The Book of the Damned Part 4
_Annual Register_, 1883-105:
That the atmospheric effects that have been attributed to Krakatoa were seen in Trinidad before the eruption occurred:
_Knowledge_, 5-418:
That they were seen in Natal, South Africa, six months before the eruption.
Inertia and its inhospitality.
Or raw meat should not be fed to babies.
We shall have a few data initiatorily.
I fear me that the horse and the barn were a little extreme for our budding liberalities.
The outrageous is the reasonable, if introduced politely.
Hailstones, for instance. One reads in the newspapers of hailstones the size of hens' eggs. One smiles. Nevertheless I will engage to list one hundred instances, from the _Monthly Weather Review_, of hailstones the size of hens' eggs. There is an account in _Nature_, Nov. 1, 1894, of hailstones that weighed almost two pounds each. See Chambers'
Encyclopedia for three-pounders. _Report of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution_, 1870-479--two-pounders authenticated, and six-pounders reported. At Seringapatam, India, about the year 1800, fell a hailstone--
I fear me, I fear me: this is one of the profoundly d.a.m.ned. I blurt out something that should, perhaps, be withheld for several hundred pages--but that d.a.m.ned thing was the size of an elephant.
We laugh.
Or snowflakes. Size of saucers. Said to have fallen at Nashville, Tenn., Jan. 24, 1891. One smiles.
"In Montana, in the winter of 1887, fell snowflakes 15 inches across, and 8 inches thick." (_Monthly Weather Review_, 1915-73.)
In the topography of intellection, I should say that what we call knowledge is ignorance surrounded by laughter.
Black rains--red rains--the fall of a thousand tons of b.u.t.ter.
Jet-black snow--pink snow--blue hailstones--hailstones flavored like oranges.
Punk and silk and charcoal.
About one hundred years ago, if anyone was so credulous as to think that stones had ever fallen from the sky, he was reasoned with:
In the first place there are no stones in the sky:
Therefore no stones can fall from the sky.
Or nothing more reasonable or scientific or logical than that could be said upon any subject. The only trouble is the universal trouble: that the major premise is not real, or is intermediate somewhere between realness and unrealness.
In 1772, a committee, of whom Lavoisier was a member, was appointed by the French Academy, to investigate a report that a stone had fallen from the sky at Luce, France. Of all attempts at positiveness, in its aspect of isolation, I don't know of anything that has been fought harder for than the notion of this earth's unrelatedness. Lavoisier a.n.a.lyzed the stone of Luce. The exclusionists' explanation at that time was that stones do not fall from the sky: that luminous objects may seem to fall, and that hot stones may be picked up where a luminous object seemingly had landed--only lightning striking a stone, heating, even melting it.
The stone of Luce showed signs of fusion.
Lavoisier's a.n.a.lysis "absolutely proved" that this stone had not fallen: that it had been struck by lightning.
So, authoritatively, falling stones were d.a.m.ned. The stock means of exclusion remained the explanation of lightning that was seen to strike something--that had been upon the ground in the first place.
But positiveness and the fate of every positive statement. It is not customary to think of d.a.m.ned stones raising an outcry against a sentence of exclusion, but, subjectively, aerolites did--or data of them bombarded the walls raised against them--
_Monthly Review_, 1796-426
"The phenomenon which is the subject of the remarks before us will seem to most persons as little worthy of credit as any that could be offered.
The falling of large stones from the sky, without any a.s.signable cause of their previous ascent, seems to partake so much of the marvelous as almost entirely to exclude the operation of known and natural agents.
Yet a body of evidence is here brought to prove that such events have actually taken place, and we ought not to withhold from it a proper degree of attention."
The writer abandons the first, or absolute, exclusion, and modifies it with the explanation that the day before a reported fall of stones in Tuscany, June 16, 1794, there had been an eruption of Vesuvius--
Or that stones do fall from the sky, but that they are stones that have been raised to the sky from some other part of the earth's surface by whirlwinds or by volcanic action.
It's more than one hundred and twenty years later. I know of no aerolite that has ever been acceptably traced to terrestrial origin.
Falling stones had to be und.a.m.ned--though still with a reservation that held out for exclusion of outside forces.
One may have the knowledge of a Lavoisier, and still not be able to a.n.a.lyze, not be able even to see, except conformably with the hypnoses, or the conventional reactions against hypnoses, of one's era.
We believe no more.
We accept.
Little by little the whirlwind and volcano explanations had to be abandoned, but so powerful was this exclusion-hypnosis, sentence of d.a.m.nation, or this attempt at positiveness, that far into our own times some scientists, notably Prof. Lawrence Smith and Sir Robert Ball, continued to hold out against all external origins, a.s.serting that nothing could fall to this earth, unless it had been cast up or whirled up from some other part of this earth's surface.
It's as commendable as anything ever has been--by which I mean it's intermediate to the commendable and the censurable.
It's virginal.
Meteorites, data of which were once of the d.a.m.ned, have been admitted, but the common impression of them is only a retreat of attempted exclusion: that only two kinds of substance fall from the sky: metallic and stony: that the metallic objects are of iron and nickel--
b.u.t.ter and paper and wool and silk and resin.
We see, to start with, that the virgins of science have fought and wept and screamed against external relations--upon two grounds:
There in the first place;
Or up from one part of this earth's surface and down to another.
As late as November, 1902, in _Nature Notes_, 13-231, a member of the Selborne Society still argued that meteorites do not fall from the sky; that they are ma.s.ses of iron upon the ground "in the first place," that attract lightning; that the lightning is seen, and is mistaken for a falling, luminous object--