The Book of the Damned

He "identifies" this matter as sand from an African desert--but after deducting organic matter-- But you and I could be "identified" as sand from an African desert, after deducting all there is to us except sand-- Why we cannot accept that this fall was of sand from the Sahara, omitting the obvious objection that in most parts the Sahara is not red at all, but is usually described as "dazzling white"-- The enormousness of it: that a whirlwind might have carried it, but that, in that case it would be no supposititious, or doubtfully identified whirlwind, but the greatest atmospheric cataclysm in the history of this earth: Jour. Roy. Met. Soc., 30-56: That, up to the 27th of February, this fall had continued in Belgium, Holland, Germany and Austria; that in some instances it was not sand, or that almost all the matter was organic: that a vessel had reported the fall as occurring in the Atlantic Ocean, midway between Southampton and the Barbados. The calculation is given that, in England alone, 10,000,000 tons of matter had fallen. It had fallen in Switzerland (Symons' Met. Mag., March, 1903). It had fallen in Russia (Bull. Com. Geolog., 22-48). Not only had a vast quantity of matter fallen several months before, in Australia, but it was at this time falling in Australia (Victorian Naturalist, June, 1903)--enormously--red mud--fifty tons per square mile. The Wessex explanation-- Or that every explanation is a Wessex explanation: by that I mean an attempt to interpret the enormous in terms of the minute--but that nothing can be finally explained, because by Truth we mean the Universal; and that even if we could think as wide as Universality, that would not be requital to the cosmic quest--which is not for Truth, but for the local that is true--not to universalize the local, but to localize the universal--or to give to a cosmic cloud absolute interpretation in terms of the little dusty roads and lanes of Wessex. I cannot conceive that this can be done: I think of high approximation.