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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
227
Unless:
The
exceptional:
the
flux
and
vagary
of
all
things.
Or
that
normally
this
earth's
gravitation
extends,
say,
ten
or
fifteen
miles
outward--but
that
gravitation
must
be
rhythmic.
Of
course,
in
the
pseudo-formulas
of
astronomers,
gravitation
as
a
fixed
quantity
is
essential.
Accept
that
gravitation
is
a
variable
force,
and
astronomers
deflate,
with
a
perceptible
hissing
sound,
into
the
punctured
condition
of
economists,
biologists,
meteorologists,
and
all
the
others
of
the
humbler
divinities,
who
can
admittedly
offer
only
insecure
approximations.
We
refer
all
who
would
not
like
to
hear
the
hiss
of
escaping
arrogance,
to
Herbert
Spencer's
chapters
upon
the
rhythm
of
all
phenomena.
If
everything
else--light
from
the
stars,
heat
from
the
sun,
the
winds
and
the
tides;
forms
and
colors
and
sizes
of
animals;
demands
and
supplies
and
prices;
political
opinions
and
chemic
reactions
and
religious
doctrines
and
magnetic
intensities
and
the
ticking
of
clocks;
and
arrival
and
departure
of
the
seasons--if
everything
else
is
variable,
we
accept
that
the
notion
of
gravitation
as
fixed
and
formulable
is
only
another
attempted
positivism,
doomed,
like
all
other
illusions
of
realness
in
quasi-existence.
So
it
is
intermediatism
to
accept
that,
though
gravitation
may
approximate
higher
to
invariability
than
do
the
winds,
for
instance,
it
must
be
somewhere
between
the
Absolutes
of
Stability
and
Instability.
Here
then
we
are
not
much
impressed
with
the
opposition
of
physicists
and
astronomers,
fearing,
a
little
mournfully,
that
their
language
is
of
expiring
sibilations.
So
then
the
fields
of
ice
in
the
sky,
and
that,
though
usually
so
far
away
as
to
be
mere
blurs,
at
times
they
come
close
enough
to
be
seen
in
detail.
For
description
of
what
I
call
a
"blur,"
see
Pop.
Sci.
News,
February,
1884--sky,
in
general,
unusually
clear,
but,
near
the
sun,
"a
white,
slightly
curdled
haze,
which
was
dazzlingly
bright."
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