The Book of the Damned, Charles Fort [best ereader for academics txt] 📗

an inch in size. England, India, France, South Africa—they've been found in many parts of the world—whether showered there or not. They belong high up in the froth of the accursed: they are not denied, and they have not been disregarded; there is an abundant literature upon this subject. One attempt to rationalize them, or assimilate them, or take them into the scientific fold, has been the notion that they were toys of prehistoric children. It sounds reasonable. But, of course, by the reasonable we mean that for which the equally reasonable, but opposing, has not been found out—except that we modify that by saying that, though nothing's finally reasonable, some phenomena have higher approximations to Reasonableness than have others. Against the notion of toys, the higher approximation is that where "pygmy flints" are found, all flints are pygmies—at least so in India, where, when larger implements have been found in the same place, there are separations by strata. (Wilson.)

The datum that, just at present, leads me to accept that these flints were made by beings about the size of pickles, is a point brought out by Prof. Wilson (Rept. National Museum, 1892-455):

Not only that the flints are tiny but that the chipping upon them is "minute."

Struggle for expression, in the mind of a 19th-century-ite, of an idea that did not belong to his era:

In Science Gossip, 1896-36, R.A. Galty says:

"So fine is the chipping that to see the workmanship a magnifying glass is necessary."

I think that would be absolutely convincing, if there were anything—absolutely anything—either that tiny beings, from pickle to cucumber-stature, made these things, or that ordinary savages made them under magnifying glasses.

The idea that we are now going to develop, or perpetrate, is rather intensely of the accursed, or the advanced. It's a lost soul, I admit—or boast—but it fits in. Or, as conventional as ever, our own method is the scientific method of assimilating. It assimilates, if we think of the inhabitants of Elvera—

By the way, I forgot to tell the name of the giant's world:

Monstrator.

Spindle-shaped world—about 100,000 miles along its major axis—more details to be published later.

But our coming inspiration fits in, if we think of the inhabitants of Elvera as having only visited here: having, in hordes as dense as clouds of bats, come here, upon hunting excursions—for mice, I should say: for bees, very likely—or most likely of all, or inevitably, to convert the heathen here—horrified with anyone who would gorge himself with more than a bean at a time; fearful for the souls of beings who would guzzle more than a dewdrop at a time—hordes of tiny missionaries, determined that right should prevail, determining right by their own minutenesses.

They must have been missionaries.

Only to be is motion to convert or assimilate something else.

The idea now is that tiny creatures coming here from their own little world, which may be Eros, though I call it Elvera, would flit from the exquisite to the enormous—gulp of a fair-sized terrestrial animal—half a dozen of them gone and soon digested. One falls into a brook—torn away in a mighty torrent—

Or never anything but conventional, we adopt from Darwin:

"The geological records are incomplete."

Their flints would survive, but, as to their fragile bodies—one might as well search for prehistoric frost-traceries. A little whirlwind—Elverean carried away a hundred yards—body never found by his companions. They'd mourn for the departed. Conventional emotion to have: they'd mourn. There'd have to be a funeral: there's no getting away from funerals. So I adopt an explanation that I take from the anthropologists: burial in effigy. Perhaps the Elvereans would not come to this earth again until many years later—another distressing occurrence—one little mausoleum for all burials in effigy.

London Times, July 20, 1836:

That, early in July, 1836, some boys were searching for rabbits' burrows in the rocky formation, near Edinburgh, known as Arthur's Seat. In the side of a cliff, they came upon some thin sheets of slate, which they pulled out.

Little cave.

Seventeen tiny coffins.

Three or four inches long.

In the coffins were miniature wooden figures. They were dressed differently both in style and material. There were two tiers of eight coffins each, and a third tier begun, with one coffin.

The extraordinary datum, which has especially made mystery here:

That the coffins had been deposited singly, in the little cave, and at intervals of many years. In the first tier, the coffins were quite decayed, and the wrappings had moldered away. In the second tier, the effects of age had not advanced so far. And the top coffin was quite recent-looking.

In the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquarians of Scotland, 3-12-460, there is a full account of this find. Three of the coffins and three of the figures are pictured.

So Elvera with its downy forests and its microscopic oyster shells—and if the Elvereans be not very far-advanced, they take baths—with sponges the size of pin heads—

Or that catastrophes have occurred: that fragments of Elvera have fallen to this earth:

In Popular Science, 20-83, Francis Bingham, writing of the corals and sponges and shells and crinoids that Dr. Hahn had asserted that he had found in meteorites, says, judging by the photographs of them, that their "notable peculiarity" is their "extreme smallness." The corals, for instance, are about one-twentieth the size of terrestrial corals. "They represent a veritable pygmy animal world," says Bingham.

The inhabitants of Monstrator and Elvera were primitives, I think, at the time of their occasional visits to this earth—though, of course, in a quasi-existence, anything that we semi-phantoms call evidence of anything may be just as good evidence of anything else. Logicians and detectives and jurymen and suspicious wives and members of the Royal Astronomic Society recognize this indeterminateness, but have the delusion that in the method of agreement there is final, or real evidence. The method is good enough for an "existence" that is only semi-real, but also it is the method of reasoning by which witches were burned, and by which ghosts have been feared. I'd not like to be so unadvanced as to deny witches and ghosts, but I do think that there never have been witches and ghosts like those of popular supposition. But stories of them have been supported by astonishing fabrications of details and of different accounts in agreement.

So, if a giant left impressions of his bare feet in the ground, that is not to say that he was a primitive—bulk of culture out taking the Kneipp cure. So, if Stonehenge is a large, but only roughly geometric construction, the inattention to details by its builders—signifies anything you please—ambitious dwarfs or giants—if giants, that they were little more than cave men, or that they were post-impressionist architects from a very far-advanced civilization.

If there are other worlds, there are tutelary worlds—or that Kepler, for instance, could not have been absolutely wrong: that his notion of an angel assigned to push along and guide each planet may not be very acceptable, but that, abstractedly, or in the notion of a tutelary relation, we may find acceptance.

Only to be is to be tutelary.

Our general expression:

That "everything" in Intermediateness is not a thing, but is an endeavor to become something—by breaking away from its continuity, or merging away, with all other phenomena—is an attempt to break away from the very essence of a relative existence and become absolute—if it have not surrendered to, or become part of, some higher attempt:

That to this process there are two aspects:

Attraction, or the spirit of everything to assimilate all other things—if it have not given in and subordinated to—or have not been assimilated by—some higher attempted system, unity, organization, entity, harmony, equilibrium—

And repulsion, or the attempt of everything to exclude or disregard the unassimilable.

Universality of the process:

Anything conceivable:

A tree. It is doing all it can to assimilate substances of the soil and substances of the air, and sunshine, too, into tree-substance: obversely it is rejecting or excluding or disregarding that which it cannot assimilate.

Cow grazing, pig rooting, tiger stalking: planets trying, or acting, to capture comets; rag pickers and the Christian religion, and a cat down headfirst in a garbage can; nations fighting for more territory, sciences correlating the data they can, trust magnates organizing, chorus girl out for a little late supper—all of them stopped somewhere by the unassimilable. Chorus girl and the broiled lobster. If she eats not shell and all she represents universal failure to positivize. Also, if she does she represents universal failure to positivize: her ensuing disorders will translate her to the Negative Absolute.

Or Science and some of our cursed hard-shelled data.

One speaks of the tutelarian as if it were something distinct in itself. So one speaks of a tree, a saint, a barrel of pork, the Rocky Mountains. One speaks of missionaries, as if they were positively different, or had identity of their own, or were a species by themselves. To the Intermediatist, everything that seems to have identity is only attempted identity, and every species is continuous with all other species, or that which is called the specific is only emphasis upon some aspect of the general. If there are cats, they're only emphasis upon universal felinity. There is nothing that does not partake of that of which the missionary, or the tutelary, is the special. Every conversation is a conflict of missionaries, each trying to convert the other, to assimilate, or to make the other similar to himself. If no progress be made, mutual repulsion will follow.

If other worlds have ever in the past had relations with this earth, they were attempted positivizations: to extend themselves, by colonies, upon this earth; to convert, or assimilate, indigenous inhabitants of this earth.

Or parent-worlds and their colonies here—

Super-Romanimus—

Or where the first Romans came from.

It's as good as the Romulus and Remus story.

Super-Israelimus—

Or that, despite modern reasoning upon this subject, there was once something that was super-parental or tutelary to early orientals.

Azuria, which was tutelary to the early Britons:

Azuria, whence came the blue Britons, whose descendants gradually diluting, like blueing in a wash-tub, where a faucet's turned on, have been most emphasized of sub-tutelarians, or assimilators ever since.

Worlds that were once tutelarian worlds—before this earth became sole property of one of them—their attempts to convert or assimilate—but then the state that comes to all things in their missionary-frustrations—unacceptance by all stomachs of some things; rejection by all societies of some units; glaciers that sort over and cast out stones—

Repulsion. Wrath of the baffled missionary. There is no other wrath. All repulsion is reaction to the unassimilable.

So then the wrath of Azuria—

Because surrounding peoples of this earth would not assimilate with her own colonists in the part of the earth that we now call England.

I don't know that there has ever been more nearly just, reasonable, or logical wrath, in this earth's history—if there is no other wrath.

The wrath of Azuria, because the other peoples of this earth would not turn blue to suit her.

History is a department of human delusion that interests us. We are able to give a little advancement to history. In the vitrified forts of a few parts of Europe, we find data that the Humes and Gibbons have disregarded.

The vitrified forts surrounding England, but not in England.

The vitrified forts of Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, and Bohemia.

Or that, once upon a time, with electric blasts, Azuria tried to swipe this earth clear of the peoples who resisted her.

The vast blue bulk of Azuria appeared in the sky. Clouds turned green. The sun was formless and purple in the vibrations of wrath that were emanating from Azuria. The whitish, or yellowish, or brownish peoples of Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, and Bohemia fled to hilltops and built forts. In a real existence, hilltops, or easiest accessibility to an aerial enemy, would be the last choice in refuges. But here, in quasi-existence, if we're accustomed to run to hilltops, in times of danger, we run to them just the same, even with danger closest to hilltops. Very common in quasi-existence: attempt to escape by running closer to the pursuing.

They built forts, or already had forts,