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The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
37
If
you'd
like
to
have
a
chemist's
opinion,
even
though
it's
only
a
chemist's
opinion,
see
the
report
of
the
meeting
of
the
Royal
Chemical
Society,
April
2,
1903.
Mr.
E.G.
Clayton
read
a
paper
upon
some
of
the
substance
that
had
fallen
from
the
sky,
collected
by
him.
The
Sahara
explanation
applies
mostly
to
falls
that
occur
in
southern
Europe.
Farther
away,
the
conventionalists
are
a
little
uneasy:
for
instance,
the
editor
of
the
Monthly
Weather
Review,
29-121,
says
of
a
red
rain
that
fell
near
the
coast
of
Newfoundland,
early
in
1890:
"It
would
be
very
remarkable
if
this
was
Sahara
dust."
Mr.
Clayton
said
that
the
matter
examined
by
him
was
"merely
wind-borne
dust
from
the
roads
and
lanes
of
Wessex."
This
opinion
is
typical
of
all
scientific
opinion--or
theological
opinion--or
feminine
opinion--all
very
well
except
for
what
it
disregards.
The
most
charitable
thing
I
can
think
of--because
I
think
it
gives
us
a
broader
tone
to
relieve
our
malices
with
occasional
charities--is
that
Mr.
Clayton
had
not
heard
of
the
astonishing
extent
of
this
fall--had
covered
the
Canary
Islands,
on
the
19th,
for
instance.
I
think,
myself,
that
in
1903,
we
passed
through
the
remains
of
a
powdered
world--left
over
from
an
ancient
inter-planetary
dispute,
brooding
in
space
like
a
red
resentment
ever
since.
Or,
like
every
other
opinion,
the
notion
of
dust
from
Wessex
turns
into
a
provincial
thing
when
we
look
it
over.
To
think
is
to
conceive
incompletely,
because
all
thought
relates
only
to
the
local.
We
metaphysicians,
of
course,
like
to
have
the
notion
that
we
think
of
the
unthinkable.
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