That Development or Progress or Evolution is Attempt to Positivize, and
is a mechanism by which a positive existence is recruited--that what we
call existence is a womb of infinitude, and is itself only
incubatory--that eventually all attempts are broken down by the falsely
excluded. Subjectively, the breaking down is aided by our own sense of
false and narrow limitations. So the classic and academic artists
wrought positivist paintings, and expressed the only ideal that I am
conscious of, though we so often hear of "ideals" instead of different
manifestations, artistically, scientifically, theologically,
politically, of the One Ideal. They sought to satisfy, in its artistic
aspect, cosmic craving for unity or completeness, sometimes called
harmony, called beauty in some aspects. By disregard they sought
completeness. But the light-effects that they disregarded, and their
narrow confinement to standardized subjects brought on the revolt of the
Impressionists. So the Puritans tried to systematize, and they
disregarded physical needs, or vices, or relaxations: they were invaded
and overthrown when their narrowness became obvious and intolerable. All
things strive for positiveness, for themselves, or for quasi-systems of
which they are parts. Formality and the mathematic, the regular and the
uniform are aspects of the positive state--but the Positive is the
Universal--so all attempted positiveness that seems to satisfy in the
aspects of formality and regularity, sooner or later disqualifies in the
aspect of wideness or universalness. So there is revolt against the
science of today, because the formulated utterances that were regarded
as final truths in a past generation, are now seen to be
insufficiencies. Every pronouncement that has opposed our own
acceptances has been found to be a composition like any academic
painting: something that is arbitrarily cut off from relations with
environment, or framed off from interfering and disturbing data, or
outlined with disregards. Our own attempt has been to take in the
included, but also to take in the excluded into wider expressions. We
accept, however, that for every one of our expressions there are
irreconcilables somewhere--that final utterance would include all
things. However, of such is the gossip of angels. The final is
unutterable in quasi-existence, where to think is to include but also to
exclude, or be not final. If we admit that for every opinion we have
expressed, there must somewhere be an irreconcilable, we are
Intermediatists and not positivists; not even higher positivists. Of
course it may be that some day we shall systematize and dogmatize and
refuse to think of anything that we may be accused of disregarding, and
believe instead of merely accepting: then, if we could have a wider
system, which would acknowledge no irreconcilables we'd be higher
positivists. So long as we only accept, we are not higher positivists,
but our feeling is that the New Dominant, even though we have thought of
it only as another enslavement, will be the nucleus for higher
positivism--and that it will be the means of elevating into infinitude a
new batch of fixed stars--until, as a recruiting instrument, it, too,
will play out, and will give way to some new medium for generating
absoluteness. It is our acceptance that all astronomers of today have
lost their souls, or, rather, all chance of attaining Entity, but that
Copernicus and Kepler and Galileo and Newton, and, conceivably,
Leverrier are now fixed stars. Some day I shall attempt to identify
them. In all this, I think we're quite a Moses. We point out the
Promised Land, but, unless we be cured of our Intermediatism, will never
be reported in _Monthly Notices_, ourself.
In our acceptance, Dominants, in their succession, displace preceding
Dominants not only because they are more nearly positive, but because
the old Dominants, as recruiting mediums, play out. Our expression is
that the New Dominant, of Wider Inclusions, is now manifesting
throughout the world, and that the old Exclusionism is everywhere
breaking down. In physics Exclusionism is breaking down by its own
researches in radium, for instance, and in its speculations upon
electrons, or its merging away into metaphysics, and by the desertion
that has been going on for many years, by such men as Gurney, Crookes,
Wallace, Flammarion, Lodge, to formerly disregarded phenomena--no longer
called "spiritualism" but now "psychic research." Biology is in chaos:
conventional Darwinites mixed up with mutationists and orthogenesists
and followers of Wisemann, who take from Darwinism one of its
pseudo-bases, and nevertheless try to reconcile their heresies with
orthodoxy. The painters are metaphysicians and psychologists. The
breaking down of Exclusionism in China and Japan and in the United
States has astonished History. The science of astronomy is going
downward so that, though Pickering, for instance, did speculate upon a
Trans-Neptunian planet, and Lowell did try to have accepted heretical
ideas as to marks on Mars, attention is now minutely focused upon such
technicalities as variations in shades of Jupiter's fourth satellite. I
think that, in general acceptance, over-refinement indicates decadence.
I think that the stronghold of Inclusionism is in aeronautics. I think
that the stronghold of the Old Dominant, when it was new, was in the
invention of the telescope. Or that coincidentally with the breakdown of
Exclusionism appears the means of finding out--whether there are vast
aerial fields of ice and floating lakes full of frogs and fishes or
not--where carved stones and black substances and great quantities of
vegetable matter and flesh, which may be dragons' flesh, come
from--whether there are inter-planetary trade routes and vast areas
devastated by Super-Tamerlanes--whether sometimes there are visitors to
this earth--who might be pursued and captured and questioned.
19
I have industriously sought data for an expression upon birds, but the
prospecting has not been very quasi-satisfactory. I think I rather
emphasize our industriousness, because a charge likely to be brought
against the attitude of Acceptance is that one who only accepts must be
one of languid interest and little application of energy. It doesn't
seem to work out: we are very industrious. I suggest to some of our
disciples that they look into the matter of messages upon pigeons, of
course attributed to earthly owners, but said to be undecipherable. I'd
do it, ourselves, only that would be selfish. That's more of the
Intermediatism that will keep us out of the firmament: Positivism is
absolute egoism. But look back in the time of Andree's Polar Expedition.
Pigeons that would have no publicity ordinarily, were often reported at
that time.
In the _Zoologist_, 3-18-21, is recorded an instance of a bird (puffin)
that had fallen to the ground with a fractured head. Interesting, but
mere speculation--but what solid object, high in the air, had that bird
struck against?
Tremendous red rain in France, Oct. 16 and 17, 1846; great storm at the
time, and red rain supposed to have been colored by matter swept up from
this earth's surface, and then precipitated (_Comptes Rendus_, 23-832).
But in _Comptes Rendus_, 24-625, the description of this red rain
differs from one's impression of red, sandy or muddy water. It is said
that this rain was so vividly red and so blood-like that many persons in
France were terrified. Two analyses are given (_Comptes Rendus_,
24-812). One chemist notes a great quantity of corpuscles--whether
blood-like corpuscles or not--in the matter. The other chemist sets down
organic matter at 35 per cent. It may be that an inter-planetary dragon
had been slain somewhere, or that this red fluid, in which were many
corpuscles, came from something not altogether pleasant to contemplate,
about the size of the Catskill Mountains, perhaps--but the present
datum is that with this substance, larks, quail, ducks, and water hens,
some of them alive, fell at Lyons and Grenoble and other places.
I have notes upon other birds that have fallen from the sky, but
unaccompanied by the red rain that makes the fall of birds in France
peculiar, and very peculiar, if it be accepted that the red substance
was extra-mundane. The other notes are upon birds that have fallen from
the sky, in the midst of storms, or of exhausted, but living, birds,
falling not far from a storm-area. But now we shall have an instance for
which I can find no parallel: fall of dead birds, from a clear sky,
far-distant from any storm to which they could be attributed--so remote
from any discoverable storm that--
My own notion is that, in the summer of 1896, something, or some beings,
came as near to this earth as they could, upon a hunting expedition;
that, in the summer of 1896, an expedition of super-scientists passed
over this earth, and let down a dragnet--and what would it catch,
sweeping through the air, supposing it to have reached not quite to this
earth?
In the _Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1917, W.L. McAtee quotes from the
Baton Rouge correspondence to the _Philadelphia Times_:
That, in the summer of 1896, into the streets of Baton Rouge, La., and
from a "clear sky," fell hundreds of dead birds. There were wild ducks
and cat birds, woodpeckers, and "many birds of strange plumage," some of
them resembling canaries.
Usually one does not have to look very far from any place to learn of a
storm. But the best that could be done in this instance was to say:
"There had been a storm on the coast of Florida."
And, unless he have psycho-chemic repulsion for the explanation, the
reader feels only momentary astonishment that dead birds from a storm in
Florida should fall from an unstormy sky in Louisiana, and with his
intellect greased like the plumage of a wild duck, the datum then drops
off.
Our greasy, shiny brains. That they may be of some use after all: that
other modes of existence place a high value upon them as lubricants;
that we're hunted for them; a hunting expedition to this earth--the
newspapers report a tornado.
If from a clear sky, or a sky in which there were no driven clouds, or
other evidences of still-continuing wind-power--or, if from a storm in
Florida, it could be accepted that hundreds of birds had fallen far
away, in Louisiana, I conceive, conventionally, of heavier objects
having fallen in Alabama, say, and of the fall of still heavier objects
still nearer the origin in Florida.
The sources of information of the Weather Bureau are widespread.
It has no records of such falls.