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BOOK OF THE DAMNED
By Charles Fort
CHAPTER: 01,
02, 03,
04, 05,
06, 07,
08, 09,
10, 11,
12, 13,
14, 15,
16, 17,
18, 19,
20, 21,
22, 23,
24, 25,
26, 27,
28
SO then, it is our expression that Science relates to real
knowledge no more than does the growth of a plant, or the organization of a
department store, or the development of a nation: that all are assimilative, or
organizing, or systematizing processes that represent different attempts to
attain the positive state -- the state commonly called heaven, I suppose I mean.
There can be no real science where there are indeterminate
variables, but every variable is, in finer terms, indeterminate, or irregular,
if only to have the appearance of being in Intermediateness is to express
regularity unattained. The invariable, or the real and stable, would be nothing
at all in Intermediateness -- rather as, but in relative terms, an undistorted
interpretation of external sounds in the mind of a dreamer could not continue to
exist in a dreaming mind, because that touch of relative realness would be of
awakening and not of dreaming. Science is the attempt to awaken to realness,
wherein it is attempt to find regularity and uniformity. Or the regular and
uniform would be that which has nothing external to disturb it. By the universal
we mean the real. Or the notion is that the underlying super-attempt, as
expressed in Science, is indifferent to the subject-matter of Science: that the
attempt to regularize is the vital spirit. Bugs and stars and chemical messes:
that they are only quasi-real, and that of them there is nothing real to know;
but that systemization of pseudo-data is approximation to realness or final
awakening --
Or a dreaming mind -- and its centaurs and canary birds that
turn into giraffes -- there could be no real biology upon such subjects, but
attempt, in a dreaming mind, to systematize such appearances would be movement
toward awakening -- if better mental co-ordination is all that we mean by the
state of being awake -- relatively awake.
So it is, that having attempted to systematize, by ignoring
externality to the greatest possible degree, the notion of things dropping in
upon this earth, from externality, is as unsettling and as unwelcome to Science
as -- tin horns blowing in upon a musician's relatively symmetric composition --
flies alighting upon a painter's attempted harmony, and tracking
colors one into another -- suffragist getting up and making a political speech at
a prayer meeting.
If all things are of a oneness, which is a state intermediate
to unrealness and realness, and if nothing has succeeded in breaking away and
establishing entity for itself, and could not continue to "exist" in
intermediateness, if it should succeed, any more than could the born still at
the same time be the uterine, I of course know of no positive difference between
Science and Christian Science -- and the attitude of both toward the unwelcome is
the same -- "it does not exist."
A Lord Kelvin and a Mrs. Eddy, and something not to their
liking -- it does not exist.
Of course not, we Intermediates say: but, also, that, in
Intermediateness, neither is there absolute non-existence.
Or a Christian Scientist and a toothache -- neither exists in
the final sense: also neither is absolutely non-existent, and, according to our
therapeutics, the one that more highly approximates to realness will win.
A secret of power --
I think it's another profundity.
Do you want power over something?
Be more nearly real than it.
We'll begin with yellow substances that have fallen upon this
earth: we'll see whether our data of them have a higher approximation to
realness than have the dogmas of those who deny their existence -- that is, as
products from somewhere external to this earth.
In mere impressionism we take our stand. We have no positive
tests nor standards. Realism in art: realism in science -- they pass away. In
1859, the thing to do was to accept Darwinism; now many biologists are revolting
and trying to conceive of something else. The thing to do was to accept it in
its day, but Darwinism of course was never proved:
The fittest survive.
What is meant by the fittest?
Not the strongest; not the cleverest --
Weakness and stupidity everywhere survive.
There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing
does survive.
"Fitness," then, is only another name for
"survival."
Darwinism:
That survivors survive.
Although Darwinism, then, seems positively baseless, or
absolutely irrational, its massing of supposed data, and its attempted coherence
approximate more highly to Organization and Consistency than did the inchoate
speculations that preceded it.
Or that Columbus never proved that the earth is round.
Shadow of the earth on the moon?
No one has ever seen it in its entirety. The earth's shadow is
much larger than the moon. If the periphery of the shadow is curved -- but the
convex moon -- a straight-edged object will cast a curved shadow upon a surface
that is convex.
All the other so-called proofs may be taken up in the same
way. It was impossible for Columbus to prove that the earth is round. It was not
required: only that with a higher seeming of positiveness than that of his
opponents, he should attempt. The thing to do, in 1492, was nevertheless to
accept that beyond Europe, to the west, were other lands.
I offer for acceptance, as something concordant with the
spirit of this first quarter of the 20th century, the expression that beyond
this earth are -- other lands -- from which come things as, from America, float
things to Europe.
As to yellow substances that have fallen upon this earth, the
endeavor to exclude extra-mundane origins is the dogma that all yellow rains and
yellow snows are colored with pollen from this earth's pine trees. Symons'
Meteorological Magazine is especially prudish in this respect and regards
as highly improper all advances made by other explainers.
Nevertheless, the Monthly Weather Review, May, 1877,
reports a golden-yellow fall, of Feb. 27, 1877, at Peckloh, Germany, in which
four kinds of organisms, not pollen, were the coloring matter. There were minute
things shaped like arrows, coffee beans, horns, and disks.
They may have been symbols. They may have been objective
hieroglyphics --
Mere passing fancy -- let it go --
In the Annales de Chimie, 85-288, there is a list of
rains said to have contained sulphur. I have thirty or forty other notes. I'll
not use one of them. I'll admit that every one of them is upon a fall of pollen.
I said, to begin with, that our methods would be the methods of theologians and
scientists, and they always begin with an appearance of liberality. I grant
thirty or forty points to start with. I'm as liberal as any of them -- or that my
liberality won't cost me anything -- the enormousness of the data that we shall
have.
Or just to look over a typical instance of this dogma, and the
way it works out:
In the American Journal of Science, 1-42-196, we are
told of a yellow substance that fell by the bucketful upon a vessel, one
"windless" night in June, in Pictou Harbour, Nova Scotia. The writer
analyzed the substance, and it was found to "give off nitrogen and ammonia
and an animal odor."
Now, one of our Intermediatist principles, to start with, is
that so far from positive, in the aspect of Homogeneousness, are all substances,
that, at least in what is called an elementary sense, anything can be found
anywhere. Mahogany logs on the coast of Greenland; bugs of a valley on top of
Mt. Blanc; atheists at a prayer meeting; ice in India. For instance, chemical
analysis can reveal that almost any dead man was poisoned with arsenic, we'll
say, because there is no stomach without some iron, lead, tin, gold, arsenic in
it and of it -- which, of course, in a broader sense, doesn't matter much, because
a certain number of persons must, as a restraining influence, be executed for
murder every year; and, if detectives aren't able really to detect anything,
illusion of their success is all that is necessary, and it is very honorable to
give up one's life for society as a whole.
The chemist who analyzed the substance of Pictou sent a sample
to the Editor of the Journal. The Editor of course found pollen in it.
My own acceptance is that there'd have to be some pollen in
it: that nothing could very well fall through the air, in June, near the pine
forests of Nova Scotia, and escape all floating spores of pollen. But the Editor
does not say that this substance "contained" pollen. He disregards
"nitrogen and ammonia, and an animal odor," and says that the
substance was pollen. For the sake of our thirty or forty tokens of liberality,
or pseudo-liberality, if we can't be really liberal, we grant that the chemist
of the first examination probably wouldn't know an animal odor if he were
janitor of a menagerie. As we go along, however, there can be no such sweeping
ignoring of this phenomenon:
The fall of animal-matter from the sky.
I'd suggest, to start with, that we'd put ourselves in the
place of deep-sea fishes:
How would they account for the fall of animal-matter from
above?
They wouldn't try --
Or it's easy enough to think of most of us as deep-sea fishes
of a kind.
Jour. Franklin Inst., 90-11:
That, upon the 14th of February, 1870, there fell, at Genoa,
Italy, according to Director Boccardo, of the Technical Institute of Genoa, and
Prof. Castellani, a yellow substance. But the microscope revealed numerous
globules of cobalt blue, also corpuscles of a pearly color that resembled
starch. See Nature, 2-166.
Comptes Rendus, 56-972:
M. Bouis says of a substance, reddish varying to yellowish,
that fell enormously and successively, or upon April 30, May 1 and May 2, in
France and Spain, that it carbonized and spread the odor of charred animal
matter -- that it was not pollen-- that in alcohol it left a residue of resinous
matter.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of this matter must have fallen.
"Odor of charred animal matter."
Or an aerial battle that occurred in inter-planetary space
several hundred years ago -- effect of time in making diverse remains uniform in
appearance --
It's all very absurd because, even though we are told of a
prodigious quantity of animal matter that fell from the sky -- three days --
France
and Spain -- we're not ready yet: that's all. M. Bouis says that this substance
was not pollen; the vastness of the fall makes acceptable that it was not
pollen; still, the resinous residue does suggest pollen of pine trees. We shall
hear a great deal of a substance with a resinous residue that has fallen from
the sky: finally we shall divorce it from all suggestion of pollen.
Blackwood's Magazine, 3-338:
A yellow powder that fell at Gerace, Calabria, March 14, 1813.
Some of this substance was collected by Sig. Simennini, Professor of Chemistry,
at Naples. It had an earthy, insipid taste, and is described as
"unctuous." When heated this matter turned brown, then black, then
red. According to the Annals of Philosophy, 11-466, one of the
components was a greenish-yellow substance, which, when dried, was found to be
resinous.
But concomitants of this fall:
Loud noises were heard in the sky.
Stones fell from the sky.
According to Chladni, these concomitants occurred, and to me
they seem -- rather brutal? -- or not associable with something so soft and gentle
as a fall of pollen?
* * *
Black rains and black snows -- rains as black as a deluge of
ink -- jet-black snowflakes.
Such a rain as that which fell in Ireland, May 14, 1849,
described in the Annals of Scientific Discovery, 1850, and the Annual
Register, 1849. It fell upon a district of 400 square miles, and was the
color of ink, and of a fetid odor and very disagreeable taste.
The rain at Castlecommon, Ireland, April 30, 1887--"thick
black rain." (Amer. Met. Jour., 4-193.)
A black rain fell in Ireland, Oct. 8 and 9, 1907. (Symons'
Met. Mag., 43-2). It left a "most peculiar and disagreeable smell in
the air."
The orthodox explanation of this rain occurs in Nature,
March 2, 1908 -- cloud of soot that had come from South Wales, crossing the Irish
Channel and all of Ireland.
So the black rain of Ireland, of March, 1898: ascribed in Symons'
Met. Mag., 33-40, to clouds of soot from the manufacturing towns of North
England and South Scotland.
Our Intermediatist principle of pseudo-logic, or our principle
of Continuity is, of course, that nothing is unique, or individual: that all
phenomena merge away into all other phenomena: that, for instance -- suppose there
should be vast super-oceanic, or inter-planetary vessels that come near this
earth and discharge volumes of smoke at times. We're only supposing such a thing
as that now, because, conventionally, we are beginning modestly and tentatively.
But if it were so, there would necessarily be some phenomenon upon this earth,
with which that phenomenon would merge. Extra-mundane smoke and smoke from
cities merge, or both would manifest in black precipitations in rain.
In Continuity, it is impossible to distinguish phenomena at
their merging-points, so we look for them at their extremes. Impossible to
distinguish between animal and vegetable in some infusoria -- but hippopotamus and
violet. For all practical purposes they're distinguishable enough. No one but a
Barnum or a Bailey would send one a bunch of hippopotami as a token of regard.
So away from the great manufacturing centers:
Black rain in Switzerland, Jan. 20, 1911. Switzerland is so
remote, and so ill at ease is the conventional explanation here, that Nature,
85-451, says of this rain that in certain conditions of weather, snow may take
on an appearance of blackness that is quite deceptive.
May be so. Or at night, if dark enough, snow may look black.
This is simply denying that a black rain fell in Switzerland, Jan. 20, 1911.
Extreme remoteness from the great manufacturing centers:
La Nature, 1888, 2-406:
That Aug. 14, 1888, there fell at the Cape of Good Hope, a
rain so black as to be described as a "shower of ink."
Continuity dogs us. Continuity rules us and pulls us back. We
seemed to have a little hope that by the method of extremes we could get away
from things that merge indistinguishably into other things. We find that every
departure from one merger is entrance upon another. At the Cape of Good Hope,
vast volumes of smoke from great manufacturing centers, as an explanation, can
not very acceptably merge with the explanation of extra-mundane origin -- but
smoke from a terrestial volcano can, and that is the suggestion that is made in La
Nature.
There is, in human intellection, no real standard to judge by,
but our acceptance, for the present, is that the more nearly positive will
prevail. By the more nearly positive we mean the more nearly Organized.
Everything merges away into everything else, but proportionately to its
complexity, if unified, a thing seems strong, real, and distinct: so, in
aesthetics, it is recognized that diversity in unity is higher beauty, or
approximation to Beauty, than is simpler unity; so the logicians feel that
agreement of diverse data constitute greater convincingness, or strength, than
that of mere parallel instances: so to Herbert Spencer the more highly
differentiated and integrated is the more fully evolved. Our opponents hold out
for mundane origin of all black rains. Our method will be the presenting of
diverse phenomena in agreement with the notion of some other origin. We take up
not only black rains but black rains and their accompanying phenomena.
A correspondent to Knowledge, 5-190, writes of a
black rain that fell in the Clyde Valley, March 1, 1884: of another black rain
that fell two days later. According to the correspondent, a black rain had
fallen in the Clyde Valley, March 20, 1828: then again March 22, 1828. According
to Nature, 9-43, a black rain fell at Marlsford, England, Sept. 4,
1873; more than twenty-four hours later another black rain fell in the same
small town.
The black rains of Slains:
According to Rev. James Rust (Scottish Showers):
A black rain at Slains, Jan. 14, 1862 -- another at Carluke, 140
miles from Slains, May 1, 1862 -- at Slains, May 20, 1862 -- Slains, Oct. 28, 1863.
But after two of these showers, vast quantities of a substance
described sometimes as "pumice stone," but sometimes as
"slag," were washed upon the sea coast near Slains. A chemist's
opinion is given that this substance was slag: that it was not a volcanic
product: slag from smelting works. We now have, for black rains, a concomitant
that is irreconcilable with origin from factory chimneys. Whatever it may have
been the quantity of this substance was so enormous that, in Mr. Rust's opinion,
to have produced so much of it would have required the united output of all the
smelting works in the world. If slag it were, we accept that an artificial
product has, in enormous quantities, fallen from the sky. If you don't think
that such occurrences are damned by Science, read Scottish Showers and
see how impossible it was for the author to have this matter taken up by the
scientific world.
The first and second rains corresponded, in time, with
ordinary ebullitions of Vesuvius.
The third and fourth, according to Mr. Rust, corresponded with
no known volcanic activities upon this earth.
La Science Pour Tous, 11-26:
That between October, 1863, and January, 1866, four more black
rains fell at Slains, Scotland.
The writer of this supplementary account tells us, with a
better, or more unscrupulous, orthodoxy than Mr. Rust's, that of the eight black
rains, five coincided with eruptions of Vesuvius and three with eruptions of
Etna.
The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have
another fly wide open. I should say that my own notions upon this subject will
be considered irrational, but at least my gregariousness is satisfied in
associating here with the preposterous -- or this writer, and those who think in
his rut, have to say that they can think of four discharges from one far-distant
volcano, passing over a great part of Europe, precipitating nowhere else,
discharging precisely over one small northern parish--
But also of three other discharges, from another far-distant
volcano, showing the same precise preference, if not marksmanship, for one small
parish in Scotland.
Nor would orthodoxy be any better off in thinking of exploding
meteorites and their debris: preciseness and recurrence would be just as
difficult to explain.
My own notion is of an island near an oceanic trade-route: it
might receive debris from passing vessels seven times in four years.
Other concomitants of black rains:
In Timb's Year Book, 1851-270, there is an account of
"a sort of rumbling, as of wagons, was heard for upward of an hour without
ceasing," July 16, 1850, Bulwick Rectory, Northampton, England. On the
19th, a black rain fell.
In Nature, 30-6, a correspondent writes of an intense
darkness at Preston, England, April 26, 1884: page 32, another correspondent
writes of a black rain at Crowle, near Worcester, April 26: that a week later,
or May 3, it had fallen again: another account of black rain, upon the 28th of
April, near Church Stretton, so intense that the following day brooks were still
dyed with it. According to four accounts by correspondents to Nature
there were earthquakes in England at this time.
Or the black rain of Canada, Nov. 9, 1819. This time it is
orthodoxy to attribute the black precipitate to smoke of forest fires south of
the Ohio River --
Zurcher, Meteors, p.238:
That this black rain was accompanied by "shocks like
those of an earthquake."
Edinburgh Philosophical Journal,
2-381:
That the earthquake had occurred at the climax of intense
darkness and the fall of black rain.
* * *
Red rains.
Orthodoxy:
Sand blown by the sirocco, from the Sahara to Europe.
Especially in the earthquake regions of Europe, there have
been many falls of red substance, usually, but not always, precipitated in rain.
Upon many occasions, these substances have been "absolutely
identified" as sand from the Sahara. When I first took this matter up, I
came across assurance after assurance, so positive to this effect, that, had I
not been an Intermediatist, I'd have looked no further. Samples collected from a
rain at Genoa -- samples of sand forwarded from the Sahara -- "absolute
agreement" some writers said: same color, same particles of quartz, even
the same shells of diatoms mixed in. Then the chemical analyses: not a
disagreement worth mentioning.
Our intermediatist means of expression will be that, with
proper exclusions, after the scientific or theological method, anything can be
identified with anything else, if all things are only different expressions of
an underlying oneness.
To many minds there's a rest and there's satisfaction in that
expression "absolutely identified." Absoluteness, or the illusion of
it -- the universal quest. If chemists have identified substances that have fallen
in Europe as sand from African deserts, swept up in African whirlwinds, that's
assuasive to all the irritations that occur to those cloistered minds that must
repose in the concept of a snug, isolated, little world, free from contact with
cosmic wickednesses, safe from stellar guile, undisturbed by inter-planetary
prowlings and invasions. The only trouble is that a chemist's analysis, which
seems so final and authoritative to some minds, is no more nearly absolute than
is identification by a child or description by an imbecile --
I take some of that back: I accept that the approximation is
higher --
But that it's based upon delusion, because there is no
definiteness, no homogeneity, no stability, only different stages somewhere
between them and indefiniteness, heterogeneity, and instability. There are no
chemical elements. It seems acceptable that Ramsay and others have settled that.
The chemical elements are only another disappointment in the quest of the
positive, as the definite, the homogeneous, and the stable. If there were real
elements, there could be a real science of chemistry.
Upon Nov. 12 and 13, 1902, occurred the greatest fall of
matter in the history of Australia. Upon the 14th of November, it "rained
mud," in Tasmania. It was of course attributed to Australian whirlwinds,
but, according to the Monthly Weather Review, 32-365, there was a haze
all the way to the Philippines, also as far as Hong Kong. It may be that this
phenomenon had no especial relation with the even more tremendous fall of matter
that occurred in Europe, February, 1903.
For several days, the south of England was a dumping
ground -- from somewhere.
If you'd like to have a chemist's opinion, even though it's
only a chemist's opinion, see the report of the meeting of the Chemical Society
of London, April 2, 1903. Mr. E.G. Clayton read a paper upon some of the
substance that had fallen from the sky, collected by him. The Sahara explanation
applies mostly to falls that occur in southern Europe. Farther away, the
conventionalists are a little uneasy: for instance, the editor of the Monthly
Weather Review, 29-121, says of a red rain that fell near the coast of
Newfoundland, early in 1890: "It would be very remarkable if this was
Sahara dust." Mr. Clayton said that the matter examined by him was
"merely wind-borne dust from the roads and lanes of Wessex." This
opinion is typical of all scientific opinion -- or theological opinion -- or
feminine opinion -- all very well except for what it disregards. The most
charitable thing I can think of -- because I think it gives us a broader tone to
relieve our malices with occasional charities -- is that Mr. Clayton had not heard
of the astonishing extent of this fall -- had covered the Canary Islands, on the
19th, for instance. I think, myself, that in 1903, we passed through the remains
of a powdered world -- left over from an ancient inter-planetary dispute, brooding
in space like a red resentment ever since. Or, like every other opinion, the
notion of dust from Wessex turns into a provincial thing when we look it over.
To think is to conceive incompletely, because all thought
relates only to the local. We metaphysicians, of course, like to have the notion
that we think of the unthinkable.
As to opinions, or pronouncements, I should say, because they
always have such an authoritative air, of other chemists, there is an analysis
in Nature, 68-54, giving water and organic matter at 9.08 per cent.
It's that carrying out of fractions that's so convincing. The substance is
identified as sand from the Sahara.
The vastness of this fall. In Nature, 68-65, we are
told that it had occurred in Ireland, too. The Sahara, of course -- because, prior
to Feb. 19, there had been dust storms in the Sahara -- disregarding that in that
great region there's always, in some part of it, a dust storm. However, just at
present, it does look reasonable that dust had come from Africa, via the
Canaries.
The great difficulty that authoritativeness has to contend
with is some other authoritativeness. When an infallibility clashes with a
pontification --
They explain.
Nature, March 5, 1903:
Another analysis -- 36 per cent organic matter.
Such disagreements don't look very well, so, in Nature,
68-109, one of the differing chemists explains. He says that his analysis was of
muddy rain, and the other was of sediment of rain --
We're quite ready to accept excuses from the most high, though
I do wonder whether we're quite so damned as we were, if we find ourselves in a
gracious and tolerant mood toward the powers that condemn -- but the tax that now
comes upon our good manners and unwillingness to be too severe --
Nature, 68-223:
Another chemist. He says it was 23.49 per cent water and
organic matter.
He "identifies" this matter as sand from an African
desert -- but after deducting organic matter --
But you and I could be "identified" as sand from an
African desert, after deducting all there is to us except sand --
Why we can not accept that this fall was of sand from the
Sahara, omitting the obvious objection that in most parts the Sahara is not red
at all, but is usually described as "dazzling white" --
The enormousness of it: that a whirlwind might have carried
it, but that, in that case it would be no supposititious, or doubtfully
identified whirlwind, but the greatest atmospheric cataclysm in the history of
this earth:
Jour. Roy. Met. Soc., 30-56:
That, up to the 27th of February, this fall had continued in
Belgium, Holland, Germany and Austria; that in some instances it was not sand,
or that almost all the matter was organic: that a vessel had reported the fall
as occurring in the Atlantic Ocean, midway between Southampton and the Barbados.
The calculation is given that, in England alone, 10,000,000 tons of matter had
fallen. It had fallen in Switzerland, (Symons' Met. Mag., March, 1903).
It had fallen in Russia (Bull. Com. Geolog., 22-48). Not only had a
vast quantity of matter fallen several months before, in Australia, but it was
at this time falling in Australia (Victorian Naturalist, June, 1903) --
enormously -- red mud -- fifty tons per square mile.
The Wessex explanation --
Or that every explanation is a Wessex explanation: by that I
mean an attempt to interpret the enormous in terms of the minute -- but that
nothing can be finally explained, because by Truth we mean the Universal; and
that even if we could think as wide as Universality, that would not be requital
to the cosmic quest -- which is not for Truth, but for the local that is true --
not
to universalize the local, but to localize the universal -- or to give to a cosmic
cloud absolute interpretation in terms of the little dusty roads and lanes of
Wessex. I can not conceive that this can be done: I think of high approximation.
Our Intermediatist concept is that, because of the continuity
of all "things," which are not separate, positive, or real things, all
pseudo-things partake of the underlying, or are only different expressions,
degrees, or aspects of the underlying: so then that a sample from somewhere in
anything must correspond with a sample from somewhere in anything else.
That, by due care in selection, and disregard for everything
else, or the scientific and theological method, the substance that fell,
February, 1903, could be identified with anything, or with some part or aspect
of anything that could be conceived of --
With sand from the Sahara, sand from a barrel of sugar, or
dust of your great, great grandfather.
Different samples are described and listed in the Journal
of the Royal Meteorological Society, 30-57 -- or we'll see whether my notion
that a chemist could have identified some one of these samples as from anywhere
conceivable, is extreme or not:
"Similar to brick dust," in one place; "buff or
light brown," in another place; "chocolate-colored and silky to the
touch and slightly iridescent"; "gray"; "red-rust
color"; "reddish raindrops and gray sand"; "dirty
gray"; "quite red"; "yellow-brown, with a tinge of
pink"; "deep yellow-clay color."
In Nature, it is described as of a peculiar yellowish
cast in one place, reddish somewhere else, and salmon-colored in another place.
Or there could be real science if there were really anything
to be scientific about.
Or the science of chemistry is like a science of sociology,
prejudiced in advance, because only to see is to see with a prejudice, setting
out to "prove" that all inhabitants of New York came from Africa.
Very easy matter. Samples from one part of town. Disregard for
all the rest.
There is no science but Wessex-science.
According to our acceptance, there should be no other, but
that approximation should be higher: that metaphysics is super-evil: that the
scientific spirit is of the cosmic quest.
Our notion is that, in a real existence, such a quasi-system
of fables as the science of chemistry could not deceive for a moment: but that
in an "existence" endeavoring to become real, it represents that
endeavor, and will continue to impose its pseudo-positiveness until it be driven
out by a higher approximation to realness;
That the science of chemistry is as impositive as
fortune-telling --
Or no --
That, though it represents a higher approximation to realness
than does alchemy, for instance, and so drove out alchemy, it is still somewhere
between myth and positiveness.
The attempt at realness, or to state a real and unmodified
fact here, is the statement:
All red rains are colored sands from the Sahara desert.
My own impositivist acceptances are:
That some red rains are colored by sands from the Sahara
desert;
Some by sands from other terrestrial sources;
Some by sands from other worlds, or from their deserts
-- also
from aerial regions too indefinite or amorphous to be thought of as
"worlds" or planets --
That no supposititious whirlwind can account for the hundreds
of millions of tons of matter that fell upon Australia, Pacific Ocean and
Atlantic Ocean and Europe in 1902 and 1903 -- that a whirlwind that could do that
would not be supposititious.
But now we shall cast off some of our wessicality by accepting
that there have been falls of red substance other than sand.
We regard every science as an expression of the attempt to be
real. But to be real is to localize the universal -- or to make some one thing as
wide as all things -- successful accomplishment of which I cannot conceive of. The
prime resistance to this endeavor is the refusal of the rest of the universe to
be damned, excluded, disregarded, to receive Christian Science treatment, by
something else so attempting. Although all phenomena are striving for the
Absolute -- or have surrendered to and have incorporated themselves in higher
attempts, simply to be phenomenal, or to have seeming in Intermediateness is to
express relations.
A river.
It is water expressing the gravitational relation of different
levels.
The water of the river.
Expression of chemic relations of hydrogen and oxygen
-- which
are not final.
A city.
Manifestation of commercial and social relations.
How could a mountain be without base in a greater body?
Storekeeper live without customers?
The prime resistance to the positivist attempt by Science is
its relations with other phenomena, or that it only expresses those relations in
the first place. Or that a Science can have seeming, or survive in
Intermediateness, as something pure, isolated, positively different, no more
than could a river or a city or a mountain or a store.
This Intermediateness-wide attempt by parts to be
wholes -- which cannot be realized in our quasi-state, if we accept that in it the
co-existence of two or more wholes or universals is impossible -- high
approximation to which, however, may be thinkable --
Scientists and their dream of "pure science."
Artists and their dream of "art for art's sake."
It is our notion that if they could almost realize, that would
be almost realness: that they would instantly be translated into real existence.
Such thinkers are good positivists, but they are evil in an economic and
sociologic sense, if, in that sense, nothing has justification for being, unless
it serve, or function for, or express the relations of, some higher aggregate.
So Science functions for and serves society at large, and would, from society at
large, receive no support, unless it did so divert itself or dissipate and
prostitute itself. It seems that by prostitution I mean usefulness.
There have been red rains that, in the middle ages, were
called "rains of blood." Such rains terrified many persons, and were
so unsettling to large populations, that Science, in its sociologic relations,
has sought, by Mrs. Eddy's method, to remove an evil --
That "rains of blood" do not exist;
That rains so called are only of water colored by sand from
the Sahara desert.
My own acceptance is that such assurances, whether fictitious
or not, whether the Sahara is a "dazzling white" desert or not, have
wrought such good effects, in a sociologic sense, even though prostitutional in
the positivist sense, they were well justified;
But that we've gone on: that this is the twentieth century;
that most of us have grown up so that such soporifics of the past are no longer
necessary:
That if gushes of blood should fall from the sky upon New York
City, business would go on as usual.
We began with rains that we accepted ourselves were, most
likely, only of sand. In my own still immature hereticalness -- and by heresy, or
progress, I mean, very largely, a return, though with many modifications, to the
superstitions of the past, I think I feel considerable aloofness to the idea of
rains of blood. Just at present, it is my conservative, or timid purpose, to
express only that there have been red rains that very strongly suggest blood or
finely divided animal matter --
Debris from inter-planetary disasters.
Aerial battles.
Food-supplies from cargoes of super-vessels, wrecked in
inter-planetary traffic.
There was a red rain in the Mediterranean region, March 6,
1888. Twelve days later, it fell again. Whatever this substance may have been,
when burned, the odor of animal matter from it was strong and persistent. (L'Astronomie,
1888-205).
But -- infinite heterogeneity -- or debris from many different
kinds of aerial cargoes -- there have been red rains that have been colored by
neither sand nor animal matter.
Annals of Philosophy, 16-226:
That, Nov. 2, 1819 -- week before the black rain and earthquake
of Canada -- there fell, at Blankenberge, Holland, a red rain. As to sand, two
chemists of Bruges concentrated 144 ounces of the rain to 4 ounces -- "no
precipitate fell." But the color was so marked that had there been sand, it
would have been deposited, if the substance had been diluted instead of
concentrated. Experiments were made, and various reagents did cast precipitates,
but other than sand. The chemists concluded that the rain-water contained
muriate of cobalt -- which is not very enlightening: that could be said of many
substances carried in vessels upon the Atlantic Ocean. Whatever it may have
been, in the Annales de Chimie, 2-12-432, its color is said to have
been red-violet. For various chemic reactions, see Quar. Jour. Roy. Inst.,
9-202, and Edin. Phil. Jour., 2-381.
Something that fell with dust said to have been meteoric,
March 9, 10, 11, 1872: described in the Chemical News, 25-300, as a
"peculiar substance," consisted of red iron ochre, carbonate of lime,
and organic matter.
Orange-red hail, March 14, 1873, in Tuscany. (Notes and
Queries, 9-5-16.)
Rain of lavender-colored substance, at Oudon, France, Dec. 19,
1903. (Bull. Soc. Met. de France, 1904-124.)
La Nature, 1885-2-351:
That, according to Prof. Schwedoff, there fell, in Russia,
June 14, 1880, red hailstones, also blue hailstones, also gray hailstones.
Nature, 34-123:
A correspondent writes that he had been told by a resident of
a small town in Venezuela, that there, April 17, 1886, had fallen hailstones,
some red, some blue, some whitish: informant said to have been one unlikely to
have heard of the Russian phenomenon; described as an "honest, plain
countryman."
Nature, July 5, 1877, quotes a
Roman correspondent to the London Times who sent a translation from an
Italian newspaper: that a red rain had fallen in Italy, June 23, 1877,
containing "microscopically small particles of sand."
Or, according to our acceptance, any other story would have
been an evil thing, in the sociologic sense, in Italy, in 1877. But the English
correspondent, from a land where terrifying red rains are uncommon, does not
feel this necessity. He writes: "I am by no means satisfied that the rain
was of sand and water." His observations are that drops of this rain left
stains "such as sandy water could not leave." He notes that when the
water evaporated, no sand was left behind.
L'Année Scientifique, 1888-75:
That, Dec. 13, 1887, there fell, in Cochin China, a substance
like blood, somewhat coagulated.
Annales de Chimie, 85-266:
That a thick, viscous, red matter fell at Ulm, in 1812.
We now have a datum with a factor that has been foreshadowed;
which will recur and recur and recur throughout this book. It is a factor that
makes for speculation so revolutionary that it will have to be re-enforced many
times before we can take it into full acceptance.
Year Book of Facts, 1861-273:
Quotation from a letter from Prof. Campini to Prof.
Matteucci:
That, upon Dec. 28, 1860, at about 7 a.m., in the northwestern
part of Siena, a reddish rain feel copiously for two hours.
A second red shower fell at 11 o'clock.
Three days later, the red rain fell again.
The next day another red rain fell.
Still more extraordinarily:
Each fall occurred in "exactly the same quarter of the
town."
CHAPTER: 01,
02, 03,
04, 05,
06, 07,
08, 09,
10, 11,
12, 13,
14, 15,
16, 17,
18, 19,
20, 21,
22, 23,
24, 25,
26, 27,
28
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