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

get down, but resisted, like balloonists, at a certain altitude, trying to get farther up, but resisted.

Not in the least except to good positivists, or the homogeneous-minded, does this speculation interfere with the concept of some other world that is in successful communication with certain esoteric ones upon this earth, by a code of symbols that print in rock, like symbols of telephotographers in selenium.

I think that sometimes, in favorable circumstances, emissaries have come to this earth—secret meetings—

Of course it sounds—

But:

Secret meetings—emissaries—esoteric ones in Europe, before the war broke out—

And those who suggested that such phenomena could be.

However, as to most of our data, I think of super-things that have passed close to this earth with no more interest in this earth than have passengers upon a steamship in the bottom of the sea—or passengers may have a keen interest, but circumstances of schedules and commercial requirements forbid investigation of the bottom of the sea.

Then, on the other hand, we may have data of super-scientific attempts to investigate phenomena of this earth from above—perhaps by beings from so far away that they had never even heard that something, somewhere, asserts a legal right to this earth.

Altogether, we're good intermediatists, but we can't be very good hypnotists.

Still another source of the merging away of our data:

That, upon general principles of Continuity, if super-vessels, or super-vehicles, have traversed this earth's atmosphere, there must be mergers between them and terrestrial phenomena: observations upon them must merge away into observations upon clouds and balloons and meteors. We shall begin with data that we cannot distinguish ourselves and work our way out of mergers into extremes.

In the Observatory, 35-168, it is said that, according to a newspaper, March 6, 1912, residents of Warmley, England, were greatly excited by something that was supposed to be "a splendidly illuminated aeroplane, passing over the village." "The machine was apparently traveling at a tremendous rate, and came from the direction of Bath, and went on toward Gloucester." The Editor says that it was a large, triple-headed fireball. "Tremendous indeed!" he says. "But we are prepared for anything nowadays."

That is satisfactory. We'd not like to creep up stealthily and then jump out of a corner with our data. This Editor, at least, is prepared to read—

Nature, Oct. 27, 1898:

A correspondent writes that, in the County Wicklow, Ireland, at about 6 o'clock in the evening, he had seen, in the sky, an object that looked like the moon in its three-quarter aspect. We note the shape which approximates to triangularity, and we note that in color it is said to have been golden yellow. It moved slowly, and in about five minutes disappeared behind a mountain.

The Editor gives his opinion that the object may have been an escaped balloon.

In Nature, Aug. 11, 1898, there is a story, taken from the July number of the Canadian Weather Review, by the meteorologist, F.F. Payne: that he had seen, in the Canadian sky, a large, pear-shaped object, sailing rapidly. At first he supposed that the object was a balloon, "its outline being sharply defined." "But, as no cage was seen, it was concluded that it must be a mass of cloud." In about six minutes this object became less definite—whether because of increasing distance or not—"the mass became less dense, and finally it disappeared." As to cyclonic formation—"no whirling motion could be seen."

Nature, 58-294:

That, upon July 8, 1898, a correspondent had seen, at Kiel, an object in the sky, colored red by the sun, which had set. It was about as broad as a rainbow, and about twelve degrees high. "It remained in its original brightness about five minutes, and then faded rapidly, and then remained almost stationary again, finally disappearing about eight minutes after I first saw it."

In an intermediate existence, we quasi-persons have nothing to judge by because everything is its own opposite. If a hundred dollars a week be a standard of luxurious living to some persons, it is poverty to others. We have instances of three objects that were seen in the sky in a space of three months, and this concurrence seems to me to be something to judge by. Science has been built upon concurrence: so have been most of the fallacies and fanaticisms. I feel the positivism of a Leverrier, or instinctively take to the notion that all three of these observations relate to the same object. However, I don't formulate them and predict the next transit. Here's another chance for me to become a fixed star—but as usual—oh, well—

A point in Intermediatism:

That the Intermediatist is likely to be a flaccid compromiser.

Our own attitude:

Ours is a partly positive and partly negative state, or a state in which nothing is finally positive or finally negative—

But, if positivism attract you, go ahead and try: you will be in harmony with cosmic endeavor—but Continuity will resist you. Only to have appearance in quasiness is to be proportionately positive, but beyond a degree of attempted positivism, Continuity will rise to pull you back. Success, as it is called—though there is only success-failure in Intermediateness—will, in Intermediateness, be yours proportionately as you are in adjustment with its own state, or some positivism mixed with compromise and retreat. To be very positive is to be a Napoleon Bonaparte, against whom the rest of civilization will sooner or later combine. For interesting data, see newspaper accounts of fate of one Dowie, of Chicago.

Intermediatism, then, is recognition that our state is only a quasi-state: it is no bar to one who desires to be positive: it is recognition that he cannot be positive and remain in a state that is positive-negative. Or that a great positivist—isolated—with no system to support him—will be crucified, or will starve to death, or will be put in jail and beaten to death—that these are the birth-pangs of translation to the Positive Absolute.

So, though positive-negative, myself, I feel the attraction of the positive pole of our intermediate state, and attempt to correlate these three data: to see them homogeneously; to think that they relate to one object.

In the aeronautic journals and in the London Times there is no mention of escaped balloons, in the summer or fall of 1898. In the New York Times there is no mention of ballooning in Canada or the United States, in the summer of 1898.

London Times, Sept. 29, 1885:

A clipping from the Royal Gazette, of Bermuda, of Sept. 8, 1885, sent to the Times by General Lefroy:

That, upon Aug. 27, 1885, at about 8:30 A.M., there was observed by Mrs. Adelina D. Bassett, "a strange object in the clouds, coming from the north." She called the attention of Mrs. L. Lowell to it, and they were both somewhat alarmed. However, they continued to watch the object steadily for some time. It drew nearer. It was of triangular shape, and seemed to be about the size of a pilot-boat mainsail, with chains attached to the bottom of it. While crossing the land it had appeared to descend, but, as it went out to sea, it ascended, and continued to ascend, until it was lost to sight high in the clouds.

Or with such power to ascend, I don't think much myself of the notion that it was an escaped balloon, partly deflated. Nevertheless, General Lefroy, correlating with Exclusionism, attempts to give a terrestrial interpretation to this occurrence. He argues that the thing may have been a balloon that had escaped from France or England—or the only aerial thing of terrestrial origin that, even to this date of about thirty-five years later, has been thought to have crossed the Atlantic Ocean. He accounts for the triangular form by deflation—"a shapeless bag, barely able to float." My own acceptance is that great deflation does not accord with observations upon its power to ascend.

In the Times, Oct. 1, 1885, Charles Harding, of the R.M.S., argues that if it had been a balloon from Europe, surely it would have been seen and reported by many vessels. Whether he was as good a Briton as the General or not, he shows awareness of the United States—or that the thing may have been a partly collapsed balloon that had escaped from the United States.

General Lefroy wrote to Nature about it (Nature, 33-99), saying—whatever his sensitivenesses may have been—that the columns of the Times were "hardly suitable" for such a discussion. If, in the past, there had been more persons like General Lefroy, we'd have better than the mere fragments of data that in most cases are too broken up very well to piece together. He took the trouble to write to a friend of his, W.H. Gosling, of Bermuda—who also was an extraordinary person. He went to the trouble of interviewing Mrs. Bassett and Mrs. Lowell. Their description to him was somewhat different:

An object from which nets were suspended—

Deflated balloon, with its network hanging from it—

A super-dragnet?

That something was trawling overhead?

The birds of Baton Rouge.

Mr. Gosling wrote that the item of chains, or suggestion of a basket that had been attached, had originated with Mr. Bassett, who had not seen the object. Mr. Gosling mentioned a balloon that had escaped from Paris in July. He tells of a balloon that fell in Chicago, September 17, or three weeks later than the Bermuda object.

It's one incredibility against another, with disregards and convictions governed by whichever of the two Dominants looms stronger in each reader's mind. That he can't think for himself any more than I can is understood.

My own correlates:

I think that we're fished for. It may be that we're highly esteemed by super-epicures somewhere. It makes me more cheerful when I think that we may be of some use after all. I think that dragnets have often come down and have been mistaken for whirlwinds and waterspouts. Some accounts of seeming structure in whirlwinds and waterspouts are astonishing. And I have data that, in this book, I can't take up at all—mysterious disappearances. I think we're fished for. But this is a little expression on the side: relates to trespassers; has nothing to do with the subject that I shall take up at some other time—or our use to some other mode of seeming that has a legal right to us.

Nature, 33-137:

"Our Paris correspondent writes that in relation to the balloon which is said to have been seen over Bermuda, in September, no ascent took place in France which can account for it."

Last of August: not September. In the London Times there is no mention of balloon ascents in Great Britain, in the summer of 1885, but mention of two ascents in France. Both balloons had escaped. In L'Aéronaute, August, 1885, it is said that these balloons had been sent up from fêtes of the fourteenth of July—44 days before the observation at Bermuda. The aeronauts were Gower and Eloy. Gower's balloon was found floating on the ocean, but Eloy's balloon was not found. Upon the 17th of July it was reported by a sea captain: still in the air; still inflated.

But this balloon of Eloy's was a small exhibition balloon, made for short ascents from fêtes and fair grounds. In La Nature, 1885-2-131, it is said that it was a very small balloon, incapable of remaining long in the air.

As to contemporaneous ballooning in the United States, I find only one account: an ascent in Connecticut, July 29, 1885. Upon leaving this balloon, the aeronauts had pulled the "rip cord," "turning it inside out." (New York Times, Aug. 10, 1885.)

To the Intermediatist, the accusation of "anthropomorphism" is meaningless. There is nothing in anything that is unique or positively different. We'd be materialists were it not quite as rational to express the material in terms of the immaterial as to express the immaterial in terms of the material. Oneness of allness in quasiness. I will engage to write the formula of any novel in psycho-chemic terms, or draw its graph in psycho-mechanic terms: or write, in romantic terms, the circumstances and sequences of any chemic or electric or magnetic reaction: or