BOOK OF THE DAMNED 137 



Disregarded. 



How can one think of something and something else, too? 



I'm in the state of mind of a savage who might find upon a shore, 

 washed up by the same storm, buoyant parts of a piano and a 

 paddle that was carved by cruder hands than his own: something 

 light and summery from India, and a fur overcoat from Russia 

 or all science, though approximating wider and wider, is attempt 

 to conceive of India in terms of an ocean island, and of Russia in 

 terms of India so interpreted. Though I am trying to think of 

 Russia and India in world-wide terms, I cannot think that that, or 

 the universalizing of the local, is cosmic purpose. The higher ideal- 

 ist is the positivist who tries to localize the universal, and is in ac- 

 cord with cosmic purpose: the super-dogmatist of a local savage who 

 can hold out, without a flurry of doubt, that a piano washed up on 

 a beach is the trunk of a palm tree that a shark has bitten, leaving 

 his teeth in it. So we fear for the soul of Dr. Gray, because, he 

 did not devote his whole life to that one stand that, whether pos- 

 sible or inconceivable, thousands of fishes had been cast from one 

 bucket. 



So, unfortunately for myself, if salvation be desirable, I look out 

 widely but amorphously, indefinitely and heterogeneously. If I 

 say I conceive of another world that is now in secret communica- 

 tion with certain esoteric inhabitants of this earth, I say I conceive 

 of still other worlds that are trying to establish communication with 

 all the inhabitants of this earth. I fit my notions to the data I find. 

 That is supposed to be the right and logical and scientific thing to 

 do; but it is no way to approximate to form, system, organization. 

 Then I think I conceive of other worlds and vast structures that 

 pass us by, within a few miles, without the slightest desire to com- 

 municate, quite as tramp vessels pass many islands without par- 

 ticularizing one from another. Then I think I have data of a vast 

 construction that has often come to this earth, dipped into an ocean, 

 submerged there a while, then going away Why? I'm not 

 absolutely sure. How would an Eskimo explain a vessel, sending 

 ashore for coal, which is plentiful upon some Arctic beaches, though 

 of unknown use to the natives, then sailing away, with no interest in 

 the natives? 



A great difficulty in trying to understand vast constructions that 

 show no interest in us: 



The notion that we must be interesting. 



I accept that, though we're usually avoided, probably for moral 



