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The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
22
Monthly
Review,
1796-426
"The
phenomenon
which
is
the
subject
of
the
remarks
before
us
will
seem
to
most
persons
as
little
worthy
of
credit
as
any
that
could
be
offered.
The
falling
of
large
stones
from
the
sky,
without
any
assignable
cause
of
their
previous
ascent,
seems
to
partake
so
much
of
the
marvelous
as
almost
entirely
to
exclude
the
operation
of
known
and
natural
agents.
Yet
a
body
of
evidence
is
here
brought
to
prove
that
such
events
have
actually
taken
place,
and
we
ought
not
to
withhold
from
it
a
proper
degree
of
attention."
The
writer
abandons
the
first,
or
absolute,
exclusion,
and
modifies
it
with
the
explanation
that
the
day
before
a
reported
fall
of
stones
in
Tuscany,
June
16,
1794,
there
had
been
an
eruption
of
Vesuvius--
Or
that
stones
do
fall
from
the
sky,
but
that
they
are
stones
that
have
been
raised
to
the
sky
from
some
other
part
of
the
earth's
surface
by
whirlwinds
or
by
volcanic
action.
It's
more
than
one
hundred
and
twenty
years
later.
I
know
of
no
aerolite
that
has
ever
been
acceptably
traced
to
terrestrial
origin.
Falling
stones
had
to
be
undamned--though
still
with
a
reservation
that
held
out
for
exclusion
of
outside
forces.
One
may
have
the
knowledge
of
a
Lavoisier,
and
still
not
be
able
to
analyze,
not
be
able
even
to
see,
except
conformably
with
the
hypnoses,
or
the
conventional
reactions
against
hypnoses,
of
one's
era.
We
believe
no
more.
We
accept.
Little
by
little
the
whirlwind
and
volcano
explanations
had
to
be
abandoned,
but
so
powerful
was
this
exclusion-hypnosis,
sentence
of
damnation,
or
this
attempt
at
positiveness,
that
far
into
our
own
times
some
scientists,
notably
Prof.
Lawrence
Smith
and
Sir
Robert
Ball,
continued
to
hold
out
against
all
external
origins,
asserting
that
nothing
could
fall
to
this
earth,
unless
it
had
been
cast
up
or
whirled
up
from
some
other
part
of
this
earth's
surface.
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