There's a wretch of an ultra-frowsy thing in the _Scientific American_,
7-298, which we condemn ourselves, if somewhere, because of the oneness
of allness, the damned must also be the damning. It's a newspaper story:
that about the first of June, 1851, a powerful blast, near Dorchester,
Mass., cast out from a bed of solid rock a bell-shaped vessel of an
unknown metal: floral designs inlaid with silver; "art of some cunning
workman." The opinion of the Editor of the _Scientific American_ is that
the thing had been made by Tubal Cain, who was the first inhabitant of
Dorchester. Though I fear that this is a little arbitrary, I am not
disposed to fly rabidly at every scientific opinion.
_Nature_, 35-36:
A block of metal found in coal, in Austria, 1885. It is now in the
Salsburg museum.
This time we have another expression. Usually our intermediatist attack
upon provincial positivism is: Science, in its attempted positivism
takes something such as "true meteoritic material" as a standard of
judgment; but carbonaceous matter, except for its relative infrequency,
is just as veritable a standard of judgment; carbonaceous matter merges
away into such a variety of organic substances, that all standards are
reduced to indistinguishability: if, then, there is no real standard
against us, there is no real resistance to our own acceptances. Now our
intermediatism is: Science takes "true meteoritic material" as a
standard of admission; but now we have an instance that quite as truly
makes "true meteoritic material" a standard of exclusion; or, then, a
thing that denies itself is no real resistance to our own
acceptances--this depending upon whether we have a datum of something of
"true meteoritic material" that orthodoxy can never accept fell from the
sky.
We're a little involved here. Our own acceptance is upon a carved,
geometric thing that, if found in a very old deposit, antedates human
life, except, perhaps, very primitive human life, as an indigenous
product of this earth: but we're quite as much interested in the dilemma
it made for the faithful.
It is of "true meteoritic material." _L'Astronomie_, 1887-114, it is
said that, though so geometric, its phenomena so characteristic of
meteorites exclude the idea that it was the work of man.
As to the deposit--Tertiary coal.
Composition--iron, carbon, and a small quantity of nickel.
It has the pitted surface that is supposed by the faithful to be
characteristic of meteorites.
For a full account of this subject, see _Comptes Rendus_, 103-702. The
scientists who examined it could reach no agreement. They bifurcated:
then a compromise was suggested; but the compromise is a product of
disregard:
That it was of true meteoritic material, and had not been shaped by man;
That it was not of true meteoritic material, but telluric iron that had
been shaped by man:
That it was true meteoritic material that had fallen from the sky, but
had been shaped by man, after its fall.
The data, one or more of which must be disregarded by each of these
three explanations, are: "true meteoritic material" and surface markings
of meteorites; geometric form; presence in an ancient deposit; material
as hard as steel; absence upon this earth, in Tertiary times, of men who
could work in material as hard as steel. It is said that, though of
"true meteoritic material," this object is virtually a steel object.
St. Augustine, with his orthodoxy, was never in--well, very much
worse--difficulties than are the faithful here. By due disregard of a
datum or so, our own acceptance that it was a steel object that had
fallen from the sky to this earth, in Tertiary times, is not forced upon
one. We offer ours as the only synthetic expression. For instance, in
_Science Gossip_, 1887-58, it is described as a meteorite: in this
account there is nothing alarming to the pious, because, though
everything else is told, its geometric form is not mentioned.
It's a cube. There is a deep incision all around it. Of its faces, two
that are opposite are rounded.
Though I accept that our own expression can only rather approximate to
Truth, by the wideness of its inclusions, and because it seems, of four
attempts, to represent the only complete synthesis, and can be nullified
or greatly modified by data that we, too, have somewhere disregarded,
the only means of nullification that I can think of would be
demonstration that this object is a mass of iron pyrites, which
sometimes forms geometrically. But the analysis mentions not a trace of
sulphur. Of course our weakness, or impositiveness, lies in that, by
anyone to whom it would be agreeable to find sulphur in this thing,
sulphur would be found in it--by our own intermediatism there is some
sulphur in everything, or sulphur is only a localization or emphasis of
something that, unemphasized, is in all things.
So there have, or haven't, been found upon this earth things that fell
from the sky, or that were left behind by extra-mundane visitors to this
earth--
A yarn in the London _Times_, June 22, 1844: that some workmen,
quarrying rock, close to the Tweed, about a quarter of a mile below
Rutherford Mills, discovered a gold thread embedded in the stone at a
depth of 8 feet: that a piece of the gold thread had been sent to the
office of the _Kelso Chronicle_.
Pretty little thing; not at all frowsy; rather damnable.
London _Times_, Dec. 24, 1851:
That Hiram De Witt, of Springfield, Mass., returning from California,
had brought with him a piece of auriferous quartz about the size of a
man's fist. It was accidentally dropped--split open--nail in it. There
was a cut-iron nail, size of a six-penny nail, slightly corroded. "It
was entirely straight and had a perfect head."
Or--California--ages ago, when auriferous quartz was
forming--super-carpenter, million of miles or so up in the air--drops a
nail.
To one not an intermediatist, it would seem incredible that this datum,
not only of the damned, but of the lowest of the damned, or of the
journalistic caste of the accursed, could merge away with something else
damned only by disregard, and backed by what is called "highest
scientific authority"--
Communication by Sir David Brewster (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1845-51):
That a nail had been found in a block of stone from Kingoodie Quarry,
North Britain. The block in which the nail was found was nine inches
thick, but as to what part of the quarry it had come from, there is no
evidence--except that it could not have been from the surface. The
quarry had been worked about twenty years. It consisted of alternate
layers of hard stone and a substance called "till." The point of the
nail, quite eaten with rust, projected into some "till," upon the
surface of the block of stone. The rest of the nail lay upon the surface
of the stone to within an inch of the head--that inch of it was embedded
in the stone.
Although its caste is high, this is a thing profoundly of the
damned--sort of a Brahmin as regarded by a Baptist. Its case was stated
fairly; Brewster related all circumstances available to him--but there
was no discussion at the meeting of the British Association: no
explanation was offered--