BOOK OF THE DAMNED 31 



Black rain in Switzerland, Jan. 20, 1911. Switzerland is so re- 

 mote, and so ill at ease is the conventional explanation here, that 

 Nature, 85-451, says of this rain that in certain conditions of 

 weather, snow may take on an appearance of blackness that is quite 

 deceptive. 



May be so. Or at night, if dark enough, snow may look black. 

 This is simply denying that a black rain fell in Switzerland, Jan. 

 20, 1911. 



Extreme remoteness from great manufacturing centers: 



La Nature, 1888, 2-406: 



That Aug. 14, 1888, there fell at the Cape of Good Hope, a rain 

 so black as to be described as a "shower of ink." 



Continuity dogs us. Continuity rules us and pulls us back. We 

 seemed to have a little hope that by the method of extremes we 

 could get away from things that merge indistinguishably into other 

 things. We find that every departure from one merger is entrance 

 upon another. At the Cape of Good Hope, vast volumes of smoke 

 from great manufacturing centers, as an explanation, can not very 

 acceptably merge with the explanation of extra-mundane origin 

 but smoke from a terrestial volcano can, and that is the suggestion 

 that is made in La Nature. 



There is, in human intellection, no real standard to judge by, 

 but our acceptance, for the present, is that the more nearly positive 

 will prevail. By the more nearly positive we mean the more 

 nearly Organized. Everything merges away into everything else, 

 but proportionately to its complexity, if unified, a thing seems 

 strong, real, and distinct: so, in aesthetics, it is recognized that 

 diversity in unity is higher beauty, or approximation to Beauty, 

 than is simpler unity; so the logicians feel that agreement of diverse 

 data constitute greater convincingness, or strength, than that of 

 mere parallel instances: so to Herbert Spencer the more highly 

 differentiated and integrated is the more fully evolved. Our oppon- 

 ents hold out for mundane origin of all black rains. Our method 

 will be the presenting of diverse phenomena in agreement with the 

 notion of some other origin. We take up not only black rains but 

 black rains and their accompanying phenomena. 



A correspondent to Knowledge, 5-190, writes of a black rain 

 that fell in the Clyde Valley, March i, 1884: of another black rain 

 that fell two days later. 'According to the correspondent, a bhck rain 

 had fallen in the Clyde Valley, March 20, 1828: then again March 

 22, 1828. According to Nature, 9-43, a. black rain fell at Marls- 



