|
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 |
