The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

Page 175 of 376

Page 175 of 376
The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

Page Content (OCR)

Storms. Disregarded. [p. 143] in bowing before impressive-looking sticks of wood; dishonestly taking time for his speculations, while the others are patriotically witch-finding. So the other higher and nobler savages know about the few regularized vessels: know when to expect them; have their periodicities all worked out; just about when vessels will pass, or eclipse each other--explaining that all vagaries were due to atmospheric conditions. They'd come out strong in explaining. You can't read a book upon savages without noting what resolute explainers they are. They'd say that all this mechanism was founded upon the mutual attraction of the vessels--deduced from the fall of a monkey from a palm tree--or, if not that, that devils were pushing the vessels-- something of the kind. Debris, not from these vessels, cast up by the waves. How can one think of something and something else, too? I'm in the state of mind of a savage who might find upon a shore, washed up by the same storm, buoyant parts of a piano and a paddle that was carved by cruder hands than his own: something light and summery from India, and a fur overcoat from Russia--or all science, though approximating wider and wider, is attempt to conceive of India in terms of an ocean island, and of Russia in terms of India so interpreted. Though | am trying to think of Russia and India in world-wide terms, | cannot think that that, or the universalizing of the local, is cosmic purpose. The higher idealist