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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
94
Intermediateness
in
its
mineralogic
aspect
of
positivism--or
Iron
that
strove
to
break
away
from
Sulphur
and
Oxygen,
and
be
real,
homogeneous
Iron--failing,
inasmuch
as
elemental
iron
exists
only
in
text-book
chemistry:
Intermediateness
in
its
biologic
aspect
of
positivism--or
the
wild,
fantastic,
grotesque,
monstrous
things
it
conceived
of,
sometimes
in
a
frenzy
of
effort
to
break
away
abruptly
from
all
preceding
types--but
failing,
in
the
giraffe-effort,
for
instance,
or
only
caricaturing
an
antelope--
All
things
break
one
relation
only
by
the
establishing
of
some
other
relation--
All
things
cut
an
umbilical
cord
only
to
clutch
a
breast.
So
the
fight
of
the
exclusionists
to
maintain
the
traditional--or
to
prevent
abrupt
transition
from
the
quasi-established--fighting
so
that
here,
more
than
a
century
after
meteorites
were
included,
no
other
notable
inclusion
has
been
made,
except
that
of
cosmic
dust,
data
of
which
Nordenskiold
made
more
nearly
real
than
data
in
opposition.
So
Proctor,
for
instance,
fought
and
expressed
his
feeling
of
the
preposterous,
against
Sir
W.H.
Thomson's
notions
of
arrival
upon
this
earth
of
organisms
on
meteorites--
"I
can
only
regard
it
as
a
jest"
(Knowledge,
1-302).
Or
that
there
is
nothing
but
jest--or
something
intermediate
to
jest
and
tragedy:
That
ours
is
not
an
existence
but
an
utterance;
That
Momus
is
imagining
us
for
the
amusement
of
the
gods,
often
with
such
success
that
some
of
us
seem
almost
alive--like
characters
in
something
a
novelist
is
writing;
which
often
to
considerable
degree
take
their
affairs
away
from
the
novelist--
That
Momus
is
imagining
us
and
our
arts
and
sciences
and
religions,
and
is
narrating
or
picturing
us
as
a
satire
upon
the
gods'
real
existence.
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
