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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
84
Over
and
over
and
over
again,
the
universal
delusion;
hope
and
despair
of
attempted
positivism;
that
there
can
be
real
criteria,
or
distinct
characteristics
of
anything.
If
anybody
can
define--not
merely
suppose,
like
Prof.
Bastian,
that
he
can
define--the
true
characteristics
of
anything,
or
so
localize
trueness
anywhere,
he
makes
the
discovery
for
which
the
cosmos
is
laboring.
He
will
be
instantly
translated,
like
Elijah,
into
the
Positive
Absolute.
My
own
notion
is
that,
in
a
moment
of
super-concentration,
Elijah
became
so
nearly
a
real
prophet
that
he
was
translated
to
heaven,
or
to
the
Positive
Absolute,
with
such
velocity
that
he
left
an
incandescent
train
behind
him.
As
we
go
along,
we
shall
find
the
"true
test
of
meteoritic
material,"
which
in
the
past
has
been
taken
as
an
absolute,
dissolving
into
almost
utmost
nebulosity.
Prof.
Bastian
explains
mechanically,
or
in
terms
of
the
usual
reflexes
to
all
reports
of
unwelcome
substances:
that
near
where
the
slag
had
been
found,
telegraph
wires
had
been
struck
by
lightning;
that
particles
of
melted
wire
had
been
seen
to
fall
near
the
slag--which
had
been
on
the
ground
in
the
first
place.
But,
according
to
the
New
York
Times,
April
14,
1879,
about
two
bushels
of
this
substance
had
fallen.
Something
that
was
said
to
have
fallen
at
Darmstadt,
June
7,
1846;
listed
by
Greg
(Rept.
Brit.
Assoc.,
1867-416)
as
"only
slag."
Philosophical
Magazine,
4-10-381:
That,
in
1855,
a
large
stone
was
found
far
in
the
interior
of
a
tree,
in
Battersea
Fields.
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