BOOK OF THE DAMNED 145 



It's sheer, brutal attempt to assimilate a thing that may or may not 

 have fallen from the sky, with phenomena admitted by the anthro- 

 pologic system: or with the early French or Spanish explorers of Illi- 

 nois. Though it is ridiculous in a positive sense, to give reasons, it is 

 more acceptable to attempt reasons more nearly real than opposing 

 reasons. Of course, in his favor, we note that Prof. Leslie qualifies 

 his notions. But his disregards are that there is nothing either 

 French or Spanish about this coin. A legend upon it is said to be 

 "somewhere between Arabic and Phoenician, without being either." 

 Prof. Winchell (Sparks from a Geologist's Hammer, p. 170) says 

 of the crude designs upon this coin, which was in his possession 

 scrawls of an animal and of a warrior, or of a cat and a gold fish, 

 whichever be convenient that they had been neither stamped nor 

 engraved, but "looked as if etched with an acid." That is a method 

 unknown in numismatics of this earth. As to the crudity of design 

 upon this coin, and something else that, though the "warrior" 

 may be, by due disregards, either a cat or a gold fish, we have to 

 note that his head dress is typical of the American Indian could 

 be explained, of course, but for fear that we might be instantly 

 translated to the Positive Absolute, which may not be absolutely 

 desirable, we prefer to have some flaws or negativeness in our own 

 expressions. 



Data of more than the thrice-accursed: 



Tablets of stone, with the ten commandments engraved upon 

 them, in Hebrew, said to have been found in mounds in the United 

 States; 



Masonic emblems said to have been found in mounds in the 

 United States. 



We're upon the borderline of our acceptances, and we're amorphous 

 in the uncertainties and mergings of our outline. Conventionally, or, 

 with no real reason for so doing, we exclude these things, and then, 

 as grossly and arbitrarily and irrationally though our attempt is 

 always to approximate away from these negative states as ever a 

 Kepler, Newton, or Darwin, made his selections, without which he 

 could not have seemed to be, at all, because every one of them is 

 now seen to be an illusion, we accept that other lettered things have 

 been found in mounds in the United States. Of course we do what 

 we can to make the selection seem not gross and arbitrary and irra- 

 tional. Then, if we accept that inscribed things of ancient origin 

 have been found in the United States; that can not be attributed to 

 any race indigenous to the western hemisphere; that are not in any 



