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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
THE New Dominant.
I mean "primarily" all that opposes Exclusionism --
That Development or Progress or Evolution is Attempt to
Positivize, and is a mechanism by which a positive existence is recruited --
that what we call existence is a womb of infinitude, and is itself only
incubatory -- that eventually all attempts are broken down by the falsely
excluded. Subjectively, the breaking down is aided by our own sense of false and
narrow limitations. So the classic and academic artists wrought positivist
paintings, and expressed the only ideal that I am conscious of, though we so
often hear of "ideals" instead of different manifestations,
artistically, scientifically, theologically, politically, of the One Ideal. They
sought to satisfy, in its artistic aspect, cosmic craving for unity or
completeness, sometimes called harmony, called beauty in some aspects. By
disregard they sought completeness. But the light-effects that they disregarded,
and their narrow confinement to standardized subjects brought on the revolt of
the Impressionists. So the Puritans tried to systematize, and they disregarded
physical needs, or vices, or relaxations: they were invaded and overthrown when
their narrowness became obvious and intolerable. All things strive for
positiveness, for themselves, or for quasi-systems of which they are parts.
Formality and the mathematic, the regular and the uniform are aspects of the
positive state -- but the Positive is the Universal -- so all attempted
positiveness that seems to satisfy in the aspects of formality and regularity,
sooner or later disqualifies in the aspect of wideness or universalness. So
there is revolt against the science of to-day, because the formulated utterances
that were regarded as final truths in a past generation, are now seen to be
insufficiencies. Every pronouncement that has opposed our own acceptances has
been found to be a composition like any academic painting: something that is
arbitrarily cut off from relations with environment, or framed off from
interfering and disturbing data, or outlined with disregards. Our own attempt
has been to take in the included, but also to take in the excluded into wider
expressions. We accept, however, that for every one of our expressions there are
irreconcilables somewhere -- that final utterance would include all things.
However, of such is the gossip of angels. The final is unutterable in
quasi-existence, where to think is to include but also to exclude, or be not
final. If we admit that for every opinion we have expressed, there must
somewhere be an irreconcilable, we are Intermediatists and not positivists; not
even higher positivists. Of course it may be that some day we shall systematize
and dogmatize and refuse to think of anything that we may be accused of
disregarding, and believe instead of merely accepting: then, if we could have a
wider system, which would acknowledge no irreconcilables we'd be higher
positivists. So long as we only accept, we are not higher positivists, but our
feeling is that the New Dominant, even though we have thought of it only as
another enslavement, will be the nucleus for higher positivism -- and that it
will be the means of elevating into infinitude a new batch of fixed stars --
until, as a recruiting instrument, it, too, will play out, and will give way to
some new medium for generating absoluteness. It is our acceptance that all
astronomers of to-day have lost their souls, or, rather, all chance of attaining
Entity, but that Copernicus and Kepler and Galileo and Newton, and, conceivably,
Leverrier are now fixed stars. Some day I shall attempt to identify them. In all
this, I think we're quite a Moses. We point out the Promised Land, but, unless
we be cured of our Intermediatism, will never be reported in the Monthly
Notices, ourself.
In our acceptance, Dominants, in their succession, displace
preceding Dominants not only because they are more nearly positive, but because
the old Dominants, as recruiting mediums, play out. Our expression is that the
New Dominant, of Wider Inclusions, is now manifesting throughout the world, and
that the old Exclusionism is everywhere breaking down. In physics Exclusionism
is breaking down by its own researches in radium, for instance, and in its
speculations upon electrons, or its merging away into metaphysics, and by the
desertion that has been going on for many years, by such men as Gurney, Crookes,
Wallace, Flammarion, Lodge, to formerly disregarded phenomena -- no longer call
"spiritualism" but now "psychic research." Biology is in
chaos: conventional Darwinites mixed up with mutationists and orthogenesists and
followers of Wisemann who take from Darwinism one of its pseudo-bases, and
nevertheless try to reconcile their heresies with orthodoxy. The painters are
metaphysicians and psychologists. The breaking down of Exclusionism in China and
Japan and in the United States has astonished History. The science of astronomy
is going downward so that, though Pickering, for instance, did speculate upon a
Trans-Neptunian planet, and Lowell did try to have accepted heretical ideas as
to marks on Mars, attention is now minutely focused upon such technicalities as
variations in shades of Jupiter's fourth satellite. I think that, in general
acceptance, over-refinement indicates decadence.
I think that the stronghold of Inclusionism is in aeronautics.
I think that the stronghold of the Old Dominant, when it was new, was in the
invention of the telescope. Or that coincidentally with the breakdown of
Exclusionism appears the means of finding out -- whether there are vast aerial
fields of ice and floating lakes full of frogs and fishes or not -- where carved
stones and black substances and great quantities of vegetable matter and flesh,
which may be dragons' flesh, come from -- whether there are inter-planetary
trade routes and vast areas devastated by Super-Tamerlanes -- whether sometimes
there are visitors to this earth -- who might be pursued and captured and
questioned.
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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