98 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



Or we are on our way to account for "thunderstones." 



It seems to me that, very strikingly here, is borne out the gen- 

 eral acceptance that ours is only an intermediate existence, in which 

 there is nothing fundamental, or nothing final to take as a positive 

 standard to judge by. 



Peasants believed in meteorites. 



Scientists excluded meteorites. 



Peasants believe in "thunderstones." 



Scientists exclude "thunderstones." 



It is useless to argue that peasants are out in the fields, and that 

 scientists are shut up in laboratories and lecture rooms. We can not 

 take for a real base that, as to phenomena with which they are 

 more familiar, peasants are more likely to be right than are scien- 

 tists: a host of biologic and meteorologic fallacies of peasants rises 

 against us. 



I should say that our "existence" is like a bridge except that 

 that comparison is in static terms but like the Brooklyn Bridge, 

 upon which multitudes of bugs are seeking a fundamental coming 

 to a girder that seems firm and final but the girder is built upon 

 supports. A support then seems final. But it is built upon under- 

 lying structures. Nothing final can be found in all the bridge, 

 because the bridge itself is not a final thing in i.self, but is a 

 relationship between Manhattan and Brooklyn. If our "existence" 

 is a relationship between the Positive Absolute and the Negative 

 Absolute, the quest for finality in it is hopeless: everything in it 

 must be relative, if the "whole" is not a whole, but is, itself, a rela- 

 tion. 



In the attitude of Acceptance, our pseudo-base is: 



Cells of an embryo are in the reptilian era of the embryo; 



Some cells feel stimuli to take on new appearances. 



If it be of the design of the whole that the next era be mam- 

 malian, those cells that turn mammalian will be sustained against 

 resistance, by inertia, of all the rest, and will be relatively right, 

 though not finally right, because they, too, in time will have to give 

 away to characters of other eras of higher development. 



If we are upon the verge of a new era, in which Exclusionism 

 must be overthrown, it will avail thee not to call us base-born and 

 frowsy peasants. 



In our crude, bucolic way, we now offer an outrage upon com- 

 mon sense that we think will some day be an unquestioned common- 

 place: 



