160 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



We now come to some "cursed" little things that are of the "lost," 

 but for the "salvation" of which scientific missionaries have done 

 their dam-dest. 



"Pigmy flints." 



They can't very well be denied. 



They're lost and well known. 



"Pigmy flints" are tiny, prehistoric implements. Some of them 

 are a quarter of an inch in size. England, India, France, South 

 Africa they've been found in many parts of the world whether 

 showered there or not. They belong high up in the froth of the 

 accursed: they are not denied, and they have not been disregarded ; 

 there is an abundant literature upon this subject. One attempt to 

 rationalize them, or assimilate them, or take them into the scientific 

 fold, has been the notion that they were toys of prehistoric children. 

 It sounds reasonable. But, of course, by the reasonable we mean 

 that for which the equally reasonable, but opposing, has not been 

 found out except that we modify that by saying that, though 

 nothing's finally reasonable, some phenomena have higher approxi- 

 mations to Reasonableness than have others. Against the notion of 

 toys, the higher approximation is that where "pigmy flints" are 

 found, all flints are pigmies at least so in India, where, when larger 

 implements have been found in the same place, there are separations 

 by strata. (Wilson.) 



The datum that, just at present, leads me to accept that these 

 flints were made by beings about the size of pickles, is a point 

 brought out by Prof. Wilson (Kept. National Museum, 1892-455): 



Not only that the flints are tiny but that the chipping upon them 

 is "minute." * 



Struggle for expression, in the mind of a iQth-century-ite, of an 

 idea that did not belong to his era: 



In Science Gossip, 1896-36, R. A. Galty says: 



"So fine is the chipping that to see the workmanship a magnify- 

 ing glass is necessary. 



I think that would be absolutely convincing, if there were any- 

 thing absolutely anything either that tiny beings, from pickle to 

 cucumber-stature made these things, or that ordinary savages made 

 them under magnifying glasses. 



The idea that we are now going to develop, or perpetrate, is rather 

 intensely of the accursed, or the advanced. It's a lost soul, I admit 

 boast but it fits in. Or, as conventional as ever, our own 



