io BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



positive difference one from another but all are only projections 

 fro^i the same sea bottom. The difference between sea and land is 

 i)jt positive. In all water there is some earth: in all earth there is 

 some water. 



So then that all seeming things are not things at all, if all are 

 inter-continuous, any more than is the leg of a table a thing in 

 itself, if it is only a projection from something else: that not one 

 of us is a real person, if, physically, we're continuous with environ- 

 ment; if, psychically, there is nothing to us but expression of rela- 

 tion to environment. 



Our general expression has two aspects: 



Conventional monism, or that all "things" that seem to have 

 identity of their own are only islands that are projections from 

 something underlying, and have no real outlines of their own. 



But that all "things," though only projections, are projections that 

 are striving to break away from the underlying that denies them 

 identity of their own. 



I conceive of one inter-continuous nexus, in which and of which, 

 all seeming things are only different expressions, but in which all 

 things are localizations of one attempt to break away and become 

 real things, or to establish entity or positive difference or final de- 

 marcation or unmodified independence or personality or soul, as it 

 is called in human phenomena 



That anything that tries to establish itself as a real, or positive, 

 or absolute system, government, organization, self, soul, entity, in- 

 dividuality, can so attempt only by drawing a line about itself, or 

 about the inclusions that constitute itself, and damning or excluding, 

 or breaking away from, all other "things": 



That, if it does not so act, it can not seem to be; 



That, if it does so act, it falsely and arbitrarily and futilely and 

 disastrously acts, just as would one who draws a circle in the sea, 

 including a few waves, saying that the other waves, with which the 

 included are continuous, are positively different, and stakes his life 

 upon maintaining that the admitted and the damned are positively 

 different. 



Our expression is that our whole existence is animation of the 

 local by an ideal that is realizable only in the universal: 



That, if all exclusions are false, because always are included and 

 excluded continuous: that if all seeming of existence perceptible to 

 us is the product of exclusion, there is nothing that is perceptible 

 to us that really is: that only the universal can really be. 



