The Book of the Damned

"A dense volume of red sand fell."

This matter of sand falling seems to suggest conventional explanation enough, or that a simoon, heavily charged with terrestrial sand, had obscured the sun, but Mr. Murray, who says that he had had experience with simoons, gives his opinion that "it cannot have been a simoon."

It is our comprehensiveness now, or this matter of concomitants of darknesses that we are going to capitalize. It is all very complicated and tremendous, and our own treatment can be but impressionistic, but a few of the rudiments of Advanced Seismology we shall now take up--or the four princ.i.p.al phenomena of another world's close approach to this world.

If a large substantial ma.s.s, or super-construction, should enter this earth's atmosphere, it is our acceptance that it would sometimes--depending upon velocity--appear luminous or look like a cloud, or like a cloud with a luminous nucleus. Later we shall have an expression upon luminosity--different from the luminosity of incandescence--that comes upon objects falling from the sky, or entering this earth's atmosphere. Now our expression is that worlds have often come close to this earth, and that smaller objects--size of a haystack or size of several dozen skysc.r.a.pers lumped, have often hurtled through this earth's atmosphere, and have been mistaken for clouds, because they were enveloped in clouds--

Or that around something coming from the intense cold of inter-planetary s.p.a.ce--that is of some regions: our own suspicion is that other regions are tropical--the moisture of this earth's atmosphere would condense into a cloud-like appearance around it. In _Nature_, 20-121, there is an account by Mr. S.W. Clifton, Collector of Customs, at Freemantle, Western Australia, sent to the Melbourne Observatory--a clear day--appearance of a small black cloud, moving not very swiftly--bursting into a ball of fire, of the apparent size of the moon--

Or that something with the velocity of an ordinary meteorite could not collect vapor around it, but that slower-moving objects--speed of a railway train, say--may.

The clouds of tornadoes have so often been described as if they were solid objects that I now accept that sometimes they are: that some so-called tornadoes are objects hurtling through this earth's atmosphere, not only generating disturbances by their suctions, but crushing, with their bulk, all things in their way, rising and falling and finally disappearing, demonstrating that gravitation is not the power that the primitives think it is, if an object moving at relatively low velocity be not pulled to this earth, or being so momentarily affected, bounds away.

In Finley's _Reports on the Character of 600 Tornadoes_ very suggestive bits of description occur:

"Cloud bounded along the earth like a ball"--

Or that it was no meteorological phenomenon, but something very much like a huge solid ball that was bounding along, crushing and carrying with it everything within its field--

"Cloud bounded along, coming to the earth every eight hundred or one thousand yards."

Here's an interesting bit that I got somewhere else. I offer it as a datum in super-biology, which, however, is a branch of advanced science that I'll not take up, restricting to things indefinitely called "objects"--

"The tornado came wriggling, jumping, whirling like a great green snake, darting out a score of glistening fangs."

Though it's interesting, I think that's sensational, myself. It may be that vast green snakes sometimes rush past this earth, taking a swift bite wherever they can, but, as I say, that's a super-biologic phenomenon. Finley gives dozens of instances of tornado clouds that seem to me more like solid things swathed in clouds, than clouds. He notes that, in the tornado at Americus, Georgia, July 18, 1881, "a strange sulphurous vapor was emitted from the cloud." In many instances, objects, or meteoritic stones, that have come from this earth's externality, have had a sulphurous odor. Why a wind effect should be sulphurous is not clear. That a vast object from external regions should be sulphurous is in line with many data. This phenomenon is described in the _Monthly Weather Review_, July, 1881, as "a strange sulphurous vapor ... burning and sickening all who approached close enough to breathe it."

The conventional explanation of tornadoes as wind-effects--which we do not deny in some instances--is so strong in the United States that it is better to look elsewhere for an account of an object that has hurtled through this earth's atmosphere, rising and falling and defying this earth's gravitation.

_Nature_, 7-112:

That, according to a correspondent to the _Birmingham Morning News_, the people living near King's Sutton, Banbury, saw, about one o'clock, Dec.

7, 1872, something like a hayc.o.c.k hurtling through the air. Like a meteor it was accompanied by fire and a dense smoke and made a noise like that of a railway train. "It was sometimes high in the air and sometimes near the ground." The effect was tornado-like: trees and walls were knocked down. It's a late day now to try to verify this story, but a list is given of persons whose property was injured. We are told that this thing then disappeared "all at once."

These are the smaller objects, which may be derailed railway trains or big green snakes, for all I know--but our expression upon approach to this earth by vast dark bodies--

That likely they'd be made luminous: would envelop in clouds, perhaps, or would have their own clouds--

But that they'd quake, and that they'd affect this earth with quakes--

And that then would occur a fall of matter from such a world, or rise of matter from this earth to a nearby world, or both fall and rise, or exchange of matter--process known to Advanced Seismology as celestio-metathesis--

Except that--if matter from some other world--and it would be like someone to get it into his head that we absolutely deny gravitation, just because we cannot accept orthodox dogmas--except that, if matter from another world, filling the sky of this earth, generally, as to a hemisphere, or locally, should be attracted to this earth, it would seem thinkable that the whole thing should drop here, and not merely its surface-materials.

Objects upon a ship's bottom. From time to time they drop to the bottom of the ocean. The ship does not.

Or, like our acceptance upon dripping from aerial ice-fields, we think of only a part of a nearby world succ.u.mbing, except in being caught in suspension, to this earth's gravitation, and surface-materials falling from that part--

Explain or express or accept, and what does it matter? Our att.i.tude is:

Here are the data.

See for yourself.

What does it matter what my notions may be?

Here are the data.

But think for yourself, or think for myself, all mixed up we must be. A long time must go by before we can know Florida from Long Island. So we've had data of fishes that have fallen from our now established and respectabilized Super-Sarga.s.so Sea--which we've almost forgotten, it's now so respectable--but we shall have data of fishes that have fallen during earthquakes. These we accept were dragged down from ponds or other worlds that have been quaked, when only a few miles away, by this earth, some other world also quaking this earth.

In a way, or in its principle, our subject is orthodox enough. Only grant proximity of other worlds--which, however, will not be a matter of granting, but will be a matter of data--and one conventionally conceives of their surfaces quaked--even of a whole lake full of fishes being quaked and dragged down from one of them. The lake full of fishes may cause a little pain to some minds, but the fall of sand and stones is pleasantly enough thought of. More scientific persons, or more faithful hypnotics than we, have taken up this subject, unpainfully, relatively to the moon. For instance, Perrey has gone over 15,000 records of earthquakes, and he has correlated many with proximities of the moon, or has attributed many to the pull of the moon when nearest this earth.

Also there is a paper upon this subject in the _Proc. Roy. Soc. of Cornwall_, 1845. Or, theoretically, when at its closest to this earth, the moon quakes the face of this earth, and is itself quaked--but does not itself fall to this earth. As to showers of matter that may have come from the moon at such times--one can go over old records and find what one pleases.

That is what we now shall do.

Our expressions are for acceptance only.

Our data:

We take them from four cla.s.ses of phenomena that have preceded or accompanied earthquakes:

Unusual clouds, darkness profound, luminous appearances in the sky, and falls of substances and objects whether commonly called meteoritic or not.

Not one of these occurrences fits in with principles of primitive, or primary, seismology, and every one of them is a datum of a quaked body pa.s.sing close to this earth or suspended over it. To the primitives there is not a reason in the world why a convulsion of this earth's surface should be accompanied by unusual sights in the sky, by darkness, or by the fall of substances or objects from the sky. As to phenomena like these, or storms, preceding earthquakes, the irreconcilability is still greater.

It was before 1860 that Perrey made his great compilation. We take most of our data from lists compiled long ago. Only the safe and unpainful have been published in recent years--at least in ambitious, voluminous form. The restraining hand of the "System"--as we call it, whether it has any real existence or not--is tight upon the sciences of today. The uncanniest aspect of our quasi-existence that I know of is that everything that seems to have one ident.i.ty has also as high a seeming of everything else. In this oneness of allness, or continuity, the protecting hand strangles; the parental stifles; love is inseparable from phenomena of hate. There is only Continuity--that is in quasi-existence. _Nature_, at least in its correspondents' columns, still evades this protective strangulation, and the _Monthly Weather Review_ is still a rich field of unfaithful observation: but, in looking over other long-established periodicals, I have noted their glimmers of quasi-individuality fade gradually, after about 1860, and the surrender of their attempted ident.i.ties to a higher attempted organization. Some of them, expressing Intermediateness-wide endeavor to localize the universal, or to localize self, soul, ident.i.ty, ent.i.ty--or positiveness or realness--held out until as far as 1880; traces findable up to 1890--and then, expressing the universal process--except that here and there in the world's history there may have been successful approximations to positiveness by "individuals"--who only then became individuals and attained to selves or souls of their own--surrendered, submitted, became parts of a higher organization's attempt to individualize or systematize into a complete thing, or to localize the universal or the attributes of the universal. After the death of Richard Proctor, whose occasional illiberalities I'd not like to emphasize too much, all succeeding volumes of _Knowledge_ have yielded scarcely an unconventionality. Note the great number of times that the _American Journal of Science_ and the _Report of the British a.s.sociation_ are quoted: note that, after, say, 1885, they're scarcely mentioned in these inspired but illicit pages--as by hypnosis and inertia, we keep on saying.

About 1880.

Throttle and disregard.

But the coercion could not be positive, and many of the excommunicated continued to creep in; or, even to this day, some of the strangled are faintly breathing.

Some of our data have been hard to find. We could tell stories of great labor and fruitless quests that would, though perhaps imperceptibly, stir the sympathy of a Mr. Symons. But, in this matter of concurrence of earthquakes with aerial phenomena, which are as una.s.sociable with earthquakes, if internally caused, as falls of sand on convulsed small boys full of sour apples, the abundance of so-called evidence is so great that we can only sketchily go over the data, beginning with Robert Mallet's Catalogue (_Rept. Brit. a.s.soc._, 1852), omitting some extraordinary instances, because they occurred before the eighteenth century:

Earthquake "preceded" by a violent tempest, England, Jan. 8, 1704--"preceded" by a brilliant meteor, Switzerland, Nov. 4, 1704--"luminous cloud, moving at high velocity, disappearing behind the horizon," Florence, Dec. 9, 1731--"thick mists in the air, through which a dim light was seen: several weeks before the shock, globes of light had been seen in the air," Swabia, May 22, 1732--rain of earth, Carpentras, France, Oct. 18, 1737--a black cloud, London, March 19, 1750--violent storm and a strange star of octagonal shape, Slavange, Norway, April 15, 1752--b.a.l.l.s of fire from a streak in the sky, Augermannland, 1752--numerous meteorites, Lisbon, Oct. 15, 1755--"terrible tempests" over and over--"falls of hail" and "brilliant meteors," instance after instance--"an immense globe," Switzerland, Nov.

2, 1761--oblong, sulphurous cloud, Germany, April, 1767--extraordinary ma.s.s of vapor, Boulogne, April, 1780--heavens obscured by a dark mist, Grenada, Aug. 7, 1804--"strange, howling noises in the air, and large spots obscuring the sun," Palermo, Italy, April 16, 1817--"luminous meteor moving in the same direction as the shock," Naples, Nov. 22, 1821--fire ball appearing in the sky: apparent size of the moon, Thuringerwald, Nov. 29, 1831.

And, unless you be polarized by the New Dominant, which is calling for recognition of multiplicities of external things, as a Dominant, dawning new over Europe in 1492, called for recognition of terrestrial externality to Europe--unless you have this contact with the new, you have no affinity for these data--beans that drop from a magnet--irreconcilables that glide from the mind of a Thomson--

Or my own acceptance that we do not really think at all; that we correlate around super-magnets that I call Dominants--a Spiritual Dominant in one age, and responsively to it up spring monasteries, and the stake and the cross are its symbols: a Materialist Dominant, and up spring laboratories, and microscopes and telescopes and crucibles are its ikons--that we're nothing but iron filings relatively to a succession of magnets that displace preceding magnets.

With no soul of your own, and with no soul of my own--except that some day some of us may no longer be Intermediatisms, but may hold out against the cosmos that once upon a time thousands of fishes were cast from one pail of water--we have psycho-valency for these data, if we're obedient slaves to the New Dominant, and repulsion to them, if we're mere correlates to the Old Dominant. I'm a soulless and selfless correlate to the New Dominant, myself: I see what I have to see. The only inducement I can hold out, in my attempt to rake up disciples, is that some day the New will be fashionable: the new correlates will sneer at the old correlates. After all, there is some inducement to that--and I'm not altogether sure it's desirable to end up as a fixed star.

As a correlate to the New Dominant, I am very much impressed with some of these data--the luminous object that moved in the same direction as an earthquake--it seems very acceptable that a quake followed this thing as it pa.s.sed near this earth's surface. The streak that was seen in the sky--or only a streak that was visible of another world--and objects, or meteorites, that were shaken down from it. The quake at Carpentras, France: and that, above Carpentras, was a smaller world, more violently quaked, so that earth was shaken down from it.

But I like best the super-wolves that were seen to cross the sun during the earthquake at Palermo.

They howled.