 CHAPTER IX. MY OWN SUDER CONCLUSIONS. THAT WE'VE BEEN DAMNED BY GIANTS SOUND ESLEEP. OR BY GREAT SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES AND ABSTRACTIONS THAT CANNOT REALIZE THEMSELVES. THAT LITTLE HARLOTS HAVE VISITED THEIR CAPRICES APON US. THAT CLOWNS WITH BUCKETS OF WATER, FROM WHICH THEY PRETEND TO CAST THOUSANDS OF GOOD SIZED FISHES, HAVE ANATHOMATIZED US FOR LAUGHING DISRESPECTFULLY. BECAUSE, AS WITH ALL CLOWNS, UNDERLINE BUFFENRY IS THE DESIRE TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. THAT PAIL IGNORANCES, PRESIDING OVER MICROSCOPES BY WHICH THEY CANNOT DISTINGUISH FLESH FROM NOSTOC, OR FISHES PRON, OR FROGS PRON, HAVE VISITED APON US THEIR ONE CELLEMINITIES. WE'VE BEEN DAMNED BY CORPSES AND SCALITANS AND MUMMIES, WHICH TWITCH AND TOTTER WITH SUDER LIFE DERIVED FROM CONVENIANCES. OR THERE IS ONLY HYPES NOSIS. THE ACURST ARE THOSE WHO ADMIT THEIR ACURST. IF WE BE MORE NEARLY REAL, WE ARE REASONS ARRANGED BEFORE A DURY OF DREAM FANTASMS. OF ALL METEORITES IN MUSEUMS, VERY FEW WERE SEEN TO FALL. IT IS CONSIDERED SUFFICIENT GROUNDS FOR ADMISSION IF SPECIMENTS CAN'T BE ACCOUNTED FOR IN ANY WAY, OTHER, THEN THAT THEY FELL FROM THE SKY. AS IF IN THE HAZE OF UNCERTAINTY THAT SURROUNDS ALL THINGS OR THAT IS THE ASSENCE OF EVERYTHING OR IN THE MERGING AWAY OF EVERYTHING INTO SOMETHING ELSE, THERE COULD BE ANYTHING THAT COULD BE ACCOUNTED FOR IN ONLY ONE WAY. THE SCIENTIST AND THE THEOLOGEN REASON THAT IF SOMETHING CAN BE ACCOUNTED FOR IN ONLY ONE WAY, IT IS ACCOUNTED FOR IN THAT WAY. OR LOGIC WOULD BE LOGICAL IF THE CONDITIONS THAT IT INPOSES, BUT OF COURSE DOES NOT INSIST UPON, COULD ANYWHERE BE FOUND IN QUASI EXISTENCE. In our acceptance, logic, science, art, religion are, in our existence, premonitions of a coming awakening, like dawning awareness of surroundings in the mind of a dreamer. Any old chunk of metal that measures up to the standard of, quote, true meteoritic material end quote, is admitted by the museums. It may seem incredible that modern curators still have this delusion, but we suspect that the date on one's morning newspaper hasn't much to do with one's modernity all day long. In reading Fletcher's catalogue, for instance, we learn that some of the best-known meteorites were, quote, found in draining a field end quote, quote, found in making a road end quote, quote, turned up by the plow end quote, occurs a dozen times. Someone fishing in Lake Okeechobee brought up an object in his fishing net. No meteorite had ever been seen to fall near it. The U.S. National Museum accepts it. If we have accepted only one of the data of the, quote, untrue meteoritic material end quote, one instance of carbonaceous matter, if it be too difficult to utter the word coal, we see that in this inclusion exclusion, as in every other means of forming an opinion, false inclusion and false exclusion have been practiced by curators of museums. There is something of ultrapathos, of cosmic sadness in this universal search for a standard and in belief that one has been revealed by either inspiration or analysis, then the dog's clinging to a poor sham of a thing long after its insufficiency has been shown or renewed hope and search for the special that can be true or for something local that could also be universal. It's as if, quote, true meteoritic material end quote were a quote rock of ages end quote to some scientific men, the Kling, but Klingers cannot hold out welcoming arms. The only seemingly conclusive utterance or seemingly substantial thing to cling to is a product of dishonesty, ignorance or fatigue. All sciences go back and back until they're worn out with the process or until mechanical reaction occurs. Then they move forward as it were. Then they become dogmatic and take for basis positions that were only points of exhaustion. So chemistry divided and subdivided down to atoms. Then, in the essential insecurity of all quasi-constructions, it built up a system which, to anyone so obsessed by his own hypnosis that he is exempt to the chemist's hypnosis, is perceptibly enough an intellectual anemia built upon infinitesimal debilities. In Science, an S-31-298 E. D. Hovi of the American Museum of Natural History, asserts or confesses that often have objects of material such as facility furious limestone and slag been sent to him. He says that these things have been accompanied by assurances that they have been seen to fall on lawns, on roads, in front of houses. They are all excluded. They are not of true meteoritic material. They were on the ground in the first place. It is only by coincidence that lightning has struck or that a real meteorite, which was unfindable, has struck near objects of slag and limestone. Mr. Hovi says that the list might be extended indefinitely. That's a tantalizing suggestion for some very interesting stuff. He says, quote, but it is not worthwhile, end quote. I'd like to know what strange, damned, excommunicated things have been sent to museums by persons who have felt convinced that they have seen what they may have seen, strongly enough to risk ridicule, to make up bundles, to go express offices and write letters. I accept that over the door of every museum into which such things enter is written, quote, abandon hope, end quote. If a Mr. Simons mentions one instance of coal or of slag or cinders said to have fallen from the sky, we are not, except by association with the carbonaceous meteorite, strong in our impressions that coal sometimes fall to this earth from coal-burning superconstructions up somewhere. In Contrandu 91-197, Mr. Dobre tells the same story. Our acceptance, then, is that other curators could tell this same story. Then the fantamosity of our impression substantiates proportionately to its multiplicity. Mr. Dobre says that often have strange, damned things been sent to the French museums, accompanied by assurances that they have been seen to fall from the sky. Especially to our interest, he mentions coal and slag, excluded, buried, unnamed, and undated in science's potter's field. I do not say that the data of the damned should have the same rights as the data of the saved. That would be justice. That would be of the positive absolute, and, though the ideal of, a violation of, the very essence of quasi-existence, wherein only to have the appearance of being is to express a preponderance of force one way or another, or in equilibrium, or in consistency, or in justice. Our acceptance is that the passing away of exclusionism is a phenomenon of the twentieth century, that gods of the twentieth century will sustain our notions, be they ever so unwashed and frowsy. But, in our own expressions, we are limited, by the oneness of causiness, to the very same methods by which orthodoxy established and maintains its now sleek, suave, preposterousnesses. At any rate, though we are inspired by a special subtle essence, or imponderable, I think, that pervades the twentieth century, we have not the superstition that we are offering anything as a positive fact. Rather, often, we have not the delusion that we are any less superstitious and credulous than any logician, savage, curator, or rustic. An orthodox demonstration, in terms of which we shall have some heresies, is that if things found in coal could have got there only by falling there, they fell there. So, in the Manchester Literature and Philosophical Society memoirs II-9-306, it is argued that certain roundish stones that have been found in coal are, quote, fossil aerolites, end quote, that they had fallen from the sky ages ago, when the coal was soft, because the coal had closed around them, showing no sign of entrance, proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. I-1-1-21, that, in a lump of coal from a mine in Scotland, an iron instrument had been found, quote, the interest attaching to this singular relic arises from the fact of its having been found in the heart of a piece of coal, seven feet under the surface, end quote. If we accept that this object of iron was of workmanship beyond the means and skill of the primitive men who may have lived in Scotland when coal was forming there, quote, the instrument was considered to be modern, end quote, that our expression has of more realness, or higher approximation to realness, than has the attempt to explain that is made in the proceedings, that in modern times someone may have bored for coal, and that his drill may have broken off in the coal it had penetrated. Why he should have abandoned such an easily accessible coal, I don't know, the important point is that there was no sign of boring, that this instrument was in a lump of coal that had closed around it so that its presence was not suspected until the lump of coal was broken. No mention can I find of this damned thing in any other publication. Of course there is an alternative here, the thing may not have fallen from the sky. If in coal-forming times in Scotland there were in the genies to this earth no man capable of making such an iron instrument, it may have been left behind by visitors from other worlds. In an extraordinary approximation to fairness and justice, which is permitted to us, because we are quite as desirous to make acceptable that nothing can be proved as we are to sustain our own expressions, we note that in notes and queries 11-1-408 there is an account of an ancient copper seal about the size of a penny found in chalk at a depth of from five to six feet near bread and stone, England. The design upon it is said to be of a monk kneeling before a virgin and child. A legend upon the margin is said to be, quote, since Jordaness monarchy spalled in gear, end quote. I don't know about that. It looks very desirable, undesirable to us. There is a rich of an ultra frowsy thing in the scientific American, 7-298, which we condemn ourselves if somewhere because of the oneness of oneness. The damned thing must also be damning. It's a newspaper story that about the 1st of June, 1851, a powerful blast near Dorchester, Massachusetts, cast out from a bed of solid rock a bell-shaped vessel of an unknown metal. Floral designs inlades with silver, quote, art of some cunning workman, end quote. The opinion of the editor of the scientific American is that the thing had been made by Tuble Kane, who was the first inhabitant of Dorchester. Though I fear that this is a little arbitrary, I am not disposed to fly rabidly at every scientific opinion. Nature 35-36, a block of metal found in coal in Austria, 1885. It is now in the Salzburg Museum. This time we have another expression. Usually our intermediatist attack upon provincial positivism is, science, in its attempted positivism, takes something, such as, quote, true mediatic material, end quote, as a standard of judgment. But carbonaceous matter, except for its relative infrequency, is just as veritable a standard of judgment. Carbonaceous matter merges away into such a variety of organic substances that all standards are reduced to indistinguishability. If then there is no real standard against us, there is no real resistance to our own acceptances. Now our intermediatism is, science takes, quote, true mediatic material, end quote, as a standard of admission. But now we have an instance that quite as truly makes, quote, true mediatic material, end quote, a standard of exclusion. Or then a thing that denies itself is no real resistance to our own acceptances. This depending upon whether we have a datum of something of, quote, true mediatic material, end quote, that orthodoxy can never accept fell from the sky. We're a little involved here. Our own acceptance is upon a carved geometric thing that, if found in a very old deposit, end to date human life, except perhaps very primitive human life, as an indigenous product of this earth. But we're quite as much interested in the dilemma it's made for the faithful. It is of, quote, true mediatic material, end quote, lastronomy 1887-114. It is said that though so geometric, its phenomena so characteristic of meteorites exclude the idea that it was the work of man, as to the deposit, tertiary coal, composition, iron, carbon, and a small quantity of nickel. It has the pitted surface that is supposed by the faithful to be characteristic of meteorites. For a full account of this subject seek compte rendu 103-702. The scientists who examined it could reach no agreement. They befracated. Then a compromise was suggested. But the compromise is a product of this regard, that it was of true mediatic material and had not been shaped by man, that it was not of true mediatic material but telluric iron that had been shaped by man, that it was true mediatic material that had fallen from the sky but had been shaped by man after its fall. The data, one or more of which must be disregarded by each of these three explanations are, quote, true mediatic material, end quote, and surface markings of meteorites, geometric form, present in an ancient deposit, material as hard as steel, absence upon this earth in tertiary times of man who could work in material as hard as steel. It is said that, though of, quote, true mediatic material, end quote, this object is virtually a steel object. Saint Augustine, with his orthodoxy, was never in, well, very much worse, difficulties than are the faithful here. By due disregard of a datum or so, our own acceptance is that it was a steel object that had fallen from the sky to this earth in tertiary times, is not forced upon one. We offer ours as the only synthetic expression. For instance, in Science Gossip 1887, that 58, it is described as a meteorite. In this account, both there is nothing alarming to the pious, because, though everything else is told, its geometric form is not mentioned. It's a cube. There is a deep incision all around it. Of its faces, two that are opposite are rounded. Though I accept that our own expression can only rather approximate to truth by the whiteness of its inclusions, and because it seems of four attempts to represent the only complete synthesis, and can be nullified or greatly modified by data that we, too, have somewhere disregarded, the only means of nullification that I can think of would be demonstration that this object is a mass of iron pyrite which sometimes forms geometrically. But the analysis mentions not a trace of sulfur. Of course, our weakness, or impositiveness, lies in that, by anyone to whom it would be agreeable to find sulfur in this thing, sulfur would be found in it. By our own intermediateism, there is some sulfur in everything, or sulfur is only a localization or emphasis of something that, un-emphasized, is in all things. So there have, or haven't, been found upon this earth things that fell from the sky, or that were left behind by extra mundane visitors to this earth. A yarn in the London Times, June 22, 1844, that some workmen querying rock close to the tweed about a quarter of a mile below Rutherford Mills discovered a gold thread embedded in the stone at the depth of eight feet, that a piece of the gold thread had been sent to the office of the calsochronical. Pretty little thing, not at all frowsy, rather damnable. London Times, December 24, 1851, that Hiram David of Springfield, Massachusetts returning from California, had brought with him a piece of orifice quartz about the size of a man's fist. It was accidentally dropped, split open, nail in it. There was a cut iron nail, size of a six-penny nail, slightly corroded. Quote, it was entirely straight, and had a perfect head. End quote. Or California, ages ago, when orifice quartz was forming. Supercarpenter, millions of miles or so, up in the air, drops a nail. To what not an intermediatist? It would seem incredible that this datum, not only of the damned, but of the lowest of the damned, or of the journalistic caste of the accursed, could merge away with something else damned only by disregard and backed by what is called, quote, highest scientific authority, end quote. Communication by Sir David Brewster, report of the British Association, 1845-51, that a nail had been found in a block of stone from King Goody Quarry, north Britain. The block in which the nail was found was nine inches thick, but as to what part of the quarry it had come from, there is no evidence, except that it could not have been from the surface. The quarry had been worked about twenty years. It consisted of alternate layers of hard stone and a substance called till. The points of the nail, quite eaten with thrust, projected into some till, upon the surface of the block of stone. The rest of the nail lay upon the surface of the stone to within an inch of the head. That inch of it was embedded in the stone. Although its case is high, this is a thing profoundly of the damned, sort of a Brahmin as regarded by a Baptist. Its case was stated fairly. Brewster related all circumstances available to him, but there was no discussion at the meeting of the British Association. No explanation was offered. Nevertheless, the thing can be nullified. But the nullification that we find is as much against orthodoxy in one respect as it is against our own expression that inclusion in quartz or sandstone indicates antiquity, or there would have to be a revision of prevailing dogmas upon quartz and sandstone and age indicated by them, if the opposing data should be accepted. Of course it may be contended by both the orthodox and us heretics that the opposition is only a yarn from a newspaper. By an odd combination, we find our two lost souls that have trades to emerge, chucked back to the perdition by one blow. Popular scientific news, 1884-41. That, according to the Carson appeal, there had been found in a mine quartz crystals that could have had only fifteen years in which to form, that where a mile had been built, sandstone had been found, when the mill was torn down, that had hardened in twelve years, that in this sandstone was a piece of wood, quote, with a nail in it, end quote. Annals of scientific discovery, 1853-71, that at the meeting of the British Association, 1853, Sir David Brewster had announced that he had to bring before the meeting an object, quote, of so incredible nature that nothing short of the strongest evidence was necessary to render the statement at all probable, end quote. A crystal lens had been found in the treasure house at Nineveh. In many of the temples and treasure houses of old civilizations upon this earth have been preserved things that have fallen from the sky, or meteorites. Again, we have a Brahmin. This thing is buried alive in the heart of propriety. It is in the British Museum. Carpenter, in the microscope and its revelations, gives two drawings of it. Carpenter argues that it is impossible to accept that optical lenses had ever been made by the ancients. Never occurred to him. Someone a million miles or so up in the air, looking through his telescope. Lens drops out. This does not appeal to Carpenter. He says that this object must have been an ornament. According to Brewster, it was not an ornament, but, quote, a true optical lens, end quote. In that case, in ruins of an old civilization upon this earth has been found an accursed thing that was, acceptably, not a product of any old civilization indigenous to this earth. Chapter 10 Early explorers have Florida mixed up with Newfoundland. But the confusion is worse than that still earlier. It arises from simplicity. Very early explorers think that all land west word is one land, India. Awareness of other lands as well as India comes as a slow process. I do not now think of things arriving upon this earth from some special other world. That was my notion when I started to collect our data. Or, as is a common place of observation, all intellect begins with the illusion of homogeneity. It's one of Spencer's data. We see homogenousness in all things distant, or with which we have small acquaintance. Advanced from the relatively homogenous to the relatively heterogeneous is Spencerian philosophy, like everything else so-called. Not that it was really Spencer's discovery, but was taken from Von Baer, who in turn was continuous with preceding evolutionary speculation. Our own expression is that all things are acting to advance to the homogenous, or are trying to localize homogenousness. Homogenousness is an aspect of the universal wherein it is a state that does not merge away into something else. We regard homogenousness as an aspect of positivness, but it is our acceptance that infinite frustrations of attempts to positivize manifest themselves in infinite heterogeneity, so that, though things try to localize homogenousness, they end up in heterogeneity, so great that it amounts to infinite dispersion or indistinguishability. So all concepts are little attempted positivnesses, but soon have to give in to compromise modification nullification merging away into the indistinguishability, unless here and there in the world's history there may have been a super dogmatist who, for only an infinitesimal of time, has been able to hold out against heterogeneity or modification or doubt or quote listening to reason and quote or loss of identity, in which case instant translation to heaven or the positive absolute. Odd thing about Spencer is that he never recognized that homogeneity, integration, and definiteness are all words for the same state, or the state that we call positivness. What we call his mistake is in that he regarded homogenousness as negative. I began with a notion of some one other world from which objects and substances have fallen to this earth, which had or which to less degree has a tutelary interest in this earth, which is now attempting to communicate with this earth, modifying because of data which will pile up later into acceptance that some other world is not attempting but has been for centuries in communication with a sect, perhaps, or a secret society, or certain esoteric ones of this earth's inhabitants. I lose a great deal of hypnotic power in not being able to concentrate attention upon some one other world. As I have admitted before, I'm intelligent, as contrasted with the orthodox. I haven't the aristocratic disregard of a New York Curator or an Eskimo-Medicine man. I have to dissipate myself in acceptance of a host of other worlds, size of the moon, some of them, one of them at least, tremendous thing. We'll take that up later. Vast, amorphous aerial regions, to which such definite words as worlds and planets seem inapplicable, and artificial constructions that I have called superconstructions, one of them about the size of Brooklyn, I should say, offhand, and one or more of them wheel-shaped things, a goodly number of square miles in area. I think that earlier in this book, before we liberalized into embracing everything that comes along, your indignation, or indigestion, would have expressed in the notion that, if this were so, astronomers would have seen these other worlds and regions and vast geometric constructions. You'd have that notion. You'd have had that notion. You'd have stopped there. But the attempt to stop is saying enough to the insatiable. In cosmic punctuation, there are no periods. Illusions of periods is incomplete view of Collins and semicolons. We can't stop with the notion that if there were such phenomena, astronomers would have seen them. Because of our experience with suppression and disregard, we suspect, before we go into the subject at all, that astronomers have seen them, that navigators and meteorologists have seen them, that individual scientists and other trained observers have seen them many times, that it is the system that has excluded data of them. As to the law of gravitation and astronomers' formulas, remember that these formulas worked out in the time of Laplace as well as they do now. But there are hundreds of planetary bodies now known that were then not known. So a few hundred worlds more of ours won't make any difference. Laplace knew about only thirty bodies in this solar system. About six hundred are recognized now. What are the discoveries of geology and biology to a theologian? His formulas still work out as well as they ever did. If the law of gravitation could be stated as a real utterance, it might be a real resistance to us. But we are told only that gravitation is gravitation. Of course, to an intermediateist, nothing can be defined except in terms of itself. But even the orthodox, in what seems to me to be the innate premonitions of realness, not founded upon experience, agree that to define a thing in terms of itself is not real definition. It is said that by gravitation is meant the attraction of all things proportionately to mass and inversely as the square of the distance. Mass would mean inter-attraction holding together final particles if there were final particles. Then until final particles be discovered, only one term of this expression survives, or mass is attraction. But distance is only extent of mass unless one holds out for absolute vacuum among planets, a position against which we could bring a host of data. But there is no possible means of expressing that gravitation is anything other than attraction. So there is nothing to resist us but such a phantom as that gravitation is the gravitation of all gravitations proportionately to gravitation and inversely as the square of gravitation. In quasi-existence, nothing more sensible than this can be set upon any so-called subject. Perhaps there are higher approximations to ultimate sensibleness. Nevertheless, we seem to have a feeling that with the system against us, we have a kind of resistance here. We'd have felt so formally at any rate. I think that Dr. Greys and Professor Hitchcocks have modified our trustfulness toward indistinguishability as to the perfection of this system that quasi-opposes us and the infallibility of its mathematics as if there could be real mathematics in a mode of seeming where twice two are not four. We've been told over and over of their vindication in the discovery of Neptune. I'm afraid that the course we're taking will turn out like every other development. We began humbly, admitting that we're of the damned. But our eyebrows, just a faint flicker in them or in one of them, every time we hear of the, quote, triumphant discovery of Neptune, end quote, this, quote, monumental achievement of theoretical astronomy, end quote, as the textbooks call it. The whole trouble is that we've looked it up. The textbooks omit this, that instead of the orbit of Neptune agreeing with the calculations of Adams and Leverere, it was so different that Leverere said that it was not the planets of his calculations. Later it was thought best to say no more upon that subject. The textbooks omit this, that in 1846, everyone who knew a sign from a cosine was out signing and cosigning for a planet beyond Uranus. Two of them guessed right. To some mind, even after Leverere's own rejection of Neptune, the word, guest, may be objectionable. But according to Professor Pearce, of Harvard, the calculations of Adams and Leverere would have applied quite as well to positions many degrees from the position of Neptune. Or for Professor Pearce's demonstration that the discovery of Neptune was only a, quote, happy accident, end quote, see the proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences, 1-65. For references, see Lowell's Evolution of Worlds. Or comets. Another nebulous resistance to our own notions. As to eclipses, I have notes upon several of them that did not occur upon scheduled time, though with differences only of seconds, and one delightful lost soul deep buried, but buried in the ultra-respectable records of the Royal Astronomical Society upon an eclipse that did not occur at all. That delightful, ultra-sponsored thing of perdition is too good and malicious to be dismissed with passing notice. We'll have him later. Throughout the history of astronomy, every comet that has come back upon predicted time, not that, essentially, there was anything more abstruse about it than is a prediction that you can make of a postman's periodicities tomorrow, was advertised for all it was worth. It's the way reputations are worked up for fortune tellers by the faithful. The comets that didn't come back omitted, or explained, or anxious comets. It came back slower and slower, but the astronomers explained. We almost absolutely sure of that. They explained. They had it all worked out and formulated and proved why that comet was coming back slower and slower, and there the damn thing began coming faster and faster. Halley's Comets. Astronomy. Quote. The perfect science, as we astronomers like to call it, end quote. It's my own notion that if, in a real existence, an astronomer could not tell one longitude from another, he'd be sent back to this purgatory of ours until he could meet that simple requirement. Halley was sent to the Cape of Good Hope to determine its longitude. He got it degrees wrong. He gave to Africa's noble Roman promontory a retrosay twist that would take the pride out of any caffer. We hear everlastingly of Halley's Comet. It came back. Maybe. But unless we look the matter up in contemporaneous records, we hear nothing of the Leonids, for instance. But the same methods are those by which Halley's Comet was predicted. The Leonids were predicted. November 1898. No Leonids. It was explained. They had been perturbed. They would appear in November 1899. November 1899. November 1900. No Leonids. My notion of astronomic accuracy. Who could not be a prize marksman if only his hits be recorded? As to Halley's Comet of 1910, everybody now swears he saw it. He has to perjure himself, otherwise he'd be accursed of having no interest in great, inspiring things that he's never given any attention to. Look, regard this. That there never is a moment when there is not some comet in the sky. Virtually there is no year in which several new comets are not discovered. So plentiful are they. Luminous fleas on a vast black dog. In popular impressions there is no realization of the extent to which this solar system is fleabitten. If a comet have not the orbit that astronomers have predicted, perturbed. If, like Halley's Comet, it be late, even a year late, perturbed. When a train is an hour late, we have small opinion of the predictions of timetables. When a comet's a year late, all we ask is that it be explained. We hear of the inflation and arrogance of astronomers. My own acceptance is not that they are imposing upon us, that they are requiting us. For many of us priests no longer function to give a seeming report with perfection. In fallibility, the positive absolute. Astronomers have stepped forward to fill a vacancy with quasi-fantamosity. But in our acceptance, with a higher approximation to substantiality than had the attenuations that preceded them. I should say myself that all that we call progress is not so much response to urge as it is response to a hiatus. Or if you want something to grow somewhere, dig out everything else in its area. So I have to accept that the positive assurances of astronomers are necessary to us. Or the blunderings, evasions and disguises of astronomers would never be tolerated. That, given such latitude as they are permitted to take, they could not be very disastrously mistaken. Suppose the comet called Halley's had not appeared. Early in 1910 a far more important comet than the anemic luminosity said to be Halley's appeared. It was so brilliant that it was visible in daylight. The astronomers would have been saved anyway. If this other comet did not have the predicted orbit, perturbation, if you're going to Coney Island and predict there'll be a special kind of a pebble on the beach, I don't see how you can disgrace yourself if some other pebble will do just as well. Because the feeble thing said to have been seen in 1910 was no more in accord with the sensational description given out by astronomers in advance than is a pale pebble with a brick-red boulder. I predict that next Wednesday a large Chinaman in evening clothes will cross Broadway at 42nd Street at 9 p.m. He doesn't, but a tubercular jab in a sailor's uniform does cross Broadway at 35th Street Friday at noon. Well, a jab is a perturbed Chinaman, and clothes are clothes. I remember the terrifying predictions made by the honest and credulous astronomers who must have been themselves hypnotized, or they could not have hypnotized the rest of us in 1909. Wills were made. Human life might be swept from this planet. In quasi-existence, which is essentially hibernian, that would be no reason why wills should not be made. The less excitable of us did expect at least some pretty good fireworks. I have to admit that it is said that in New York a light was seen in the sky. It was about as terrifying as the scratch of a match on the seat of some breeches half a mile away. It was not on time. Though I have heard that a faint nebulosity, which I did not see myself, though I looked when I was told to look, was seen in the sky, it appeared several days after the time predicted. A hypnotized host of imbeciles of us told to look up at the sky. We did, like a lot of pointers hypnotized by a partridge. The effect? Almost everybody now swears that he saw Halley's comet, and that it was a glorious spectacle. An interesting circumstance here is that seemingly we are trying to discredit astronomers because astronomers oppose us. That is not my impression. We shall be in the Brahmin caste of the hell of the Baptists. Almost all our data in some regiments of dispossession are observations by astronomers. Few of them mere amateur astronomers. It is the system that opposes us. It is the system that is suppressing astronomers. I think we pity them in their captivity. Astronomers is not malice in a positive sense. It is trivlarie somewhat. Unhappy astronomers looking out from high towers in which they are imprisoned, we appear upon the horizon. But as I have said, our data do not relate to some special other world. I mean very much what a savage upon an ocean island might vaguely think of in his speculations. Not upon some other land, but complexes of continents and their phenomena. Cities? Factories in cities? Means of communication? Now all the other savages would know of a few vessels sailing in their regular routes, passing this island in regularized periodicities. The tendency in these minds would be expression of the universal tendency towards positivism or completeness or conviction that these few regularized vessels constituted all. Now I think of some a special savage who suspects otherwise because he's very backward and unimaginative and insensible to the beautiful ideals of the others. Not piously occupied, like others, in bowing before impressive-looking sticks of wood. This honestly taking time for his speculations, while the others are patriotically witch-finding. So the other higher and nobler savages know about the few regularized vessels. Know when to expect them. Have their periodicities all worked out. Just about when the vessels will pass or eclipse each other, explaining that all vagaries were due to atmospheric conditions. They'd come out strong in explaining. You can't read a book upon savages without noting what resolute explainers they are. They'd say that all this mechanism was founded upon the mutual attraction of the vessels, deduced from the fold of a monkey from a palm tree, or if not that, that devils were pushing the vessels, something of the kind. Storms, debris not from the vessels, cast up by the waves, this regarded. How can one think of something and something else too? I'm in the state of mind of a savage who might find upon a shore washed up by the same storm buoyant parts of a piano and a paddle that was carved by cruder hands than his own. Something light and summery from India, and a fur overcoat from Russia. Or all science, though approximating wider and wider, is attempt to conceive of India in terms of an ocean island, and of Russia in terms of India so interpreted. Though I am trying to think of Russia and India in world-wide terms, I cannot think that that, or the universalizing of the local, is cosmic purpose. The higher idealist is the positivist who tries to localize the universal and is in accord with cosmic purpose. The super-documentist of a local savage who can hold out without a flurry of doubt that a piano washed up on a beach is the trunk of a palm tree that a shark has bitten, leaving his teeth in it. So we fear for the soul of Dr. Gray because he did not devote his whole life to that one stand that, whether possible or inconceivable, thousands of fishes had been cast from one bucket. So, unfortunately for myself, if salvation be desirable, I look out widely, but amorphously, indefinitely, and heterogeneously. If I say I conceive of another world that is now in secret communication with certain esoteric inhabitants of this earth, I say I conceive of still other worlds that are trying to establish communication with all the inhabitants of this earth. I fit my notions to the data I find. That is supposed to be the right and logical and scientific thing to do. But it is no way to approximate, to form, system, organization. Then I think I conceive of other worlds and vast structures that pass us by within a few miles without the slightest desire to communicate. Quite as tramp vessels pass many islands without particularizing one from another. Then I think I have data of a vast construction that has often come to this earth, dipped into an ocean, submerged there awhile, then going away. Why? I'm not absolutely sure. How would an eskimo explain a vessel sending ashore for coal, which is plentiful upon some architect beaches, though of unknown use to the natives, then sailing away with no interest in the natives? A great difficulty is trying to understand vast constructions that show no interest in us. The notion that we must be interesting. I accept that, though we're usually avoided, probably for moral reasons, sometimes this earth has been visited by explorers. I think that the notion that there have been extra mundane visitors to China within what we call the historic period will be only ordinarily observed when we come to that datum. I accept that some of the other worlds are of conditions very similar to our own. I think of others that are very different, so that visitors from them could not live here without artificial adaptations. How some of them could breathe our attenuated air if they come from a gelatinous atmosphere? Masks. The masks that have been found in ancient deposits. Most of them are of stone and are said to have been ceremonial regalia of savages. But the mask that was found in Sullivan County, Missouri, in 1879, American Antichrarian 3-336. It is made of iron and silver. Ends of Chapter 10. Read by J. C. Guan, Montreal, November 2008. Chapter 11 of the Book of the Damned. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by J. C. Guan. The Book of the Damned by Charles Ford. Chapter 11. One of the damned is in our whole Saturnalia of the Occursed. Because it is hopeless to try to shake off an excommunication only by saying that we're dammed by blacker things in ourselves and that the damned are those who admit they're of the damned. Inertia and hypnosis are too strong for us. We say that, then we go right on admitting we're of the damned. It is only by being more nearly real that we can sweep away the quasi-things that oppose us. Of course, as a whole, we have considerable amorphousness. But we're thinking now of individual acceptances. Whiteness is an aspect of universalness or realness. If our synthesis disregard fewer data than do opposing synthesis, which are often not synthesis at all but mere consideration of some one circumstance, less widely synthetic things fade away before us. Harmony is an aspect of the universal by which we mean realness. If we approximate more highly to harmony among the parts of an expression and to all available circumstances of an occurrence, the self-contradictors turn hazy. Solidity is an aspect of realness. We pile them up and we pile them up or they pass and pass and pass. Things that both large as they march by, supporting and solidifying one another. And still, and for regiments to come, hypnosis and inertia rule us. One of the damndest of our data. In the Scientific American, September 10, 1910, Charles F. Holder writes, Many years ago, a strange stone resembling a meteorite fell into the valley of the Yaqui, Mexico, and the sensational story went from one end to the other of the country that a stone bearing human inscriptions had descended to the earth. The bewildering observation here is Mr. Holder's assertion that this stone did fall. It seems to me that he must mean that it fell by dislodgement from a mountainside into a valley. But we shall see that it was such a marked stone that very unlikely would it have been unknown to dwellers in a valley if it had been reposing upon a mountainside above them. It may have been carelessness. Intent may have been to say that a sensational story of a strange stone said to have fallen, etc. The stone was reported by Major Frederick Burnham of the British Army. Later Major Burnham revisited it, and Mr. Holder accompanied him, their purpose to decipher the inscriptions upon it, if possible. The stone was brown, igneous rock, its longest axis about eight feet, and on the eastern face, which had an angle of about forty-five degrees, was the deep cut inscription. Mr. Holder says that he recognized familiar Mayan symbols in the inscription. His method was the usual method by which anything can be identified as anything else. That is, to pick out whatever is agreeable and disregard the rest. He says that he has demonstrated that most of the symbols are Mayan. One of our intermediates, pseudo-principles, is that any way of demonstrating anything is just as good a way of demonstrating anything else. By Mr. Holder's method, we could demonstrate that we're Mayan, if that should be a source of pride to us. One of the characters upon the stone is a circle within a circle. Similar character found by Mr. Holder is a Mayan manuscript. There are two sixes. Sixes can be found in Mayan manuscripts. A double scroll. They are dots and they are dashes. Well, then we, in turn, disregard the circle within a circle and the double scroll and emphasize that sixes occur in this book and that dots are plentiful and would be more plentiful if it were customary to use the small i for the first personal pronoun. In that, when it comes to dashes, that's demonstrated for Mayan. I suppose the tendency is to feel that we're sneering at some valuable archaeological work and that Mr. Holder did make a veritable identification. He writes, I submitted the photographs to the Field Museum and the Smithsonian and one or two others and, to my surprise, the reply was that they could make nothing out of it. Our indefinite acceptance by preponderance of three or four groups of museum experts against one person is that the stone-bearing inscriptions unassimilable with any known language upon this earth is said to have fallen from the sky. Another poor wretch of an outcast belonging here is noted in the Scientific American, 48-261. That of an object or a meteorite that fell February the 16th, 1883, near Brescia, Italy, a false report was circulated that one of the fragments bore the impress of a hand. That's all that is findable by me upon this mere gasp of a thing. Intermediatistically, my acceptance is that, though in the course of human society, there have been some notable approximations, there never has been a real liar that he could not survive in intermediateness, where everything merges away or has its pseudo base in something else, would be instantly translated to the negative absolute. So my acceptance is that, though curtly dismissed, there was something to base upon in this report, that there was unusual markings upon this object. Of course, that is not to jump to the conclusion that they were cuneiform characters that looked like fingerprints. Altogether, I think that in some of our past expressions, we must have been very efficient if the experience of Mr. Simons be typical, so indefinite are we becoming here. Just here we're interested in many things that have been found, especially in the United States, which speak of a civilization or of many civilizations not indigenous to this earth. One trouble isn't trying to decide whether they fell here from the sky or were left behind by visitors from other worlds. We have a notion that there have been disasters aloft and that coins have dropped here, that inhabitants of this earth found them or saw them fall and then made coins imitatively. It may be that coins were showered here by something of a tutelary nature that undertook two advances from the stage of barter to the use of a medium. If coins should be identified as Roman coins, we've had so much experience with identifications that we know a phantom when we see one. But even so, how could Roman coins have got to North America, far in the interior of North America, or buried under the accumulations of centuries of soil, unless they did drop from whatever the first Romans came from. Ignatius Donnelly in Atlantis gives a list of objects that have been found in mounds that are supposed to antedate all European influence in America. Lathes made articles, such as traders, from somewhere, would supply to savages. Marks of the Lathes said to be unmistakable. Said to be, of course we can't accept that anything is unmistakable. In the report of the Smithsonian Institute, 1881-619, there is an account by Charles C. Jones of two silver crosses that were found in Georgia. They are skillfully made, highly ornamented crosses, but are not conventional crucifixes, all arms of equal length. Mr. Jones is a good positivist that the Sota had halted at the precise spot where these crosses were found. But the spirit of negativeness that lurks in all things said to be precise shows itself in that upon one of these crosses is an inscription that has no meaning in Spanish or any other known terrestrial language, yinquicidu, according to Mr. Jones. He thinks that this is a name and that there is an aboriginal rank to it, though I should say myself that he was thinking of the far-distant incas, that the Spanish donor caught on the cross the name of an Indian to whom it was presented. But we look at the inscription ourselves and see that the letters said to be C and D are turned the wrong way and that the letter to be K is not only turned the wrong way, but is upside down. It is difficult to accept that the remarkable, the very extensive copper mines in the region of Lake Superior were ever the works of American aborigines. Despite the astonishing extents of these mines, nothing has ever been found to indicate that the region was ever inhabited by permanent dwellers. Quote, not a vestige of a dwelling, a skeleton, or a bone has been found, and quote, the Indians have no traditions relating to the mines. American Antiquarine, 25-258. I think that we've had visitors, that they have come here for copper, for instance, as to other relics of them, but we now come upon frequency of a merger that has not so often appeared before, fraudulency. Then there are wigs, teeth, called real teeth. Then there are false teeth, official money, counterfeit money. It's the bane of psychic research. If there be psychic phenomena, there must be fraudulent psychic phenomena. So desperate is the situation here that Carrington argues that even if Palladino be caught cheating, that is not to say that all her phenomena are fraudulent. My own version is that nothing indicates anything in a positive sense, because in a positive sense there is nothing to be indicated. Everything that is called true must merge away indistinguishably into something called false. Both are expressions of the same underlying closeness and are continuous. Fraudulent Antiquarine relics are very common, but they are not more common than are fraudulent paintings. W.S. Forest historical sketches of Norfolk, Virginia. That in September 1833, when some workmen near Norfolk were borrowing for water, a coin was drawn up from a depth of about 30 feet. It was about the size of an English shelling, but oval, an oval disk, if not a coin. The figures upon it were distinct and represented, quote, a warrior or hunter and other characters, apparently of Roman origin, end quote. The means of execution would probably be men digging a hole, no one else looking. One of them drops a coin into the hole, as to where he got the strange coin, remarkable in shape even, that's disregarded. Up comes the coin, expressions of astonishment from the evil one who had dropped it. However, the Antichorians have missed this coin. I can't find no other mention of it. Another coin, also a little study in the genesis of a prophet. In the American Antichorian 16-313, is copied a story by a correspondent to the Detroit News of a copper coin about the size of a two cent piece. Said to have been found in a Michigan mound. The editor says merely that he does not endorse the find. Upon this slander basis he buds out in the next number of the Antichorian, quote, the coin turns out, as we predicted, to be a fraud, end quote. You can't imagine the scorn of a liar or any one of the old, more nearly real prophets, where all things are tried by the one kind of jurisprudence we have in quasi-existence, presumed to be innocent until convicted, but they're guilty. The editor's reasoning is as phantom-like as my own, or sin-pulse, or dorrens. The coin is condemned because it came from the same region from which a few years before had come pottery that had been called fraudulent. The pottery had been condemned because it was condemnable. Scientific American June 17, 1882, that a farmer in Cass County, Illinois, picked up on his farm a bronze coin which was sent to Professor F. F. Hilder of St. Louis, who identified it as a coin of Antiochus IV, inscription said to be in ancient Greek characters, translated as King Antiochus Epiphanes, illustrious, the victorious. Sounds quite definite and convincing, but we have some more translations coming. In the American Pioneer, 2-169, are shown two faces of a copper coin, with characters very much like those upon the Grave Creek Stone, which, with translations, will take up soon. This coin is said to have been found in Connecticut in 1843. Records of the past, 12-182, that, early in 1913, a coin, said to be a Roman coin, was reported as discovered in an Illinois mound. It was sent to Mr. Emerson, of the Arts Institute of Chicago. His opinion was that the coin is, quote, of the wearer mintage of the Missus Domitianus, emperor in Egypt, end quote. As to its discovery in an Illinois mound, Dr. Emerson disclaims responsibility. But what strikes me here is that a joker should not have been satisfied with an ordinary Roman coin. Where did he get a wearer coin? And why was it not missed from some collection? I have looked over new, asthmatic journals enough to accept that the wearabouts of every wearer coin in anyone's possession is known to coin collectors. Seems to me, nothing left, but to call this another identification. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 12-224 That in July 1871 a letter was received from Mr. Jacob W. Muffet of Chilicoes, Illinois, enclosing a photograph of a coin, which he said had been brought up by him, while boring, from a depth of 120 feet. Of course, by conventional scientific standards, such depth has some extraordinary meaning. Paleontologists, geologists and archaeologists consider themselves reasonable in arguing ancient origin of the far-buried. We only accept. Depth is a pseudo-standard with us. One earthquake could bury a coin of recent mintage 120 feet below the surface. According to a writer in the Proceedings, the coin is uniform in thickness and had never been hammered out by savages. There are other talcans of the machine shop. But according to Professor Leslie, it is an astrological amulet. There are upon it the signs of P.C. and Leo. Or, with due disregard, you can find signs of your great-grandmother or of the crusades or of the Mayans upon anything that ever came from Chilicoes, or from a five- and ten-cent store. Anything that looks like a cat and a goldfish looks like Leo and P.C.'s. But, by due suppression and distortions, there's nothing that can't be made to look like a cat and a goldfish. I fear me. We're turning a little irritable here. To be damned by slumbering giants and interesting little harlots and clowns who rank high in their profession is at least supportable to our vanity. But we find that the anthropologists are of the slums of the divine or of an archaic kindergarten of intellectuality. And it is very unflattering to find a mess of moldy infants sitting in judgment upon us. Professor Leslie then finds, as arbitrarily as one might find that some joker put the Brooklyn Bridge where it is, that, quote, the pace was placed there as a practical joke, though not by its present owner, and is a modern fabrication, perhaps of the 16th century, possibly Hispanic-American or French-American origin. End, quote. It's sheer, brutal attempt to assimilate a thing that may or may not have fallen from the sky with phenomena admitted by the anthropologic system or with the early French or Spanish explorers of Illinois. Though it is ridiculous in a positive sense to give reasons, it is more acceptable to attempt reasons more nearly real than opposing reasons. Of course, in his favor, we note that Professor Leslie qualifies his notions. But his disregards are that there is nothing either French or Spanish about the coin. A legend upon it is said to be, quote, somewhere between Arabic and Phoenician, without being either, end, quote. Professor Winchell, sparks from a geologist's hammer, page 170, says of the crude designs upon this coin, which was in his possession, scrolls of an animal and of a warrior, or of a cat and a goldfish, whichever be convenient, that they had been neither stumped nor engraved. But, quote, looked as if etched with an acid, end, quote. That is a method unknown in numismatics of this earth. As to the crudity of the design upon this coin, and something else, that though the warrior may be, by due disregard, either a cat or a goldfish, we have to note that his headdress is typical of the American Indian. Could be explained, of course, but for fear that we might be instantly translated to the positive absolute, which may not be absolutely desirable, we prefer to have some flaws or a negativeness in our own expressions. Data of more than the thrice occurs, tablets of stone, with the Ten Commandments engraved upon them in Hebrew, said to have been found in the mounds of the United States. Masonic emblems said to have been found in the mounds in the United States. We're upon the borderline of our acceptances, and we're amorphous in the uncertainties and mergings of our outline. Conventionally, or with no real reason for doing so, we exclude these things, and then, as grossly and arbitrarily and irrationally, although our attempt is always to approximate away from these negative states, as ever a Kepler, Newton, or Darwin, made his selections, without which he could not have seemed to be at all, because every one of them is now seem to be an illusion. We accept that other lettered things have been found in mounds in the United States. Of course, we do what we can to make this election seem not gross and arbitrary and rational. Then if we accept that inscribed things of ancient origin have been found in the United States, that cannot be attributed to any race indigenous to the Western Hemisphere, that are not in any language ever heard of in the Eastern Hemisphere. There's nothing to it but to turn non-Euclidean and try to conceive of a third hemisphere or to accept that there has been intercourse between the Western Hemisphere and some other world. The Book of the Damned by Charles Ford Chapter 11 Part B But there is a peculiarity to these inscribed objects. They remind me of the records left by Sir John Franklin in the Arctic, but also of attempts made by relief expeditions to communicate with the Franklin expedition. The lost explorers cached their records or concealed them conspicuously in mounds. The relief expeditions sent up balloons from which messages were dropped broadcast. Our data are of things that have been cached and of things that seem to have been dropped. Or a lost expedition from somewhere. Explorers from somewhere and their inability to return then a long sentimental persistent attempt in the spirit of our own Arctic relief expeditions at least to establish communication. What if it may have succeeded? We think of India, the millions of natives who are ruled by a small band of exoterics only because they receive support and direction from somewhere else or from England. In 1838 Mr. A. B. Tomlinson, owner of the great mound at Grave Creek, West Virginia, excavated the mound. He said that in the presence of witnesses he had found a small, flat, oval stone or disk upon which were engraved alphabetic characters. Colonel Whittlesey, an expert in these matters says that the stone is now quote universally regarded by archaeologists as a fraud, end quote. That, in his opinion, Mr. Tomlinson had been imposed upon. Avery, prehistoric times, page 271. Quote, I mention it because it has been the subject of much discussion but it is now generally admitted to be a fraud. It is inscribed with Hebrew characters but the forwarder has copied the modern instead of the ancient form of the letters, end quote. As I have said, we're as irritable here under the impression of the anthropologists as ever were slaves in the south toward superiorities from, quote, poor white trash, end quote. When we finally reverse our relative positions we shall give lowest place to the anthropologists. A Dr. Gray does at least look at a fish before he conceives of a miraculous origin for it. We shall have to submerge Lord Avery far below him if we accept that the stone from Grave Creek is generally regarded as a fraud by eminent authorities who did not know it from some other object or, in general, that so decided an opinion must be the product of either deliberate disregard or ignorance or fatigue. The stone belongs to a class of phenomena that is repulsive to the system. It will not assimilate with the system. Let such an object be heard of by such a systematist as Avery and the mere mention of it is as nearly certainly the stimulus to a conventional reaction as is a charged body to an electroscope or a glass of beer to a prohibitionist. It is of the ideals of science to know one object from another before expressing an opinion upon a thing. But that is not the spirit of universal mechanics. A thing. It is attractive or repulsive. Its conventional reaction follows. Because it is not the stone from Grave Creek that is in Hebrew characters, either ancient or modern, it is a stone from Newark, Ohio, of which the story is told that a forger made this mistake of using modern instead of ancient Hebrew characters. We shall say that the inscription upon the Grave Creek stone is not in Hebrew. Or all things are presumed to be innocent but are supposed to be guilty unless they assimilate. Colonel Whittlesey, western reserve historical tracts number 33, says that the Grave Creek stone was considered a fraud by Wilson, Squires, and Davis. Then he comes to the Congress of Archaeologists at Nancy, France, 1875. It is hard for Colonel Whittlesey to admit that at this meeting, which sounds important, the stone was endorsed. He reminds us of Mr. Simons and the man who considered that he saw something. Colonel Whittlesey's somewhat torturous expression is that the finder of the stone, quote, so imposed his views, end quote, upon the Congress, that it pronounced the stone genuine. Also, the stone was examined by Schoolcraft. He gave his opinion for genuineness. Or there's only one process, and see-saw is one of its aspects. Three or four fat experts on the side against us. We find four or five plump ones on our side. Or all that we call logic and reasoning ends up as sheer preponderance or avo du pois. Then several philologists came out in favor of genuineness. Some of them translated the inscription. Of course, as we have said, it is our method or the method of orthodoxy, way in which all conclusions are reached to have some awfully eminent or preponderantly plump authorities with us whenever we can. In this case, however, we feel just a little apprehensive in being caught in such excellently obese but somewhat negativized company. Translation by Mr. Jombird. Thy orders are laws, thou shyness in impetuous elan and rapid chamois, end quote. Mr. Morris Schwab, quote, the chief of emigration who reached these places, or this island, has fixed these characters forever, end quote. Mr. Oppert, quote, the grave of one who was assassinated here, may God to revenge him, strike his murderer, cutting off the hand of his existence, end quote. I like to first one the best. I have such a vivid impression from it of someone polishing up brass or something and in an awful hurry. Of course, the third is more dramatic. Still, they're all very good. They are perturbations of one another, I suppose. In tract 44, Colonel Whittlesey returns to the subject. He gives the conclusion of Major the Hellward at the Congress of Luxembourg, 1877, quote, if Professor Redd and myself are right in the conclusion that the figures are neither of the runic, Phoenician, Canonite, Hebrew, Libyan, Celtic, or any other alphabet language, its importance has been greatly overrated, end quote. Obvious to a child, obvious to any mentality not helplessly subjected to a system. That's just therein lies the importance of this object. It is said that an ideal of science is to find out the new. But unless a thing be of the old, it is unimportant. Quote, it is not worthwhile, end quote, Hovey. Then the inscribed acts, or wedge, which according to Dr. John C. Evans, in a communication to the American Ethnological Society was plowed up near Pemberton, New Jersey, 1859. The characters upon this ax, or wedge, are strikingly similar to the characters on the Grave Creek Stone. Also, with a little disregard here and a little more there, they look like tracks in the snow by someone who's been out celebrating. Or, like your handwriting, or mine, when we think there's a certain distinction in eligibility. Method of disregard. Anything's anything. Dr. Abbott describes this object in the report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1875-260. He says he has no faith in it. All progress is from the outrageous to the commonplace, or quasi-existence, proceeds from rape to the crooning of lullabies. It's been interesting to me to go over various long-established periodicals and note controversies between attempting positivists and then intermediatistic issues. Bold, bad intruders of theories, ruffians with dishonorable intentions, the alarms of science, her attempts to preserve that which is dearer than life itself, submission, then a fidelity like Mrs. Macabre's. So many of these ruffians, or wandering comedians that were hated, or scorned, pettied, embraced, conventionalised. There's not a notion in this book that has a more frightful or ridiculous mean that had the notion of human footprints in rocks, when that now-respectableized ruffian, or clown, was first heard from. It seems bewildering to one whose interests are not scientific that such rouse should be raised over such trifles. But the feeling of a systematist toward such an intruder is just about what anyone's would be if a tramp from the street should come in, sit at one's dinner table, and say he belonged there. We know what hypnosis can do. Let him insist with all his might that he does belong there, and one begins to suspect that he may be right, that he may have higher perceptions of what's right. The prohibitionists have this worked out very skillfully. So the row that was raised over the stone from Grave Creek, but time and cumulativeness, and the very factor we make so much of, or the power of massed data. There were other reports of inscribed stones, and then, half a century later, some mounds, or cached, as we call them, were opened by Reverend Mr. Gas, near the city of Davenport, American and Czechrarian, 15-73. Several stone tablets were found. Upon one of them, the letters, quote, TFTOWNS, and quote, may easily be made out. In this instance, we hear nothing of fraudulency. Time, cumulativeness, the power of massed data, the attempt to assimilate this datum is that the tablet was probably of Mormon origin. Why? Because, at Menden, Illinois, was found a brass plate upon which were similar characters. Why that? Because that was found, quote, near a house once occupied by a Mormon, end quote. In a real existence, a real meteorologist, suspecting that cinders had come from a fire engine, would have asked a fireman. Tablets of Davenport. There's not a record, findable, that it ever occurred to an Ian Czecharian to ask a Mormon. Other tablets were found. Upon one of them are two Fs and two 8s. Also a large tablet, 12 inches by 8 to 10 inches, quote, with Roman numerals and Arabic, end quote. It is said that the figure 8 occurs 3 times, and that the figure, or letter O, 7 times, quote, with these familiar characters are others that resemble ancient asylvets, either Phoenician or Hebrew, end quote. It may be that the discovery of Australia, for instance, will turn out to be less important than the discovery and the meaning of these tablets. But where will you read of them in anything subsequently published? What Antichorian has ever since tried to understand them and their presence and indications of antiquity in a land that were told was inhabited only by unlettered savages. These things that are exhumed only to be buried in some other way. They are found at Davenport by Mr. Charles Harrison, president of the American Antichorian Society, quote, 8 and other hieroglyphs are upon this tablet, end quote. This time also. Fraud is not mentioned. My own notion is that it is very unsportsmanlike ever to mention fraud. Accept anything. Then explain it your way. Anything that assimilates with one explanation must have assimilable relations, to some degree, with all other explanations. If all explanations are somewhere continuous, Mormons are logged in again. But the attempt is faint and helpless, quote, because general circumstances make it difficult to explain the presence of these tablets, end quote. Altogether our phantom resistance is mere attribution to the Mormons, without the slightest attempt to find space for the attribution. We think of messages that were showered upon this earth, and of messages that were cached in nouns upon this earth. The similarity to the Franklin's situation is striking. Conceivably, centuries from now, objects dropped from relief expedition balloons may be found in the Arctic, and conceivably, there are still discovered caches left by Franklin in the hope that relief expeditions would find them. It would be, as incongruous, to attribute these things to the Eskimos, as to attribute tablets and lettered stones to the aborigines of America. Sometime I shall take up an expression that the queer-shaped mounds upon this earth were built by explorers from somewhere, unable to get back, designed to attract attention from some other world, and that a vast sword-shaped mound had been discovered upon the moon. Just now we think of lettered things and their two possible significances. A bizarre little lost soul rescued from one of the morgues of the American Journal of Science, an account sent by a correspondent to Professor Silliman of something that was found in a block of marble taken November 1829 from a quarry near Philadelphia American Journal of Science 1-19-361 The block was cut into slabs by this process, it is said, was exposed an indentation in the stone about one and a half inches by five-eighths of an inch. A geometric indentation in it were two definite-looking raised letters like I, U Only difference is that the corners of the U are not rounded, but are straight angles. We are told that this block of stone came from a depth of seventy or eighty feet or that, if acceptable, this lettering was done long, long ago. To some persons not sated with the commonness of the incredible that has to be accepted, it may seem grotesque to think that an indentation in sand could have tons of other sand piled upon it and hardening into stone without being pressed out. But the famous Nicaraguan footprints were found in a quarry under a leaven strata of solid rock. There was no discussion of this datum. We only take it out for an airing. As to lettered stones that may once upon a time have been showered upon Europe if we cannot accept that the stones were inscribed by indigenous inhabitants of Europe many have been found in caves. Once they were carried as curiosities by prehistoric men or as ornaments I suppose about the size and shape of the Grave Creek stone or disk flat and oval and about two inches wide and solace. Characters painted upon them found first by Mr. Piet in the cave of Madazil Aries According to solace they are marked in various directions with red and black lines but on not a few of them more complex characters occur which in a few instances simulates some of the capital letters of the Roman alphabet end quote. In one instance the letters F, E, I accompanied by no other markings to modify them are as plain as they could be. According to solace ancient hunters page 95 Mr. Cartagac has confirmed the observations of Piet and Mr. Boul has found additional examples quote the other one of the darkest problems of prehistoric times end quote solace as to caches in general I should say that they are made with two purposes to proclaim and to conceal or that caches and documents are hidden or covered over in conspicuous structures at least so are designed the cairns in the Arctic of the New York Academy of Sciences 11-27 that Mr. J. H. Hooper Bradley County, Tennessee having come upon a curious stone in some woods upon his farm investigated he dug he unearthed a long wall upon this wall were inscribed many alphabetic characters quote 872 characters have been examined many of them duplicates and a few imitations of animal forms the moon and other objects accidental imitations of oriental alphabets are numerous end quote the part that seems significant that these letters had been hidden under a layer of cement and still in our own heterogeneity or unwillingness to concentrate upon single concepts we shall or we shan't accept that though there may have been a lost colony or lost expedition from somewhere upon this earth and extra mundane visitors who could never get back there have been other extra mundane visitors who have gone away again altogether quite in analogy with the Franklin expedition and fury flittings in the Arctic that occurred to one group of them and the loot that was lost overboard the Chinese seals of Ireland not the things with the big wistful eyes that lie on ice and that are taught to balance objects on their noses but inscribed stumps with which to make impressions proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 1-381 a paper was read by Mr. J. Hubbin Smith descriptive of about a dozen Chinese seals that have been found in Ireland they are all alike each a cube with an animal seated upon it quote it is said that the inscriptions upon them are of a very ancient class of Chinese characters end quote the three points that have made a leper and an outcast of this datum but only in the sense of this regard because nowhere that I know of is it questioned agreement among archaeologists is that there were no relations in the remote past between China and Ireland that no other objects from ancient China virtually I suppose have ever been found in Ireland the great distance at which these seals have been found apart after Mr. Smith's investigations if he did investigate or do more than record many more Chinese seals were found in Ireland and with one exception only in Ireland in 1852 about 60 had been found of all archaeologic finds in Ireland quote none is enveloped in greater mystery end quote 16-364 according to the writer in chamber's journal one of these seals was found in a curiosity shop in London one questioned the shopkeeper said that it had come from Ireland in this instance if you don't take instinctively to our expression there is no orthodox explanation for your preference it is the astonishing scattering of them over field and forest about the explainers in the proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 10-171 Dr. Fraser says that they quote appear to have been soon broadcast over the county in some strange way that I cannot offer a solution of end quote the struggle for expression of a notion that did not belong to Dr. Fraser's era quote the invariable story of their find is what we might expect had been accidentally dropped end quote three were found in temporary six in quirk three in dawn four in Waterford all of the rest one or two to a county but one of these Chinese seals was found in the bed of the river Boine near Conard, Meath when workmen were raising gravel that one at least had been dropped there ends of chapter 11 read by J. C. Guan Montreal, November 2008