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[p. 144] is the positivist who tries to localize the universal, and is in accord with cosmic purpose: the super- dogmatist of a local savage who can hold out, without a flurry of doubt, that a piano washed up ona beach is the trunk of a palm tree that a shark has bitten, leaving his teeth in it. So we fear for the soul of Dr. Gray, because he did not devote his whole life to that one stand that, whether possible or inconceivable, thousands of fishes had been cast from one bucket. So, unfortunately for myself, if salvation be desirable, | look out widely but amorphously, indefinitely and heterogeneously. If | say | conceive of another world that is now in secret communication with certain esoteric inhabitants of this earth, | say | conceive of still other worlds that are trying to establish communication with all the inhabitants of this earth. | fit my notions to the data | find. That is supposed to be the right and logical and scientific thing to do; but it is no way to approximate to form, system, organization. Then | think | conceive of other worlds and vast structures that pass us by, within a few miles, without the slightest desire to communicate, quite as tramp vessels pass many islands without particularizing one from another. Then | think | have data of a vast construction that has often come to this earth, dipped into an ocean, submerged there a while, then going away--Why? I'm not absolutely sure. How would an Eskimo explain a vessel, sending ashore for coal, which is plentiful upon some Arctic beaches, though of unknown use to the natives, then sailing away, with no interest in the natives? A great difficulty in trying to understand vast constructions that show no interest in us: The notion that we must be interesting. | accept that, though we're usually avoided, probably for moral reasons, sometimes this earth has been visited by explorers. | think that the notion that there have been extra-mundane visitors to China, within what we call the historic period, will be only ordinarily absurd, when we come to that datum. | accept that some of the other worlds are of conditions very similar to our own. | think of others that are very different--so