The Book of the Damned

l land westward 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 esp

o, in turn, was continuous with preceding evolutionary speculation. Our own expression is that all things are acting to advance to the homogeneous, or are trying to localize Homogeneousness. Homogeneousness is an aspect of the Universal, wherein it is a state that does not merge away into something else. We regard homog

ty-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 ag

and "definiteness" are all words for the same state, or the state that we call "posit

erest 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 wo

er in not being able to concentrate

ted with the orthodox. I haven't the aristocratic dis

r. Vast, amorphous aerial regions, to which such definite words as "worlds" and "planets" seem inapplicable. And artificial constructions that I have called "super

ation, or indigestion would have expressed in the notion that, if this were so, astronomers would have seen thes

ble. In cosmic punctuation there are no periods: illusion

with suppression and disregard, we suspect, before we go into the subject at all, that astronomers have seen them; that nav

stem that has exc

s they do now. But there are hundreds of planetary bodies now known that were then not known. So a few hundred worlds more of our

ies of geology and bi

l work out as wel

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 ho

Prof. Hitchcocks have modified our trustfulness toward indistinguishability. As to the perfection of this System that quasi-opposes us and the infallibility of its mathema

turn out like every other development. We beg

ur ey

hear of the "triumphal discovery of Neptune"-this "monumental a

le is that we'v

-books o

ulations of Adams and Leverrier, it was so different-that Le

t best to say no mo

-books o

ine from a cosine was out sining and

hem gues

jectionable-but, according to Prof. Peirce, of Harvard, the calculations of Adams and Leverr

discovery of Neptune was only a "happy acci

see Lowell's Evo

fferences 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

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 Encke's comet. It came back slower and slower. But the astr

y's c

ience, as we astronomers

ould not tell one longitude from another, he'd be sent back to t

e. He got it degrees wrong. He gave to Africa's noble Roman promon

g of-the Leonids, for instance. By the same methods as those by which Halley's comet was predicted, the Leonids were predicted. November,

f astronomi

ize marksman, if only

s to perjure himself: otherwise he'd be accused of having no intere

rd t

ich several new comets are not discovered, so plentiful are they. Luminous fleas on a vast black dog-i

us. For many of us priests no longer function to give us seeming rapport with Perfection, Infallibility-the Positive Absolute. Astronomers have stepped forward to fill a vacancy-with quasi-phantomosity-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 respo

omet 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

nd Street, at 9 P.M. He doesn't, but a tubercular Jap in a sailor's uniform does cross Broadway

ot have hypnotized the rest of us, in 1909. Wills were made. Human life might be swept from this planet. In quasi-existence, which is essenti

said that, in New York, a

scratch of a match on the seat o

not o

ee, myself, though I looked when I was told to look, was seen

ld to look up at the sky: we did-like a

ef

t he saw Halley's comet, and th

most all our data, in some regiments of this procession, 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

savage upon an ocean island might vaguely think of in his speculations-not upon some other land, b

ll. Now I think of some especial savage who suspects otherwise-because he's very backward and unimaginative and insensible to the beautiful ideals of the others: not piously occupied, like the others, in bowing before impressive-looking sticks of wood; dishonestly taking time for his speculations, while th

out strong i

avages without noting what r

n of the vessels-deduced from the fall of a monkey from a palm tree-or,

or

these vessels, ca

egar

of something and s

cean 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-dogmatist of a loc

otions 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 a

o understand vast construction

at we must be

n visited by explorers. I think that the notion that there have been extra-mundane visitors to China,

ar to our own. I think of others that are very different-so that vi

our attenuated air, if they cam

sk

ve been found in

and are said to have been c

ullivan County, Missouri, in 187

of iron a