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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
I ACCEPT that, when there are storms, the
damdest of excluded,
excommunicated things -- things that are leprous to the faithful -- are brought
down -- from the Super-Sargasso Sea -- or from what for convenience we call the
Super-Sargasso Sea -- which by no means has been taken into full acceptance yet.
That things are brought down by storms, just as, from the
depths of the sea things are brought up by storms. To be sure it is orthodoxy
that storms have little, if any, effect below waves of the ocean -- but -- of
course -- only to have an opinion is to be ignorant of, or to disregard a
contradiction, or something else that modifies an opinion out of
distinguishability.
Symons' Meteorological Magazine,
47-180:
That, along the coast of New Zealand, in regions not subject
to submarine volcanic action, deep-sea fishes are often brought up by storms.
Iron and stones that fall from the sky; and atmospheric
disturbances:
"There is absolutely no connection between the two
phenomena." (Symons.)
The orthodox belief is that objects moving at planetary
velocity would, upon entering this earth's atmosphere, be virtually unaffected
by hurricanes; might as well think of a bullet swerved by someone fanning
himself. The only trouble with the orthodox reasoning is the usual trouble --
its phantom-dominant -- its basing upon a myth -- data we've had, and more we'll have,
of things in the sky having no independent velocity.
There are so many storms and so many meteors and meteorites
that it would be extraordinary if there were no concurrences. Nevertheless so
many of these concurrences are listed by Prof. Baden-Powell (Rept. Brit.
Assoc., 1850-54) that one -- notices.
See Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1860--other instances.
The famous fall of stones at Siena, Italy, 1794 -- "in a
violent storm."
See Greg's Catalogues -- many instances. One that
stands out is -- "bright ball of fire and light in a hurricane in England,
Sept. 2, 1786." The remarkable datum here is that this phenomenon was
visible forty minutes. That's about 800 times the duration that the orthodox
give to meteors and meteorites.
See the Annual Register -- many instances.
In Nature, Oct. 25, 1877, and the London Times,
Oct. 15, 1877, something that fell in a gale on Oct. 14, 1877, is described as a
"huge ball of green fire." This phenomenon is described by another
correspondent, in Nature, 17-10, and an account of it by another
correspondent was forwarded to Nature by W.F. Denning.
There are so many instances that some of us will revolt
against the insistence of the faithful that it is only coincidence, and accept
that there is connection of the kind called causal. If it is too difficult to
think of stones and metallic masses swerved from their courses by storms, if
they move at high velocity, we think of low velocity, or of things having no
velocity at all, hovering a few miles above this earth, dislodged by storms, and
falling luminously.
But the resistance is so great here, and
"coincidence" so insisted upon that we'd better have some more
instances:
Aerolite in a storm at St. Leonards-on-sea, England, Sept. 17,
1885 -- no trace of it found (Annual Register, 1885); meteorite in a
gale, March 1, 1886, described in the Monthly Weather Review, March
1886; meteorite in a thunderstorm, off coast of Greece, Nov. 19, 1899, (Nature,
61-111); fall of a meteorite in a storm, July 7, 1883, near Lachine, Quebec (Monthly
Weather Review, July 1883); same phenomenon noted in Nature,
28-319; meteorite in a whirlwind, Sweden, Sept. 24, 1883, (Nature,
29-15).
London Roy. Soc. Proc., 6-276
A triangular cloud that appeared in a storm, Dec. 17, 1852; a
red nucleus, about half the apparent diameter of the moon, and a long tail;
visible thirteen minutes; explosion of the nucleus.
Nevertheless, in Science Gossip, 6-65, it is said
that, though meteorites have fallen in storms, no connection is supposed to
exist between the two phenomena, except by the ignorant peasantry.
But some of us peasants have gone through the Report of
the British Association, 1852. Upon page 239, Dr. Buist, who had never
heard of the Super-Sargasso Sea, says that, though it is difficult to trace
connection between the phenomena, three aerolites had fallen in five months, in
India, during thunderstorms, in 1851 (may have been 1852). For accounts by
witnesses, see page 229 of the Report.
Or -- we are on our way to account for
"thunderstones."
It seems to me that, very striking here, is borne out the
general acceptance that ours is only an intermediate existence, in which there
is nothing fundamental, or nothing final to take as a positive standard to judge
by.
Peasants believed in meteorites.
Scientists excluded meteorites.
Peasants believe in "thunderstones."
Scientists exclude "thunderstones."
It is useless to argue that peasants are out in the fields,
and that scientists are shut up in laboratories and lecture rooms. We can not
take for a real base that, as to phenomena with which they are more familiar,
peasants are more likely to be right than are scientists: a host of biologic and
meteorologic fallacies of peasants rises against us.
I should say that our "existence" is like a
bridge -- except that that comparison is in static terms -- but like the Brooklyn
Bridge, upon which multitudes of bugs are seeking a fundamental -- coming to a
girder that seems firm and final -- but the girder is built upon supports. A
support then seems final. But it is built upon underlying structures. Nothing
final can be found in all the bridge, because the bridge itself is not a final
thing in itself, but is a relationship between Manhattan and Brooklyn. If our
"existence" is a relationship between the Positive Absolute and the
Negative Absolute, the quest for finality in it is hopeless: everything in it
must be relative, if the "whole" is not a whole, but is, itself, a
relation.
In the attitude of Acceptance, our pseudo-base is:
Cells of an embryo are in the reptilian era of the embryo;
Some cells feel stimuli to take on new appearances.
If it be of the design of the whole that the next era be
mammalian, those cells that turn mammalian will be sustained against resistance,
by inertia, of all the rest, and will be relatively right, though not finally
right, because they, too, in time will have to give way to characters of other
eras of higher development.
If we are upon the verge of a new era, in which Exclusionism
must be overthrown, it will avail thee not to call us base-born and frowsy
peasants.
In our crude, bucolic way, we now offer an outrage upon common
sense that we think will some day be an unquestioned commonplace:
That manufactured objects of stone and iron have fallen from
the sky:
That they have been brought down from a state of suspension,
in a region of inertness to this earth's attraction, by atmospheric
disturbances.
The "thunderstone" is usually "a beautifully
polished, wedge-shaped piece of solid greenstone," says a writer in the Cornhill
Magazine, 50-517. It isn't: it's likely to be of almost any kind of stone,
but we call attention to the skill with which some of them have been made. Of
course this writer says it's all superstition. Otherwise he'd be one of us crude
and simple sons of the soil.
Conventional damnation is that stone implements, already on
the ground -- "on the ground in the first place" -- are found near where
lightning was seen to strike: that are supposed by astonished rustics, or by
intelligence of a low order, to have fallen in or with lightning.
Throughout this book, we class a great deal of science with
bad fiction. When is fiction bad, cheap, low? If coincidence is overworked.
That's one way of deciding. But with single writers coincidence seldom is
overworked: we find the excess in the subject at large. Such a writer as the one
of the Cornhill Magazine tells us vaguely of beliefs of peasants: there
is no massing of instance after instance after instance. Here ours will be the
method of mass-formation.
Conceivably lightning may strike the ground near where there
was a wedge-shaped object in the first place: again and again and again:
lightning striking ground near wedge-shaped object in China; lightning striking
ground near wedge-shaped object in Scotland; lightning striking ground near
wedge-shaped object in Central Africa: coincidence in France; coincidence in
Java; coincidence in South America--
We grant a great deal but note a tendency to restlessness.
Nevertheless this is the psycho-tropism of science to all
"thunderstones" said to have fallen luminously.
As to greenstone, it is in the island of Jamaica, where the
notion is general that axes of a hard greenstone fall from the sky -- "during
the rains." (Jour. Inst. Jamaica, 2-4.) Some other time we shall
inquire into this localization of objects of a specific material. "They are
of a stone nowhere else to be found in Jamaica." (Notes and Queries,
2-8-24.)
In my own tendency to exclude, or in the attitude of one
peasant or savage who thinks he is not to be classed with other peasants or
savages, I am not very much impressed with what natives think. It would be hard
to tell why. If the word of a Lord Kelvin carries no more weight, upon
scientific subjects, than the word of a Sitting Bull, unless it be in agreement
with conventional opinion -- I think it must be because savages have bad table
manners. However, my snobbishness, in this respect, loosens up somewhat before
very widespread belief by savages and peasants. And the notion of
"thunderstones" is as wide as geography itself.
The natives of Burmah, China, Japan, according to Blinkenberg
(Thunder Weapons, p. 100) -- not, of course, that Blinkenberg accepts one
word of it -- think that carved stone objects have fallen from the sky, because
they think they have seen such objects fall from the sky. Such objects are
called "thunderbolts" in these countries. They are called
"thunderstones" in Moravia, Holland, Belgium, France, Cambodia,
Sumatra, and Siberia. They're called "storm stones" in Lausitz;
"sky arrows" in Slavonia; "thunder axes" in England and
Scotland; "lightning stones" in Spain and Portugal; "sky
axes" in Greece; "lightning flashes" in Brazil; "thunder
teeth" in Amboina.
The belief is as widespread as is belief in ghosts and
witches, which only the superstitious deny to-day.
As to beliefs by North American Indians, Tyler gives a list of
references (Primitive Culture, 2-237). As to South American Indians -- "Certain stone hatchets are said to have fallen from the
heavens." (Jour. Amer. Folk Lore, 17-203.)
If you, too, revolt against coincidence after coincidence
after coincidence, but find our interpretation of "thunderstones" just
a little too strong or rich for digestion, we recommend the explanation of one,
Tallius, written in 1649:
"The naturalists say they are generated in the sky by
fulgureous exhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumfixed humor."
Of course the paper in the Cornhill Magazine was
written with no intention of trying really to investigate this subject, but to
deride the notion that worked-stone objects have ever fallen from the sky. A
writer in the Amer. Jour. Sci., 1-21-325, read this paper and thinks it
remarkable "that any man of ordinary reasoning powers should write a paper
to prove that thunderbolts do not exist."
I confess that we're a little flattered by that.
Over and over:
"It is scarcely necessary to suggest to the intelligent
reader that thunderstones are a myth."
We contend that there is a misuse of a word here: we admit
that only we are intelligent upon this subject, if by intelligence is meant the
inquiry of inequilibrium, and that all other intellection is only mechanical
reflex -- of course that intelligence, too, is mechanical, but less orderly and
confined: less obviously mechanical -- that as an acceptance of ours becomes
firmer and firmer-established, we pass from the state of intelligence to
reflexes in ruts. An odd thing is that intelligence is usually supposed to be
creditable. It may be in the sense that it is mental activity trying to find
out, but it is confession of ignorance. The bees, the theologians, the dogmatic
scientists are the intellectual aristocrats. The rest of us are plebians, not
yet graduated to Nirvana, or to the instinctive and suave as differentiated from
the intelligent and crude.
Blinkenberg gives many instances of the superstition of
"thunderstones" which flourishes only where mentality is in a
lamentable state -- or universally. In Malacca, Sumatra, and Java, natives say
that stone axes have often been found under trees that have been struck by
lightning. Blinkenberg does not dispute this, but says it is coincidence: that
the axes were of course upon the ground in the first place: that the natives
jumped to the conclusion that these carved stones had fallen in or with
lightning. In Central Africa, it is said that often have wedge-shaped, highly
polished objects of stone, described as "axes," been found sticking in
trees that have been struck by lightning--or by what seemed to be lightning. The
natives, rather like the unscientific persons of Memphis, Tenn., when they saw
snakes after a storm, jumped to the conclusion that the "axes" had not
always been sticking in the trees. Livingstone (Last Journals, pages
83, 89, 442, 448) says that he has never heard of stone implements used by
natives of Africa. A writer in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution,
1877-308, says that there are a few.
That they are said, by the natives, to have fallen in
thunderstorms.
As to luminosity, it is my lamentable acceptance that bodies
falling through this earth's atmosphere, if not warmed even, often fall with a
brilliant light, looking like flashes of lightning. This matter seems important:
we'll take it up later, with data.
In Prussia, two stone axes were found in the trunks of trees,
one under the bark. (Blinkenberg, Thunder Weapons, p. 100).
The finders jumped to the conclusion that the axes had fallen
there.
Another stone ax -- or wedge-shaped object of worked
stone -- said
to have been found in a tree that had been struck by something that looked like
lightning. (Thunder Weapons, p. 71.)
The finder jumped to the conclusion.
Story told by Blinkenberg of a woman, who lived near
Kulsbjaergene, Sweden, who found a flint near an old willow -- "near her
house." I emphasize "near her house" because that means familiar
ground. The willow had been split by something.
She jumped.
Cow killed by lightning, or by what looked like lightning,
(Isle of Sark, near Guernsey). The peasant who owned the cow dug up the ground
at the spot and found a small greenstone "ax." Blinkenberg says that
he jumped to the conclusion that it was this object that had fallen luminously,
killing the cow.
Reliquary, 1867-207:
A flint ax found by a farmer, after a severe storm --
described
as a "fearful storm" -- by a signal staff, which had been split by
something. I should say that nearness to a signal staff may be considered
familiar ground.
Whether he jumped, or arrived at the conclusion by a more
leisurely process, the farmer thought that the flint object had fallen in the
storm.
In this instance we have a lamentable scientist with us. It's
impossible to have positive difference between orthodoxy and heresy: somewhere
there must be a merging into each other, or an overlapping. Nevertheless, upon
such a subject as this, it does seem a little shocking. In most important works
upon meteorites, the peculiar, sulphurous odor of things that fall from the sky
is mentioned. Sir John Evans ("Stone Implements," p. 57) says -- with
extraordinary reasoning powers, if he could never have thought such a thing with
ordinary reasoning powers -- that this flint object "proved to have been the
bolt, by its peculiar smell when broken."
If it did so prove to be, that settles the whole subject. If
we prove that only one object of worked stone has fallen from the sky, all
piling up of further reports is unnecessary. However, we have already taken the
stand that nothing settles anything; that the disputes of ancient Greece are no
nearer solution now than they were several thousand years ago -- all because, in a
positive sense, there is nothing to prove or solve or settle. Our object is to
be more nearly real than our opponents. Wideness is an aspect of the Universal.
We go on widely. According to us the fat man is nearer godliness than is the
thin man. Eat, drink, and approximate to the Positive Absolute. Beware of
negativeness, by which we mean indigestion.
The vast majority of "thunderstones" are described
as "axes," but Meunier (La Nature, 1892-2-381) tells of one
that was in his possession; said to have fallen at Ghardia, Algeria, contrasting
"profoundment" (pear-shaped) with the angular outlines of ordinary
meteorites. The conventional explanation that it had been formed as a drop of
molten matter from a larger body seems reasonable to me; but with less
agreeableness I note its fall in a thunderstorm, the datum that turns the
orthodox meteorologist pale with rage, or induces a slight elevation of his
eyebrows, if you mention it to him.
Meunier tells of another "thunderstone" said to have
fallen in North Africa. Meunier, too, is a little lamentable here: he quotes a
soldier of experience that such objects fall most frequently in the deserts of
Africa.
Rather miscellaneous now:
"Thunderstone" said to have fallen in London, April,
1876: weight about 8 pounds: no particulars as to shape (Timb's Year Book,
1877-246).
"Thunderbolt" said to have fallen at Cardiff, Sept.
26, 1916, (London Times, Sept. 28, 1916). According to Nature,
98-95, it was coincidence; only a lightning flash had been seen.
Stone that fell in a storm, near St. Albans, England: accepted
at the Museum of St. Albans; said, at the British Museum, not to be of
"true meteoritic material." (Nature, 80-34.)
London Times, April 26, 1876:
That, April 20, 1876, near Wolverhampton, fell a mass of
meteoritic iron during a heavy fall of rain. An account of this phenomenon in Nature,
14-272, by H.S. Maskelyne, who accepts it as authentic. Also, see Nature,
13-531.
For three other instances, see the Scientific American,
47-194; 52-83; 68-325.
As to wedge-shaped larger than could very well be called an
"ax":
Nature, 30-300:
That, May 27, 1884, at Tysnas, Norway, a meteorite had fallen:
that the turf was torn up at the spot where the object had been supposed to have
fallen; that two days later "a very peculiar stone" was found near by.
The description is -- "in shape and size very like the fourth part of a large
Stilton cheese."
Description of the thunderstones of Burmah (Proc. Asiatic
Soc. of Bengal, 1869-183): said to be a kind of stone unlike any other
found in Burmah; called "thunderbolts" by the natives. I think there's
a good deal of meaning in such expressions as "unlike any other found in
Burmah" -- but that if they said anything more definite, there would have
been unpleasant consequences to writers in the 19th century.
More about the thunderstones of Burmah, in the Proc. Soc.
Antiq. of London, 2-3-97. One of them, described as an "adze,"
was exhibited by Captain Duff, who wrote that there was no stone like it in the
neighborhood.
Of course it may not be very convincing to say that because a
stone is unlike neighboring stones it had foreign origin -- also we fear it is a
kind of plagiarism: we got it from the geologists, who demonstrate by this
reasoning the foreign origin of erratics. We fear we're a little gross and
scientific at times.
But it's my acceptance that a great deal of scientific
literature must be read between the lines. It's not everyone who has the
lamentableness of a Sir John Evans. Just as a great deal of Voltaire's meaning
was inter-linear, we suspect that a Captain Duff merely hints rather than to
risk having a Prof. Lawrence Smith fly at him and call him "a half-insane
man." Whatever Captain Duff's meaning may have been, and whether he smiled
like a Voltaire when he wrote it, Captain Duff writes of "the extremely
soft nature of the stone, rendering it equally useless as an offensive or
defensive weapon."
Story, by a correspondent, in Nature, 34-53, of a
Malay, of "considerable social standing" -- and one thing about our data
is that, damned though they be, they do so often bring us into awful good
company -- who knew of a tree that had been struck, about a month before, by
something in a thunderstorm. He searched among the roots of this tree and found
a "thunderstone." Not said whether [104/105] he jumped or leaped to
the conclusion that it had fallen: process likely to be more leisurely in
tropical countries. Also I'm afraid his way of reasoning was not very original:
just so were fragments of the Bath-furnace meteorite, accepted by orthodoxy,
discovered.
We shall now have an unusual experience. We shall read of some
reports of extraordinary circumstances that were investigated by a man of
science -- not, of course that they were really investigated by him, but that his
phenomena occupied a position approximating higher to real investigation than to
utter neglect. Over and over we read of extraordinary occurrences -- no
discussion; not even a comment afterward findable; mere mention occasionally --
burial and damnation.
The extraordinary and how quickly it is hidden away.
Burial and damnation, or the obscurity of the conspicuous.
We did read of a man who, in the matter of snails, did travel
some distance to assure himself of something that he had suspected in advance;
and we remember Prof. Hitchcock, who had only to smite Amherst with the wand of
his botanical knowledge, and lo! two fungi sprang up before night; and we did
read of Dr. Gray and his thousands of fishes from one pailful of water -- but
these instances stand out; more frequently there was no
"investigation." We now have a good many reported occurrences that
were "investigated." Of things said to have fallen from the sky, we
make, in the usual scientific way, two divisions: miscellaneous objects and
substances, and symmetric objects attributable to beings like human beings,
sub-dividing into -- wedges, spheres, and disks.
Jour. Royal Met. Soc., 14-207:
That, July 2, 1866, a correspondent to a London newspaper,
wrote that something had fallen from the sky, during a thunderstorm of June 30,
1866, at Notting Hill. Mr. G.T. Symons, of Symons' Meteorological Magazine,
investigated, about as fairly, and with about as unprejudiced a mind, as
anything ever has been investigated.
He says that the object was nothing but a lump of coal: that,
next door to the home of the correspondent coal had been unloaded the day
before. With the uncanny wisdom of the stranger upon unfamiliar ground that we
have noted before, Mr. Symons saw that the coal reported to have fallen from the
sky, and the coal unloaded more prosaically the day before, were identical.
Persons in the neighborhood, unable to make this simple identification, had
bought from the correspondent pieces of the object reported to have fallen from
the sky. As to credulity, I know of no limits for it -- but when it comes to
paying our money for credulity -- oh, no standards to judge by, of course --
just
the same--
The trouble with efficiency is that it will merge away into
excess. With what seems to me to be super-abundance of convincingness, Mr.
Symons then lugs another character into his little comedy:
That it was all a hoax by a chemist's pupil, who had filled a
capsule with an explosive, and "during the height of the storm had thrown
the burning mass into the gutter, so making an artificial thunderbolt."
Or even Shakespeare, with all his inartistry, did not lug in
King Lear to make Hamlet complete.
Whether I'm lugging in something that has no special meaning,
myself, or not, I find that this storm of June 30, 1866, was peculiar. It is
described in the London Times, July 2, 1866: that "during the
storm, the sky, in many places remained partially clear while hail and rain were
falling." That may have more meaning when we take up the possible
extra-mundane origin of some hailstones, especially if they fall from a
cloudless sky. Mere suggestion, not worth much, that there have been falls of
extra-mundane substances, in London, June 30, 1866.
Clinkers, said to have fallen, during a storm, at Kilburn,
July 5, 1877:
According to the Kilburn Times, July 7, 1877, quoted
by Mr. Symons, a street had been "literally strewn," during the storm,
with a mass of clinkers, estimated at about two bushels: sizes from that of a
walnut to that of a man's hand -- "Pieces of the clinker can be seen at the
Kilburn Times office."
If these clinkers, or cinders, were refuse from one of the
super-mercantile constructions from which coke and coal and ashes occasionally
fall to this earth, or, rather, to the Super-Sargasso Sea, from which
dislodgment by tempests occurs, it is intermediatistic to accept that they must
merge away somewhere with local phenomena of the scene of precipitation. If a
red-hot stove should drop from a cloud into Broadway, some one would find that
at about the time of the occurrence, a moving van had passed, and that the
moving men had tired of the stove, or something -- that it had not been really
red-hot, but had been rouged instead of blacked, by some absent-minded
housekeeper. Compared with some of the scientific explanations that we have
encountered, there's considerable restraint, I think, in that one.
Mr. Symons learned that in the same street -- he emphasizes that
it was a short street -- there was a fire-engine station. I had such an impression
of him hustling and bustling around at Notting Hill, searching cellars until he
found one with newly arrived coal in it; ringing door bells, exciting a whole
neighborhood, calling up to second-story windows, stopping people in the
streets, hotter and hotter on the trail of a wretched imposter of a chemist's
pupil. After his efficiency at Notting Hill, we'd expect to hear that he went to
the station, and -- something like this:
"It is said that clinkers fell, in your street, at about
ten minutes past four o'clock, afternoon of July fifth. Will you look over your
records and tell me where your engine was at about ten minutes past four, July
fifth?"
Mr. Symons says:
"I think that most probably they had been raked out of
the steam fire-engine."
June 20, 1880, it was reported that a "thunderbolt"
had struck the house at 180 Oakley Street, Chelsea, falling down the chimney,
into the kitchen grate.
Mr. Symons investigated.
He describes the "thunderbolt" as an
"agglomeration of brick, soot, unburnt coal and cinder."
He says that, in his opinion, lightning had flashed down the
chimney, and had fused some of the brick of it.
He does not think it remarkable that the lightning did not
then scatter the contents of the grate, which were disturbed only as if a heavy
body had fallen. If we admit that climbing up the chimney to find out, is too
rigorous a requirement for a man who may have been large, dignified and subject
to expansions, the only unreasonableness we find in what he says -- as judged by
our more modern outlook, is:
"I suppose that no one would suggest that bricks are
manufactured in the atmosphere."
Sounds a little unreasonable to us, because it is so of the
positivistic spirit of former times, when it was not so obvious that the highest
incredibility and laughability must merge away with the "proper" -- as
the Sci. Am. Sup. would say. The preposterous is always interpretable
in terms of the "proper," with which it must be continuous -- or --
clay-like masses such as have fallen from the sky -- tremendous
heat generated by their velocity -- they bake -- bricks.
We begin to suspect that Mr. Symons exhausted himself at
Notting Hill. It's a warning to efficiency-fanatics.
Then the instance of three lumps of earthy matter, found upon
a well-frequented path, after a thunderstorm, at Reading, July 3, 1883. There
are so many records of the fall of earthy matter from the sky that it would seem
almost uncanny to find resistance here, were we not so accustomed to the
uncompromising stands of orthodoxy -- which, in our metaphysics, represent good,
as attempts, but evil in their insufficiency. If I thought it necessary, I'd
list one hundred and fifty instances of earthy matter said to have fallen from
the sky. It is his antagonism to atmospheric disturbance associated with the
fall of things from the sky that blinds and hypnotizes a Mr. Symons here. This
especial Mr. Symons rejects the Reading substance because it was not "of
true meteoritic material." It's uncanny -- or it's not uncanny at all, but
universal -- if you don't take something for a standard of opinion, you can't have
any opinion at all: but, if you do take a standard, in some of its applications
it must be preposterous. The carbonaceous meteorites, which are unquestioned --
though avoided, as we have seen -- by orthodoxy, are more glaringly
of untrue meteoritic material than was this substance of Reading. Mr. Symons
says that these three lumps were upon the ground "in the first place."
Whether these data are worth preserving or not, I think that
the appeal that this especial Mr. Symons makes is worthy of a place in the
museum we're writing. He argues against belief in all external origins "for
our credit as Englishmen." He is a patriot, but I think that these
foreigners had a small chance "in the first place" for hospitality
from him.
Then comes a "small lump of iron (two inches in
diameter)" said to have fallen, during a thunderstorm, at Brixton, Aug. 17,
1887. Mr. Symons says: "At present I can not trace it."
He was at his best at Notting Hill: there's been a marked
falling off in his later manner:
In the London Times, Feb. 1, 1888, it is said that a
roundish object of iron had been found, "after the violent
thunderstorm," in a garden at Brixton, Aug. 17, 1887. It was analyzed by a
chemist, who could not identify it as true meteoritic material. Whether a
product of workmanship like human workmanship or not, this object is described
as an oblate spheroid, about two inches across its major diameter. The chemist's
name and address are given: Mr. J. James Morgan: Ebbw Vale.
Garden -- familiar ground -- I suppose that in Mr. Symons' opinion
this symmetric object had been upon the ground "in the first place,"
though he neglects to say this. But we do note that he described this object as
a "lump," which does not suggest the spheroidal or symmetric. It is
our notion that the word "lump" was, because of its meaning of
amorphousness, used purposely to have the next datum stand alone, remote,
without similars. If Mr. Symons had said that there had been a report of another
round object that had fallen from the sky, his readers would be attracted by an
agreement. He distracts his readers by describing in terms of the
unprecedented--
"Iron cannon ball."
It was found in a manure heap, in Sussex, after a
thunderstorm.
However, Mr. Symons argues pretty reasonably, it seems to me,
that, given a cannon ball in a manure heap, in the first place, lightning might
be attracted by it, and, if seen to strike there, the untutored mind, or
mentality below the average, would leap or jump, or proceed with less celerity,
to the conclusion that the iron object had fallen.
Except that -- if every farmer isn't upon very familiar
ground -- or if every farmer doesn't know his own manure heap as well as Mr.
Symons knew his writing desk--
Then comes the instance of a man, his wife, and his three
daughters, at Casterton, Westmoreland, who were looking out at their lawn,
during a thunderstorm, when they "considered," as Mr. Symons expresses
it, that they saw a stone fall from the sky, kill a sheep, and bury itself in
the ground.
They dug.
They found a stone ball.
Symons:
Coincidence. It had been there in the first place.
This object was exhibited at a meeting of the Royal
Meteorological Society by Mr. C. Carus-Wilson. It is described in the Journal's
list of exhibits as a "sandstone" ball. It is described as
"sandstone" by Mr. Symons.
Now a round piece of sandstone may be almost anywhere in the
ground -- in the first place -- but, by our more or less discreditable habit of
prying and snooping, we find that this object was rather more complex and of
material less commonplace. In snooping through Knowledge, October 9,
1885, we read that this "thunder-stone" was in the possession of Mr.
C. Carus-Wilson, who tells the story of the witness and his family -- the sheep
killed, the burial of something in the earth, the digging, and the finding. Mr.
C. Carus-Wilson describes the object as a ball of hard, ferruginous quartzite,
about the size of a cocoanut, weight about twelve pounds. Whether we're feeling
around for significance or not, there is a suggestion not only of symmetry but
of structure in this object: it had an external shell, separated from a loose
nucleus. Mr. Carus-Wilson attributes this cleavage to unequal cooling of the
mass.
My own notion is that there is very little deliberate
misrepresentation in the writings of scientific men: that they are quite as
guiltless in intent as are other hypnotic subjects. Such a victim of induced
belief reads of a stone ball said to have fallen from the sky. Mechanically in
his mind arise impressions of globular lumps, or nodules, of sandstone, which
are common almost everywhere. He assimilates the reported fall with his
impressions of objects in the ground, in the first place. To an intermediatist,
the phenomena of intellection are only phenomena of universal process localized
in human minds. The process called "explanation" is only a local
aspect of universal assimilation. It looks like materialism: but the
intermediatist holds that interpretation of the immaterial, as it is called, in
terms of the material, as it is called, is no more rational than interpretation
of the "material" in terms of the "immaterial": that there
is a quasi-existence neither the material nor the immaterial, but approximations
one way or the other. But so hypnotic quasi-reasons: that globular lumps of
sandstone are common. Whether he jumps or leaps, or whether only the frowsy and
baseborn are so athletic, his is the impression, by assimilation, that this
especial object is a ball of sandstone. Or human mentality: its inhabitants are
conveniences. It may be that Mr. Symons' paper was written before this object
was exhibited to the members of the Society, and with the charity with which,
for the sake of diversity, we intersperse our malices, we are willing to accept
that he "investigated" something that he has never seen. But whoever
listed this object was uncareful: it is listed as "sandstone."
We're making excuses for them.
Really -- as it were -- you know, we're not quite so damned as we
were.
One does not apologize for the gods and at the same time feel
quite utterly prostrate before them.
If this were a real existence, and all of us real persons,
with real standards to judge by, I'm afraid we'd have to be a little severe with
some of these Mr. Symonses. As it is, of course, seriousness seems out of place.
We note an amusing little touch in the indefinite allusion to
"a man," who with his un-named family, had "considered" that
he had seen a stone fall. The "man" was the Rev. W. Carus-Wilson, who
was well-known in his day.
The next instance was reported by W.B. Tripp, F.R.M.S.
-- that,
during a thunderstorm, a farmer had seen the ground in front of him plowed up by
something that was luminous.
Dug.
Bronze ax.
My own notion is that an expedition to the north pole could
not be so urgent as that representative scientists should have gone to that
farmer and there spent a summer studying this one reported occurrence. As it is
-- un-named farmer -- somewhere -- no date. The thing must stay damned.
Another specimen for our museum is a comment in Nature,
upon these objects: that they are "of an amusing character, thus clearly
showing that they were of terrestrial, and not a celestial, character."
Just why celestiality, or that of it which, too, is only of Intermediateness
should not be quite as amusing as terrestriality is beyond our reasoning powers,
which we have agreed are not ordinary. Of course there is nothing amusing about
wedges and spheres at all -- or Archimedes and Euclid are humorists. It is that
they were described derisively. If you'd like a little specimen of the
standardization of orthodox opinion--
Amer. Met. Jour., 4-589:
"They are of an amusing character, thus clearly showing
that they were of a terrestrial and not a celestial character."
I'm sure -- not positively, of course -- that we've tried to be as
easy-going and lenient with Mr. Symons as his obviously scientific performance
would permit. Of course it may be that sub-consciously we were prejudiced
against him, instinctively classing him with St. Augustine, Darwin, St. Jerome,
and Lyell. As to the "thunderstones," I think that he investigated
them mostly "for the credit of Englishmen," or in the spirit of the
Royal Krakatoa Committee, or about as the commission from the French Academy
investigated meteorites. According to a writer in Knowledge, 5-418, the
Krakatoa Committee attempted not in the least to prove what had caused the
atmospheric effects of 1883, but to prove -- that Krakatoa did it.
Altogether I should think that the following quotation should
be enlightening to any one who still thinks that these occurrences were
investigated not to support an opinion formed in advance:
In opening his paper, Mr. Symons says that he undertook his
investigation as to the existence of "thunderstones," or
"thunderbolts" as he calls them -- "feeling certain that there was
a weak point somewhere, inasmuch as 'thunderbolts' have no existence."
We have another instance of the reported fall of a
"cannon ball." It occurred prior to Mr. Symons' investigations, but is
not mentioned by him. It was investigated, however. In the Proc. Roy. Soc.
Edin., 3-147, is the report of a "thunderstone," "supposed
to have fallen in Hampshire, Sept., 1852." It was an iron cannon ball, or
it was a "large nodule of iron pyrites or bisulphuret of iron." No one
had seen it fall. It had been noticed, upon a garden path, for the first time,
after a thunderstorm. It was only a "supposed" thing, because -- "The mineral had not the characters of any known meteorite."
In the London Times, Sept. 16, 1852, appears a letter
from Mr. George E. Bailey, a chemist of Andover, Hants. He says that, in a very
heavy thunderstorm, of the first week of September, 1852, this iron object had
fallen in the garden of Mr. Robert Dowling, of Andover; that it had fallen upon
a path "within six yards of the house." It had been picked up
"immediately" after the storm by Mrs. Dowling. It was about the size
of a cricket ball: weight four pounds. No one had seen it fall. In the Times,
Sept. 15, there is an account of this thunderstorm, which was of unusual
violence.
There are some other data relative to the ball of quartz of
Westmoreland. They're poor things. There's so little to them that they look like
ghosts of the damned. However, ghosts, when multiplied, take on what is called
substantiality -- if the solidest thing conceivable, in quasi-existence, is only
concentrated phantomosity. It is not only that there have been other reports of
quartz that has fallen from the sky; there is another agreement. The round
quartz object of Westmoreland, if broken open and separated from its loose
nucleus, would be a round, hollow, quartz object. My pseudo-position is that two
reports of similar extraordinary occurrences, one from England and one from
Canada -- are interesting.
Proc. Canadian Institute, 3-7-8:
That, at the meeting of the Institute, of Dec. 1, 1888, one of
the members, Mr. J.A. Livingston, exhibited a globular quartz body which he
asserted had fallen from the sky. It had been split open. It was hollow.
But the other members of the Institute decided that the object
was spurious, because it was not of "true meteoritic material."
No date; no place mentioned; we note the suggestion that it
was only a geode, which had been upon the ground in the first place. Its
crystalline lining was geode-like.
Quartz is upon the "index prohibitory" of Science. A
monk who would read Darwin would sin no more than would a scientist who would
admit that, except by "up and down" process, quartz has ever fallen
from the sky -- but Continuity: it is not excommunicated if part of or
incorporated in a baptized meteorite -- St. Catherine's of Mexico, I think. It's
as epicurean a distinction as any ever made by theologians. Fassig lists a
quartz pebble, found in a hailstone (Bibliography, part 2-355).
"Up and down," of course. Another object of quartzite was reported to
have fallen, in the autumn of 1880, at Schroon Lake, N. Y. -- said in the Scientific
American, 43-272, to be a fraud -- it was not -- the usual About the first of
May, 1899, the newspapers published a story of a "snow-white"
meteorite that had fallen, at Vincennes, Indiana. The Editor of the Monthly
Weather Review ("M. W. R." April, 1899) requested a local
observer, at Vincennes, to investigate. The Editor says that the thing was only
a fragment of a quartz bowlder. He says that any one with at least a public
school education should know better than to write that quartz has ever fallen
from the sky.
Note and Queries, 2-8-92:
That, in the Leyden Museum of Antiquities, there is a disk of
quartz: 6 centimeters by 5 millimeters by about 5 centimeters; said to have
fallen upon a plantation in the Dutch West Indies, after a meteoric explosion.
Bricks.
I think this is a vice we're writing. I recommend it to those
who have hankered for a new sin. At first some of our data were of so frightful
or ridiculous mien, as to be hated, or eyebrowed, was only to be seen. Then some
pity crept in? I think that we can now embrace bricks.
The baked-clay-idea was all right in its place, but it rather
lacks distinction, I think. With our minds upon the concrete boats that have
been building terrestrially lately, and thinking of wrecks that may occur to
some of them, and of a new material for the deep-sea fishes to disregard--
Object fell at Richland, South Carolina -- yellow to
gray -- said
to look like a piece of brick (Amer. Jour. Sci., 2-34-298).
Pieces of "furnace-made" brick" said to have
fallen -- in a hailstorm -- at Padua, Aug. 26, 1834 (Edin. New Phil. Jour.,
19-87). The writer offered an explanation that started another convention: that
the fragments of brick had been knocked from buildings by the hailstones. But
there is here a concomitant that will be disagreeable to anyone who may have
been inclined to smile at the now digestible-enough notion that furnace-made
bricks have fallen from the sky. It is that in some of the hailstones -- two per
cent of them -- that were found with the pieces of brick, was a light grayish
powder.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
337-365:
Padre Sechi explains that a stone said to have fallen, in a
thunderstorm, at Supino, Italy, Sept. 4, 1875, had been knocked from a roof.
Nature, 33-153:
That it had been reported that a good-sized stone, of form
clearly artificial, had fallen at Naples, Nov., 1885. The stone was described by
one of two professors at Naples, who had accepted it as inexplicable but
veritable. They were visited by Dr. H. Johnstone-Lavis, the correspondent to Nature,
whose investigations had convinced him that the object was a "shoemaker's
lapstone."
Now to us of the initiated, or to us of the wider outlook,
there is nothing incredible in the thought of shoemakers in other worlds -- but I
suspect that this characterization is tactical.
This object of worked stone, or this shoemaker's lapstone, was
made of Vesuvian lava, Dr. Johnstone-Lavis thinks: most probably of lava of the
flow of 1631, from the La Scala quarries. We condemn "most probably"
as bad positivism. As to the "men of position," who had accepted that
this thing had fallen from the sky -- "I have now obliged them to admit their
mistake," says Dr. Johnstone-Lavis -- or it's always the stranger in Naples
who knows La Scala lava better than the natives know it.
Explanation:
That the thing had been knocked from, or thrown from, a roof.
As to attempt to trace the occurrence to any special
roof -- nothing said upon that subject. Or that Dr. Johnstone-Lavis called a
carved stone a "lapstone," quite as Mr. Symons called a spherical
object a "cannon ball": bent upon a discrediting incongruity:
Shoemaking and celestiality.
It is so easy to say that axes, or wedge-shaped stones found
on the ground, were there in the first place, and that it is only coincidence
that lightning should strike near one -- but the credibility of coincidences
decreases as the square root of their volume, I think. Our massed instances
speak too much of coincidences of coincidences. But the axes, or wedge-shaped
objects that have been found in trees are more difficult for orthodoxy. For
instance, Arago accepts that such finds have occurred, but he argues that, if
wedge-shaped stones have been found in tree trunks, so have toads been found in
tree trunks -- did the toads fall there?
Not at all bad for a hypnotic.
Of course, in our acceptance, the Irish are the Chosen People.
It's because they are characteristically best in accord with the underlying
essence of quasi-existence. M. Arago answers a question by asking another
question. That's the only way a question can be answered in our Hibernian kind
of existence.
Dr. Bodding argued with the natives of the Santal Parganas,
India, who said that cut and shaped stones had fallen from the sky, some of them
lodging in tree trunks. Dr. Bodding, with orthodox notions of velocity of
falling bodies, having missed, I suppose, some of the notes I have upon large
hailstones, which, for size, have fallen with astonishingly low velocity, argued
that anything falling from the sky would be "smashed to atoms." He
accepts that objects of worked stone have been found in tree trunks, but he
explains:
That the Santals often steal trees, but do not chop them down
in the usual way, because that would be to make too much noise: they insert
stone wedges, and hammer them instead; then, if they should get caught, wedges
would not be the evidence against them that axes would be.
Or that a scientific man can't be desperate and reasonable
too.
Or that a pickpocket, for instance, is safe, though caught
with his hand in one's pocket, if he's gloved, say: because no court in the land
would regard a gloved hand in the same way in which a bare hand would be
regarded.
That there's nothing but intermediateness to the rational and
the preposterous: that this status of our own ratiocination is perceptible
wherein they are upon the unfamiliar.
Dr. Bodding collected 50 of these shaped stones, said to have
fallen from the sky, in the course of many years. He says that the Santals are a
highly developed race, and for ages have not used stone implements -- except in
this one nefarious convenience to him.
All explanations are localizations. They fade away before the
universal. It is difficult to express that black rains in England do not
originate in the smoke of factories -- less difficult to express that black rains
in South Africa do not. We utter little stress upon the absurdity of Dr.
Bodding's explanation, because, if anything's absurd everything's absurd, or,
rather, has in it some degree or aspect of absurdity, and we've never had
experience with any state except something somewhere between ultimate absurdity
and final reasonableness. Our acceptance is that Dr. Bodding's elaborate
explanation does not apply to cut-stone objects found in tree trunks in other
lands: we accept that for the general, a local explanation is inadequate.
As to "thunderstones" not said to have fallen
luminously, and not said to have been found sticking in trees, we are told by
faithful hypnotics that astonished rustics come upon prehistoric axes that have
been washed into sight by rains, and jump to the conclusion that the things have
fallen from the sky. But simple rustics come upon many prehistoric things:
scrapers, pottery, knives, hammers. We have no record of rusticity coming upon
old pottery after a rain, reporting the fall of a bowl from the sky.
Just now, my own acceptance is that wedge-shaped stone
objects, formed by means similar to human workmanship, have often fallen from
the sky. Maybe there are messages upon them. My acceptance is that they have
been called "axes" to discredit them: or the more familiar a term, the
higher the incongruity with vague concepts of the vast, remote, tremendous,
unknown.
In Notes and Queries, 2-8-92, a writer says that he
had a "thunderstone," which he had brought from Jamaica. The
description is of a wedge-shaped object; not of an ax:
"It shows no mark of having been attached to a
handle."
Of ten "thunderstones," figured upon different pages
in Blinkenberg's book, nine show no sign of ever having been attached to a
handle: one is perforated.
But in a report by Dr. C. Leemans, Director of the Leyden
Museum of Antiquities, objects, said by the Javanese to have fallen from the
sky, are alluded to throughout as "wedges." In the Archaeologic
Journal, 11-118, in a paper upon the "thunderstones" of Java, the
objects are called "wedges" and not "axes."
Our notion is that rustics and savages call wedge-shaped
objects that fall from the sky, "axes": that scientific men, when it
suits their purposes, can resist temptations to prolixity and pedantry, and
adopt the simple: that they can be intelligible when derisive.
All of which lands us in a confusion, worse, I think, than we
were in before we so satisfactorily emerged from the distresses of -- butter and
blood and ink and paper and punk and silk. Now it's cannon balls and axes and
disks -- if a "lapstone" be a disk -- it's a flat stone, at any rate.
A great many scientists are good impressionists: they snub the
impertinences of details. Had he been of a coarse, grubbing nature, I think Dr.
Bodding could never have so simply and beautifully explained the occurrence of
stone wedges in tree trunks. But to a realist, the story would be something like
this:
A man who needed a tree, in a land of jungles, where, for some
unknown reason, every one's selfish with his trees, conceives that hammering
stone wedges makes less noise than does the chopping of wood: he and his
descendants, in a course of many years, cut down trees with wedges, and escape
penalty, because it never occurs to a prosecutor that the head of an ax is a
wedge.
The story is like every other attempted positivism --
beautiful
and complete, until we see what it excludes or disregards; whereupon it becomes
the ugly and incomplete -- but not absolutely, because there is probably something
of what is called foundation for it. Perhaps a mentally incomplete Santal did
once do something of the kind. Story told to Dr. Bodding: in the usual
scientific way, he makes a dogma of an aberration.
Or we did have to utter a little stress upon this matter,
after all. They're so hairy and attractive, these scientists of the 19th
century. We feel the zeal of a Sitting Bull when we think of their scalps. We
shall have to have an expression of our own upon this confusing subject. We have
expressions: we don't call them explanations: we've discarded explanations with
beliefs. Though every one who scalps is, in the oneness of allness, himself
likely to be scalped, there is such a discourtesy to an enemy as the wearing of
wigs.
Cannon balls and wedges, and what may they mean?
Bombardments of this earth--
Attempts to communicate--
Or visitors to this earth, long ago -- explorers from the
moon -- taking back with them, as curiosities, perhaps, implements of this earth's
prehistoric inhabitants -- a wreck -- a cargo of such things held for ages in
suspension in the Super-Sargasso Sea -- falling, or shaken, down occasionally by
storms--
But, by the preponderance of description, we can not accept
that "thunderstones" ever were attached to handles, or are prehistoric
axes--
As to attempts to communicate with this earth, by means of
wedge-shaped objects especially adapted to the penetration of vast, gelatinous
areas spread around this earth--
In the Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., 9-337, there is an
account of a stone wedge that fell from the sky, near Cashel, Co. Tipperary,
Aug. 2, 1865. The phenomenon is not questioned, but the orthodox preference is
to call it, not ax-like, nor wedge-shaped, but "pyramidal." For data
of other pyramidal stones said to have fallen from the sky, see Rept. Brit.
Assoc., 1861-34. One fell at Segowolee, India, March 6, 1853. Of the object
that fell at Cashel, Dr. Haughton says in the Proceedings: "A
singular feature is observable in this stone that I have never yet seen in any
other:-- the rounded edges of the pyramid are sharply marked by lines on the
black crust, as perfect as if made by a ruler." Dr. Haughton's idea is that
the marks may have been made by "some peculiar tension in the
cooling." It must have been very peculiar, if in all aerolites not
wedge-shaped, no such phenomenon had ever been observed. It merges away with one
or two instances known, after Dr. Haughton's time, of seeming stratification in
meteorites. Stratification in meteorites, however, is denied by the faithful.
I begin to suspect something else.
A whopper is coming.
Later it will be as reasonable, by familiarity, as anything
else ever said.
If someone should study the stone of Cashel, as Champollion
studied the Rosetta stone, he might -- or, rather, would inevitably -- find meaning
in those lines, and translate them into English--
Nevertheless I begin to suspect something else: something more
subtle and esoteric than graven characters upon stones that have fallen from the
sky, in attempts to communicate. The notion that other worlds are attempting to
communicate with this world is widespread: my own notion is that it is not
attempt at all -- that it was achievement centuries ago.
I should like to send out a report that a
"thunderstone" had fallen, say, somewhere in New Hampshire--
And keep track of every person who came to examine that
stone -- trace down his affiliations -- keep track of him--
Then send out a report that a "thunderstone" had
fallen at Stockholm, say--
Would one of the persons who had gone to New Hampshire, be met
again in Stockholm? But -- what if he had no anthropological, lapidarian, or
meteorological affiliations -- but did belong to a secret society--
It is only a dawning credulity.
Of the three forms of symmetric objects that have, or haven't,
fallen from the sky, it seems to me that the disk is the most striking. So far,
in this respect, we have been at our worst -- possibly that's pretty bad -- but
"lapstones" are likely to be of considerable variety of form, and
something that is said to have fallen at sometime somewhere in the Dutch West
Indies is profoundly of the unchosen.
Now we shall have something that is high up in the castes of
the accursed:
Comptes Rendus, 1887-182:
That, upon June 20, 1887, in a "violent storm"
-- two
months before the reported fall of the symmetric iron object of Brixton -- a small
stone had fallen from the sky at Tarbes, France: 13 millimeters in diameter; 5
millimeters thick; weight 2 grammes. Reported to the French Academy by M. Sudre,
professor of the Normal School, Tarbes.
This time the old convenience "there in the first
place" is too greatly resisted -- the stone was covered with ice.
This object had been cut and shaped by means similar to human
hands and human mentality. It was a disk of worked stone -- "tres
regulier." "Il a été assurement travaillé."
There's not a word as to any known whirlwind anywhere: nothing
of other objects or débris that fell at or near this date, in France. The thing
had fallen alone. But as mechanically as any part of a machine responds to its
stimulus, the explanation appears in Comptes Rendus, that this stone
had been raised by a whirlwind and then flung down.
It may be that in the whole nineteenth century no event more
important than this occurred. In La Nature, 1887, and in L'Année
Scientifique, 1887, this occurrence is noted. It is mentioned in one of the
summer numbers of Nature, 1887. Fassig lists a paper upon it in the Annuaire
de Soc. Met., 1887.
Not a word of discussion.
Not a subsequent mention can I find.
Our own expression:
What matters it how we, the French Academy, or the Salvation
Army may explain?
A disk of worked stone fell from the sky, at Tarbes, France,
June 20, 1887.
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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