BOOK OF THE DAMNED i v 



expressions, in all fields of phenomena, of that which we think of as 

 one inter-continuous nexus: 



The religious and their idea or ideal of the soul. They mean dis- 

 tinct, stable entity, or a state that is independent, and not a mere 

 flux of vibrations or complex of reactions to environment, continuous 

 with environment, merging away with an infinitude of other inter- 

 dependent complexes. 



But the only thing that would not merge away into something else 

 would be that besides which there is nothing else. 



That Truth is only another name for the positive state, or that 

 the quest for Truth, is the attempt to achieve positiveness: 



Scientists who have thought that they were seeking Truth, but who 

 were trying to find out astronomic, or chemic, or biologic truths. 

 But Truth is that besides which there is nothing: nothing to modify 

 it, nothing to question it, nothing to form an exception: the all- 

 inclusive, the complete 



By Truth I mean the Universal. 



So chemists have sought the true, or the real, and have always 

 failed in their endeavors, because of the outside relations of chemical 

 phenomena: have failed in the sense that never has a chemical law, 

 without exceptions, been discovered: because chemistry is continuous 

 with astronomy, physics, biology For instance, if the sun should 

 greatly change its distance from this earth, and if human life could 

 survive, the familiar chemic formulas would no longer work out: a 

 new science of chemistry would have to be learned 



Or that all attempts to find Truth in the special are attempts to 

 find the universal in the local. 



And artists and their striving for positiveness, under the name of 

 "harmony" but their pigments that are oxydizing, or are respond- 

 ing to a deranging environment or the strings of musical instru- 

 ments that are differently and disturbingly adjusting to outside 

 chemic and thermal and gravitational forces again and again this 

 oneness of all ideals, and that it is the attempt to be, or to achieve, 

 locally, that which is realizable only universally. In our experi- 

 ence there is only intermediateness to harmony and discord. Har- 

 mony is that besides which there are no outside forces. 



And nations that have fought with only one motive: for indi- 

 viduality, or entity, or to be real, final nations, not subordinate to, 

 or parts of, other nations. And that nothing but intermediateness 

 has ever been attained, and that history is record of failures of 



