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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
207
A
tree.
It
is
doing
all
it
can
to
assimilate
substances
of
the
soil
and
substances
of
the
air,
and
sunshine,
too,
into
tree-substance:
obversely
it
is
rejecting
or
excluding
or
disregarding
that
which
it
cannot
assimilate.
Cow
grazing,
pig
rooting,
tiger
stalking:
planets
trying,
or
acting,
to
capture
comets;
rag
pickers
and
the
Christian
religion,
and
a
cat
down
headfirst
in
a
garbage
can;
nations
fighting
for
more
territory,
sciences
correlating
the
data
they
can,
trust
magnates
organizing,
chorus
girl
out
for
a
little
late
supper--all
of
them
stopped
somewhere
by
the
unassimilable.
Chorus
girl
and
the
broiled
lobster.
If
she
eats
not
shell
and
all
she
represents
universal
failure
to
positivize.
Also,
if
she
does
she
represents
universal
failure
to
positivize:
her
ensuing
disorders
will
translate
her
to
the
Negative
Absolute.
Or
Science
and
some
of
our
cursed
hard-shelled
data.
One
speaks
of
the
tutelarian
as
if
it
were
something
distinct
in
itself.
So
one
speaks
of
a
tree,
a
saint,
a
barrel
of
pork,
the
Rocky
Mountains.
One
speaks
of
missionaries,
as
if
they
were
positively
different,
or
had
identity
of
their
own,
or
were
a
species
by
themselves.
To
the
Intermediatist,
everything
that
seems
to
have
identity
is
only
attempted
identity,
and
every
species
is
continuous
with
all
other
species,
or
that
which
is
called
the
specific
is
only
emphasis
upon
some
aspect
of
the
general.
If
there
are
cats,
they're
only
emphasis
upon
universal
felinity.
There
is
nothing
that
does
not
partake
of
that
of
which
the
missionary,
or
the
tutelary,
is
the
special.
Every
conversation
is
a
conflict
of
missionaries,
each
trying
to
convert
the
other,
to
assimilate,
or
to
make
the
other
similar
to
himself.
If
no
progress
be
made,
mutual
repulsion
will
follow.
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