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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
349
I
think
that
with
the
object
known
as
Eddie's
"comet"
passes
away
the
last
of
our
susceptibility
to
the
common
fallacy
of
personifying.
It
is
one
of
the
most
deep-rooted
of
positivist
illusions--that
people
are
persons.
We
have
been
guilty
too
often
of
spleens
and
spites
and
ridicules
against
astronomers,
as
if
they
were
persons,
or
final
unities,
individuals,
completenesses,
or
selves--instead
of
indeterminate
parts.
But,
so
long
as
we
remain
in
quasi-existence,
we
can
cast
out
illusion
only
with
some
other
illusion,
though
the
other
illusion
may
approximate
higher
to
reality.
So
we
personify
no
more--but
we
super-personify.
We
now
take
into
full
acceptance
our
expression
that
Development
is
an
Autocracy
of
Successive
Dominants--which
are
not
final--but
which
approximate
higher
to
individuality
or
self-ness,
than
do
the
human
tropisms
that
irresponsibly
correlate
to
them.
Eddie
reported
a
celestial
object,
from
the
Observatory
at
Grahamstown,
South
Africa.
It
was
in
1890.
The
New
Dominant
was
only
heir
presumptive
then,
or
heir
apparent
but
not
obvious.
The
thing
that
Eddie
reported
might
as
well
have
been
reported
by
a
night
watchman,
who
had
looked
up
through
an
unplaced
sewer
pipe.
It
did
not
correlate.
The
thing
was
not
admitted
to
Monthly
Notices.
I
think
myself
that
if
the
Editor
had
attempted
to
let
it
in--earthquake--or
a
mysterious
fire
in
his
publishing
house.
The
Dominants
are
jealous
gods.
In
Nature,
presumably
a
vassal
of
the
new
god,
though
of
course
also
plausibly
rendering
homage
to
the
old,
is
reported
a
comet-like
body,
of
Oct.
27,
1890,
observed
at
Grahamstown,
by
Eddie.
It
may
have
looked
comet-like,
but
it
moved
100
degrees
while
visible,
or
one
hundred
degrees
in
three-quarters
of
an
hour.
See
Nature,
43-89,
90.
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