1 10 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



stone" was in the possession of Mr. C. Carus-Wilson, who tells 

 the story of the witness and his family the sheep killed, the burial 

 of something in the earth, the digging, and the finding. Mr. C. 

 Carus-Wilson describes the object as a ball of hard, ferruginous 

 quartzite, about the size of a cocoanut, weight about twelve pounds, 

 Whether we're feeling around for significance or not, there is a sug- 

 gestion not only of symmetry but of structure in this object: it had 

 an external shell, separated from a loose nucleus. Mr. Carus- 

 Wilson attributes this cleavage to unequal cooling of the mass. 



My own notion is that there is very little deliberate misrepre- 

 sentation in the writings of scientific men: that they are quite as 

 guiltiness in intent as are other hypnotic subjects. Such a victim 

 of induced belief reads of a stone ball said to have fallen from the 

 sky. Mechanically in his mind arise impressions of globular lumps, 

 or nodules, of sandstone, which are common almost everywhere. 

 He assimilates the reported fall with his impressions of objects in 

 the ground, in the first place. To an intermediatist, the phenomena 

 of intellection are only phenomena of universal process localized in 

 human minds. The process called "explanation" is only a local 

 aspect of universal assimilation. It looks like materialism: but the 

 intermediatist holds that interpretation of the immaterial, as it is 

 called, in terms of the material, as it is called, is no more rational 

 than interpretation of the "material" in terms of the "immaterial": 

 that there is in quasi-existence neither the material nor the im- 

 material, but approximations one way or the other. But so hypnotic 

 quasi-reasons : that globular lumps of sandstone are common. 

 Whether he jumps or leaps, or whether only the frowsy and base- 

 born are so athletic, his is the impression, by assimilation, that 

 this especial object is a ball of sandstone. Or human mentality: 

 its inhabitants are conveniences. It may be that Mr. Symons' paper 

 was written before this object was exhibited to the members of the 

 Society, and with the charity with which, for the sake of diversity, 

 we intersperse our malices, we are willing to accept that he "inves- 

 tigated" something that he had never seen. But whoever listed 

 this object was uncareful: it is listed as "sandstone." 



We're making excuses for them. 



Really as it were you know we're not quite so damned as 

 we were. 



One does not apologize for the gods and at the same time feel 

 quite utterly prostrate before them. 



If this were a real existence, and all of us real persons, with real 



