The Book of the Damned

Sense of homogeneity, or our positivist illusion of the unknown--and the fate of all positivism. Astronomy and the academic. Ethics and the abstract. The universal attempt to formulate or to regularize--an attempt that can be made only by disregarding or denying. Or all things disregard or deny that which will eventually invade and destroy them-- Until comes the day when some one thing shall say, and enforce upon Infinitude: "Thus far shalt thou go: here is absolute demarcation." The final utterance: "There is only I." In the Monthly Notices of the R.A.S., 11-48, there is a letter from the Rev. W. Read: That, upon the 4th of September, 1851, at 9:30 A.M., he had seen a host of self-luminous bodies, passing the field of his telescope, some slowly and some rapidly. They appeared to occupy a zone several degrees in breadth. The direction of most of them was due east to west, but some moved from north to south. The numbers were tremendous. They were observed for six hours. Editor's note: "May not these appearances be attributed to an abnormal state of the optic nerves of the observer?" In Monthly Notices, 12-38, Mr. Read answers that he had been a diligent observer, with instruments of a superior order, for about 28 years--"but I have never witnessed such an appearance before." As to illusion he says that two other members of his family had seen the objects. The Editor withdraws his suggestion. We know what to expect. Almost absolutely--in an existence that is essentially Hibernian--we can predict the past--that is, look over something of this kind, written in 1851, and know what to expect from the Exclusionists later. If Mr. Read saw a migration of dissatisfied angels, numbering millions, they must merge away, at least subjectively, with commonplace terrestrial phenomena--of course disregarding Mr. Read's probable familiarity, of 28 years' duration, with the commonplaces of terrestrial phenomena.