3 8 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



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 supposititious 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 supposititious. 



But now we shall cast off some of our own wessicality by accept- 

 ing 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 re- 

 fusal of the rest of the universe to be damned, excluded, disregarded, 

 to receive Christian Science treatment, by something else so attempt- 

 ing. 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. 



