BOOK OF THE DAMNED 9 



reasonable than that of redness and yellowness has ever been con- 

 ceived of. 



Science has, by appeal to various bases, included a multitude of 

 data. Had it not done so, there would be nothing with which 

 to seem to be. Science has, by appeal to various bases, excluded a 

 multitude of data. Then, if redness is continuous with yellowness: 

 if every basis of admission is continuous with every basis of ex- 

 clusion, Science must have excluded some things that are continuous 

 with the accepted. In redness and yellowness, which merge in 

 orangeness, we typify all tests, all standards, all means of forming 

 an opinion 



Or that any positive opinion upon any subject is illusion built 

 upon the fallacy that there are positive differences to judge by 



That the quest of all intellection has been for something a fact, 

 a basis, a generalization, law, formula, a major premise that is posi- 

 tive: that the best that has ever been done has been to say that 

 some things are self-evident whereas, by evidence we mean the 

 support of something else 



That this is the quest; but that it has never been attained; but 

 that Science has acted, ruled, pronounced, and condemned as if it 

 had been attained. 



What is a house? 



It is not possible to say what anything is, as positively distin- 

 guished from anything else, if there are no positive differences. 



A barn is a house, if one lives in it. If residence constitutes 

 houseness, because style of architecture does not, then a bird's nest 

 is a house: and human occupancy is not the standard to judge by, 

 because we speak of dogs' houses; nor material, because we speak of 

 snow houses of Eskimos or a shell is a house to a hermit crab or 

 was to the mollusk that made it or things seemingly so positively 

 different as the White House at Washington and a shell on the sea- 

 shore are seen to be continuous. 



So no one has ever been able to say what electricity is, for in- 

 stance. It isn'l anything, as positively distinguished from heat or 

 magnetism or life. Metaphysicians and theologians and biologists 

 have tried to define life. They have failed, because, in a positive 

 sense, there is nothing to define: there is no phenomenon of life 

 that is not, to some degree, manifest in chemism, magnetism, as- 

 tronomic motions. 



White coral islands in a dark blue sea. 



Their seeming of distinctness: the seeming of individuality, or of 



