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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
262
Against
these
notions
is
the
same
sense
of
finality
that
opposes
all
advance.
It's
why
we
rate
acceptance
as
a
better
adaptation
than
belief.
Opposing
us
is
the
strong
belief
that,
as
to
inter-planetary
phenomena,
virtually
everything
has
been
found
out.
Sense
of
finality
and
illusion
of
homogeneity.
But
that
what
is
called
advancing
knowledge
is
violation
of
the
sense
of
blankness.
A
drop
of
water.
Once
upon
a
time
water
was
considered
so
homogeneous
that
it
was
thought
of
as
an
element.
The
microscope--and
not
only
that
the
supposititiously
elementary
was
seen
to
be
of
infinite
diversity,
but
that
in
its
protoplasmic
life
there
were
new
orders
of
beings.
Or
the
year
1491--and
a
European
looking
westward
over
the
ocean--his
feeling
that
that
suave
western
droop
was
unbreakable;
that
gods
of
regularity
would
not
permit
that
smooth
horizon
to
be
disturbed
by
coasts
or
spotted
with
islands.
The
unpleasantness
of
even
contemplating
such
a
state--wide,
smooth
west,
so
clean
against
the
sky--spotted
with
islands--geographic
leprosy.
But
coasts
and
islands
and
Indians
and
bison,
in
the
seemingly
vacant
west:
lakes,
mountains,
rivers--
One
looks
up
at
the
sky:
the
relative
homogeneity
of
the
relatively
unexplored:
one
thinks
of
only
a
few
kinds
of
phenomena.
But
the
acceptance
is
forced
upon
me
that
there
are
modes
and
modes
and
modes
of
inter-planetary
existence:
things
as
different
from
planets
and
comets
and
meteors
as
Indians
are
from
bison
and
prairie
dogs:
a
super-geography--or
celestiography--of
vast
stagnant
regions,
but
also
of
Super-Niagaras
and
Ultra-Mississippis:
and
a
super-sociology--voyagers
and
tourists
and
ravagers:
the
hunted
and
the
hunting:
the
super-mercantile,
the
super-piratic,
the
super-evangelical.
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