BOOK OF THE DAMNEF /. ; : \" :' '*$i\ 



"It is scarcely necessary to suggest to the intelligent reader that 

 thunders tones are a myth." 



We contend that there is a misuse of a word here: we admit 

 that only we are intelligent upon this subject, if by intelligence is 

 meant the inquiry of inequilibrium, and that all other intellection is 

 only mechanical reflex of course that intelligence, too, is me- 

 chanical, but less orderly and confined: less obviously mechanical 

 that as an acceptance of ours becomes firmer and firmer-established, 

 we pass from the state of intelligence to reflexes in ruts. An odd 

 thing is that intelligence is usually supposed to be creditable. It 

 may be in the sense that it is mental activity trying to find out, but 

 it is confession of ignorance. The bees, the theologians, the dog- 

 matic scientists are the intellectual aristocrats. The rest f us 

 are plebeians, not yet graduated to Nirvana, or to the instinctive 

 and suave as differentiated from the intelligent and crude. 



Blinkenberg gives many instances of the superstition of "thunder- 

 stones" which flourishes only where mentality is in a lamentable 

 state or universally. In Malacca, Sumatra, and Java, natives say 

 that stone axes have often been found under trees that have been 

 struck by lightning. Blinkenberg does not dispute this, but says it 

 is coincidence: that the axes were of course upon the ground in the 

 first place: that the natives jumped to the conclusion that these 

 carved stones had fallen in or with lightning. In Central Africa, 

 it is said that often have wedge-shaped, highly polished objects 

 of stone, described as "axes," been found sticking in trees that 

 have been struck by lightning or by what seemed to be lightning. 

 The natives, rather like the unscientific persons of Memphis, Tenn., 

 when they saw snakes after a storm, jumped to the conclusion that 

 the "axes" had not always been sticking in the trees. Livingstone 

 (Last Journal, pages 83, 89, 442, 448) says that he had never heard 

 of stone implements used by natives of Africa, A writer in the 

 Report of the Smithsonian Institute, 1877-308, says that there are 

 a few. 



That they are said, by the natives, to have fallen in thunder- 

 storms. 



As to luminosity, it is my lamentable acceptance that bodies fall- 

 ing through this earth's atmosphere, if not warmed even, often fall 

 with a brilliant light, looking like flashes of lightning. This matter 

 seems important: we'll take it up later, with data. 



In Prussia, two stone axes were found in the trunks of trees, one 

 under the bark. (Blinkenberg, Thunder Weapons, p. 100.) 



