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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
147
That
the
Santals
often
steal
trees,
but
do
not
chop
them
down
in
the
usual
way,
because
that
would
be
to
make
too
much
noise:
they
insert
stone
wedges,
and
hammer
them
instead:
then,
if
they
should
be
caught,
wedges
would
not
be
the
evidence
against
them
that
axes
would
be.
Or
that
a
scientific
man
can't
be
desperate
and
reasonable
too.
Or
that
a
pickpocket,
for
instance,
is
safe,
though
caught
with
his
hand
in
one's
pocket,
if
he's
gloved,
say:
because
no
court
in
the
land
would
regard
a
gloved
hand
in
the
same
way
in
which
a
bare
hand
would
be
regarded.
That
there's
nothing
but
intermediateness
to
the
rational
and
the
preposterous:
that
this
status
of
our
own
ratiocinations
is
perceptible
wherein
they
are
upon
the
unfamiliar.
Dr.
Bodding
collected
50
of
these
shaped
stones,
said
to
have
fallen
from
the
sky,
in
the
course
of
many
years.
He
says
that
the
Santals
are
a
highly
developed
race,
and
for
ages
have
not
used
stone
implements--except
in
this
one
nefarious
convenience
to
him.
All
explanations
are
localizations.
They
fade
away
before
the
universal.
It
is
difficult
to
express
that
black
rains
in
England
do
not
originate
in
the
smoke
of
factories--less
difficult
to
express
that
black
rains
of
South
Africa
do
not.
We
utter
little
stress
upon
the
absurdity
of
Dr.
Bedding's
explanation,
because,
if
anything's
absurd
everything's
absurd,
or,
rather,
has
in
it
some
degree
or
aspect
of
absurdity,
and
we've
never
had
experience
with
any
state
except
something
somewhere
between
ultimate
absurdity
and
final
reasonableness.
Our
acceptance
is
that
Dr.
Bedding's
elaborate
explanation
does
not
apply
to
cut-stone
objects
found
in
tree
trunks
in
other
lands:
we
accept
that
for
the
general,
a
local
explanation
is
inadequate.
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