BOOK OF THE DAMNED 23 



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 assignable cause of their previous ascent, seems to partake so 

 much of the marvellous 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 modi- 

 fies 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 terrestial origin. 



Falling stones had to be undamned though still with a reserva- 

 tion that held out for exclusion of outside forces. 



One may have the knowledge of a Lavoisier, and still not be able 

 to analyze, 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 

 damnation, 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, asserting 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 damned, have been 

 admitted, but the common impression of them is only a retreat of 

 attempted exclusion: that only two kinds of substance fall from 



