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The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
189
Dr.
Abbott
describes
this
object
in
the
Report
of
the
Smithsonian
Institution,
1875-260.
He
says
he
has
no
faith
in
it.
All
progress
is
from
the
outrageous
to
the
commonplace.
Or
quasi-existence
proceeds
from
rape
to
the
crooning
of
lullabies.
It's
been
interesting
to
me
to
go
over
various
long-established
periodicals
and
note
controversies
between
attempting
positivists
and
then
intermediatistic
issues.
Bold,
bad
intruders
of
theories;
ruffians
with
dishonorable
intentions--the
alarms
of
Science;
her
attempts
to
preserve
that
which
is
dearer
than
life
itself--submission--then
a
fidelity
like
Mrs.
Micawber's.
So
many
of
these
ruffians,
or
wandering
comedians
that
were
hated,
or
scorned,
pitied,
embraced,
conventionalized.
There's
not
a
notion
in
this
book
that
has
a
more
frightful,
or
ridiculous,
mien
than
had
the
notion
of
human
footprints
in
rocks,
when
that
now
respectabilized
ruffian,
or
clown,
was
first
heard
from.
It
seems
bewildering
to
one
whose
interests
are
not
scientific
that
such
rows
should
be
raised
over
such
trifles:
but
the
feeling
of
a
systematist
toward
such
an
intruder
is
just
about
what
anyone's
would
be
if
a
tramp
from
the
street
should
come
in,
sit
at
one's
dinner
table,
and
say
he
belonged
there.
We
know
what
hypnosis
can
do:
let
him
insist
with
all
his
might
that
he
does
belong
there,
and
one
begins
to
suspect
that
he
may
be
right;
that
he
may
have
higher
perceptions
of
what's
right.
The
prohibitionists
had
this
worked
out
very
skillfully.
So
the
row
that
was
raised
over
the
stone
from
Grave
Creek--but
time
and
cumulativeness,
and
the
very
factor
we
make
so
much
of--or
the
power
of
massed
data.
There
were
other
reports
of
inscribed
stones,
and
then,
half
a
century
later,
some
mounds--or
caches,
as
we
call
them--were
opened
by
the
Rev.
Mr.
Gass,
near
the
city
of
Davenport.
(American
Antiquarian,
15-73.)
Several
stone
tablets
were
found.
Upon
one
of
them,
the
letters
"TFTOWNS"
may
easily
be
made
out.
In
this
instance
we
hear
nothing
of
fraudulency--time,
cumulativeness,
the
power
of
massed
data.
The
attempt
to
assimilate
this
datum
is:
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