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The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
197
When
we
can
specially
take
up
that
subject,
one
of
our
leading
ideas,
or
credulities,
will
be
that
near
approach
by
another
world
to
this
world
would
be
catastrophic:
that
navigable
worlds
would
avoid
proximity;
that
others
that
have
survived
have
organized
into
protective
remotenesses,
or
orbits
which
approximate
to
regularity,
though
by
no
means
to
the
degree
of
popular
supposition.
But
the
persistence
of
the
notion
that
we
must
be
interesting.
Bugs
and
germs
and
things
like
that:
they're
interesting
to
us:
some
of
them
are
too
interesting.
Dangers
of
near
approach--nevertheless
our
own
ships
that
dare
not
venture
close
to
a
rocky
shore
can
send
rowboats
ashore--
Why
not
diplomatic
relations
established
between
the
United
States
and
Cyclorea--which,
in
our
advanced
astronomy,
is
the
name
of
a
remarkable
wheel-shaped
world
or
super-construction?
Why
not
missionaries
sent
here
openly
to
convert
us
from
our
barbarous
prohibitions
and
other
taboos,
and
to
prepare
the
way
for
a
good
trade
in
ultra-bibles
and
super-whiskeys;
fortunes
made
in
selling
us
cast-off
super-fineries,
which
we'd
take
to
like
an
African
chief
to
someone's
old
silk
hat
from
New
York
or
London?
The
answer
that
occurs
to
me
is
so
simple
that
it
seems
immediately
acceptable,
if
we
accept
that
the
obvious
is
the
solution
of
all
problems,
or
if
most
of
our
perplexities
consist
in
laboriously
and
painfully
conceiving
of
the
unanswerable,
and
then
looking
for
answers--using
such
words
as
"obvious"
and
"solution"
conventionally--
Or:
Would
we,
if
we
could,
educate
and
sophisticate
pigs,
geese,
cattle?
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