BOOK OF THE DAMNED 207 



but have the impertinence to attribute it all to our own nobler 

 and higher instincts. 



Against these notions is the same sense of finality that opposes 

 all advance. It's why we rate acceptance as a better adaptation 

 than belief. Opposing us is the strong belief that, as to inter- 

 planetary phenomena, virtually everything has been found out. 

 Sense of finality and illusion of homogeneity. But that what is 

 called advancing knowledge is violation of the sense of blankness. 



A drop of water. Once upon a time water was considered so 

 homogeneous that it was thought of as an element. The microscope 

 and not only that the supposititiously elementary was seen to be 

 of infinite diversity, but that in its protoplasmic life there were 

 new orders of beings. 



Or the year 1491 and a European looking westward over the 

 ocean his feeling that that suave western droop was unbreakable; 

 that gods of regularity would not permit that smooth horizon to be 

 disturbed by coasts or spotted with islands. The unpleasantness 

 of even contemplating such a state wide, smooth west, so clean 

 against the sky spotted with islands geographic leprosy. 



But coasts and islands and Indians and bison, in the seemingly 

 vacant west: lakes, mountains, rivers 



One looks up at the sky: the relative homogeneity of the rela- 

 tively unexplored: one thinks of only a few kinds of phenomena. 

 But the acceptance is forced upon me that there are modes and 

 modes and modes of inter-planetary existence: things as different 

 from planets and comets and meteors as Indians are from bison 

 and prairie dogs: a super-geography or celestiography of vast 

 stagnant regions, but also of Super-Niagaras and Ultra-Mississippis: 

 and a super-sociology voyagers and tourists and ravagers: the 

 hunted and the hunting: the super-mercantile, the super-piratic, 

 the super-evangelical. 



Sense of homogeneity, or our positivist illusion of the unknown 

 and the fate of all positivism. 



Astronomy and the academic. 



Ethics and the abstract. 



The universal attempt to formulate or to regularize an attempt 

 that can be made only by disregarding or denying. 



Or all things disregard or deny that which will eventually invade 

 and destroy them 



Until comes the day when some one thing shall say, and enforce 

 upon Infinitude: 



