20 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



According to our general acceptance, it would be impossible to dem- 

 onstrate such a thing. Point out a hundred reasons for saying that 

 a hippopotamus is not a table: you'll have to end up agreeing that 

 neither is a table a table it only seems to be a table. Well, that's 

 what the hippopotamus seems to be. So how can you prove that 

 something is not something else, when neither is something else some 

 other thing? There's nothing to prove. 



This is one of the profundities that we advertised in advance. 



You can oppose an absurdity only with some other absurdity. 

 But Science is established preposterousness. We divide all intellec- 

 tion: the obviously preposterous and the established. 



But Krakatoa: that's the explanation that the scientists gave. I 

 don't know what whopper the medicine men told. 



We see, from the start, the very strong inclination of science to 

 deny, as much as it can, external relations of this earth. 



This book is an assemblage of data of external relations of this 

 earth. We take the position that our data have been damned, upon 

 no consideration for individual merits or demerits, but in conformity 

 with a general attempt to hold out for isolation of this earth. This 

 is attempted positiveness. We take the position that science can no 

 more succeed than, in a similar endeavor, could the Chinese, or than 

 could the United States. So then, with only pseudo-consideration of 

 the phenomena of 1883, or as an expression of positivism in its 

 aspect of isolation, or unrelatedness, scientists have perpetrated such 

 an enormity as suspension of volcanic dust seven years in the air 

 disregarding the lapse of several years rather than to admit the 

 arrival of dust from somewhere beyond this earth. Not that scien- 

 tists themselves have ever achieved positiveness, in its aspect of 

 unitedness, among themselves because Nordenskiold, before 1883, 

 wrote a great deal upon his theory of cosmic dust, and Prof. Cleve- 

 land Abbe contended against the Krakatoan explanation but that 

 this is the orthodoxy of the main body of scientists. 



My own chief reason for indignation here: 



That this preposterous explanation interferes with some of my 

 own enormities. 



It would cost me too much explaining, if I should have to admit 

 that this earth's atmosphere has such sustrining power. 



Later, we shall have data of things that have gone up in the air 

 and that have stayed up somewhere weeks months but not bv 

 the sustaining power of this earth's atmosphere. For instance, tht- 

 turtle of Vicksburg. It seems to me that it would be ridiculous to 



