The Book of the Damned Part 8

Our notion is that, in a real existence, such a quasi-system of fables as the science of chemistry could not deceive for a moment: but that in an "existence" endeavoring to become real, it represents that endeavor, and will continue to impose its pseudo-positiveness until it be driven out by a higher approximation to realness:

That the science of chemistry is as impositive as fortune-telling--

Or no--

That, though it represents a higher approximation to realness than does alchemy, for instance, and so drove out alchemy, it is still only somewhere between myth and positiveness.

The attempt at realness, or to state a real and unmodified fact here, is the statement:

All red rains are colored by sands from the Sahara Desert.

My own impositivist acceptances are:

That some red rains are colored by sands from the Sahara Desert;

Some by sands from other terrestrial sources;

Some by sands from other worlds, or from their deserts--also from aerial regions too indefinite or amorphous to be thought of as "worlds"

or planets--

That no supposit.i.tious whirlwind can account for the hundreds of millions of tons of matter that fell upon Australia, Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean and Europe in 1902 and 1903--that a whirlwind that could do that would not be supposit.i.tious.

But now we shall cast off some of our own wessicality by accepting that there have been falls of red substance other than sand.

We regard every science as an expression of the attempt to be real. But to be real is to localize the universal--or to make some one thing as wide as all things--successful accomplishment of which I cannot conceive of. The prime resistance to this endeavor is the refusal of the rest of the universe to be d.a.m.ned, excluded, disregarded, to receive Christian Science treatment, by something else so attempting. Although all phenomena are striving for the Absolute--or have surrendered to and have incorporated themselves in higher attempts, simply to be phenomenal, or to have seeming in Intermediateness is to express relations.

A river.

It is water expressing the gravitational relation of different levels.

The water of the river.

Expression of chemic relations of hydrogen and oxygen--which are not final.

A city.

Manifestation of commercial and social relations.

How could a mountain be without base in a greater body?

Storekeeper live without customers?

The prime resistance to the positivist attempt by Science is its relations with other phenomena, or that it only expresses those relations in the first place. Or that a Science can have seeming, or survive in Intermediateness, as something pure, isolated, positively different, no more than could a river or a city or a mountain or a store.

This Intermediateness-wide attempt by parts to be wholes--which cannot be realized in our quasi-state, if we accept that in it the co-existence of two or more wholes or universals is impossible--high approximation to which, however, may be thinkable--

Scientists and their dream of "pure science."

Artists and their dream of "art for art's sake."

It is our notion that if they could almost realize, that would be almost realness: that they would instantly be translated into real existence.

Such thinkers are good positivists, but they are evil in an economic and sociologic sense, if, in that sense, nothing has justification for being, unless it serve, or function for, or express the relations of, some higher aggregate. So Science functions for and serves society at large, and would, from society at large, receive no support, unless it did so divert itself or dissipate and prost.i.tute itself. It seems that by prost.i.tution I mean usefulness.

There have been red rains that, in the middle ages, were called "rains of blood." Such rains terrified many persons, and were so unsettling to large populations, that Science, in its sociologic relations, has sought, by Mrs. Eddy's method, to remove an evil--

That "rains of blood" do not exist;

That rains so called are only of water colored by sand from the Sahara Desert.

My own acceptance is that such a.s.surances, whether fict.i.tious or not, whether the Sahara is a "dazzling white" desert or not, have wrought such good effects, in a sociologic sense, even though prost.i.tutional in the positivist sense, that, in the sociologic sense, they were well justified:

But that we've gone on: that this is the twentieth century; that most of us have grown up so that such soporifics of the past are no longer necessary:

That if gushes of blood should fall from the sky upon New York City, business would go on as usual.

We began with rains that we accepted ourselves were, most likely, only of sand. In my own still immature hereticalness--and by heresy, or progress, I mean, very largely, a return, though with many modifications, to the superst.i.tions of the past, I think I feel considerable aloofness to the idea of rains of blood. Just at present, it is my conservative, or timid purpose, to express only that there have been red rains that very strongly suggest blood or finely divided animal matter--

Debris from inter-planetary disasters.

Aerial battles.

Food-supplies from cargoes of super-vessels, wrecked in inter-planetary traffic.

There was a red rain in the Mediterranean region, March 6, 1888. Twelve days later, it fell again. Whatever this substance may have been, when burned, the odor of animal matter from it was strong and persistent.

(_L'Astronomie_, 1888-205.)

But--infinite heterogeneity--or debris from many different kinds of aerial cargoes--there have been red rains that have been colored by neither sand nor animal matter.

_Annals of Philosophy_, 16-226:

That, Nov. 2, 1819--week before the black rain and earthquake of Canada--there fell, at Blankenberge, Holland, a red rain. As to sand, two chemists of Bruges concentrated 144 ounces of the rain to 4 ounces--"no precipitate fell." But the color was so marked that had there been sand, it would have been deposited, if the substance had been diluted instead of concentrated. Experiments were made, and various reagents did cast precipitates, but other than sand. The chemists concluded that the rain-water contained muriate of cobalt--which is not very enlightening: that could be said of many substances carried in vessels upon the Atlantic Ocean. Whatever it may have been, in the _Annales de Chimie_, 2-12-432, its color is said to have been red-violet. For various chemic reactions, see _Quar. Jour. Roy. Inst._, 9-202, and _Edin. Phil. Jour._, 2-381.

Something that fell with dust said to have been meteoric, March 9, 10, 11, 1872: described in the _Chemical News_, 25-300, as a "peculiar substance," consisted of red iron ocher, carbonate of lime, and organic matter.

Orange-red hail, March 14, 1873, in Tuscany. (Notes and Queries 9-5-16.)

Rain of lavender-colored substance, at Oudon, France, Dec. 19, 1903.

(_Bull. Soc. Met. de France_, 1904-124.)

_La Nature_, 1885-2-351:

That, according to Prof. Schwedoff, there fell, in Russia, June 14, 1880, red hailstones, also blue hailstones, also gray hailstones.

_Nature_, 34-123:

A correspondent writes that he had been told by a resident of a small town in Venezuela, that there, April 17, 1886, had fallen hailstones, some red, some blue, some whitish: informant said to have been one unlikely ever to have heard of the Russian phenomenon; described as an "honest, plain countryman."

_Nature_, July 5, 1877, quotes a Roman correspondent to the London _Times_ who sent a translation from an Italian newspaper: that a red rain had fallen in Italy, June 23, 1877, containing "microscopically small particles of sand."