But the nullification that we find is as much against orthodoxy in one
respect as it is against our own expression that inclusion in quartz or
sandstone indicates antiquity--or there would have to be a revision of
prevailing dogmas upon quartz and sandstone and age indicated by them,
if the opposing data should be accepted. Of course it may be contended
by both the orthodox and us heretics that the opposition is only a yarn
from a newspaper. By an odd combination, we find our two lost souls that
have tried to emerge, chucked back to perdition by one blow:
_Pop. Sci. News_, 1884-41:
That, according to the _Carson Appeal_, there had been found in a mine,
quartz crystals that could have had only 15 years in which to form:
that, where a mill had been built, sandstone had been found, when the
mill was torn down, that had hardened in 12 years: that in this
sandstone was a piece of wood "with a nail in it."
_Annals of Scientific Discovery_, 1853-71:
That, at the meeting of the British Association, 1853, Sir David
Brewster had announced that he had to bring before the meeting an object
"of so incredible a nature that nothing short of the strongest evidence
was necessary to render the statement at all probable."
A crystal lens had been found in the treasure-house at Nineveh.
In many of the temples and treasure houses of old civilizations upon
this earth have been preserved things that have fallen from the sky--or
meteorites.
Again we have a Brahmin. This thing is buried alive in the heart of
propriety: it is in the British Museum.
Carpenter, in _The Microscope and Its Revelations_, gives two drawings
of it. Carpenter argues that it is impossible to accept that optical
lenses had ever been made by the ancients. Never occurred to
him--someone a million miles or so up in the air--looking through his
telescope--lens drops out.
This does not appeal to Carpenter: he says that this object must have
been an ornament.
According to Brewster, it was not an ornament, but "a true optical
lens."
In that case, in ruins of an old civilization upon this earth, has been
found an accursed thing that was, acceptably, not a product of any old
civilization indigenous to this earth.
10
Early explorers have Florida mixed up with Newfoundland. But the
confusion is worse than that still earlier. It arises from simplicity.
Very early explorers think that all 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 especial
other world. That was my notion when I started to collect our data. Or,
as is a commonplace of observation, all intellection begins with the
illusion of homogeneity. It's one of Spencer's data: we see
homogeneousness in all things distant, or with which we have small
acquaintance. Advance from the relatively homogeneous to the relatively
heterogeneous is Spencerian Philosophy--like everything else, so-called:
not that it was really Spencer's discovery, but was taken from von Baer,
who, 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 homogeneousness as an aspect of
positiveness, but it is our acceptance that infinite frustrations of
attempts to positivize manifest themselves in infinite heterogeneity: so
that though things try to localize homogeneousness they end up in
heterogeneity so great that it amounts to infinite dispersion or
indistinguishability.
So all concepts are little attempted positivenesses, but soon have to
give in to compromise, modification, nullification, merging away into
indistinguishability--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 against heterogeneity or modification or
doubt or "listening to reason," or loss of identity--in which
case--instant translation to heaven or the Positive Absolute.
Odd thing about Spencer is that he never recognized that "homogeneity,"
"integration," and "definiteness" are all words for the same state, or
the state that we call "positiveness." What we call his mistake is in
that he regarded "homogeneousness" as negative.
I began with a notion of some one other world, from which objects and
substances have fallen to this earth; which had, or which, to less
degree, has a tutelary interest 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 world is not attempting
but has been, for centuries, in communication with a sect, perhaps, or a
secret society, or certain esoteric ones of this earth's inhabitants.
I lose a great deal of hypnotic power in not being able to concentrate
attention upon some one other world.
As I have admitted before I'm intelligent, as contrasted with the
orthodox. I haven't the aristocratic disregard of a New York curator or
an Eskimo medicine-man.
I have to dissipate myself in acceptance of a host of other worlds: size
of the moon, some of them: one of them, at least--tremendous thing:
we'll take that up later. Vast, amorphous aerial regions, to which such
definite words as "worlds" and "planets" seem inapplicable. And
artificial constructions that I have called "super-constructions": one
of them about the size of Brooklyn, I should say, offhand. And one or
more of them wheel-shaped things a goodly number of square miles in
area.
I think that earlier in this book, before we liberalized into embracing
everything that comes along, your indignation, or indigestion would have
expressed in the notion that, if this were so, astronomers would have
seen these other worlds and regions and vast geometric constructions.
You'd have had that notion: you'd have stopped there.
But the attempt to stop is saying "enough" to the insatiable. In cosmic
punctuation there are no periods: illusion of periods is incomplete view
of colons and semi-colons.
We can't stop with the notion that if there were such phenomena,
astronomers would have seen them. Because of our experience with
suppression and disregard, we suspect, before we go into the subject at
all, that astronomers have seen them; that navigators and meteorologists
have seen them; that individual scientists and other trained observers
have seen them many times--
That it is the System that has excluded data of them.
As to the Law of Gravitation, and astronomers' formulas, remember that
these formulas worked out in the time of Laplace as well as they do now.
But there are hundreds of planetary bodies now known that were then not
known. So a few hundred worlds more of ours won't make any difference.
Laplace knew of about only thirty bodies in this solar system: about six
hundred are recognized now--
What are the discoveries of geology and biology to a theologian?
His formulas still work out as well as they ever did.
If the Law of Gravitation could be stated as a real utterance, it might
be a real resistance to us. But we are told only that gravitation is
gravitation. Of course to an intermediatist, nothing can be defined
except in terms of itself--but even the orthodox, in what seems to me to
be the innate premonitions of realness, not founded upon experience,
agree that to define a thing in terms of itself is not real definition.
It is said that by gravitation 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 host of
data. But there is no possible means of expressing that gravitation is
anything other than attraction. So there is nothing to resist us but
such a phantom as--that gravitation is the gravitation of all
gravitations proportionately to gravitation and inversely as the square
of gravitation. In a quasi-existence, nothing more sensible than this
can be said upon any so-called subject--perhaps there are higher
approximations to ultimate sensibleness.
Nevertheless we seem to have a feeling that with the System against us
we have a kind of resistance here. We'd have felt so formerly, at any
rate: I think the Dr. Grays and Prof. Hitchcocks have modified our
trustfulness toward indistinguishability. As to the perfection of this
System that quasi-opposes us and the infallibility of its
mathematics--as if there could be real mathematics in a mode of seeming
where twice two are not four--we've been told over and over of their
vindication in the discovery of Neptune.
I'm afraid that the course we're taking will turn out like every other
development. We began humbly, admitting that we're of the damned--