Upon which we shall have another expression. We thought we'd settled
that, and we thought we'd establish that, but nothing's ever settled,
and nothing's ever established, in a real sense, if, in a real sense,
there is nothing in quasiness.
I suppose there had been a storm somewhere, the storm in Florida,
perhaps, and many birds had been swept upward into the Super-Sargasso
Sea. It has frigid regions and it has tropical regions--that birds of
diverse species had been swept upward, into an icy region, where,
huddling together for warmth, they had died. Then, later, they had been
dislodged--meteor coming along--boat--bicycle--dragon--don't know what
did come along--something dislodged them.
So leaves of trees, carried up there in whirlwinds, staying there years,
ages, perhaps only a few months, but then falling to this earth at an
unseasonable time for dead leaves--fishes carried up there, some of them
dying and drying, some of them living in volumes of water that are in
abundance up there, or that fall sometimes in the deluges that we call
"cloudbursts."
The astronomers won't think kindly of us, and we haven't done anything
to endear ourselves to the meteorologists--but we're weak and mawkish
Intermediatists--several times we've tried to get the aeronauts with
us--extraordinary things up there: things that curators of museums would
give up all hope of ever being fixed stars, to obtain: things left over
from whirlwinds of the time of the Pharaohs, perhaps: or that Elijah did
go up in the sky in something like a chariot, and may not be Vega, after
all, and that there may be a wheel or so left of whatever he went up in.
We basely suggest that it would bring a high price--but sell soon,
because after a while there'd be thousands of them hawked around--
We weakly drop a hint to the aeronauts.
In the _Scientific American_, 33-197, there is an account of some hay
that fell from the sky. From the circumstances we incline to accept that
this hay went up, in a whirlwind, from this earth, in the first place,
reached the Super-Sargasso Sea, and remained there a long time before
falling. An interesting point in this expression is the usual
attribution to a local and coinciding whirlwind, and identification of
it--and then data that make that local whirlwind unacceptable--
That, upon July 27, 1875, small masses of damp hay had fallen at
Monkstown, Ireland. In the _Dublin Daily Express_, Dr. J.W. Moore had
explained: he had found a nearby whirlwind, to the south of Monkstown,
that coincided. But, according to the _Scientific American_, a similar
fall had occurred near Wrexham, England, two days before.
In November, 1918, I made some studies upon light objects thrown into
the air. Armistice-day. I suppose I should have been more emotionally
occupied, but I made notes upon torn-up papers thrown high in the air
from windows of office buildings. Scraps of paper did stay together for
a while. Several minutes, sometimes.
_Cosmos_, 3-4-574:
That, upon the 10th of April, 1869, at Autriche (Indre-et-Loire) a
great number of oak leaves--enormous segregation of them--fell from the
sky. Very calm day. So little wind that the leaves fell almost
vertically. Fall lasted about ten minutes.
Flammarion, in _The Atmosphere_, p. 412, tells this story.
He has to find a storm.
He does find a squall--but it had occurred upon April 3rd.
Flammarion's two incredibilities are--that leaves could remain a week in
the air: that they could stay together a week in the air.
Think of some of your own observations upon papers thrown from an
aeroplane.
Our one incredibility:
That these leaves had been whirled up six months before, when they were
common on the ground, and had been sustained, of course not in the air,
but in a region gravitationally inert; and had been precipitated by the
disturbances of April rains.
I have no records of leaves that have so fallen from the sky in October
or November, the season when one might expect dead leaves to be raised
from one place and precipitated somewhere else. I emphasize that this
occurred in April.
_La Nature_, 1889-2-94:
That, upon April 19, 1889, dried leaves, of different species, oak, elm,
etc., fell from the sky. This day, too, was a calm day. The fall was
tremendous. The leaves were seen to fall fifteen minutes, but, judging
from the quantity on the ground, it is the writer's opinion that they
had already been falling half an hour. I think that the geyser of
corpses that sprang from Riobamba toward the sky must have been an
interesting sight. If I were a painter, I'd like that subject. But this
cataract of dried leaves, too, is a study in the rhythms of the dead. In
this datum, the point most agreeable to us is the very point that the
writer in _La Nature_ emphasizes. Windlessness. He says that the surface
of the Loire was "absolutely smooth." The river was strewn with leaves
as far as he could see.
_L'Astronomie_, 1894-194:
That, upon the 7th of April, 1894, dried leaves fell at Clairvaux and
Outre-Aube, France. The fall is described as prodigious. Half an hour.
Then, upon the 11th, a fall of dried leaves occurred at Pontcarre.
It is in this recurrence that we found some of our opposition to the
conventional explanation. The Editor (Flammarion) explains. He says that
the leaves had been caught up in a cyclone which had expended its force;
that the heavier leaves had fallen first. We think that that was all
right for 1894, and that it was quite good enough for 1894. But, in
these more exacting days, we want to know how wind-power insufficient to
hold some leaves in the air could sustain others four days.
The factors in this expression are unseasonableness, not for dried
leaves, but for prodigious numbers of dried leaves; direct fall,
windlessness, month of April, and localization in France. The factor of
localization is interesting. Not a note have I upon fall of leaves from
the sky, except these notes. Were the conventional explanation, or "old
correlate" acceptable, it would seem that similar occurrences in other
regions should be as frequent as in France. The indication is that there
may be quasi-permanent undulations in the Super-Sargasso Sea, or a
pronounced inclination toward France--
Inspiration:
That there may be a nearby world complementary to this world, where
autumn occurs at the time that is springtime here.
Let some disciple have that.
But there may be a dip toward France, so that leaves that are borne high
there, are more likely to be held in suspension than highflying leaves
elsewhere. Some other time I shall take up Super-geography, and be
guilty of charts. I think, now, that the Super-Sargasso Sea is an
oblique belt, with changing ramifications, over Great Britain, France,
Italy, and on to India. Relatively to the United States I am not very
clear, but think especially of the Southern States.
The preponderance of our data indicates frigid regions aloft.
Nevertheless such phenomena as putrefaction have occurred often enough
to make super-tropical regions, also, acceptable. We shall have one more
datum upon the Super-Sargasso Sea. It seems to me that, by this time,
our requirements of support and reinforcement and agreement have been
quite as rigorous for acceptance as ever for belief: at least for full
acceptance. By virtue of mere acceptance, we may, in some later book,
deny the Super-Sargasso Sea, and find that our data relate to some other
complementary world instead--or the moon--and have abundant data for
accepting that the moon is not more than twenty or thirty miles away.
However, the Super-Sargasso Sea functions very well as a nucleus around
which to gather data that oppose Exclusionism. That is our main motive:
to oppose Exclusionism.
Or our agreement with cosmic processes. The climax of our general
expression upon the Super-Sargasso Sea. Coincidentally appears something
else that may overthrow it later.
_Notes and Queries_, 8-12-228:
That in the province of Macerata, Italy (summer of 1897?) an immense
number of small, blood-colored clouds covered the sky. About an hour
later a storm broke, and myriad seeds fell to the ground. It is said
that they were identified as products of a tree found only in Central
Africa and the Antilles.
If--in terms of conventional reasoning--these seeds had been high in the
air, they had been in a cold region. But it is our acceptance that these
seeds had, for a considerable time, been in a warm region, and for a
time longer than is attributable to suspension by wind-power:
"It is said that a great number of the seeds were in the first stage of
germination."
20
The New Dominant.
Inclusionism.
In it we have a pseudo-standard.
We have a datum, and we give it an interpretation, in accordance with
our pseudo-standard. At present we have not the delusions of Absolutism
that may have translated some of the positivists of the nineteenth
century to heaven. We are Intermediatists--but feel a lurking suspicion
that we may some day solidify and dogmatize and illiberalize into higher
positivists. At present we do not ask whether something be reasonable or
preposterous, because we recognize that by reasonableness and
preposterousness are meant agreement and disagreement with a
standard--which must be a delusion--though not absolutely, of
course--and must some day be displaced by a more advanced
quasi-delusion. Scientists in the past have taken the positivist
attitude--is this or that reasonable or unreasonable? Analyze them and
we find that they meant relatively to a standard, such as Newtonism,
Daltonism, Darwinism, or Lyellism. But they have written and spoken and
thought as if they could mean real reasonableness and real
unreasonableness.
So our pseudo-standard is Inclusionism, and, if a datum be a correlate
to a more widely inclusive outlook as to this earth and its externality
and relations with externality, its harmony with Inclusionism admits it.
Such was the process, and such was the requirement for admission in the
days of the Old Dominant: our difference is in underlying
Intermediatism, or consciousness that though we're more nearly real, we
and our standards are only quasi--
Or that all things--in our intermediate state--are phantoms in a
super-mind in a dreaming state--but striving to awaken to realness.
Though in some respects our own Intermediatism is unsatisfactory, our
underlying feeling is--
That in a dreaming mind awakening is accelerated--if phantoms in that
mind know that they're only phantoms in a dream. Of course, they too are
quasi, or--but in a relative sense--they have an essence of what is
called realness. They are derived from experience or from
senes-relations, even though grotesque distortions. It seems acceptable
that a table that is seen when one is awake is more nearly real than a
dreamed table, which, with fifteen or twenty legs, chases one.
So now, in the twentieth century, with a change of terms, and a change
in underlying consciousness, our attitude toward the New Dominant is the
attitude of the scientists of the nineteenth century to the Old
Dominant. We do not insist that our data and interpretations shall be
as shocking, grotesque, evil, ridiculous, childish, insincere,
laughable, ignorant to nineteenth-centuryites as were their data and
interpretations to the medieval-minded. We ask only whether data and
interpretations correlate. If they do, they are acceptable, perhaps only
for a short time, or as nuclei, or scaffolding, or preliminary sketches,
or as gropings and tentativenesses. Later, of course, when we cool off
and harden and radiate into space most of our present mobility, which
expresses in modesty and plasticity, we shall acknowledge no
scaffoldings, gropings or tentativenesses, but think we utter absolute
facts. A point in Intermediatism here is opposed to most current
speculations upon Development. Usually one thinks of the spiritual as
higher than the material, but, in our acceptance, quasi-existence is a
means by which the absolutely immaterial materializes absolutely, and,
being intermediate, is a state in which nothing is finally either
immaterial or material, all objects, substances, thoughts, occupying
some grade of approximation one way or the other. Final solidification
of the ethereal is, to us, the goal of cosmic ambition. Positivism is
Puritanism. Heat is Evil. Final Good is Absolute Frigidity. An Arctic
winter is very beautiful, but I think that an interest in monkeys
chattering in palm trees accounts for our own Intermediatism.
Visitors.
Our confusion here, out of which we are attempting to make quasi-order,
is as great as it has been throughout this book, because we have not the
positivist's delusion of homogeneity. A positivist would gather all data
that seem to relate to one kind of visitors and coldly disregard all
other data. I think of as many different kinds of visitors to this earth
as there are visitors to New York, to a jail, to a church--some persons
go to church to pick pockets, for instance.
My own acceptance is that either a world or a vast
super-construction--or a world, if red substances and fishes fell from
it--hovered over India in the summer of 1860. Something then fell from
somewhere, July 17, 1860, at Dhurmsalla. Whatever "it" was, "it" is so
persistently alluded to as "a meteorite" that I look back and see that I
adopted this convention myself. But in the London _Times_, Dec. 26,
1860, Syed Abdoolah, Professor of Hindustani, University College,
London, writes that he had sent to a friend in Dhurmsalla, for an
account of the stones that had fallen at that place. The answer:
"... divers forms and sizes, many of which bore great resemblance to
ordinary cannon balls just discharged from engines of war."
It's an addition to our data of spherical objects that have arrived upon
this earth. Note that they are spherical stone objects.
And, in the evening of this same day that something--took a shot at
Dhurmsalla--or sent objects upon which there may be decipherable
markings--lights were seen in the air--
I think, myself, of a number of things, beings, whatever they were,
trying to 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--