The Book of the Damned Part 7

Or the black rain of Canada, Nov. 9, 1819. This time it is orthodoxy to attribute the black precipitate to smoke of forest fires south of the Ohio River--

Zurcher, _Meteors_, p. 238:

That this black rain was accompanied by "shocks like those of an earthquake."

_Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_, 2-381:

That the earthquake had occurred at the climax of intense darkness and the fall of black rain.

Red rains.

Orthodoxy:

Sand blown by the sirocco, from the Sahara to Europe.

Especially in the earthquake regions of Europe, there have been many falls of red substance, usually, but not always, precipitated in rain.

Upon many occasions, these substances have been "absolutely identified"

as sand from the Sahara. When I first took this matter up, I came across a.s.surance after a.s.surance, so positive to this effect, that, had I not been an Intermediatist, I'd have looked no further. Samples collected from a rain at Genoa--samples of sand forwarded from the Sahara--"absolute agreement" some writers said: same color, same particles of quartz, even the same sh.e.l.ls of diatoms mixed in. Then the chemical a.n.a.lyses: not a disagreement worth mentioning.

Our intermediatist means of expression will be that, with proper exclusions, after the scientific or theological method, anything can be identified with anything else, if all things are only different expressions of an underlying oneness.

To many minds there's rest and there's satisfaction in that expression "absolutely identified." Absoluteness, or the illusion of it--the universal quest. If chemists have identified substances that have fallen in Europe as sand from African deserts, swept up in African whirlwinds, that's a.s.suasive to all the irritations that occur to those cloistered minds that must repose in the concept of a snug, isolated, little world, free from contact with cosmic wickednesses, safe from stellar guile, undisturbed by inter-planetary prowlings and invasions. The only trouble is that a chemist's a.n.a.lysis, which seems so final and authoritative to some minds, is no more nearly absolute than is identification by a child or description by an imbecile--

I take some of that back: I accept that the approximation is higher--

But that it's based upon delusion, because there is no definiteness, no h.o.m.ogeneity, no stability, only different stages somewhere between them and indefiniteness, heterogeneity, and instability. There are no chemical elements. It seems acceptable that Ramsay and others have settled that. The chemical elements are only another disappointment in the quest for the positive, as the definite, the h.o.m.ogeneous, and the stable. If there were real elements, there could be a real science of chemistry.

Upon Nov. 12 and 13, 1902, occurred the greatest fall of matter in the history of Australia. Upon the 14th of November, it "rained mud," in Tasmania. It was of course attributed to Australian whirlwinds, but, according to the _Monthly Weather Review_, 32-365, there was a haze all the way to the Philippines, also as far as Hong Kong. It may be that this phenomenon had no especial relation with the even more tremendous fall of matter that occurred in Europe, February, 1903.

For several days, the south of England was a dumping ground--from somewhere.

If you'd like to have a chemist's opinion, even though it's only a chemist's opinion, see the report of the meeting of the Royal Chemical Society, April 2, 1903. Mr. E.G. Clayton read a paper upon some of the substance that had fallen from the sky, collected by him. The Sahara explanation applies mostly to falls that occur in southern Europe.

Farther away, the conventionalists are a little uneasy: for instance, the editor of the _Monthly Weather Review_, 29-121, says of a red rain that fell near the coast of Newfoundland, early in 1890: "It would be very remarkable if this was Sahara dust." Mr. Clayton said that the matter examined by him was "merely wind-borne dust from the roads and lanes of Wess.e.x." This opinion is typical of all scientific opinion--or theological opinion--or feminine opinion--all very well except for what it disregards. The most charitable thing I can think of--because I think it gives us a broader tone to relieve our malices with occasional charities--is that Mr. Clayton had not heard of the astonishing extent of this fall--had covered the Canary Islands, on the 19th, for instance.

I think, myself, that in 1903, we pa.s.sed through the remains of a powdered world--left over from an ancient inter-planetary dispute, brooding in s.p.a.ce like a red resentment ever since. Or, like every other opinion, the notion of dust from Wess.e.x turns into a provincial thing when we look it over.

To think is to conceive incompletely, because all thought relates only to the local. We metaphysicians, of course, like to have the notion that we think of the unthinkable.

As to opinions, or p.r.o.nouncements, I should say, because they always have such an authoritative air, of other chemists, there is an a.n.a.lysis in _Nature_, 68-54, giving water and organic matter at 9.08 per cent.

It's that carrying out of fractions that's so convincing. The substance is identified as sand from the Sahara.

The vastness of this fall. In _Nature_, 68-65, we are told that it had occurred in Ireland, too. The Sahara, of course--because, prior to February 19, there had been dust storms in the Sahara--disregarding that in that great region there's always, in some part of it, a dust storm.

However, just at present, it does look reasonable that dust had come from Africa, via the Canaries.

The great difficulty that authoritativeness has to contend with is some other authoritativeness. When an infallibility clashes with a pontification--

They explain.

_Nature_, March 5, 1903:

Another a.n.a.lysis--36 per cent organic matter.

Such disagreements don't look very well, so, in _Nature_, 68-109, one of the differing chemists explains. He says that his a.n.a.lysis was of muddy rain, and the other was of sediment of rain--

We're quite ready to accept excuses from the most high, though I do wonder whether we're quite so d.a.m.ned as we were, if we find ourselves in a gracious and tolerant mood toward the powers that condemn--but the tax that now comes upon our good manners and unwillingness to be too severe--

_Nature_, 68-223:

Another chemist. He says it was 23.49 per cent water and organic matter.

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 supposit.i.tious, 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 quant.i.ty 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 Wess.e.x explanation--

Or that every explanation is a Wess.e.x 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 Wess.e.x. I cannot conceive that this can be done: I think of high approximation.

Our Intermediatist concept is that, because of the continuity of all "things," which are not separate, positive, or real things, all pseudo-things partake of the underlying, or are only different expressions, degrees, or aspects of the underlying: so then that a sample from somewhere in anything must correspond with a sample from somewhere in anything else.

That, by due care in selection, and disregard for everything else, or the scientific and theological method, the substance that fell, February, 1903, could be identified with anything, or with some part or aspect of anything that could be conceived of--

With sand from the Sahara, sand from a barrel of sugar, or dust of your great-great-grandfather.

Different samples are described and listed in the _Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society_, 30-57--or we'll see whether my notion that a chemist could have identified some one of these samples as from anywhere conceivable, is extreme or not:

"Similar to brick dust," in one place; "buff or light brown," in another place; "chocolate-colored and silky to the touch and slightly iridescent"; "gray"; "red-rust color"; "reddish raindrops and gray sand"; "dirty gray"; "quite red"; "yellow-brown, with a tinge of pink"; "deep yellow-clay color."

In _Nature_, it is described as of a peculiar yellowish cast in one place, reddish somewhere else, and salmon-colored in another place.

Or there could be real science if there were really anything to be scientific about.

Or the science of chemistry is like a science of sociology, prejudiced in advance, because only to see is to see with a prejudice, setting out to "prove" that all inhabitants of New York came from Africa.

Very easy matter. Samples from one part of town. Disregard for all the rest.

There is no science but Wess.e.x-science.

According to our acceptance, there should be no other, but that approximation should be higher: that metaphysics is super-evil: that the scientific spirit is of the cosmic quest.