The Book of the Damned

They have done well. They have functioned. But now they're negatives, or they're out of harmony-- If we are in harmony with a new dominant, or the spirit of a new era, in which Exclusionism must be overthrown; if we have data of many obscurations that have occurred, not only upon the moon, but upon our own earth, as convincing of vast intervening bodies, usually invisible, as is any regularized, predicted eclipse. One looks up at the sky. It seems incredible that, say, at the distance of the moon, there could be, but be invisible, a solid body, say, the size of the moon. One looks up at the moon, at a time when only a crescent of it is visible. The tendency is to build up the rest of it in one's mind; but the unillumined part looks as vacant as the rest of the sky, and it's of the same blueness as the rest of the sky. There's a vast area of solid substance before one's eyes. It's indistinguishable from the sky. In some of our little lessons upon the beauties of modesty and humility, we have picked out basic arrogances--tail of a peacock, horns of a stag, dollars of a capitalist--eclipses of astronomers. Though I have no desire for the job, I'd engage to list hundreds of instances in which the report upon an expected eclipse has been "sky overcast" or "weather unfavorable." In our Super-Hibernia, the unfavorable has been construed as the favorable. Some time ago, when we were lost, because we had not recognized our own dominant, when we were still of the unchosen and likely to be more malicious than we now are--because we have noted a steady tolerance creeping into our attitude--if astronomers are not to blame, but are only correlates to a dominant--we advertised a predicted eclipse that did not occur at all. Now, without any especial feeling, except that of recognition of the fate of all attempted absolutism, we give the instance, noting that, though such an evil thing to orthodoxy, it was orthodoxy that recorded the non-event.