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The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
125
Throughout
this
book,
we
class
a
great
deal
of
science
with
bad
fiction.
When
is
fiction
bad,
cheap,
low?
If
coincidence
is
overworked.
That's
one
way
of
deciding.
But
with
single
writers
coincidence
seldom
is
overworked:
we
find
the
excess
in
the
subject
at
large.
Such
a
writer
as
the
one
of
the
Cornhill
Magazine
tells
us
vaguely
of
beliefs
of
peasants:
there
is
no
massing
of
instance
after
instance
after
instance.
Here
ours
will
be
the
method
of
mass-formation.
Conceivably
lightning
may
strike
the
ground
near
where
there
was
a
wedge-shaped
object
in
the
first
place:
again
and
again
and
again:
lightning
striking
ground
near
wedge-shaped
object
in
China;
lightning
striking
ground
near
wedge-shaped
object
in
Scotland;
lightning
striking
ground
near
wedge-shaped
object
in
Central
Africa:
coincidence
in
France;
coincidence
in
Java;
coincidence
in
South
America--
We
grant
a
great
deal
but
note
a
tendency
to
restlessness.
Nevertheless
this
is
the
psycho-tropism
of
science
to
all
"thunderstones"
said
to
have
fallen
luminously.
As
to
greenstone,
it
is
in
the
island
of
Jamaica,
where
the
notion
is
general
that
axes
of
a
hard
greenstone
fall
from
the
sky--"during
the
rains."
(Jour.
Inst.
Jamaica,
2-4.)
Some
other
time
we
shall
inquire
into
this
localization
of
objects
of
a
specific
material.
"They
are
of
a
stone
nowhere
else
to
be
found
in
Jamaica."
(Notes
and
Queries,
2-8-24.)
In
my
own
tendency
to
exclude,
or
in
the
attitude
of
one
peasant
or
savage
who
thinks
he
is
not
to
be
classed
with
other
peasants
or
savages,
I
am
not
very
much
impressed
with
what
natives
think.
It
would
be
hard
to
tell
why.
If
the
word
of
a
Lord
Kelvin
carries
no
more
weight,
upon
scientific
subjects,
than
the
word
of
a
Sitting
Bull,
unless
it
be
in
agreement
with
conventional
opinion--I
think
it
must
be
because
savages
have
bad
table
manners.
However,
my
snobbishness,
in
this
respect,
loosens
up
somewhat
before
very
widespread
belief
by
savages
and
peasants.
And
the
notion
of
"thunderstones"
is
as
wide
as
geography
itself.
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