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The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
215
We
now
have
a
commonplace
datum
that
is
familiar
in
two
respects:
Little,
symmetric
objects
of
metal
that
fell
at
Orenburg,
Russia,
September,
1824
(Phil.
Mag.,
4-8-463).
A
second
fall
of
these
objects,
at
Orenburg,
Russia,
Jan.
25,
1825
(Quar.
Jour.
Roy.
Inst.,
1828-1-447).
I
now
think
of
the
disk
of
Tarbes,
but
when
first
I
came
upon
these
data
I
was
impressed
only
with
recurrence,
because
the
objects
of
Orenburg
were
described
as
crystals
of
pyrites,
or
sulphate
of
iron.
I
had
no
notion
of
metallic
objects
that
might
have
been
shaped
or
molded
by
means
other
than
crystallization,
until
I
came
to
Arago's
account
of
these
occurrences
(OEuvres,
11-644).
Here
the
analysis
gives
70
per
cent.
red
oxide
of
iron,
and
sulphur
and
loss
by
ignition
5
per
cent.
It
seems
to
me
acceptable
that
iron
with
considerably
less
than
5
per
cent.
sulphur
in
it
is
not
iron
pyrites--then
little,
rusty
iron
objects,
shaped
by
some
other
means,
have
fallen,
four
months
apart,
at
the
same
place.
M.
Arago
expresses
astonishment
at
this
phenomenon
of
recurrence
so
familiar
to
us.
Altogether,
I
find
opening
before
us,
vistas
of
heresies
to
which
I,
for
one,
must
shut
my
eyes.
I
have
always
been
in
sympathy
with
the
dogmatists
and
exclusionists:
that
is
plain
in
our
opening
lines:
that
to
seem
to
be
is
falsely
and
arbitrarily
and
dogmatically
to
exclude.
It
is
only
that
exclusionists
who
are
good
in
the
nineteenth
century
are
evil
in
the
twentieth
century.
Constantly
we
feel
a
merging
away
into
infinitude;
but
that
this
book
shall
approximate
to
form,
or
that
our
data
shall
approximate
to
organization,
or
that
we
shall
approximate
to
intelligibility,
we
have
to
call
ourselves
back
constantly
from
wandering
off
into
infinitude.
The
thing
that
we
do,
however,
is
to
make
our
own
outline,
or
the
difference
between
what
we
include
and
what
we
exclude,
vague.
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