The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

Page 220 of 376

Page 220 of 376
The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

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[p. 179] had no notion of metallic objects that might have been shaped or molded by means other than crystallization, until | came to Arago's account of these occurrences (Oeuvres, 11-644). Here the analysis gives 70 per cent. red oxide of iron, and sulphur and loss by ignition 5 per cent. It seems to me acceptable that iron with considerably less than 5 per cent. sulphur in it is not iron pyrites--then little, rusty iron objects, shaped by some other means, have fallen, four months apart, at the same place. M. Arago expresses astonishment at this phenomenon of recurrence so familiar to us. Altogether, | find opening before us, vistas of heresies to which |, for one, must shut my eyes. | have always been in sympathy with the dogmatists and exclusionists: that is plain in our opening lines: that to seem to be is falsely and arbitrarily and dogmatically to exclude. It is only that exclusionists who are good in the nineteenth century are evil in the twentieth century. Constantly we feel a merging away into infinitude; but that this book shall approximate to form, or that our data shall approximate to organization, or that we shall approximate to intelligibility, we have to call ourselves back constantly from wandering off into infinitude. The thing that we do, however, is to make our own outline, or the difference between what we include and what we exclude, vague. The crux here, and the limit beyond which we may not go--very much--is: Acceptance that there is a region that we call the Super-Sargasso Sea--not yet fully accepted, but a provisional position that has received a great deal of support-- But is it a part of this earth, and does it revolve with and over this earth-- Or does it flatly overlie this earth, not revolving with and over this earth-- That this earth does not revolve, and is not round, or roundish, at all, but is continuous with the rest of its system, so that, if one could break away from the traditions of the geographers, one might walk and walk, and come to Mars, and then find Mars continuous with Jupiter?