The Book of the Damned. Charles Fort
of Philosophy, n.s., 12-94) a viscous mass fell with a luminous meteorite between Siena and Rome, May, 1652; viscous matter found after the fall of a fire ball, in Lusatia, March, 1796; fall of a gelatinous substance, after the explosion of a meteorite, near Heidelberg, July, 1811. In the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, 1-234, the substance that fell at Lusatia is said to have been of the "color and odor of dried, brown varnish." In the Amer. Jour. Sci., 1-26-133, it is said that gelatinous matter fell with a globe of fire, upon the island of Lethy, India, 1718.
In the Amer. Jour. Sci., 1-26-396, in many observations upon the meteors of November, 1833, are reports of falls of gelatinous substance:
That, according to newspaper reports, "lumps of jelly" were found on the ground at Rahway, N.J. The substance was whitish, or resembled the coagulated white of an egg:
That Mr. H.H. Garland, of Nelson County, Virginia, had found a jelly-like substance of about the circumference of a twenty-five-cent piece:
That, according to a communication from A.C. Twining to Prof. Olmstead, a woman at West Point, N.Y., had seen a mass the size of a teacup. It looked like boiled starch:
That, according to a newspaper, of Newark, N.J., a mass of gelatinous substance, like soft soap, had been found. "It possessed little elasticity, and, on the application of heat, it evaporated as readily as water."
It seems incredible that a scientist would have such hardihood, or infidelity, as to accept that these things had fallen from the sky: nevertheless, Prof. Olmstead, who collected these lost souls, says:
"The fact that the supposed deposits were so uniformly described as gelatinous substance forms a presumption in favor of the supposition that they had the origin ascribed to them."
In contemporaneous scientific publications considerable attention was given to Prof. Olmstead's series of papers upon this subject of the November meteors. You will not find one mention of the part that treats of gelatinous matter.
CHAPTER 5
I shall attempt not much of correlation of dates. A mathematic-minded positivist, with his delusion that in an intermediate state twice two are four, whereas, if we accept Continuity, we cannot accept that there are anywhere two things to start with, would search our data for periodicities. It is so obvious to me that the mathematic, or the regular, is the attribute of the Universal, that I have not much inclination to look for it in the local. Still, in this solar system, "as a whole," there is considerable approximation to regularity; or the mathematic is so nearly localized that eclipses, for instance, can, with rather high approximation, be foretold, though I have notes that would deflate a little the astronomers' vainglory in this respect—or would if that were possible. An astronomer is poorly paid, uncheered by crowds, considerably isolated: he lives upon his own inflations: deflate a bear and it couldn't hibernate. This solar system is like every other phenomenon that can be regarded "as a whole"—or the affairs of a ward are interfered with by the affairs of the city of which it is a part; city by county; county by state; state by nation; nation by other nations; all nations by climatic conditions; climatic conditions by solar circumstances; sun by general planetary circumstances; solar system "as a whole" by other solar systems—so the hopelessness of finding the phenomena of entirety in the ward of a city. But positivists are those who try to find the unrelated in the ward of a city. In our acceptance this is the spirit of cosmic religion. Objectively the state is not realizable in the ward of a city. But, if a positivist could bring himself to absolute belief that he had found it, that would be a subjective realization of that which is unrealizable objectively. Of course we do not draw a positive line between the objective and the subjective—or that all phenomena called things or persons are subjective within one all-inclusive nexus, and that thoughts within those that are commonly called "persons" are sub-subjective. It is rather as if Intermediateness strove for Regularity in this solar system and failed: then generated the mentality of astronomers, and, in that secondary expression, strove for conviction that failure had been success.
I have tabulated all the data of this book, and a great deal besides—card system—and several proximities, thus emphasized, have been revelations to me: nevertheless, it is only the method of theologians and scientists—worst of all, of statisticians.
For instance, by the statistic method, I could "prove" that a black rain has fallen "regularly" every seven months, somewhere upon this earth. To do this, I'd have to include red rains and yellow rains, but, conventionally, I'd pick out the black particles in red substances and in yellow substances, and disregard the rest. Then, too, if here and there a black rain should be a week early or a month late—that would be "acceleration" or "retardation." This is supposed to be legitimate in working out the periodicities of comets. If black rains, or red or yellow rains with black particles in them, should not appear at all near some dates—we have not read Darwin in vain—"the records are not complete." As to other, interfering black rains, they'd be either gray or brown, or for them we'd find other periodicities.
Still, I have had to notice the year 1819, for instance. I shall not note them all in this book, but I have records of 31 extraordinary events in 1883. Someone should write a book upon the phenomena of this one year—that is, if books should be written. 1849 is notable for extraordinary falls, so far apart that a local explanation seems inadequate—not only the black rain of Ireland, May, 1849, but a red rain in Sicily and a red rain in Wales. Also, it is said (Timb's Year Book, 1850-241) that, upon April 18 or 20, 1849, shepherds near Mt. Ararat, found a substance that was not indigenous, upon areas measuring 8 to 10 miles in circumference. Presumably it had fallen there.
We have already gone into the subject of Science and its attempted positiveness, and its resistances in that it must have relations of service. It is very easy to see that most of the theoretic science of the 19th century was only a relation of reaction against theologic dogma, and has no more to do with Truth than has a wave that bounds back from a shore. Or, if a shop girl, or you or I, should pull out a piece of chewing gum about a yard long, that would be quite as scientific a performance as was the stretching of this earth's age several hundred millions of years.
All "things" are not things, but only relations, or expressions of relations: but all relations are striving to be the unrelated, or have surrendered to, and subordinated to, higher attempts. So there is a positivist aspect to this reaction that is itself only a relation, and that is the attempt to assimilate all phenomena under the materialist explanation, or to formulate a final, all-inclusive system, upon the materialist basis. If this attempt could be realized, that would be the attaining of realness; but this attempt can be made only by disregarding psychic phenomena, for instance—or, if science shall eventually give in to the psychic, it would be no more legitimate to explain the immaterial in terms of the material than to explain the material in terms of the immaterial. Our own acceptance is that material and immaterial are of a oneness, merging, for instance, in a thought that is continuous with a physical action: that oneness cannot be explained, because the process of explaining is the interpreting of something in terms of something else. All explanation is assimilation of something in terms of something else that has been taken as a basis: but, in Continuity, there is nothing that is any more basic than anything else—unless we think that delusion built upon delusion is less real than its pseudo-foundation.
In 1829 (Timb's Year Book, 1848-235) in Persia fell a substance that the people said they had never seen before. As to what it was, they had not a notion, but they saw that the sheep ate it. They ground it into flour and made bread, said to have been passable enough, though insipid.
That was a chance that science did not neglect. Manna was placed upon a reasonable basis, or was assimilated and reconciled with the system that had ousted the older—and less nearly real—system. It was said that, likely enough, manna had fallen in ancient times—because it was still falling—but that there was no tutelary influence behind it—that it was a lichen from the steppes of Asia Minor—from one place in a whirlwind and down in another place. "In the American Almanac, 1833-71, it is said that this substance—to the inhabitants of the region"—was "immediately recognized" by scientists who examined it: and that "the chemical analysis also identified it as a lichen."
This