Part 80

In a way, another strange occurrence during an earthquake is suggested. The ancient Chinese tradition--the marks like hoof marks in the ground. We have thought--with a low degree of acceptance--of another world that may be in secret communication with certain esoteric ones of this earth's inhabitants--and of messages in symbols like hoof marks that are sent to some receptor, or special hill, upon this earth--and of messages that at times miscarry.

This other world comes close to this world--there are quakes--but advantage of proximity is taken to send a message--the message, designed for a receptor in India, perhaps, or in Central Europe, miscarries all the way to England--marks like the marks of the Chinese tradition are found upon a beach, in Cornwall, after an earthquake--

Phil. Trans., 50-500:

After the quake of July 15, 1757, upon the sands of Penzance, Cornwall, in an area of more than 100 square yards, were found marks like hoof prints, except that they were not crescentic. We feel a similarity, but note an arbitrary disregard of our own, this time. It seems to us that marks described as "little cones surrounded by basins of equal diameter" would be like hoof prints, if hoofs printed complete circles. Other disregards are that there were black specks on the tops of cones, as if something, perhaps gaseous, had issued from them; that from one of these formations came a gush of water as thick as a man's wrist. Of course the opening of springs is common in earthquakes--but we suspect, myself, that the Negative Absolute is compelling us to put in this datum and its disorders.

There's another matter in which the Negative Absolute seems to work against us. Though to super-chemistry, we have introduced the principle of celestio-metathesis, we have no good data of exchange of substances during proximities. The data are all of falls and not of upward translations. Of course upward impulses are common during earthquakes, but I haven't a datum upon a tree or a fish or a brick or a man that ever did go up and stay up and that never did come down again. Our classic of the horse and barn occurred in what was called a whirlwind.

It is said that, in an earthquake in Calabria, paving stones shot up far in the air.

The writer doesn't specifically say that they came down again, but something seems to tell me they did.

The corpses of Riobamba.

Humboldt reported that, in the quake of Riobamba, "bodies were torn upward from graves"; that "the vertical motion was so strong that bodies were tossed several hundred feet in the air."

I explain.

I explain that, if in the center of greatest violence of an earthquake, anything ever has gone up, and has kept on going up, the thoughts of the nearest observers were very likely upon other subjects.

The quay of Lisbon.

We are told that it went down.

A vast throng of persons ran to the quay for refuge. The city of Lisbon was in profound darkness. The quay and all the people on it disappeared. If it and they went down--not a single corpse, not a shred of clothing, not a plank of the quay, nor so much as a splinter of it ever floated to the surface.

The New Dominant.

I mean "primarily" all that opposes Exclusionism--

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.

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."