136 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



The effect: 



Almost everybody now swears that he saw Halley's comet, and 

 that it was a glorious spectacle. 



An interesting circumstance here is that seemingly we are trying 

 to discredit astronomers because astronomers oppose us that's not 

 my impression. We shall be in the Brahmin caste of the hell of 

 the Baptists. Almost all our data, in some regiments of this pro- 

 cession, are observations by astronomers, few of them mere amateur 

 astronomers. It is the System that opposes us. It is the System 

 that is suppressing astronomers. I think we pity them in their 

 captivity. Ours is not malice in a positive sense. It's chivalry 

 somewhat. Unhappy astronomers looking out from high towers in 

 which they are imprisoned we appear upon the horizon. 



But, as I have said, our data do not relate to some especial other 

 world. I mean very much what a savage upon an ocean island 

 might vaguely think of in his speculations not upon some other 

 land, but complexes of continents and their phenomena: cities, fac- 

 tories in cities, means of communication 



Now all the other savages would know of a few vessels sailing 

 in their regular routes, passing this island in regularized periodicities. 

 The tendency in these minds would be expression of the universal 

 tendency toward positivism or Completeness or conviction that 

 these few regularized vessels constituted all. Now I think of some 

 especial savage who suspects otherwise because he's very backward 

 and unimaginative and insensible to the beautiful ideals of the 

 others: not piously occupied, like the others, in bowing before im- 

 pressive-looking sticks of wood; dishonestly taking time for his 

 speculations, while the others are patriotically witch-finding. So 

 the other higher and nobler savages know about the few regularized 

 vessels: know when to expect them; have their periodicities all 

 worked out ; just about when vessels will pass, or eclipse each other 

 explaining that all vagaries were due to atmospheric conditions. 



They'd come out strong in explaining. 



You can't read a book upon savages without noting what reso- 

 lute explainers they are. 



They'd say that all this mechanism was founded upon the mutual 

 attraction of the vessels deduced from the fall of a monkey from 

 a palm tree or, if not that, that devils were pushing the vessels 

 something of the kind. 



Storms. 



Debris, not from these vessels, cast up by the waves. 



