The Book of the Damned

All other forces have phenomena of repulsion and of inertness irrespective of distance, as well as of attraction. But Newtonian Gravitation admits attraction only: Then Newtonian Gravitation can be only one-third acceptable even to the orthodox, or there is denial of the correlation and equivalence of forces. Or still simpler: Here are the data. Make what you will, yourself, of them. In our Intermediatist revolt against homogeneous, or positive, explanations, or our acceptance that the all-sufficing cannot be less than universality, besides which, however, there would be nothing to suffice, our expression upon the Super-Sargasso Sea, though it harmonizes with data of fishes that fall as if from a stationary source--and, of course, with other data, too--is inadequate to account for two peculiarities of the falls of frogs: That never has a fall of tadpoles been reported; That never has a fall of full-grown frogs been reported-- Always frogs a few months old. It sounds positive, but if there be such reports they are somewhere out of my range of reading. But tadpoles would be more likely to fall from the sky than would frogs, little or big, if such falls be attributed to whirlwinds; and more likely to fall from the Super-Sargasso Sea if, though very tentatively and provisionally, we accept the Super-Sargasso Sea. Before we take up an especial expression upon the fall of immature and larval forms of life to this earth, and the necessity then of conceiving of some factor besides mere stationariness or suspension or stagnation, there are other data that are similar to data of falls of fishes.