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

In Popular Science, 34-158, Serviss tells of a shadow that Schroeter saw, in 1788, in the lunar Alps. First he saw a light. But then, when this region was illuminated, he saw a round shadow where the light had been.

Our own expression:

That he saw a luminous object near the moon: that that part of the moon became illuminated, and the object was lost to view; but that then its shadow underneath was seen.

Serviss explains, of course. Otherwise he'd not be Prof. Serviss. It's a little contest in relative approximations to realness. Prof. Serviss thinks that what Schroeter saw was the "round" shadow of a mountain—in the region that had become lighted. He assumes that Schroeter never looked again to see whether the shadow could be attributed to a mountain. That's the crux: conceivably a mountain could cast a round—and that means detached—shadow, in the lighted part of the moon. Prof. Serviss could, of course, explain why he disregards the light in the first place—maybe it had always been there "in the first place." If he couldn't explain, he'd still be an amateur.

We have another datum. I think it is more extraordinary than—

Vast thing, black and poised, like a crow, over the moon.

But only because it's more circumstantial, and because it has corroboration, do I think it more extraordinary than—

Vast poised thing, black as a crow, over the moon.

Mr. H.C. Russell, who was usually as orthodox as anybody, I suppose—at least, he wrote "F.R.A.S." after his name—tells in the Observatory, 2-374, one of the wickedest, or most preposterous, stories that we have so far exhumed:

That he and another astronomer, G.D. Hirst, were in the Blue fountains, near Sydney, N.S.W., and Mr. Hirst was looking at the moon—

He saw on the moon what Russell calls "one of those remarkable facts, which being seen should be recorded, although no explanation can at present be offered."

That may be so. It is very rarely done. Our own expression upon evolution by successive dominants and their correlates is against it. On the other hand, we express that every era records a few observations out of harmony with it, but adumbratory or preparatory to the spirit of eras still to come. It's very rarely done. Lashed by the phantom-scourge of a now passing era, the world of astronomers is in a state of terrorism, though of a highly attenuated, modernized, devitalized kind. Let an astronomer see something that is not of the conventional, celestial sights, or something that it is "improper" to see—his very dignity is in danger. Some one of the corralled and scourged may stick a smile into his back. He'll be thought of unkindly.

With a hardihood that is unusual in his world of ethereal sensitivenesses, Russell says, of Hirst's observation:

"He found a large part of it covered with a dark shade, quite as dark as the shadow of the earth during an eclipse of the moon."

But the climax of hardihood or impropriety or wickedness, preposterousness or enlightenment:

"One could hardly resist the conviction that it was a shadow, yet it could not be the shadow of any known body."

Richard Proctor was a man of some liberality. After a while we shall have a letter, which once upon a time we'd have called delirious—don't know that we could read such a thing now, for the first time, without incredulous laughter—which Mr. Proctor permitted to be published in Knowledge. But a dark, unknown world that could cast a shadow upon a large part of the moon, perhaps extending far beyond the limb of the moon; a shadow as deep as the shadow of this earth—

Too much for Mr. Proctor's politeness.

I haven't read what he said, but it seems to have been a little coarse. Russell says that Proctor "freely used" his name in the Echo, of March 14, 1879, ridiculing this observation which had been made by Russell as well as Hirst. If it hadn't been Proctor, it would have been someone else—but one notes that the attack came out in a newspaper. There is no discussion of this remarkable subject, no mention in any other astronomic journal. The disregard was almost complete—but we do note that the columns of the Observatory were open to Russell to answer Proctor.

In the answer, I note considerable intermediateness. Far back in 1879, it would have been a beautiful positivism, if Russell had said—

"There was a shadow on the moon. Absolutely it was cast by an unknown body."

According to our religion, if he had then given all his time to the maintaining of this one stand, of course breaking all friendships, all ties with his fellow astronomers, his apotheosis would have occurred, greatly assisted by means well known to quasi-existence when its compromises and evasions, and phenomena that are partly this and partly that, are flouted by the definite and uncompromising. It would be impossible in a real existence, but Mr. Russell, of quasi-existence, says that he did resist the conviction; that he had said that one could "hardly resist"; and most of his resentment is against Mr. Proctor's thinking that he had not resisted. It seems too bad—if apotheosis be desirable.

The point in Intermediatism here is:

Not that to adapt to the conditions of quasi-existence is to have what is called success in quasi-existence, but is to lose one's soul—

But is to lose "one's" chance of attaining soul, self, or entity.

One indignation quoted from Proctor interests us:

"What happens on the moon may at any time happen to this earth."

Or:

That is just the teaching of this department of Advanced Astronomy:

That Russell and Hirst saw the sun eclipsed relatively to the moon by a vast dark body:

That many times have eclipses occurred relatively to this earth, by vast, dark bodies:

That there have been many eclipses that have not been recognized as eclipses by scientific kindergartens.

There is a merger, of course. We'll take a look at it first—that, after all, it may have been a shadow that Hirst and Russell saw, but the only significance is that the sun was eclipsed relatively to the moon by a cosmic haze of some kind, or a swarm of meteors close together, or a gaseous discharge left behind by a comet. My own acceptance is that vagueness of shadow is a function of vagueness of intervention; that a shadow as dense as the shadow of this earth is cast by a body denser than hazes and swarms. The information seems definite enough in this respect—"quite as dark as the shadow of this earth during the eclipse of the moon."

Though we may not always be as patient toward them as we should be, it is our acceptance that the astronomic primitives have done a great deal of good work: for instance, in the allaying of fears upon this earth. Sometimes it may seem as if all science were to us very much like what a red flag is to bulls and anti-socialists. It's not that: it's more like what unsquare meals are to bulls and anti-socialists—not the scientific, but the insufficient. Our acceptance is that Evil is the negative state, by which we mean the state of maladjustment, discord, ugliness, disorganization, inconsistency, injustice, and so on—as determined in Intermediateness, not by real standards, but only by higher approximations to adjustment, harmony, beauty, organization, consistency, justice, and so on. Evil is outlived virtue, or incipient virtue that has not yet established itself, or any other phenomenon that is not in seeming adjustment, harmony, consistency with a dominant. The astronomers have functioned bravely in the past. They've been good for business: the big interests think kindly, if at all, of them. It's bad for trade to have an intense darkness come upon an unaware community and frighten people out of their purchasing values. But if an obscuration be foretold, and if it then occur—may seem a little uncanny—only a shadow—and no one who was about to buy a pair of shoes runs home panic-stricken and saves the money.

Upon general principles we accept that astronomers have quasi-systematized data of eclipses—or have included some and disregarded others.

They have done well.

They have functioned.

But now they're negatives, or they're out of harmony—

If we are in harmony with a new dominant, or the spirit of a new era, in which Exclusionism must be overthrown; if we have data of many obscurations that have occurred, not only upon the moon, but upon our own earth, as convincing of vast intervening bodies, usually invisible, as is any regularized, predicted eclipse.

One looks up at the sky.

It seems incredible that, say, at the distance of the moon, there could be, but be invisible, a solid body, say, the size of the moon.

One looks up at the moon, at a time when only a crescent of it is visible. The tendency is to build up the rest of it in one's mind; but the unillumined part looks as vacant as the rest of the sky, and it's of the same blueness as the rest of the sky. There's a vast area of solid substance before one's eyes. It's indistinguishable from the sky.

In some of our little lessons upon the beauties of modesty and humility, we have picked out basic arrogances—tail of a peacock, horns of a stag, dollars of a capitalist—eclipses of astronomers. Though I have no desire for the job, I'd engage to list hundreds of instances in which the report upon an expected eclipse has been "sky overcast" or "weather unfavorable." In our Super-Hibernia, the unfavorable has been construed as the favorable. Some time ago, when we were lost, because we had not recognized our own dominant, when we were still of the unchosen and likely to be more malicious than we now are—because we have noted a steady tolerance creeping into our attitude—if astronomers are not to blame, but are only correlates to a dominant—we advertised a predicted eclipse that did not occur at all. Now, without any especial feeling, except that of recognition of the fate of all attempted absolutism, we give the instance, noting that, though such an evil thing to orthodoxy, it was orthodoxy that recorded the non-event.

Monthly Notices of the R.A.S., 8-132:

"Remarkable appearances during the total eclipse of the moon on March 19, 1848":

In an extract from a letter from Mr. Forster, of Bruges, it is said that, according to the writer's observations at the time of the predicted total eclipse, the moon shone with about three times the intensity of the mean illumination of an eclipsed lunar disk: that the British Consul, at Ghent, who did not know of the predicted eclipse, had written enquiring as to the "blood-red" color of the moon.

This is not very satisfactory to what used to be our malices. But there follows another letter, from another astronomer, Walkey, who had made observations at Clyst St. Lawrence: that, instead of an eclipse, the moon became—as is printed in italics—"most beautifully illuminated" ... "rather tinged with a deep red"... "the moon being as perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse whatever."

I note that Chambers, in his work upon eclipses, gives Forster's letter in full—and not a mention of Walkey's letter.

There is no attempt in Monthly Notices to explain upon the notion of greater distance of the moon, and the earth's shadow falling short, which would make as much trouble for astronomers, if that were not foreseen, as no eclipse at all. Also there is no refuge in saying that virtually never, even in total eclipses, is the moon totally dark—"as perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse whatever." It is said that at the time there had been an aurora borealis, which might have caused the luminosity, without a datum that such an effect, by an aurora, had ever been observed upon the moon.

But single instances—so an observation by Scott, in the Antarctic. The force of this datum lies in my own acceptance, based upon especially looking up this point, that an eclipse nine-tenths of totality has great effect,