122 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



do with one's modernity all day long. In reading Fletcher's cata- 

 logue, for instance, we learn that some of the best-known meteorites 

 were "found in draining a field" "found in making a road" 

 "turned up by the plow" occurs a dozen times. Some one fishing 

 in Lake Okeechobee, brought up an object in his fishing net. No 

 meteorite had ever been seen to fall near it. The U. S. National 

 Museum accepts it. * 



If we have accepted only one of the data of "untrue meteoritic 

 material" one instance of "carbonaceous" matter if it be too diffi- 

 cult to utter the word "coal" we see that in this inclusion-exclusion, 

 as in every other means of forming an opinion, false inclusion and 

 false exclusion have been practiced by curators of museums. 



There is something of ultra-pathos of cosmic sadness in this 

 universal search for a standard, and in belief that one has been 

 revealed by either inspiration or analysis, then the dogged clinging 

 to a poor sham of a thing long after its insufficiency has been shown 

 or renewed hope and search for the special that can be true, or 

 for something local that could also be universal. It's as if "true 

 meteoritic material" were a "rock of ages" to some scientific men. 

 They cling. But clingers cannot hold out welcoming arms. 



The only seemingly conclusive utterance, or seemingly substantial 

 thing to cling to, is a product of dishonesty, ignorance, or fatigue. 

 All sciences go back and back, until they're worn out with the 

 process, or until mechanical reaction occurs: then they move for- 

 ward as it were. Then they become dogmatic, and take for bases, 

 positions that were only points of exhaustion. So chemistry divided 

 and sub-divided down to atoms; then, in the essential insecurity of 

 all quasi-constructions, it built up a system, which, to any one so 

 obsessed by his own hypnoses that he is exempt to the chemist's 

 hypnoses, is perceptibly enough an intellectual anaemia built upon 

 infinitesimal debilities. 



In Science, n.s., 31-298, E. D. Hovey, of the American Mu- 

 seum of Natural History, asserts or confesses, that often have ob- 

 jects of material such as fossiliferous limestone and slag been sent 

 to him. He says that these things have been accompanied by as- 

 surances that they have been seen to fall on lawns, on roads, in front 

 of houses. 



They are all excluded. They are not of true meteoritic material. 

 They were on the ground in the first place. It is only by coinci- 

 dence that lightning has struck, or that a real meteorite, which was 

 unfindable, has struck near objects of slag and limestone. 



