126 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



It is of "true meteoritic material." In V Astronomic, 1887-114, 

 it is said that, though so geometric, its phenomena so characteristic 

 of meteorites exclude the idea that it was the work of man. 



As to the deposit Tertiary coal. 



Composition iron, carbon, and a small quantity of nickel. 



It has the pitted surface that is supposed by the faithful to be 

 characteristic of meteorites. 



For a full account of this object, see Comptes Rendus, 103-702. 

 The scientists who examined it could reach no agreement. They 

 bifurcated: then a compromise was suggested; but the compromise 

 is a product of disregard: 



That it was of true meteoritic material, and had not been shaped 

 by man; 



That it was not of true meteoritic material, but telluric iron that 

 had been shaped by man ; 



That it was true meteoritic material that had fallen from the 

 sky, but had been shaped by man, after its fall. 



The data, one or more of which must be disregarded by each of 

 these three explanations are: "true meteoritic material" and sur- 

 face markings of meteorites; geometric form; presence in an an- 

 cient deposit; material as hard as steel; absence upon this earth, in 

 Tertiary times, of men who could work in material as hard as steel. 

 It is said that, though of "true meteoritic material," this object is 

 virtually a steel object. 



St. Augustine, with his orthodoxy, was never in well, very much 

 worse difficulties than are the faithful here. By due disregard of 

 a datum or so, our own acceptance that it was a steel object that had 

 fallen from the sky to this earth, in Tertiary times, is not forced 

 upon one. We offer ours as the only synthetic expression. For in- 

 stance, in Science Gossip, 1887-58, it is described as a meteorite: 

 in this account there is nothing alarming to the pious, because, 

 though everything else is told, its geometric form is not mentioned. 



It's a cube. There is a deep incision all around it. Of its faces, 

 two that are opposite are rounded. 



Though I accept that our own expression can only rather approxi- 

 mate to Truth, by the wideness of its inclusions, and because it 

 seems, of four attempts, to represent the only complete synthesis, 

 and can be nullified or greatly modified, by data that we, too, have 

 somewhere disregarded, the only means of nullification that I can 

 think of would be demonstration that this object is a mass of iron 

 pyrites, which sometimes forms geometrically. But the analysis 



