, perhaps only\nfor a short time, or as nuclei, or scaffolding, or preliminary sketches,\nor as gropings and tentativenesses. Later, of course, when we cool off\nand harden and radiate into space most of our present mobility, which\nexpresses in modesty and plasticity, we shall acknowledge no\nscaffoldings, gropings or tentativenesses, but think we utter absolute\nfacts. A point in Intermediatism here is opposed to most current\nspeculations upon Development. Usually one thinks of the spiritual as\nhigher than the material, but, in our acceptance, quasi-existence is a\nmeans by which the absolutely immaterial materializes absolutely, and,\nbeing intermediate, is a state in which nothing is finally either\nimmaterial or material, all objects, substances, thoughts, occupying\nsome grade of approximation one way or the other. Final solidification\nof the ethereal is, to us, the goal of cosmic ambition. Positivism is\nPuritanism. Heat is Evil. Final Good is Absolute Frigidity. An Arctic\nwinter is very beautiful, but I think that an interest in monkeys\nchattering in palm trees accounts for our own Intermediatism.\n\nVisitors.\n\nOur confusion here, out of which we are attempting to make quasi-order,\nis as great as it has been throughout this book, because we have not the\npositivist's delusion of homogeneity. A positivist would gather all data\nthat seem to relate to one kind of visitors and coldly disregard all\nother data. I think of as many different kinds of visitors to this earth\nas there are visitors to New York, to a jail, to a church--some persons\ngo to church to pick pockets, for instance.\n\nMy own acceptance is that either a world or a vast\nsuper-construction--or a world, if red substances and fishes fell from\nit--hovered over India in the summer of 1860. Something then fell from\nsomewhere, July 17, 1860, at Dhurmsalla. Whatever \"it\" was, \"it\" is so\npersistently alluded to as \"a meteorite\" that I look back and see that I\nadopted this convention myself. But in the London _Times_, Dec. 26,\n1860, Syed Abdoolah, Professor of Hindustani, University College,\nLondon, writes that he had sent to a friend in Dhurmsalla, for an\naccount of the stones that had fallen at that place. The answer:\n\n\"... divers forms and sizes, many of which bore great resemblance to\nordinary cannon balls just discharged from engines of war.\"\n\nIt's an addition to our data of spherical objects that have arrived upon\nthis earth. Note that they are spherical stone objects.\n\nAnd, in the evening of this same day that something--took a shot at\nDhurmsalla--or sent objects upon which there may be decipherable\nmarkings--lights were seen in the air--\n\nI think, myself, of a number of things, beings, whatever they were,\ntrying to get down, but resisted, like balloonists, at a certain\naltitude, trying to get farther up, but resisted.\n\nNot in the least except to good positivists, or the homogeneous-minded,\ndoes this speculation interfere with the concept of some other world\nthat is in successful communication with certain esoteric ones upon this\nearth, by a code of symbols that print in rock, like symbols of\ntelephotographers in selenium.\n\nI think that sometimes, in favorable circumstances, emissaries have come\nto this earth--secret meetings--\n\nOf course it sounds--\n\nBut:\n\nSecret meetings--emissaries--esoteric ones in Europe, before the war\nbroke out--\n\nAnd those who suggested that such phenomena could be.\n\nHowever, as to most of our data, I think of super-things that have\npassed close to this earth with no more interest in this earth than have\npassengers upon a steamship in the bottom of the sea--or passengers may\nhave a keen interest, but circumstances of schedules and commercial\nrequirements forbid investigation of the bottom of the sea.\n\nThen, on the other hand, we may have data of super-scientific attempts\nto investigate phenomena of this earth from above--perhaps by beings\nfrom so far away that they had never even heard that something,\nsomewhere, asserts a legal right to this earth.\n\nAltogether, we're good intermediatists, but we can't be very good\nhypnotists.\n\nStill another source of the merging away of our data:\n\nThat, upon general principles of Continuity, if super-vessels, or\nsuper-vehicles, have traversed this earth's atmosphere, there must be\nmergers between them and terrestrial phenomena: observations upon them\nmust merge away into observations upon clouds and balloons and meteors.\nWe shall begin with data that we cannot distinguish ourselves and work\nour way out of mergers into extremes.\n\nIn the _Observatory_, 35-168, it is said that, according to a newspaper,\nMarch 6, 1912, residents of Warmley, England, were greatly excited by\nsomething that was supposed to be \"a splendidly illuminated aeroplane,\npassing over the village.\" \"The machine was apparently traveling at a\ntremendous rate, and came from the direction of Bath, and went on toward\nGloucester.\" The Editor says that it was a large, triple-headed\nfireball. \"Tremendous indeed!\" he says. \"But we are prepared for\nanything nowadays.\"\n\nThat is satisfactory. We'd not like to creep up stealthily and then jump\nout of a corner with our data. This Editor, at least, is prepared to\nread--\n\n_Nature_, Oct. 27, 1898:\n\nA correspondent writes that, in the County Wicklow, Ireland, at about 6\no'clock in the evening, he had seen, in the sky, an object that looked\nlike the moon in its three-quarter aspect. We note the shape which\napproximates to triangularity, and we note that in color it is said to\nhave been golden yellow. It moved slowly, and in about five minutes\ndisappeared behind a mountain.\n\nThe Editor gives his opinion that the object may have been an escaped\nballoon.\n\nIn _Nature_, Aug. 11, 1898, there is a story, taken from the July number\nof the _Canadian Weather Review_, by the meteorologist, F.F. Payne: that\nhe had seen, in the Canadian sky, a large, pear-shaped object, sailing\nrapidly. At first he supposed that the object was a balloon, \"its\noutline being sharply defined.\" \"But, as no cage was seen, it was\nconcluded that it must be a mass of cloud.\" In about six minutes this\nobject became less definite--whether because of increasing distance or\nnot--\"the mass became less dense, and finally it disappeared.\" As to\ncyclonic formation--\"no whirling motion could be seen.\"\n\n_Nature_, 58-294:\n\nThat, upon July 8, 1898, a correspondent had seen, at Kiel, an object in\nthe sky, colored red by the sun, which had set. It was about as broad as\na rainbow, and about twelve degrees high. \"It remained in its original\nbrightness about five minutes, and then faded rapidly, and then remained\nalmost stationary again, finally disappearing about eight minutes after\nI first saw it.\"\n\nIn an intermediate existence, we quasi-persons have nothing to judge by\nbecause everything is its own opposite. If a hundred dollars a week be a\nstandard of luxurious living to some persons, it is poverty to others.\nWe have instances of three objects that were seen in the sky in a space\nof three months, and this concurrence seems to me to be something to\njudge by. Science has been built upon concurrence: so have been most of\nthe fallacies and fanaticisms. I feel the positivism of a Leverrier, or\ninstinctively take to the notion that all three of these observations\nrelate to the same object. However, I don't formulate them and predict\nthe next transit. Here's another chance for me to become a fixed\nstar--but as usual--oh, well--\n\nA point in Intermediatism:\n\nThat the Intermediatist is likely to be a flaccid compromiser.\n\nOur own attitude:\n\nOurs is a partly positive and partly negative state, or a state in which\nnothing is finally positive or finally negative--\n\nBut, if positivism attract you, go ahead and try: you will be in harmony\nwith cosmic endeavor--but Continuity will resist you. Only to have\nappearance in quasiness is to be proportionately positive, but beyond a\ndegree of attempted positivism, Continuity will rise to pull you back.\nSuccess, as it is called--though there is only success-failure in\nIntermediateness--will, in Intermediateness, be yours proportionately as\nyou are in adjustment with its own state, or some positivism mixed with\ncompromise and retreat. To be very positive is to be a Napoleon\nBonaparte, against whom the rest of civilization will sooner or later\ncombine. For interesting data, see newspaper accounts of fate of one\nDowie, of Chicago.\n\nIntermediatism, then, is recognition that our state is only a\nquasi-state: it is no bar to one who desires to be positive: it is\nrecognition that he cannot be positive and remain in a state that is\npositive-negative. Or that a great positivist--isolated--with no system\nto support him--will be crucified, or will starve to death, or will be\nput in jail and beaten to death--that these are the birth-pangs of\ntranslation to the Positive Absolute.\n\nSo, though positive-negative, myself, I feel the attraction of the\npositive pole of our intermediate state, and attempt to correlate these\nthree data: to see them homogeneously; to think that they relate to one\nobject.\n\nIn the aeronautic journals and in the London _Times_ there is no mention\nof escaped balloons, in the summer or fall of 1898. In the _New York\nTimes_ there is no mention of ballooning in Canada or the United States,\nin the summer of 1898.\n\nLondon _Times_, Sept. 29, 1885:\n\nA clipping from the _Royal Gazette_, of Bermuda, of Sept. 8, 1885, sent\nto the _Times_ by General Lefroy:\n\nThat, upon Aug. 27, 1885, at about 8:30 A.M., there was observed by Mrs.\nAdelina D. Bassett, \"a strange object in the clouds, coming from the\nnorth.\" She called the attention of Mrs. L. Lowell to it, and they were\nboth somewhat alarmed. However, they continued to watch the object\nsteadily for some time. It drew nearer. It was of triangular shape, and\nseemed to be about the size of a pilot-boat mainsail, with chains\nattached to the bottom of it. While crossing the land it had appeared to\ndescend, but, as it went out to sea, it ascended, and continued to\nascend, until it was lost to sight high in the clouds.\n\nOr with such power to ascend, I don't think much myself of the notion\nthat it was an escaped balloon, partly deflated. Nevertheless, General\nLefroy, correlating with Exclusionism, attempts to give a terrestrial\ninterpretation to this occurrence. He argues that the thing may have\nbeen a balloon that had escaped from France or England--or the only\naerial thing of terrestrial origin that, even to this date of about\nthirty-five years later, has been thought to have crossed the Atlantic\nOcean. He accounts for the triangular form by deflation--\"a shapeless\nbag, barely able to float.\" My own acceptance is that great deflation\ndoes not accord with observations upon its power to ascend.\n\nIn the _Times_, Oct. 1, 1885, Charles Harding, of the R.M.S., argues\nthat if it had been a balloon from Europe, surely it would have been\nseen and reported by many vessels. Whether he was as good a Briton as\nthe General or not, he shows awareness of the United States--or that the\nthing may have been a partly collapsed balloon that had escaped from the\nUnited States.\n\nGeneral Lefroy wrote to _Nature_ about it (_Nature_, 33-99),\nsaying--whatever his sensitivenesses may have been--that the columns of\nthe _Times_ were \"hardly suitable\" for such a discussion. If, in the\npast, there had been more persons like General Lefroy, we'd have better\nthan the mere fragments of data that in most cases are too broken up\nvery well to piece together. He took the trouble to write to a friend of\nhis, W.H. Gosling, of Bermuda--who also was an extraordinary person. He\nwent to the trouble of interviewing Mrs. Bassett and Mrs. Lowell. Their\ndescription to him was somewhat different:\n\nAn object from which nets were suspended--\n\nDeflated balloon, with its network hanging from it--\n\nA super-dragnet?\n\nThat something was trawling overhead?\n\nThe birds of Baton Rouge.\n\nMr. Gosling wrote that the item of chains, or suggestion of a basket\nthat had been attached, had originated with Mr. Bassett, who had not\nseen the object. Mr. Gosling mentioned a balloon that had escaped from\nParis in July. He tells of a balloon that fell in Chicago, September 17,\nor three weeks later than the Bermuda object.\n\nIt's one incredibility against another, with disregards and convictions\ngoverned by whichever of the two Dominants looms stronger in each\nreader's mind. That he can't think for himself any more than I can is\nunderstood.\n\nMy own correlates:\n\nI think that we're fished for. It may be that we're highly esteemed by\nsuper-epicures somewhere. It makes me more cheerful when I think that we\nmay be of some use after all. I think that dragnets have often come down\nand have been mistaken for whirlwinds and waterspouts. Some accounts of\nseeming structure in whirlwinds and waterspouts are astonishing. And I\nhave data that, in this book, I can't take up at all--mysterious\ndisappearances. I think we're fished for. But this is a little\nexpression on the side: relates to trespassers; has nothing to do with\nthe subject that I shall take up at some other time--or our use to some\nother mode of seeming that has a legal right to us.\n\n_Nature_, 33-137:\n\n\"Our Paris correspondent writes that in relation to the balloon which is\nsaid to have been seen over Bermuda, in September, no ascent took place\nin France which can account for it.\"\n\nLast of August: not September. In the London _Times_ there is no mention\nof balloon ascents in Great Britain, in the summer of 1885, but mention\nof two ascents in France. Both balloons had escaped. In _L'Aeronaute_,\nAugust, 1885, it is said that these balloons had been sent up from fetes\nof the fourteenth of July--44 days before the observation at Bermuda.\nThe aeronauts were Gower and Eloy. Gower's balloon was found floating on\nthe ocean, but Eloy's balloon was not found. Upon the 17th of July it\nwas reported by a sea captain: still in the air; still inflated.\n\nBut this balloon of Eloy's was a small exhibition balloon, made for\nshort ascents from fetes and fair grounds. In _La Nature_, 1885-2-131,\nit is said that it was a very small balloon, incapable of remaining long\nin the air.\n\nAs to contemporaneous ballooning in the United States, I find only one\naccount: an ascent in Connecticut, July 29, 1885. Upon leaving this\nballoon, the aeronauts had pulled the \"rip cord,\" \"turning it inside\nout.\" (_New York Times_, Aug. 10, 1885.)\n\nTo the Intermediatist, the accusation of \"anthropomorphism\" is\nmeaningless. There is nothing in anything that is unique or positively\ndifferent. We'd be materialists were it not quite as rational to express\nthe material in terms of the immaterial as to express the immaterial in\nterms of the material. Oneness of allness in quasiness. I will engage to\nwrite the formula of any novel in psycho-chemic terms, or draw its\ngraph in psycho-mechanic terms: or write, in romantic terms, the\ncircumstances and sequences of any chemic or electric or magnetic\nreaction: or express any historic event in algebraic terms--or see Boole\nand Jevons for economic situations expressed algebraically.\n\nI think of the Dominants as I think of persons--not meaning that they\nare real persons--not meaning that we are real persons--\n\nOr the Old Dominant and its jealousy, and its suppression of all things\nand thoughts that endangered its supremacy. In reading discussions of\npapers, by scientific societies, I have often noted how, when they\napproached forbidden--or irreconcilable--subjects, the discussions were\nthrown into confusion and ramification. It's as if scientific\ndiscussions have often been led astray--as if purposefully--as if by\nsomething directive, hovering over them. Of course I mean only the\nSpirit of all Development. Just so, in any embryo, cells that would tend\nto vary from the appearances of their era are compelled to correlate.\n\nIn _Nature_, 90-169, Charles Tilden Smith writes that, at Chisbury,\nWiltshire, England, April 8, 1912, he saw something in the sky--\n\n\"--unlike anything that I had ever seen before.\"\n\n\"Although I have studied the skies for many years, I have never seen\nanything like it.\"\n\nHe saw two stationary dark patches upon clouds.\n\nThe extraordinary part:\n\nThey were stationary upon clouds that were rapidly moving.\n\nThey were fan-shaped--or triangular--and varied in size, but kept the\nsame position upon different clouds as cloud after cloud came along. For\nmore than half an hour Mr. Smith watched these dark patches--\n\nHis impression as to the one that appeared first:\n\nThat it was \"really a heavy shadow cast upon a thin veil of clouds by\nsome unseen object away in the west, which was intercepting the sun's\nrays.\"\n\nUpon page 244, of this volume of _Nature_, is a letter from another\ncorrespondent, to the effect that similar shadows are cast by mountains\nupon clouds, and that no doubt Mr. Smith was right in attributing the\nappearance to \"some unseen object, which was intercepting the sun's\nrays.\" But the Old Dominant that was a jealous Dominant, and the wrath\nof the Old Dominant against such an irreconcilability as large, opaque\nobjects in the sky, casting down shadows upon clouds. Still the\nDominants are suave very often, or are not absolute gods, and the way\nattention was led away from this subject is an interesting study in\nquasi-divine bamboozlement. Upon page 268, Charles J.P. Cave, the\nmeteorologist, writes that, upon April 5 and 8, at Ditcham Park,\nPetersfield, he had observed a similar appearance, while watching some\npilot balloons--but he describes something not in the least like a\nshadow on clouds, but a stationary cloud--the inference seems to be that\nthe shadows at Chisbury may have been shadows of pilot balloons. Upon\npage 322, another correspondent writes upon shadows cast by mountains;\nupon page 348 someone else carries on the divergence by discussing this\nthird letter: then someone takes up the third letter mathematically; and\nthen there is a correction of error in this mathematic demonstration--I\nthink it looks very much like what I think it looks like.\n\nBut the mystery here:\n\nThat the dark patches at Chisbury could not have been cast by stationary\npilot balloons that were to the west, or that were between clouds and\nthe setting sun. If, to the west of Chisbury, a stationary object were\nhigh in the air, intercepting the sun's rays, the shadow of the\nstationary object would not have been stationary, but would have moved\nhigher and higher with the setting of the sun.\n\nI have to think of something that is in accord with no other data\nwhatsoever:\n\nA luminous body--not the sun--in the sky--but, because of some unknown\nprinciple or atmospheric condition, its light extended down only about\nto the clouds; that from it were suspended two triangular objects, like\nthe object that was seen in Bermuda; that it was this light that fell\nshort of the earth that these objects intercepted; that the objects were\ndrawn up and lowered from something overhead, so that, in its light,\ntheir shadows changed size.\n\nIf my grope seem to have no grasp in it, and, if a stationary balloon\nwill, in half an hour, not cast a stationary shadow from the setting\nsun, we have to think of two triangular objects that accurately\nmaintained positions in a line between sun and clouds, and at the same\ntime approached and receded from clouds. Whatever it may have been, it's\nenough to make the devout make the sign of the crucible, or whatever the\ndevotees of the Old Dominant do in the presence of a new correlate.\n\nVast, black thing poised like a crow over the moon.\n\nIt is our acceptance that these two shadows of Chisbury looked, from the\nmoon, like vast things, black as crows, poised over the earth. It is our\nacceptance that two triangular luminosities and then two triangular\npatches, like vast black things, poised like crows over the moon, and,\nlike the triangularities at Chisbury, have been seen upon, or over, the\nmoon:\n\n_Scientific American_, 46-49:\n\nTwo triangular, luminous appearances reported by several observers in\nLebanon, Conn., evening of July 3, 1882, on the moon's upper limb. They\ndisappeared, and two dark triangular appearances that looked like\nnotches were seen three minutes later upon the lower limb. They\napproached each other, met and instantly disappeared.\n\nThe merger here is notches that have at times been seen upon the moon's\nlimb: thought to be cross sections of craters (_Monthly Notices,\nR.A.S._, 37-432). But these appearances of July 3, 1882, were vast upon\nthe moon--\"seemed to be cutting off or obliterating nearly a quarter of\nits surface.\"\n\nSomething else that may have looked like a vast black crow poised over\nthis earth from the moon:\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, 41-599:\n\nDescription of a shadow in the sky, of some unseen body, April 8, 1913,\nFort Worth, Texas--supposed to have been cast by an unseen cloud--this\npatch of shade moved with the declining sun.\n\n_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1854-410:\n\nAccount by two observers of a faint but distinctly triangular object,\nvisible for six nights in the sky. It was observed from two stations\nthat were not far apart. But the parallax was considerable. Whatever it\nwas, it was, acceptably, relatively close to this earth.\n\nI should say that relatively to phenomena of light we are in confusion\nas great as some of the discords that orthodoxy is in relatively to\nlight. Broadly and intermediatistically, our position is:\n\nThat light is not really and necessarily light--any more than is\nanything else really and necessarily anything--but an interpretation of\na mode of force, as I suppose we have to call it, as light. At sea\nlevel, the earth's atmosphere interprets sunlight as red or orange or\nyellow. High up on mountains the sun is blue. Very high up on mountains\nthe zenith is black. Or it is orthodoxy to say that in inter-planetary\nspace, where there is no air, there is no light. So then the sun and\ncomets are black, but this earth's atmosphere, or, rather, dust\nparticles in it, interpret radiations from these black objects as light.\n\nWe look up at the moon.\n\nThe jet-black moon is so silvery white.\n\nI have about fifty notes indicating that the moon has atmosphere:\nnevertheless most astronomers hold out that the moon has no atmosphere.\nThey have to: the theory of eclipses would not work out otherwise. So,\narguing in conventional terms, the moon is black. Rather\nastonishing--explorers upon the moon--stumbling and groping in intense\ndarkness--with telescopes powerful enough, we could see them stumbling\nand groping in brilliant light.\n\nOr, just because of familiarity, it is not now obvious to us how the\npreposterousnesses of the old system must have seemed to the correlates\nof the system preceding it.\n\nYe jet-black silvery moon.\n\nAltogether, then, it may be conceivable that there are phenomena of\nforce that are interpretable as light as far down as the clouds, but not\nin denser strata of air, or just the opposite of familiar\ninterpretations.\n\nI now have some notes upon an occurrence that suggests a force not\ninterpreted by air as light, but interpreted, or reflected by the ground\nas light. I think of something that, for a week, was suspended over\nLondon: of an emanation that was not interpreted as light until it\nreached the ground.\n\n_Lancet_, June 1, 1867:\n\nThat every night for a week, a light had appeared in Woburn Square,\nLondon, upon the grass of a small park, enclosed by railings. Crowds\ngathering--police called out \"for the special service of maintaining\norder and making the populace move on.\" The Editor of the _Lancet_ went\nto the Square. He says that he saw nothing but a patch of light falling\nupon an arbor at the northeast corner of the enclosure. Seems to me that\nthat was interesting enough.\n\nIn this Editor we have a companion for Mr. Symons and Dr. Gray. He\nsuggests that the light came from a street lamp--does not say that he\ncould trace it to any such origin himself--but recommends that the\npolice investigate neighboring street lamps.\n\nI'd not say that such a commonplace as light from a street lamp would\nnot attract and excite and deceive great crowds for a week--but I do\naccept that any cop who was called upon for extra work would have needed\nnobody's suggestion to settle that point the very first thing.\n\nOr that something in the sky hung suspended over a London Square for a\nweek.\n\n\n\n\n21\n\n\n_Knowledge_, Dec. 28, 1883:\n\n\"Seeing so many meteorological phenomena in your excellent paper,\n_Knowledge_, I am tempted to ask for an explanation of the following,\nwhich I saw when on board the British India Company's steamer _Patna_,\nwhile on a voyage up the Persian Gulf. In May, 1880, on a dark night,\nabout 11:30 P.M., there suddenly appeared on each side of the ship an\nenormous luminous wheel, whirling around, the spokes of which seemed to\nbrush the ship along. The spokes would be 200 or 300 yards long, and\nresembled the birch rods of the dames' schools. Each wheel contained\nabout sixteen spokes, and, although the wheels must have been some 500\nor 600 yards in diameter, the spokes could be distinctly seen all the\nway round. The phosphorescent gleam seemed to glide along flat on the\nsurface of the sea, no light being visible in the air above the water.\nThe appearance of the spokes could be almost exactly represented by\nstanding in a boat and flashing a bull's eye lantern horizontally along\nthe surface of the water, round and round. I may mention that the\nphenomenon was also seen by Captain Avern, of the _Patna_, and Mr.\nManning, third officer.\n\n\"Lee Fore Brace.\n\n\"P.S.--The wheels advanced along with the ship for about twenty\nminutes.--L.F.B.\"\n\n_Knowledge_, Jan. 11, 1884:\n\nLetter from \"A. Mc. D.\":\n\nThat \"Lee Fore Brace,\" \"who sees 'so many meteorological phenomena in\nyour excellent paper,' should have signed himself 'The Modern Ezekiel,'\nfor his vision of wheels is quite as wonderful as the prophet's.\" The\nwriter then takes up the measurements that were given, and calculates a\nvelocity at the circumference of a wheel, of about 166 yards per second,\napparently considering that especially incredible. He then says: \"From\nthe nom de plume he assumes, it might be inferred that your\ncorrespondent is in the habit of 'sailing close to the wind.'\" He asks\npermission to suggest an explanation of his own. It is that before 11:30\nP.M. there had been numerous accidents to the \"main brace,\" and that it\nhad required splicing so often that almost any ray of light would have\ntaken on a rotary motion.\n\nIn _Knowledge_, Jan. 25, 1884, Mr. \"Brace\" answers and signs himself\n\"J.W. Robertson\":\n\n\"I don't suppose A. Mc. D. means any harm, but I do think it's rather\nunjust to say a man is drunk because he sees something out of the\ncommon. If there's one thing I pride myself upon, it's being able to say\nthat never in my life have I indulged in anything stronger than water.\"\nFrom this curiosity of pride, he goes on to say that he had not intended\nto be exact, but to give his impressions of dimensions and velocity. He\nends amiably: \"However, 'no offense taken, where I suppose none is\nmeant.'\"\n\nTo this letter Mr. Proctor adds a note, apologizing for the publication\nof \"A. Mc. D's.\" letter, which had come about by a misunderstood\ninstruction. Then Mr. Proctor wrote disagreeable letters, himself,\nabout other persons--what else would you expect in a quasi-existence?\n\nThe obvious explanation of this phenomenon is that, under the surface of\nthe sea, in the Persian Gulf, was a vast luminous wheel: that it was the\nlight from its submerged spokes that Mr. Robertson saw, shining upward.\nIt seems clear that this light did shine upward from origin below the\nsurface of the sea. But at first it is not so clear how vast luminous\nwheels, each the size of a village, ever got under the surface of the\nPersian Gulf: also there may be some misunderstanding as to what they\nwere doing there.\n\nA deep-sea fish, and its adaptation to a dense medium--\n\nThat, at least in some regions aloft, there is a medium dense even to\ngelatinousness--\n\nA deep-sea fish, brought to the surface of the ocean: in a relatively\nattenuated medium, it disintegrates--\n\nSuper-constructions adapted to a dense medium in inter-planetary\nspace--sometimes, by stresses of various kinds, they are driven into\nthis earth's thin atmosphere--\n\nLater we shall have data to support just this: that things entering this\nearth's atmosphere disintegrate and shine with a light that is not the\nlight of incandescence: shine brilliantly, even if cold--\n\nVast wheel-like super-constructions--they enter this earth's atmosphere,\nand, threatened with disintegration, plunge for relief into an ocean, or\ninto a denser medium.\n\nOf course the requirements now facing us are:\n\nNot only data of vast wheel-like super-constructions that have relieved\ntheir distresses in the ocean, but data of enormous wheels that have\nbeen seen in the air, or entering the ocean, or rising from the ocean\nand continuing their voyages.\n\nVery largely we shall concern ourselves with enormous fiery objects that\nhave either plunged into the ocean or risen from the ocean. Our\nacceptance is that, though disruption may intensify into incandescence,\napart from disruption and its probable fieriness, things that enter this\nearth's atmosphere have a cold light which would not, like light from\nmolten matter, be instantly quenched by water. Also it seems acceptable\nthat a revolving wheel would, from a distance, look like a globe; that a\nrevolving wheel, seen relatively close by, looks like a wheel in few\naspects. The mergers of ball-lightning and meteorites are not\nresistances to us: our data are of enormous bodies.\n\nSo we shall interpret--and what does it matter?\n\nOur attitude throughout this book:\n\nThat here are extraordinary data--that they never would be exhumed, and\nnever would be massed together, unless--\n\nHere are the data:\n\nOur first datum is of something that was once seen to enter an ocean.\nIt's from the puritanic publication, _Science_, which has yielded us\nlittle material, or which, like most puritans, does not go upon a spree\nvery often. Whatever the thing could have been, my impression is of\ntremendousness, or of bulk many times that of all meteorites in all\nmuseums combined: also of relative slowness, or of long warning of\napproach. The story, in _Science_, 5-242, is from an account sent to the\nHydrographic Office, at Washington, from the branch office, at San\nFrancisco:\n\nThat, at midnight, Feb. 24, 1885, Lat. 37 deg. N., and Long. 170 deg. E., or\nsomewhere between Yokohama and Victoria, the captain of the bark\n_Innerwich_ was aroused by his mate, who had seen something unusual in\nthe sky. This must have taken appreciable time. The captain went on deck\nand saw the sky turning fiery red. \"All at once, a large mass of fire\nappeared over the vessel, completely blinding the spectators.\" The fiery\nmass fell into the sea. Its size may be judged by the volume of water\ncast up by it, said to have rushed toward the vessel with a noise that\nwas \"deafening.\" The bark was struck flat aback, and \"a roaring, white\nsea passed ahead.\" \"The master, an old, experienced mariner, declared\nthat the awfulness of the sight was beyond description.\"\n\nIn _Nature_, 37-187, and _L'Astronomie_; 1887-76, we are told that an\nobject, described as \"a large ball of fire,\" was seen to rise from the\nsea, near Cape Race. We are told that it rose to a height of fifty feet,\nand then advanced close to the ship, then moving away, remaining visible\nabout five minutes. The supposition in _Nature_ is that it was \"ball\nlightning,\" but Flammarion, _Thunder and Lightning_, p. 68, says that it\nwas enormous. Details in the American _Meteorological Journal_,\n6-443--Nov. 12, 1887--British steamer _Siberian_--that the object had\nmoved \"against the wind\" before retreating--that Captain Moore said that\nat about the same place he had seen such appearances before.\n\n_Report of the British Association_, 1861-30:\n\nThat, upon June 18, 1845, according to the _Malta Times_, from the brig\n_Victoria_, about 900 miles east of Adalia, Asia Minor (36 deg. 40' 56\", N.\nLat.: 13 deg. 44' 36\" E. Long.), three luminous bodies were seen to issue\nfrom the sea, at about half a mile from the vessel. They were visible\nabout ten minutes.\n\nThe story was never investigated, but other accounts that seem\nacceptably to be other observations upon this same sensational spectacle\ncame in, as if of their own accord, and were published by Prof.\nBaden-Powell. One is a letter from a correspondent at Mt. Lebanon. He\ndescribes only two luminous bodies. Apparently they were five times the\nsize of the moon: each had appendages, or they were connected by parts\nthat are described as \"sail-like or streamer-like,\" looking like \"large\nflags blown out by a gentle breeze.\" The important point here is not\nonly suggestion of structure, but duration. The duration of meteors is a\nfew seconds: duration of fifteen seconds is remarkable, but I think\nthere are records up to half a minute. This object, if it were all one\nobject, was visible at Mt. Lebanon about one hour. An interesting\ncircumstance is that the appendages did not look like trains of meteors,\nwhich shine by their own light, but \"seemed to shine by light from the\nmain bodies.\"\n\nAbout 900 miles west of the position of the _Victoria_ is the town of\nAdalia, Asia Minor. At about the time of the observation reported by the\ncaptain of the _Victoria_, the Rev. F. Hawlett, F.R.A.S., was in Adalia.\nHe, too, saw this spectacle, and sent an account to Prof. Baden-Powell.\nIn his view it was a body that appeared and then broke up. He places\nduration at twenty minutes to half an hour.\n\nIn the _Report of the British Association_, 1860-82, the phenomenon was\nreported from Syria and Malta, as two very large bodies \"nearly joined.\"\n\n_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1860-77:\n\nThat, at Cherbourg, France, Jan. 12, 1836, was seen a luminous body,\nseemingly two-thirds the size of the moon. It seemed to rotate on an\naxis. Central to it there seemed to be a dark cavity.\n\nFor other accounts, all indefinite, but distortable into data of\nwheel-like objects in the sky, see _Nature_, 22-617; London _Times_,\nOct. 15, 1859; _Nature_, 21-225; _Monthly Weather Review_, 1883-264.\n\n_L'Astronomie_, 1894-157:\n\nThat, upon the morning of Dec. 20, 1893, an appearance in the sky was\nseen by many persons in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. A\nluminous body passed overhead, from west to east, until at about 15\ndegrees in the eastern horizon, it appeared to stand still for fifteen\nor twenty minutes. According to some descriptions it was the size of a\ntable. To some observers it looked like an enormous wheel. The light was\na brilliant white. Acceptably it was not an optical illusion--the noise\nof its passage through the air was heard. Having been stationary, or\nhaving seemed to stand still fifteen or twenty minutes, it disappeared,\nor exploded. No sound of explosion was heard.\n\nVast wheel-like constructions. They're especially adapted to roll\nthrough a gelatinous medium from planet to planet. Sometimes, because of\nmiscalculations, or because of stresses of various kinds, they enter\nthis earth's atmosphere. They're likely to explode. They have to\nsubmerge in the sea. They stay in the sea awhile, revolving with\nrelative leisureliness, until relieved, and then emerge, sometimes close\nto vessels. Seamen tell of what they see: their reports are interred in\nscientific morgues. I should say that the general route of these\nconstructions is along latitudes not far from the latitudes of the\nPersian Gulf.\n\n_Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society_, 28-29:\n\nThat, upon April 4, 1901, about 8:30, in the Persian Gulf, Captain\nHoseason, of the steamship _Kilwa_, according to a paper read before the\nSociety by Captain Hoseason, was sailing in a sea in which there was no\nphosphorescence--\"there being no phosphorescence in the water.\"\n\nI suppose I'll have to repeat that:\n\n\"... there being no phosphorescence in the water.\"\n\nVast shafts of light--though the captain uses the word\n\"ripples\"--suddenly appeared. Shaft followed shaft, upon the surface of\nthe sea. But it was only a faint light, and, in about fifteen minutes,\ndied out: having appeared suddenly, having died out gradually. The\nshafts revolved at a velocity of about 60 miles an hour.\n\nPhosphorescent jellyfish correlate with the Old Dominant: in one of the\nmost heroic compositions of disregards in our experience, it was agreed,\nin the discussion of Capt. Hoseason's paper, that the phenomenon was\nprobably pulsations of long strings of jellyfish.\n\n_Nature_, 21-410:\n\nReprint of a letter from R.E. Harris, Commander of the A.H.N. Co.'s\nsteamship _Shahjehan_, to the Calcutta _Englishman_, Jan. 21, 1880:\n\nThat upon the 5th of June, 1880, off the coast of Malabar, at 10 P.M.,\nwater calm, sky cloudless, he had seen something that was so foreign to\nanything that he had ever seen before, that he had stopped his ship. He\nsaw what he describes as waves of brilliant light, with spaces between.\nUpon the water were floating patches of a substance that was not\nidentified. Thinking in terms of the conventional explanation of all\nphosphorescence at sea, the captain at first suspected this substance.\nHowever, he gives his opinion that it did no illuminating but was, with\nthe rest of the sea, illuminated by tremendous shafts of light. Whether\nit was a thick and oily discharge from the engine of a submerged\nconstruction or not, I think that I shall have to accept this substance\nas a concomitant, because of another note. \"As wave succeeded wave, one\nof the most grand and brilliant, yet solemn, spectacles that one could\nthink of, was here witnessed.\"\n\n_Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 32-280:\n\nExtract from a letter from Mr. Douglas Carnegie, Blackheath, England.\nDate some time in 1906--\n\n\"This last voyage we witnessed a weird and most extraordinary electric\ndisplay.\" In the Gulf of Oman, he saw a bank of apparently quiescent\nphosphorescence: but, when within twenty yards of it, \"shafts of\nbrilliant light came sweeping across the ship's bows at a prodigious\nspeed, which might be put down as anything between 60 and 200 miles an\nhour.\" \"These light bars were about 20 feet apart and most regular.\" As\nto phosphorescence--\"I collected a bucketful of water, and examined it\nunder the microscope, but could not detect anything abnormal.\" That the\nshafts of light came up from something beneath the surface--\"They first\nstruck us on our broadside, and I noticed that an intervening ship had\nno effect on the light beams: they started away from the lee side of the\nship, just as if they had traveled right through it.\"\n\nThe Gulf of Oman is at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.\n\n_Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 33-294:\n\nExtract from a letter by Mr. S.C. Patterson, second officer of the P.\nand O. steamship _Delta_: a spectacle which the _Journal_ continues to\ncall phosphorescent:\n\nMalacca Strait, 2 A.M., March 14, 1907:\n\n\"... shafts which seemed to move round a center--like the spokes of a\nwheel--and appeared to be about 300 yards long. The phenomenon lasted\nabout half an hour, during which time the ship had traveled six or seven\nmiles. It stopped suddenly.\"\n\n_L'Astronomie_, 1891-312:\n\nA correspondent writes that, in October, 1891, in the China Sea, he had\nseen shafts or lances of light that had had the appearance of rays of a\nsearchlight, and that had moved like such rays.\n\n_Nature_, 20-291:\n\nReport to the Admiralty by Capt. Evans, the Hydrographer of the British\nNavy:\n\nThat Commander J.E. Pringle, of H.M.S. _Vulture_, had reported that, at\nLat. 26 deg. 26' N., and Long. 53 deg. 11' E.--in the Persian Gulf--May 15,\n1879, he had noticed luminous waves or pulsations in the water, moving\nat great speed. This time we have a definite datum upon origin somewhere\nbelow the surface. It is said that these waves of light passed under the\n_Vulture_. \"On looking toward the east, the appearance was that of a\nrevolving wheel with a center on that bearing, and whose spokes were\nilluminated, and, looking toward the west, a similar wheel appeared to\nbe revolving, but in the opposite direction.\" Or finally as to\nsubmergence--\"These waves of light extended from the surface well under\nthe water.\" It is Commander Pringle's opinion that the shafts\nconstituted one wheel, and that doubling was an illusion. He judges the\nshafts to have been about 25 feet broad, and the spaces about 100.\nVelocity about 84 miles an hour. Duration about 35 minutes. Time 9:40\nP.M. Before and after this display the ship had passed through patches\nof floating substance described as \"oily-looking fish spawn.\"\n\nUpon page 428 of this number of _Nature_, E.L. Moss says that, in April,\n1875, when upon H.M.S. _Bulldog_, a few miles north of Vera Cruz, he had\nseen a series of swift lines of light. He had dipped up some of the\nwater, finding in it animalcule, which would, however, not account for\nphenomena of geometric formation and high velocity. If he means Vera\nCruz, Mexico, this is the only instance we have out of oriental waters.\n\n_Scientific American_, 106-51:\n\nThat, in the _Nautical Meteorological Annual_, published by the Danish\nMeteorological Institute, appears a report upon a \"singular phenomenon\"\nthat was seen by Capt. Gabe, of the Danish East Asiatic Co.'s steamship\n_Bintang_. At 3 A.M., June 10, 1909, while sailing through the Straits\nof Malacca, Captain Gabe saw a vast revolving wheel of light, flat upon\nthe water--\"long arms issuing from a center around which the whole\nsystem appeared to rotate.\" So vast was the appearance that only half of\nit could be seen at a time, the center lying near the horizon. This\ndisplay lasted about fifteen minutes. Heretofore we have not been clear\nupon the important point that forward motions of these wheels do not\nsynchronize with a vessel's motions, and freaks of disregard, or,\nrather, commonplaces of disregard, might attempt to assimilate with\nlights of a vessel. This time we are told that the vast wheel moved\nforward, decreasing in brilliancy, and also in speed of rotation,\ndisappearing when the center was right ahead of the vessel--or my own\ninterpretation would be that the source of light was submerging deeper\nand deeper and slowing down because meeting more and more resistance.\n\nThe Danish Meteorological Institute reports another instance:\n\nThat, when Capt. Breyer, of the Dutch steamer _Valentijn_, was in the\nSouth China Sea, midnight, Aug. 12, 1910, he saw a rotation of flashes.\n\"It looked like a horizontal wheel, turning rapidly.\" This time it is\nsaid that the appearance was above water. \"The phenomenon was observed\nby the captain, the first and second mates, and the first engineer, and\nupon all of them it made a somewhat uncomfortable impression.\"\n\nIn general, if our expression be not immediately acceptable, we\nrecommend to rival interpreters that they consider the localization--with\none exception--of this phenomenon, to the Indian Ocean and adjacent waters,\nor Persian Gulf on one side and China Sea on the other side. Though we're\nIntermediatists, the call of attempted Positivism, in the aspect of\nCompleteness, is irresistible. We have expressed that from few aspects\nwould wheels of fire in the air look like wheels of fire, but, if we can\nget it, we must have observation upon vast luminous wheels, not\ninterpretable as optical illusions, but enormous, substantial things\nthat have smashed down material resistances, and have been seen to\nplunge into the ocean:\n\n_Athenaeum_, 1848-833:\n\nThat at the meeting of the British Association, 1848, Sir W.S. Harris\nsaid that he had recorded an account sent to him of a vessel toward\nwhich had whirled \"two wheels of fire, which the men described as\nrolling millstones of fire.\" \"When they came near, an awful crash took\nplace: the topmasts were shivered to pieces.\" It is said that there was\na strong sulphurous odor.\n\n\n\n\n22\n\n\n_Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society_, 1-157:\n\nExtract from the log of the bark _Lady of the Lake_, by Capt. F.W.\nBanner:\n\nCommunicated by R.H. Scott, F.R.S.:\n\nThat, upon the 22nd of March, 1870, at Lat. 5 deg. 47' N., Long. 27 deg. 52' W.,\nthe sailors of the _Lady of the Lake_ saw a remarkable object, or\n\"cloud,\" in the sky. They reported to the captain.\n\nAccording to Capt. Banner, it was a cloud of circular form, with an\nincluded semi-circle divided into four parts, the central dividing shaft\nbeginning at the center of the circle and extending far outward, and\nthen curving backward.\n\nGeometricity and complexity and stability of form: and the small\nlikelihood of a cloud maintaining such diversity of features, to say\nnothing of appearance of organic form.\n\nThe thing traveled from a point at about 20 degrees above the horizon to\na point about 80 degrees above. Then it settled down to the northeast,\nhaving appeared from the south, southeast.\n\nLight gray in color, or it was cloud-color.\n\n\"It was much lower than the other clouds.\"\n\nAnd this datum stands out:\n\nThat, whatever it may have been, it traveled against the wind.\n\n\"It came up obliquely against the wind, and finally settled down right\nin the wind's eye.\"\n\nFor half an hour this form was visible. When it did finally disappear\nthat was not because it disintegrated like a cloud, but because it was\nlost to sight in the evening darkness.\n\nCapt. Banner draws the following diagram:\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n23\n\n\nText-books tell us that the Dhurmsalla meteorites were picked up \"soon,\"\nor \"within half an hour.\" Given a little time the conventionalists may\nargue that these stones were hot when they fell, but that their great\ninterior coldness had overcome the molten state of their surfaces.\n\nAccording to the Deputy Commissioner of Dhurmsalla, these stones had\nbeen picked up \"immediately\" by passing coolies.\n\nThese stones were so cold that they benumbed the fingers. But they had\nfallen with a great light. It is described as \"a flame of fire about\ntwo feet in depth and nine feet in length.\" Acceptably this light was\nnot the light of molten matter.\n\nIn this chapter we are very intermediatistic--and unsatisfactory. To the\nintermediatist there is but one answer to all questions:\n\nSometimes and sometimes not.\n\nAnother form of this intermediatist \"solution\" of all problems is:\n\nYes and no.\n\nEverything that is, also isn't.\n\nA positivist attempts to formulate: so does the intermediatist, but with\nless rigorousness: he accepts but also denies: he may seem to accept in\none respect and deny in some other respect, but no real line can be\ndrawn between any two aspects of anything. The intermediatist accepts\nthat which seems to correlate with something that he has accepted as a\ndominant. The positivist correlates with a belief.\n\nIn the Dhurmsalla meteorites we have support for our expression that\nthings entering this earth's atmosphere sometimes shine with a light\nthat is not the light of incandescence--or so we account, or offer an\nexpression upon, \"thunderstones,\" or carved stones that have fallen\nluminously to this earth, in streaks that have looked like strokes of\nlightning--but we accept, also, that some things that have entered this\nearth's atmosphere, disintegrate with the intensity of flame and molten\nmatter--but some things, we accept, enter this earth's atmosphere and\ncollapse non-luminously, quite like deep-sea fishes brought to the\nsurface of the ocean. Whatever agreement we have is an indication that\nsomewhere aloft there is a medium denser than this earth's atmosphere. I\nsuppose our stronghold is in that such is not popular belief--\n\nOr the rhythm of all phenomena:\n\nAir dense at sea level upon this earth--less and less dense as one\nascends--then denser and denser. A good many bothersome questions\narise--\n\nOur attitude:\n\nHere are the data:\n\nLuminous rains sometimes fall (_Nature_, March 9, 1882; _Nature_,\n25-437). This is light that is not the light of incandescence, but no\none can say that these occasional, or rare, rains come from this\nearth's externality. We simply note cold light of falling bodies. For\nluminous rain, snow, and dust, see Hartwig, _Aerial World_, p. 319. As\nto luminous clouds, we have more nearly definite observations and\nopinions: they mark transition between the Old Dominant and the New\nDominant. We have already noted the transition in Prof. Schwedoffs\ntheory of external origin of some hailstones--and the implications that,\nto a former generation, seemed so preposterous--\"droll\" was the\nword--that there are in inter-planetary regions volumes of\nwater--whether they have fishes and frogs in them or not. Now our\nacceptance is that clouds sometimes come from external regions, having\nhad origin from super-geographical lakes and oceans that we shall not\nattempt to chart, just at present--only suggesting to enterprising\naviators--and we note that we put it all up to them, and show no\ninclination to go Columbusing on our own account--that they take bathing\nsuits, or, rather, deep-sea diving-suits along. So then that some clouds\ncome from inter-planetary oceans--of the Super-Sargasso Sea--if we still\naccept the Super-Sargasso Sea--and shine, upon entering this earth's\natmosphere. In _Himmel und Erde_, February, 1889--a phenomenon of\ntransition of thirty years ago--Herr O. Jesse, in his observations upon\nluminous night-clouds, notes the great height of them, and drolly or\nsensibly suggests that some of them may have come from regions external\nto this earth. I suppose he means only from other planets. But it's a\nvery droll and sensible idea either way.\n\nIn general I am accounting for a great deal of this earth's isolation:\nthat it is relatively isolated by circumstances that are similar to the\ncircumstances that make for relative isolation of the bottom of the\nocean--except that there is a clumsiness of analogy now. To call\nourselves deep-sea fishes has been convenient, but, in a\nquasi-existence, there is no convenience that will not sooner or later\nturn awkward--so, if there be denser regions aloft, these regions should\nnow be regarded as analogues of far-submerged oceanic regions, and\nthings coming to this earth would be like things rising to an attenuated\nmedium--and exploding--sometimes incandescently, sometimes with cold\nlight--sometimes non-luminously, like deep-sea fishes brought to the\nsurface--altogether conditions of inhospitality. I have a suspicion\nthat, in their own depths, deep-sea fishes are not luminous. If they\nare, Darwinism is mere jesuitism, in attempting to correlate them. Such\nadvertising would so attract attention that all advantages would be more\nthan offset. Darwinism is largely a doctrine of concealment: here we\nhave brazen proclamation--if accepted. Fishes in the Mammoth Cave need\nno light to see by. We might have an expression that deep-sea fishes\nturn luminous upon entering a less dense medium--but models in the\nAmerican Museum of Natural History: specialized organs of luminosity\nupon these models. Of course we do remember that awfully convincing\n\"dodo,\" and some of our sophistications we trace to him--at any rate\ndisruption is regarded as a phenomenon of coming from a dense to a less\ndense medium.\n\nAn account by M. Acharius, in the _Transactions of the Swedish Academy\nof Sciences_, 1808-215, translated for the _North American Review_,\n3-319:\n\nThat M. Acharius, having heard of \"an extraordinary and probably\nhitherto unseen phenomenon,\" reported from near the town of Skeninge,\nSweden, investigated:\n\nThat, upon the 16th of May, 1808, at about 4 P.M., the sun suddenly\nturned dull brick-red. At the same time there appeared, upon the western\nhorizon, a great number of round bodies, dark brown, and seemingly the\nsize of a hat crown. They passed overhead and disappeared in the eastern\nhorizon. Tremendous procession. It lasted two hours. Occasionally one\nfell to the ground. When the place of a fall was examined, there was\nfound a film, which soon dried and vanished. Often, when approaching the\nsun, these bodies seemed to link together, or were then seen to be\nlinked together, in groups not exceeding eight, and, under the sun, they\nwere seen to have tails three or four fathoms long. Away from the sun\nthe tails were invisible. Whatever their substance may have been, it is\ndescribed as gelatinous--\"soapy and jellied.\"\n\nI place this datum here for several reasons. It would have been a good\nclimax to our expression upon hordes of small bodies that, in our\nacceptance, were not seeds, nor birds, nor ice-crystals: but the\ntendency would have been to jump to the homogeneous conclusion that all\nour data in that expression related to this one kind of phenomena,\nwhereas we conceive of infinite heterogeneity of the external: of\ncrusaders and rabbles and emigrants and tourists and dragons and things\nlike gelatinous hat crowns. Or that all things, here, upon this earth,\nthat flock together, are not necessarily sheep, Presbyterians,\ngangsters, or porpoises. The datum is important to us, here, as\nindication of disruption in this earth's atmosphere--dangers in entering\nthis earth's atmosphere.\n\nI think, myself, that thousands of objects have been seen to fall from\naloft, and have exploded luminously, and have been called \"ball\nlightning.\"\n\n\"As to what ball lightning is, we have not yet begun to make intelligent\nguesses.\" (_Monthly Weather Review_, 34-17.)\n\nIn general, it seems to me that when we encounter the opposition \"ball\nlightning\" we should pay little attention, but confine ourselves to\nguesses that are at least intelligent, that stand phantom-like in our\nway. We note here that in some of our acceptances upon intelligence we\nshould more clearly have pointed out that they were upon the intelligent\nas opposed to the instinctive. In the _Monthly Weather Review_, 33-409,\nthere is an account of \"ball lightning\" that struck a tree. It made a\ndent such as a falling object would make. Some other time I shall\ncollect instances of \"ball lightning,\" to express that they are\ninstances of objects that have fallen from the sky, luminously,\nexploding terrifically. So bewildered is the old orthodoxy by these\nphenomena that many scientists have either denied \"ball lightning\" or\nhave considered it very doubtful. I refer to Dr. Sestier's list of one\nhundred and fifty instances, which he considered authentic.\n\nIn accord with our disaccord is an instance related in the _Monthly\nWeather Review_, March, 1887--something that fell luminously from the\nsky, accompanied by something that was not so affected, or that was\ndark:\n\nThat, according to Capt. C.D. Sweet, of the Dutch bark, _J.P.A._, upon\nMarch 19, 1887, N. 37 deg. 39', W. 57 deg. 00', he encountered a severe storm.\nHe saw two objects in the air above the ship. One was luminous, and\nmight be explained in several ways, but the other was dark. One or both\nfell into the sea, with a roar and the casting up of billows. It is our\nacceptance that these things had entered this earth's atmosphere,\nhaving first crashed through a field of ice--\"immediately afterward\nlumps of ice fell.\"\n\nOne of the most astonishing of the phenomena of \"ball lightning\" is a\nphenomenon of many meteorites: violence of explosion out of all\nproportion to size and velocity. We accept that the icy meteorites of\nDhurmsalla could have fallen with no great velocity, but the sound from\nthem was tremendous. The soft substance that fell at the Cape of Good\nHope was carbonaceous, but was unburned, or had fallen with velocity\ninsufficient to ignite it. The tremendous report that it made was heard\nover an area more than seventy miles in diameter.\n\nThat some hailstones have been formed in a dense medium, and violently\ndisintegrate in this earth's relatively thin atmosphere:\n\n_Nature_, 88-350:\n\nLarge hailstones noted at the University of Missouri, Nov. 11, 1911:\nthey exploded with sounds like pistol shots. The writer says that he had\nnoticed a similar phenomenon, eighteen years before, at Lexington,\nKentucky. Hailstones that seemed to have been formed in a denser medium:\nwhen melted under water they gave out bubbles larger than their central\nair spaces. (_Monthly Weather Review_, 33-445.)\n\nOur acceptance is that many objects have fallen from the sky, but that\nmany of them have disintegrated violently. This acceptance will\nco-ordinate with data still to come, but, also, we make it easy for\nourselves in our expressions upon super-constructions, if we're asked\nwhy, from thinkable wrecks of them, girders, plates, or parts\nrecognizably of manufactured metal have not fallen from the sky.\nHowever, as to composition, we have not this refuge, so it is our\nexpression that there have been reported instances of the fall of\nmanufactured metal from the sky.\n\nThe meteorite of Rutherford, North Carolina, is of artificial material:\nmass of pig iron. It is said to be fraudulent. (_Amer. Jour. Sci._,\n2-34-298.)\n\nThe object that was said to have fallen at Marblehead, Mass., in 1858,\nis described in the _Amer. Jour. Sci._, 2-34-135, as \"a furnace product,\nformed in smelting copper ores, or iron ores containing copper.\" It is\nsaid to be fraudulent.\n\nAccording to Ehrenberg, the substance reported by Capt. Callam to have\nfallen upon his vessel, near Java, \"offered complete resemblance to the\nresidue resulting from combustion of a steel wire in a flask of oxygen.\"\n(Zurcher, _Meteors_, p. 239.) _Nature_, Nov. 21, 1878, publishes a\nnotice that, according to the _Yuma Sentinel_, a meteorite that\n\"resembles steel\" had been found in the Mohave Desert. In _Nature_, Feb.\n15, 1894, we read that one of the meteorites brought to the United\nStates by Peary, from Greenland, is of tempered steel. The opinion is\nthat meteoric iron had fallen in water or snow, quickly cooling and\nhardening. This does not apply to composition. Nov. 5, 1898, _Nature_\npublishes a notice of a paper by Prof. Berwerth, of Vienna, upon \"the\nclose connection between meteoric iron and steel-works' steel.\"\n\nAt the meeting of Nov. 24, 1906, of the Essex Field Club, was exhibited\na piece of metal said to have fallen from the sky, Oct. 9, 1906, at\nBraintree. According to the _Essex Naturalist_, Dr. Fletcher, of the\nBritish Museum, had declared this metal to be smelted iron--\"so that the\nmystery of its reported 'fall' remained unexplained.\"\n\n\n\n\n24\n\n\nWe shall have an outcry of silences. If a single instance of anything be\ndisregarded by a System--our own attitude is that a single instance is a\npowerless thing. Of course our own method of agreement of many instances\nis not a real method. In Continuity, all things must have resemblances\nwith all other things. Anything has any quasi-identity you please. Some\ntime ago conscription was assimilated with either autocracy or democracy\nwith equal facility. Note the need for a dominant to correlate to.\nScarcely anybody said simply that we must have conscription: but that we\nmust have conscription, which correlates with democracy, which was taken\nas a base, or something basically desirable. Of course between autocracy\nand democracy nothing but false demarcation can be drawn. So I can\nconceive of no subject upon which there should be such poverty as a\nsingle instance, if anything one pleases can be whipped into line.\nHowever, we shall try to be more nearly real than the Darwinites who\nadvance concealing coloration as Darwinism, and then drag in proclaiming\nluminosity, too, as Darwinism. I think the Darwinites had better come in\nwith us as to the deep-sea fishes--and be sorry later, I suppose. It\nwill be amazing or negligible to read all the instances now to come of\nthings that have been seen in the sky, and to think that all have been\ndisregarded. My own opinion is that it is not possible, or very easy, to\ndisregard them, now that they have been brought together--but that, if\nprior to about this time we had attempted such an assemblage, the Old\nDominant would have withered our typewriter--as it is the letter \"e\" has\ngone back on us, and the \"s\" is temperamental.\n\n\"Most extraordinary and singular phenomenon,\" North Wales, Aug. 26,\n1894; a disk from which projected an orange-colored body that looked\nlike \"an elongated flatfish,\" reported by Admiral Ommanney (_Nature_,\n50-524); disk from which projected a hook-like form, India, about 1838;\ndiagram of it given; disk about size of the moon, but brighter than the\nmoon; visible about twenty minutes; by G. Pettit, in Prof.\nBaden-Powell's Catalogue (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1849); very brilliant\nhook-like form, seen in the sky at Poland, Trumbull Co., Ohio, during\nthe stream of meteors, of 1833; visible more than an hour: large\nluminous body, almost stationary \"for a time\"; shaped like a square\ntable; Niagara Falls, Nov. 13, 1833 (_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-25-391);\nsomething described as a bright white cloud, at night, Nov. 3, 1886, at\nHamar, Norway; from it were emitted brilliant rays of light; drifted\nacross the sky; \"retained throughout its original form\" (_Nature_, Dec.\n16, 1886-158); thing with an oval nucleus, and streamers with dark bands\nand lines very suggestive of structure; New Zealand, May 4, 1888\n(_Nature_, 42-402); luminous object, size of full moon, visible an hour\nand a half, Chili, Nov. 5, 1883 (_Comptes Rendus_, 103-682); bright\nobject near sun, Dec. 21, 1882 (_Knowledge_, 3-13); light that looked\nlike a great flame, far out at sea, off Ryook Phyoo, Dec. 2, 1845\n(_London Roy. Soc. Proc._, 5-627); something like a gigantic trumpet,\nsuspended, vertical, oscillating gently, visible five or six minutes,\nlength estimated at 425 feet, at Oaxaca, Mexico, July 6, 1874 (_Sci.\nAm. Sup._, 6-2365); two luminous bodies, seemingly united, visible five\nor six minutes, June 3, 1898 (_La Nature_, 1898-1-127); thing with a\ntail, crossing moon, transit half a minute, Sept. 26, 1870 (London\n_Times_, Sept. 30, 1870); object four or five times size of moon, moving\nslowly across sky, Nov. 1, 1885, near Adrianople (_L'Astronomie_,\n1886-309); large body, colored red, moving slowly, visible 15 minutes,\nreported by Coggia, Marseilles, Aug. 1, 1871 (_Chem. News_, 24-193);\ndetails of this observation, and similar observation by Guillemin, and\nother instances by de Fonville (_Comptes Rendus_, 73-297, 755); thing\nthat was large and that was stationary twice in seven minutes, Oxford,\nNov. 19, 1847; listed by Lowe (_Rec. Sci._, 1-136); grayish object that\nlooked to be about three and a half feet long, rapidly approaching the\nearth at Saarbruck, April 1, 1826; sound like thunder; object expanding\nlike a sheet (_Am. Jour. Sci._, 1-26-133; _Quar. Jour. Roy. Inst._,\n24-488); report by an astronomer, N.S. Drayton, upon an object duration\nof which seemed to him extraordinary; duration three-quarters of a\nminute, Jersey City, July 6, 1882 (_Sci. Amer._, 47-53); object like a\ncomet, but with proper motion of 10 degrees an hour; visible one hour;\nreported by Purine and Glancy from the Cordoba Observatory, Argentina,\nMarch 14, 1916 (_Sci. Amer._, 115-493); something like a signal light,\nreported by Glaisher, Oct. 4, 1844; bright as Jupiter, \"sending out\nquick flickering waves of light\" (_Year Book of Facts_, 1845-278).\n\nI think that with the object known as Eddie's \"comet\" passes away the\nlast of our susceptibility to the common fallacy of personifying. It is\none of the most deep-rooted of positivist illusions--that people are\npersons. We have been guilty too often of spleens and spites and\nridicules against astronomers, as if they were persons, or final\nunities, individuals, completenesses, or selves--instead of\nindeterminate parts. But, so long as we remain in quasi-existence, we\ncan cast out illusion only with some other illusion, though the other\nillusion may approximate higher to reality. So we personify no more--but\nwe super-personify. We now take into full acceptance our expression that\nDevelopment is an Autocracy of Successive Dominants--which are not\nfinal--but which approximate higher to individuality or self-ness, than\ndo the human tropisms that irresponsibly correlate to them.\n\nEddie reported a celestial object, from the Observatory at Grahamstown,\nSouth Africa. It was in 1890. The New Dominant was only heir presumptive\nthen, or heir apparent but not obvious. The thing that Eddie reported\nmight as well have been reported by a night watchman, who had looked up\nthrough an unplaced sewer pipe.\n\nIt did not correlate.\n\nThe thing was not admitted to _Monthly Notices_. I think myself that if\nthe Editor had attempted to let it in--earthquake--or a mysterious fire\nin his publishing house.\n\nThe Dominants are jealous gods.\n\nIn _Nature_, presumably a vassal of the new god, though of course also\nplausibly rendering homage to the old, is reported a comet-like body, of\nOct. 27, 1890, observed at Grahamstown, by Eddie. It may have looked\ncomet-like, but it moved 100 degrees while visible, or one hundred\ndegrees in three-quarters of an hour. See _Nature_, 43-89, 90.\n\nIn _Nature_, 44-519, Prof. Copeland describes a similar appearance that\nhe had seen, Sept. 10, 1891. Dreyer says (_Nature_, 44-541) that he had\nseen this object at the Armagh Observatory. He likens it to the object\nthat was reported by Eddie. It was seen by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell,\nSept. 11, 1891, in Nova Scotia.\n\nBut the Old Dominant was a jealous god.\n\nSo there were different observations upon something that was seen in\nNovember, 1883. These observations were Philistines in 1883. In the\n_Amer. Met. Jour._, 1-110, a correspondent reports having seen an object\nlike a comet, with two tails, one up and one down, Nov. 10 or 12, 1883.\nVery likely this phenomenon should be placed in our expression upon\ntorpedo-shaped bodies that have been seen in the sky--our data upon\ndirigibles, or super-Zeppelins--but our attempted classifications are\nfar from rigorous--or are mere gropes. In the _Scientific American_,\n50-40, a correspondent writes from Humacao, Porto Rico, that, Nov. 21,\n1883, he and several other--persons--or persons, as it were--had seen a\nmajestic appearance, like a comet. Visible three successive nights:\ndisappeared then. The Editor says that he can offer no explanation. If\naccepted, this thing must have been close to the earth. If it had been a\ncomet, it would have been seen widely, and the news would have been\ntelegraphed over the world, says the Editor. Upon page 97 of this volume\nof the _Scientific American_, a correspondent writes that, at Sulphur\nSprings, Ohio, he had seen \"a wonder in the sky,\" at about the same\ndate. It was torpedo-shaped, or something with a nucleus, at each end of\nwhich was a tail. Again the Editor says that he can offer no\nexplanation: that the object was not a comet. He associates it with the\natmospheric effects general in 1883. But it will be our expression that,\nin England and Holland, a similar object was seen in November, 1882.\n\nIn the _Scientific American_, 40-294, is published a letter from Henry\nHarrison, of Jersey City, copied from the _New York Tribune_: that upon\nthe evening of April 13, 1879, Mr. Harrison was searching for Brorsen's\ncomet, when he saw an object that was moving so rapidly that it could\nnot have been a comet. He called a friend to look, and his observation\nwas confirmed. At two o'clock in the morning this object was still\nvisible. In the _Scientific American Supplement_, 7-2885, Mr. Harrison\ndisclaims sensationalism, which he seems to think unworthy, and gives\ntechnical details: he says that the object was seen by Mr. J. Spencer\nDevoe, of Manhattanville.\n\n\n\n\n25\n\n\n\"A formation having the shape of a dirigible.\" It was reported from\nHuntington, West Virginia (_Sci. Amer._, 115-241). Luminous object that\nwas seen July 19, 1916, at about 11 P.M. Observed through \"rather\npowerful field glasses,\" it looked to be about two degrees long and half\na degree wide. It gradually dimmed, disappeared, reappeared, and then\nfaded out of sight. Another person--as we say: it would be too\ninconvenient to hold to our intermediatist recognitions--another person\nwho observed this phenomenon suggested to the writer of the account\nthat the object was a dirigible, but the writer says that faint stars\ncould be seen behind it. This would seem really to oppose our notion of\na dirigible visitor to this earth--except for the inconclusiveness of\nall things in a mode of seeming that is not final--or we suggest that\nbehind some parts of the object, thing, construction, faint stars were\nseen. We find a slight discussion here. Prof. H.M. Russell thinks that\nthe phenomenon was a detached cloud of aurora borealis. Upon page 369 of\nthis volume of the _Scientific American_, another correlator suggests\nthat it was a light from a blast furnace--disregarding that, if there be\nblast furnaces in or near Huntington, their reflections would be\ncommonplaces there.\n\nWe now have several observations upon cylindrical-shaped bodies that\nhave appeared in this earth's atmosphere: cylindrical, but pointed at\nboth ends, or torpedo-shaped. Some of the accounts are not very\ndetailed, but out of the bits of description my own acceptance is that\nsuper-geographical routes are traversed by torpedo-shaped\nsuper-constructions that have occasionally visited, or that have\noccasionally been driven into this earth's atmosphere. From data, the\nacceptance is that upon entering this earth's atmosphere, these vessels\nhave been so racked that had they not sailed away, disintegration would\nhave occurred: that, before leaving this earth, they have, whether in\nattempted communication or not, or in mere wantonness or not, dropped\nobjects, which did almost immediately violently disintegrate or explode.\nUpon general principles we think that explosives have not been purposely\ndropped, but that parts have been racked off, and have fallen, exploding\nlike the things called \"ball lightning.\" Many have been objects of stone\nor metal with inscriptions upon them, for all we know, at present. In\nall instances, estimates of dimensions are valueless, but ratios of\ndimensions are more acceptable. A thing said to have been six feet long\nmay have been six hundred feet long; but shape is not so subject to the\nillusions of distance.\n\n_Nature_, 40-415:\n\nThat, Aug. 5, 1889, during a violent storm, an object that looked to be\nabout 15 inches long and 5 inches wide, fell, rather slowly, at East\nTwickenham, England. It exploded. No substance from it was found.\n\n_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1864-54:\n\nThat, Oct. 10, 1864, M. Leverrier had sent to the Academy three letters\nfrom witnesses of a long luminous body, tapering at both ends, that had\nbeen seen in the sky.\n\nIn _Thunder and Lightning_, p. 87, Flammarion says that on Aug. 20,\n1880, during a rather violent storm, M.A. Trecul, of the French Academy,\nsaw a very brilliant yellowish-white body, apparently 35 to 40\ncentimeters long, and about 25 centimeters wide. Torpedo-shaped. Or a\ncylindrical body, \"with slightly conical ends.\" It dropped something,\nand disappeared in the clouds. Whatever it may have been that was\ndropped, it fell vertically, like a heavy object, and left a luminous\ntrain. The scene of this occurrence may have been far from the observer.\nNo sound was heard. For M. Trecul's account, see _Comptes Rendus_,\n103-849.\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, 1907-310:\n\nThat, July 2, 1907, in the town of Burlington, Vermont, a terrific\nexplosion had been heard throughout the city. A ball of light, or a\nluminous object, had been seen to fall from the sky--or from a\ntorpedo-shaped thing, or construction, in the sky. No one had seen this\nthing that had exploded fall from a larger body that was in the sky--but\nif we accept that at the same time there was a larger body in the sky--\n\nMy own acceptance is that a dirigible in the sky, or a construction that\nshowed every sign of disrupting, had barely time to drop--whatever it\ndid drop--and to speed away to safety above.\n\nThe following story is told, in the _Review_, by Bishop John S. Michaud:\n\n\"I was standing on the corner of Church and College Streets, just in\nfront of the Howard Bank, and facing east, engaged in conversation with\nEx-Governor Woodbury and Mr. A.A. Buell, when, without the slightest\nindication, or warning, we were startled by what sounded like a most\nunusual and terrific explosion, evidently very nearby. Raising my eyes,\nand looking eastward along College Street, I observed a torpedo-shaped\nbody, some 300 feet away, stationary in appearance, and suspended in the\nair, about 50 feet above the tops of the buildings. In size it was about\n6 feet long by 8 inches in diameter, the shell, or covering, having a\ndark appearance, with here and there tongues of fire issuing from spots\non the surface, resembling red-hot, unburnished copper. Although\nstationary when first noticed, this object soon began to move, rather\nslowly, and disappeared over Dolan Brothers' store, southward. As it\nmoved, the covering seemed rupturing in places, and through these the\nintensely red flames issued.\"\n\nBishop Michaud attempts to correlate it with meteorological\nobservations.\n\nBecause of the nearby view this is perhaps the most remarkable of the\nnew correlates, but the correlate now coming is extraordinary because of\nthe great number of recorded observations upon it. My own acceptance is\nthat, upon Nov. 17, 1882, a vast dirigible crossed England, but by the\ndefiniteness-indefiniteness of all things quasi-real, some observations\nupon it can be correlated with anything one pleases.\n\nE.W. Maunder, invited by the Editors of the _Observatory_ to write some\nreminiscences for the 500th number of their magazine, gives one that he\nsays stands out (_Observatory_, 39-214). It is upon something that he\nterms \"a strange celestial visitor.\" Maunder was at the Royal\nObservatory, Greenwich, Nov. 17, 1882, at night. There was an aurora,\nwithout features of special interest. In the midst of the aurora, a\ngreat circular disk of greenish light appeared and moved smoothly across\nthe sky. But the circularity was evidently the effect of foreshortening.\nThe thing passed above the moon, and was, by other observers, described\nas \"cigar-shaped,\" \"like a torpedo,\" \"a spindle,\" \"a shuttle.\" The idea\nof foreshortening is not mine: Maunder says this. He says: \"Had the\nincident occurred a third of a century later, beyond doubt everyone\nwould have selected the same simile--it would have been 'just like a\nZeppelin.'\" The duration was about two minutes. Color said to have been\nthe same as that of the auroral glow in the north. Nevertheless, Maunder\nsays that this thing had no relation to auroral phenomena. \"It appeared\nto be a definite body.\" Motion too fast for a cloud, but \"nothing could\nbe more unlike the rush of a meteor.\" In the _Philosophical Magazine_,\n5-15-318, J. Rand Capron, in a lengthy paper, alludes throughout to this\nphenomenon as an \"auroral beam,\" but he lists many observations upon\nits \"torpedo-shape,\" and one observation upon a \"dark nucleus\" in\nit--host of most confusing observations--estimates of height between 40\nand 200 miles--observations in Holland and Belgium. We are told that\naccording to Capron's spectroscopic observations the phenomenon was\nnothing but a beam of auroral light. In the _Observatory_, 6-192, is\nMaunder's contemporaneous account. He gives apparent approximate length\nand breadth at twenty-seven degrees and three degrees and a half. He\ngives other observations seeming to indicate structure--\"remarkable dark\nmarking down the center.\"\n\nIn _Nature_, 27-84, Capron says that because of the moonlight he had\nbeen able to do little with the spectroscope.\n\nColor white, but aurora rosy (_Nature_, 27-87).\n\nBright stars seen through it, but not at the zenith, where it looked\nopaque. This is the only assertion of transparency (_Nature_, 27-87).\nToo slow for a meteor, but too fast for a cloud (_Nature_, 27-86).\n\"Surface had a mottled appearance\" (_Nature_, 27-87). \"Very definite in\nform, like a torpedo\" (_Nature_, 27-100). \"Probably a meteoric object\"\n(Dr. Groneman, _Nature_, 27-296). Technical demonstration by Dr.\nGroneman, that it was a cloud of meteoric matter (_Nature_, 28-105). See\n_Nature_, 27-315, 338, 365, 388, 412, 434.\n\n\"Very little doubt it was an electric phenomenon\" (Proctor, _Knowledge_,\n2-419).\n\nIn the London _Times_, Nov. 20, 1882, the Editor says that he had\nreceived a great number of letters upon this phenomenon. He publishes\ntwo. One correspondent describes it as \"well-defined and shaped like a\nfish... extraordinary and alarming.\" The other correspondent writes of\nit as \"a most magnificent luminous mass, shaped somewhat like a\ntorpedo.\"\n\n\n\n\n26\n\n\n_Notes and Queries_, 5-3-306:\n\nAbout 8 lights that were seen in Wales, over an area of about 8 miles,\nall keeping their own ground, whether moving together perpendicularly,\nhorizontally, or over a zigzag course. They looked like electric\nlights--disappearing, reappearing dimly, then shining as bright as ever.\n\"We have seen them three or four at a time afterward, on four or five\noccasions.\"\n\nLondon _Times_, Oct. 5, 1877:\n\n\"From time to time the west coast of Wales seems to have been the scene\nof mysterious lights.... And now we have a statement from Towyn that\nwithin the last few weeks lights of various colors have been seen moving\nover the estuary of the Dysynni River, and out to sea. They are\ngenerally in a northerly direction, but sometimes they hug the shore,\nand move at high velocity for miles toward Aberdovey, and suddenly\ndisappear.\"\n\n_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1877-45:\n\nLights that appeared in the sky, above Vence, France, March 23, 1877;\ndescribed as balls of fire of dazzling brightness; appeared from a cloud\nabout a degree in diameter; moved relatively slowly. They were visible\nmore than an hour, moving northward. It is said that eight or ten years\nbefore similar lights or objects had been seen in the sky, at Vence.\n\nLondon _Times_, Sept. 19, 1848:\n\nThat, at Inverness, Scotland, two large, bright lights that looked like\nstars had been seen in the sky: sometimes stationary, but occasionally\nmoving at high velocity.\n\n_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1888-66:\n\nObserved near St. Petersburg, July 30, 1880, in the evening: a large\nspherical light and two smaller ones, moving along a ravine: visible\nthree minutes; disappearing without noise.\n\n_Nature_, 35-173:\n\nThat, at Yloilo, Sept. 30, 1886, was seen a luminous object the size of\nthe full moon. It \"floated\" slowly \"northward,\" followed by smaller ones\nclose to it.\n\n\"The False Lights of Durham.\"\n\nEvery now and then in the English newspapers, in the middle of the\nnineteenth century, there is something about lights that were seen\nagainst the sky, but as if not far above land, oftenest upon the coast\nof Durham. They were mistaken for beacons by sailors. Wreck after wreck\noccurred. The fishermen were accused of displaying false lights and\nprofiting by wreckage. The fishermen answered that mostly only old\nvessels, worthless except for insurance, were so wrecked.\n\nIn 1866 (London _Times_, Jan. 9, 1866) popular excitement became\nintense. There was an investigation. Before a commission, headed by\nAdmiral Collinson, testimony was taken. One witness described the light\nthat had deceived him as \"considerably elevated above ground.\" No\nconclusion was reached: the lights were called \"the mysterious lights.\"\nBut whatever the \"false lights of Durham\" may have been, they were\nunaffected by the investigation. In 1867, the Tyne Pilotage Board took\nthe matter up. Opinion of the Mayor of Tyne--\"a mysterious affair.\"\n\nIn the _Report of the British Association_, 1877-152, there is a\ndescription of a group of \"meteors\" that traveled with \"remarkable\nslowness.\" They were in sight about three minutes. \"Remarkable,\" it\nseems, is scarcely strong enough: one reads of \"remarkable\" as applied\nto a duration of three seconds. These \"meteors\" had another peculiarity;\nthey left no train. They are described as \"seemingly huddled together\nlike a flock of wild geese, and moving with the same velocity and grace\nof regularity.\"\n\n_Jour. Roy. Astro. Soc. of Canada_, November and December, 1913:\n\nThat, according to many observations collected by Prof. Chant, of\nToronto, there appeared, upon the night of Feb. 9, 1913, a spectacle\nthat was seen in Canada, the United States, and at sea, and in Bermuda.\nA luminous body was seen. To it there was a long tail. The body grew\nrapidly larger. \"Observers differ as to whether the body was single, or\nwas composed of three or four parts, with a tail to each part.\" The\ngroup, or complex structure, moved with \"a peculiar, majestic\ndeliberation.\" \"It disappeared in the distance, and another group\nemerged from its place of origin. Onward they moved, at the same\ndeliberate pace, in twos or threes or fours.\" They disappeared. A third\ngroup, or a third structure, followed.\n\nSome observers compared the spectacle to a fleet of airships: others to\nbattleships attended by cruisers and destroyers.\n\nAccording to one writer:\n\n\"There were probably 30 or 32 bodies, and the peculiar thing about them\nwas their moving in fours and threes and twos, abreast of one another;\nand so perfect was the lining up that you would have thought it was an\naerial fleet maneuvering after rigid drilling.\"\n\n_Nature_, May 25, 1893:\n\nA letter from Capt. Charles J. Norcock, of H.M.S. _Caroline_:\n\nThat, upon the 24th of February, 1893, at 10 P.M., between Shanghai and\nJapan, the officer of the watch had reported \"some unusual lights.\"\n\nThey were between the ship and a mountain. The mountain was about 6,000\nfeet high. The lights seemed to be globular. They moved sometimes\nmassed, but sometimes strung out in an irregular line. They bore\n\"northward,\" until lost to sight. Duration two hours.\n\nThe next night the lights were seen again.\n\nThey were, for a time, eclipsed by a small island. They bore north at\nabout the same speed and in about the same direction as speed and\ndirection of the _Caroline_. But they were lights that cast a\nreflection: there was a glare upon the horizon under them. A telescope\nbrought out but few details: that they were reddish, and seemed to emit\na faint smoke. This time the duration was seven and a half hours.\n\nThen Capt. Norcock says that, in the same general locality, and at about\nthe same time, Capt. Castle, of H.M.S. _Leander_, had seen lights. He\nhad altered his course and had made toward them. The lights had fled\nfrom him. At least, they had moved higher in the sky.\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, March, 1904-115:\n\nReport from the observations of three members of his crew by Lieut.\nFrank H. Schofield, U.S.N, of the U.S.S. _Supply_:\n\nFeb. 24, 1904. Three luminous objects, of different sizes, the largest\nhaving an apparent area of about six suns. When first sighted, they were\nnot very high. They were below clouds of an estimated height of about\none mile.\n\nThey fled, or they evaded, or they turned.\n\nThey went up into the clouds below which they had, at first, been\nsighted.\n\nTheir unison of movement.\n\nBut they were of different sizes, and of different susceptibilities to\nall forces of this earth and of the air.\n\n_Monthly Weather Review_, August, 1898-358:\n\nTwo letters from C.N. Crotsenburg, Crow Agency, Montana:\n\nThat, in the summer of 1896, when this writer was a railroad postal\nclerk--or one who was experienced in train-phenomena--while his train\nwas going \"northward,\" from Trenton, Mo., he and another clerk saw, in\nthe darkness of a heavy rain, a light that appeared to be round, and of\na dull-rose color, and seemed to be about a foot in diameter. It seemed\nto float within a hundred feet of the earth, but soon rose high, or\n\"midway between horizon and zenith.\" The wind was quite strong from the\neast, but the light held a course almost due north.\n\nIts speed varied. Sometimes it seemed to outrun the train\n\"considerably.\" At other times it seemed to fall behind. The mail-clerks\nwatched until the town of Linville, Iowa, was reached. Behind the depot\nof this town, the light disappeared, and was not seen again. All this\ntime there had been rain, but very little lightning, but Mr. Crotsenburg\noffers the explanation that it was \"ball lightning.\"\n\nThe Editor of the _Review_ disagrees. He thinks that the light may have\nbeen a reflection from the rain, or fog, or from leaves of trees,\nglistening with rain, or the train's light--not lights.\n\nIn the December number of the _Review_ is a letter from Edward M.\nBoggs--that the light was a reflection, perhaps, from the glare--one\nlight, this time--from the locomotive's fire-box, upon wet telegraph\nwires--an appearance that might not be striated by the wires, but\nconsolidated into one rotundity--that it had seemed to oscillate with\nthe undulations of the wires, and had seemed to change horizontal\ndistance with the varying angles of reflection, and had seemed to\nadvance or fall behind, when the train had rounded curves.\n\nAll of which is typical of the best of quasi-reasoning. It includes and\nassimilates diverse data: but it excludes that which will destroy it:\n\nThat, acceptably, the telegraph wires were alongside the track beyond,\nas well as leading to Linville.\n\nMr. Crotsenburg thinks of \"ball lightning,\" which, though a sore\nbewilderment to most speculation, is usually supposed to be a correlate\nwith the old system of thought: but his awareness of \"something else\" is\nexpressed in other parts of his letters, when he says that he has\nsomething to tell that is \"so strange that I should never have mentioned\nit, even to my friends, had it not been corroborated... so unreal that I\nhesitated to speak of it, fearing that it was some freak of the\nimagination.\"\n\n\n\n\n27\n\n\nVast and black. The thing that was poised, like a crow over the moon.\n\nRound and smooth. Cannon balls. Things that have fallen from the sky to\nthis earth.\n\nOur slippery brains.\n\nThings like cannon balls have fallen, in storms, upon this earth. Like\ncannon balls are things that, in storms, have fallen to this earth.\n\nShowers of blood.\n\nShowers of blood.\n\nShowers of blood.\n\nWhatever it may have been, something like red-brick dust, or a red\nsubstance in a dried state, fell at Piedmont, Italy, Oct. 27, 1814\n(_Electric Magazine_, 68-437). A red powder fell, in Switzerland, winter\nof 1867 (_Pop. Sci. Rev._, 10-112)--\n\nThat something, far from this earth, had bled--super-dragon that had\nrammed a comet--\n\nOr that there are oceans of blood somewhere in the sky--substance that\ndries, and falls in a powder--wafts for ages in powdered form--that\nthere is a vast area that will some day be known to aviators as the\nDesert of Blood. We attempt little of super-topography, at present, but\nOcean of Blood, or Desert of Blood--or both--Italy is nearest to it--or\nto them.\n\nI suspect that there were corpuscles in the substance that fell in\nSwitzerland, but all that could be published in 1867 was that in this\nsubstance there was a high proportion of \"variously shaped organic\nmatter.\"\n\nAt Giessen, Germany, in 1821, according to the _Report of the British\nAssociation_, 5-2, fell a rain of a peach-red color. In this rain were\nflakes of a hyacinthine tint. It is said that this substance was\norganic: we are told that it was pyrrhine.\n\nBut distinctly enough, we are told of one red rain that it was of\ncorpuscular composition--red snow, rather. It fell, March 12, 1876, near\nthe Crystal Palace, London (_Year Book of Facts_, 1876-89; _Nature_,\n13-414). As to the \"red snow\" of polar and mountainous regions, we have\nno opposition, because that \"snow\" has never been seen to fall from the\nsky: it is a growth of micro-organisms, or of a \"protococcus,\" that\nspreads over snow that is on the ground. This time nothing is said of\n\"sand from the Sahara.\" It is said of the red matter that fell in\nLondon, March 12, 1876, that it was composed of corpuscles--\n\nOf course:\n\nThat they looked like \"vegetable cells.\"\n\nA note:\n\nThat nine days before had fallen the red substance--flesh--whatever it\nmay have been--of Bath County, Kentucky.\n\nI think that a super-egotist, vast, but not so vast as it had supposed,\nhad refused to move to one side for a comet.\n\nWe summarize our general super-geographical expressions:\n\nGelatinous regions, sulphurous regions, frigid and tropical regions: a\nregion that has been Source of Life relatively to this earth: regions\nwherein there is density so great that things from them, entering this\nearth's thin atmosphere, explode.\n\nWe have had a datum of explosive hailstones. We now have support to the\nacceptance that they had been formed in a medium far denser than air of\nthis earth at sea-level. In the _Popular Science News_, 22-38, is an\naccount of ice that had been formed, under great pressure, in the\nlaboratory of the University of Virginia. When released and brought into\ncontact with ordinary air, this ice exploded.\n\nAnd again the flesh-like substance that fell in Kentucky: its flake-like\nformation. Here is a phenomenon that is familiar to us: it suggests\nflattening, under pressure. But the extraordinary inference is--pressure\nnot equal on all sides. In the _Annual Record of Science_, 1873-350, it\nis said that, in 1873, after a heavy thunderstorm in Louisiana, a\ntremendous number of fish scales were found, for a distance of forty\nmiles, along the banks of the Mississippi River: bushels of them picked\nup in single places: large scales that were said to be of the gar fish,\na fish that weighs from five to fifty pounds. It seems impossible to\naccept this identification: one thinks of a substance that had been\npressed into flakes or scales. And round hailstones with wide thin\nmargins of ice irregularly around them--still, such hailstones seem to\nme more like things that had been stationary: had been held in a field\nof thin ice. In the _Illustrated London News_, 34-546, are drawings of\nhailstones so margined, as if they had been held in a sheet of ice.\n\nSome day we shall have an expression which will be, to our advanced\nprimitiveness, a great joy:\n\nThat devils have visited this earth: foreign devils: human-like beings,\nwith pointed beards: good singers; one shoe ill-fitting--but with\nsulphurous exhalations, at any rate. I have been impressed with the\nfrequent occurrence of sulphurousness with things that come from the\nsky. A fall of jagged pieces of ice, Orkney, July 24, 1818 (_Trans. Roy.\nSoc. Edin._, 9-187). They had a strong sulphurous odor. And the coke--or\nthe substance that looked like coke--that fell at Mortree, France, April\n24, 1887: with it fell a sulphurous substance. The enormous round things\nthat rose from the ocean, near the _Victoria_. Whether we still accept\nthat they were super-constructions that had come from a denser\natmosphere and, in danger of disruption, had plunged into the ocean for\nrelief, then rising and continuing on their way to Jupiter or Uranus--it\nwas reported that they spread a \"stench of sulphur.\" At any rate, this\ndatum of proximity is against the conventional explanation that these\nthings did not rise from the ocean, but rose far away above the horizon,\nwith illusion of nearness.\n\nAnd the things that were seen in the sky July, 1898: I have another\nnote. In _Nature_, 58-224, a correspondent writes that, upon July 1,\n1898, at Sedberg, he had seen in the sky--a red object--or, in his own\nwording, something that looked like the red part of a rainbow, about 10\ndegrees long. But the sky was dark at the time. The sun had set. A heavy\nrain was falling.\n\nThroughout this book, the datum that we are most impressed with:\n\nSuccessive falls.\n\nOr that, if upon one small area, things fall from the sky, and then,\nlater, fall again upon the same small area, they are not products of a\nwhirlwind, which though sometimes axially stationary, discharges\ntangentially--\n\nSo the frogs that fell at Wigan. I have looked that matter up again.\nLater more frogs fell.\n\nAs to our data of gelatinous substance said to have fallen to this earth\nwith meteorites, it is our expression that meteorites, tearing through\nthe shaky, protoplasmic seas of Genesistrine--against which we warn\naviators, or they may find themselves suffocating in a reservoir of\nlife, or stuck like currants in a blanc mange--that meteorites detach\ngelatinous, or protoplasmic, lumps that fall with them.\n\nNow the element of positiveness in our composition yearns for the\nappearance of completeness. Super-geographical lakes with fishes in\nthem. Meteorites that plunge through these lakes, on their way to this\nearth. The positiveness in our make-up must have expression in at least\none record of a meteorite that has brought down a lot of fishes with\nit--\n\n_Nature_, 3-512:\n\nThat, near the bank of a river, in Peru, Feb. 4, 1871, a meteorite\nfell. \"On the spot, it is reported, several dead fishes were found, of\ndifferent species.\" The attempt to correlate is--that the fishes \"are\nsupposed to have been lifted out of the river and dashed against the\nstones.\"\n\nWhether this be imaginable or not depends upon each one's own hypnoses.\n\n_Nature_, 4-169:\n\nThat the fishes had fallen among the fragments of the meteorite.\n\n_Popular Science Review_, 4-126:\n\nThat one day, Mr. Le Gould, an Australian scientist, was traveling in\nQueensland. He saw a tree that had been broken off close to the ground.\nWhere the tree had been broken was a great bruise. Near by was an object\nthat \"resembled a ten-inch shot.\"\n\nA good many pages back there was an instance of over-shadowing, I think.\nThe little carved stone that fell at Tarbes is my own choice as the most\nimpressive of our new correlates. It was coated with ice, remember.\nSuppose we should sift and sift and discard half the data in this\nbook--suppose only that one datum should survive. To call attention to\nthe stone of Tarbes would, in my opinion, be doing well enough, for\nwhatever the spirit of this book is trying to do. Nevertheless, it seems\nto me that a datum that preceded it was slightingly treated.\n\nThe disk of quartz, said to have fallen from the sky, after a meteoric\nexplosion:\n\nSaid to have fallen at the plantation Bleijendal, Dutch Guiana: sent to\nthe Museum of Leyden by M. van Sypesteyn, adjutant to the Governor of\nDutch Guiana (_Notes and Queries_, 2-8-92).\n\nAnd the fragments that fall from super-geographic ice fields: flat\npieces of ice with icicles on them. I think that we did not emphasize\nenough that, if these structures were not icicles, but crystalline\nprotuberances, such crystalline formations indicate long suspension\nquite as notably as would icicles. In the _Popular Science News_, 24-34,\nit is said that in 1869, near Tiflis, fell large hailstones with long\nprotuberances. \"The most remarkable point in connection with the\nhailstones is the fact that, judging from our present knowledge, a very\nlong time must have been occupied in their formation.\" According to the\n_Geological Magazine_, 7-27, this fall occurred May 27, 1869. The\nwriter in the _Geological Magazine_ says that of all theories that he\nhad ever heard of, not one could give him light as to this\noccurrence--\"these growing crystalline forms must have been suspended a\nlong time\"--\n\nAgain and again this phenomenon:\n\nFourteen days later, at about the same place, more of these hailstones\nfell.\n\nRivers of blood that vein albuminous seas, or an egg-like composition in\nthe incubation of which this earth is a local center of\ndevelopment--that there are super-arteries of blood in Genesistrine:\nthat sunsets are consciousness of them: that they flush the skies with\nnorthern lights sometimes: super-embryonic reservoirs from which\nlife-forms emanate--\n\nOr that our whole solar system is a living thing: that showers of blood\nupon this earth are its internal hemorrhages--\n\nOr vast living things in the sky, as there are vast living things in the\noceans--\n\nOr some one especial thing: an especial time: an especial place. A thing\nthe size of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's alive in outer space--something\nthe size of Central Park kills it--\n\nIt drips.\n\nWe think of the ice fields above this earth: which do not, themselves,\nfall to this earth, but from which water does fall--\n\n_Popular Science News_, 35-104:\n\nThat, according to Prof. Luigi Palazzo, head of the Italian\nMeteorological Bureau, upon May 15, 1890, at Messignadi, Calabria,\nsomething the color of fresh blood fell from the sky.\n\nThis substance was examined in the public-health laboratories of Rome.\n\nIt was found to be blood.\n\n\"The most probable explanation of this terrifying phenomenon is that\nmigratory birds (quails or swallows) were caught and torn in a violent\nwind.\"\n\nSo the substance was identified as birds' blood--\n\nWhat matters it what the microscopists of Rome said--or had to say--and\nwhat matters it that we point out that there is no assertion that there\nwas a violent wind at the time--and that such a substance would be\nalmost infinitely dispersed in a violent wind--that no bird was said to\nhave fallen from the sky--or said to have been seen in the sky--that not\na feather of a bird is said to have been seen--\n\nThis one datum:\n\nThe fall of blood from the sky--\n\nBut later, in the same place, blood again fell from the sky.\n\n\n\n\n28\n\n\n_Notes and Queries_, 7-8-508:\n\nA correspondent who had been to Devonshire writes for information as to\na story that he had heard there: of an occurrence of about thirty-five\nyears before the date of writing:\n\nOf snow upon the ground--of all South Devonshire waking up one morning\nto find such tracks in the snow as had never before been heard\nof--\"clawed footmarks\" of \"an unclassifiable form\"--alternating at huge\nbut regular intervals with what seemed to be the impression of the point\nof a stick--but the scattering of the prints--amazing expanse of\nterritory covered--obstacles, such as hedges, walls, houses, seemingly\nsurmounted--\n\nIntense excitement--that the track had been followed by huntsmen and\nhounds, until they had come to a forest--from which the hounds had\nretreated, baying and terrified, so that no one had dared to enter the\nforest.\n\n_Notes and Queries_, 7-9-18:\n\nWhole occurrence well-remembered by a correspondent: a badger had left\nmarks in the snow: this was determined, and the excitement had \"dropped\nto a dead calm in a single day.\"\n\n_Notes and Queries_, 7-9-70:\n\nThat for years a correspondent had had a tracing of the prints, which\nhis mother had taken from those in the snow in her garden, in Exmouth:\nthat they were hoof-like marks--but had been made by a biped.\n\n_Notes and Queries_, 7-9-253:\n\nWell remembered by another correspondent, who writes of the excitement\nand consternation of \"some classes.\" He says that a kangaroo had escaped\nfrom a menagerie--\"the footprints being so peculiar and far apart gave\nrise to a scare that the devil was loose.\"\n\nWe have had a story, and now we shall tell it over from contemporaneous\nsources. We have had the later accounts first very largely for an\nimpression of the correlating effect that time brings about, by\naddition, disregard and distortion. For instance, the \"dead calm in a\nsingle day.\" If I had found that the excitement did die out rather soon,\nI'd incline to accept that nothing extraordinary had occurred.\n\nI found that the excitement had continued for weeks.\n\nI recognize this as a well-adapted thing to say, to divert attention\nfrom a discorrelate.\n\nAll phenomena are \"explained\" in the terms of the Dominant of their era.\nThis is why we give up trying really to explain, and content ourselves\nwith expressing. Devils that might print marks in snow are correlates to\nthe third Dominant back from this era. So it was an adjustment by\nnineteenth-century correlates, or human tropisms, to say that the marks\nin the snow were clawed. Hoof-like marks are not only horsey but\ndevilish. It had to be said in the nineteenth century that those prints\nshowed claw-marks. We shall see that this was stated by Prof. Owen, one\nof the greatest biologists of his day--except that Darwin didn't think\nso. But I shall give reference to two representations of them that can\nbe seen in the New York Public Library. In neither representation is\nthere the faintest suggestion of a claw-mark. There never has been a\nProf. Owen who has explained: he has correlated.\n\nAnother adaptation, in the later accounts, is that of leading this\ndiscorrelate to the Old Dominant into the familiar scenery of a fairy\nstory, and discredit it by assimilation to the conventionally\nfictitious--so the idea of the baying, terrified hounds, and forest like\nenchanted forests, which no one dared to enter. Hunting parties were\norganized, but the baying, terrified hounds do not appear in\ncontemporaneous accounts.\n\nThe story of the kangaroo looks like adaptation to needs for an animal\nthat could spring far, because marks were found in the snow on roofs of\nhouses. But so astonishing is the extent of snow that was marked that\nafter a while another kangaroo was added.\n\nBut the marks were in single lines.\n\nMy own acceptance is that not less than a thousand one-legged kangaroos,\neach shod with a very small horseshoe, could have marked that snow of\nDevonshire.\n\nLondon _Times_, Feb 16, 1855:\n\n\"Considerable sensation has been caused in the towns of Topsham,\nLymphstone, Exmouth, Teignmouth, and Dawlish, in Devonshire, in\nconsequence of the discovery of a vast number of foot tracks of a most\nstrange and mysterious description.\"\n\nThe story is of an incredible multiplicity of marks discovered in the\nmorning of Feb. 8, 1855, in the snow, by the inhabitants of many towns\nand regions between towns. This great area must of course be disregarded\nby Prof. Owen and the other correlators. The tracks were in all kinds of\nunaccountable places: in gardens enclosed by high walls, and up on the\ntops of houses, as well as in the open fields. There was in Lymphstone\nscarcely one unmarked garden. We've had heroic disregards but I think\nthat here disregard was titanic. And, because they occurred in single\nlines, the marks are said to have been \"more like those of a biped than\nof a quadruped\"--as if a biped would place one foot precisely ahead of\nanother--unless it hopped--but then we have to think of a thousand, or\nof thousands.\n\nIt is said that the marks were \"generally 8 inches in advance of each\nother.\"\n\n\"The impression of the foot closely resembles that of a donkey's shoe,\nand measured from an inch and a half, in some instances, to two and a\nhalf inches across.\"\n\nOr the impressions were cones in incomplete, or crescentic basins.\n\nThe diameters equaled diameters of very young colts' hoofs: too small to\nbe compared with marks of donkey's hoofs.\n\n\"On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. Musgrave alluded to the subject in his\nsermon and suggested the possibility of the footprints being those of a\nkangaroo, but this could scarcely have been the case, as they were found\non both sides of the Este. At present it remains a mystery, and many\nsuperstitious people in the above-named towns are actually afraid to go\noutside their doors after night.\"\n\nThe Este is a body of water two miles wide.\n\nLondon _Times_, March 6, 1855:\n\n\"The interest in this matter has scarcely yet subsided, many inquiries\nstill being made into the origin of the footprints, which caused so much\nconsternation upon the morning of the 8th ult. In addition to the\ncircumstances mentioned in the _Times_ a little while ago, it may be\nstated that at Dawlish a number of persons sallied out, armed with guns\nand other weapons, for the purpose, if possible, of discovering and\ndestroying the animal which was supposed to have been so busy in\nmultiplying its footprints. As might have been expected, the party\nreturned as they went. Various speculations have been made as to the\ncause of the footprints. Some have asserted that they are those of a\nkangaroo, while others affirm that they are the impressions of claws of\nlarge birds driven ashore by stress of weather. On more than one\noccasion reports have been circulated that an animal from a menagerie\nhad been caught, but the matter at present is as much involved in\nmystery as ever it was.\"\n\nIn the _Illustrated London News_, the occurrence is given a great deal\nof space. In the issue of Feb. 24, 1855, a sketch is given of the\nprints.\n\nI call them cones in incomplete basins.\n\nExcept that they're a little longish, they look like prints of hoofs of\nhorses--or, rather, of colts.\n\nBut they're in a single line.\n\nIt is said that the marks from which the sketch was made were 8 inches\napart, and that this spacing was regular and invariable \"in every\nparish.\" Also other towns besides those named in the _Times_ are\nmentioned. The writer, who had spent a winter in Canada, and was\nfamiliar with tracks in snow, says that he had never seen \"a more\nclearly defined track.\" Also he brings out the point that was so\npersistently disregarded by Prof. Owen and the other correlators--that\n\"no known animal walks in a line of single footsteps, not even man.\"\nWith these wider inclusions, this writer concludes with us that the\nmarks were not footprints. It may be that his following observation hits\nupon the crux of the whole occurrence:\n\nThat whatever it may have been that had made the marks, it had removed,\nrather than pressed, the snow.\n\nAccording to his observations the snow looked \"as if branded with a hot\niron.\"\n\n_Illustrated London News_, March 3, 1855-214:\n\nProf. Owen, to whom a friend had sent drawings of the prints, writes\nthat there were claw-marks. He says that the \"track\" was made by \"a\"\nbadger.\n\nSix other witnesses sent letters to this number of the _News_. One\nmentioned, but not published, is a notion of a strayed swan. Always this\nhomogeneous-seeing--\"a\" badger--\"a\" swan--\"a\" track. I should have\nlisted the other towns as well as those mentioned in the _Times_.\n\nA letter from Mr. Musgrave is published. He, too, sends a sketch of the\nprints. It, too, shows a single line. There are four prints, of which\nthe third is a little out of line.\n\nThere is no sign of a claw-mark.\n\nThe prints look like prints of longish hoofs of a very young colt, but\nthey are not so definitely outlined as in the sketch of February 24th,\nas if drawn after disturbance by wind, or after thawing had set in.\nMeasurements at places a mile and a half apart, gave the same\ninter-spacing--\"exactly eight inches and a half apart.\"\n\nWe now have a little study in the psychology and genesis of an attempted\ncorrelation. Mr. Musgrave says: \"I found a very apt opportunity to\nmention the name 'kangaroo' in allusion to the report then current.\" He\nsays that he had no faith in the kangaroo-story himself, but was glad\n\"that a kangaroo was in the wind,\" because it opposed \"a dangerous,\ndegrading, and false impression that it was the devil.\"\n\n\"Mine was a word in season and did good.\"\n\nWhether it's Jesuitical or not, and no matter what it is or isn't, that\nis our own acceptance: that, though we've often been carried away from\nthis attitude controversially, that is our acceptance as to every\ncorrelate of the past that has been considered in this book--relatively\nto the Dominant of its era.\n\nAnother correspondent writes that, though the prints in all cases\nresembled hoof marks, there were indistinct traces of claws--that \"an\"\notter had made the marks. After that many other witnesses wrote to the\n_News_. The correspondence was so great that, in the issue of March\n10th, only a selection could be given. There's \"a\" jumping-rat solution\nand \"a\" hopping-toad inspiration, and then someone came out strong with\nan idea of \"a\" hare that had galloped with pairs of feet held close\ntogether, so as to make impressions in a single line.\n\nLondon _Times_, March 14, 1840:\n\n\"Among the high mountains of that elevated district where Glenorchy,\nGlenlyon and Glenochay are contiguous, there have been met with several\ntimes, during this and also the former winter, upon the snow, the tracks\nof an animal seemingly unknown at present in Scotland. The print, in\nevery respect, is an exact resemblance to that of a foal of considerable\nsize, with this small difference, perhaps, that the sole seems a little\nlonger, or not so round; but as no one has had the good fortune as yet\nto have obtained a glimpse of this creature, nothing more can be said of\nits shape or dimensions; only it has been remarked, from the depth to\nwhich the feet sank in the snow, that it must be a beast of considerable\nsize. It has been observed also that its walk is not like that of the\ngenerality of quadrupeds, but that it is more like the bounding or\nleaping of a horse when scared or pursued. It is not in one locality\nthat its tracks have been met with, but through a range of at least\ntwelve miles.\"\n\nIn the _Illustrated London News_, March 17, 1855, a correspondent from\nHeidelberg writes, \"upon the authority of a Polish Doctor of Medicine,\"\nthat on the Piashowa-gora (Sand Hill) a small elevation on the border of\nGalicia, but in Russian Poland, such marks are to be seen in the snow\nevery year, and sometimes in the sand of this hill, and \"are attributed\nby the inhabitants to supernatural influences.\"","title":"The Book of the Damned","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":107863}