BOOK OF THE DAMNED 217 



that one could "hardly resist"; and most of his resentment is against 

 Mr. Proctor's thinking that he had not resisted. It seems too bad 

 if apotheosis be desirable. 



The point in Intermediatism here is: 



Not that to adapt to the conditions of quasi-existence is to have 

 what is called success in quasi-existence, but is to lose one's soul 



But is to lose "one's" chance of attaining soul, self, or entity. 



One indignation quoted from Proctor interests us: 



"What happens on the moon may at any time happen to this 

 earth." 



Or: 



That is just the teaching of this department of Advanced 

 Astronomy: 



That Russell and Hirst saw the sun eclipsed relatively to the 

 moon by a vast dark body; 



That many times have eclipses occurred relatively to this earth, 

 by vast, dark bodies; 



That there have been many eclipses that have not been recog- 

 nized as eclipses by scientific kindergartens. 



There is a merger, of course. We'll take a look at it first that, 

 after all, it may have been a shadow that Hirst and Russell saw, 

 but the only significance is that the sun was eclipsed relatively to 

 the moon by a cosmic haze of some kind, or a swarm of meteors 

 close together, or a gaseous discharge left behind by a comet. My 

 own acceptance is that vagueness of shadow is a function of vague- 

 ness of intervention; that a shadow as dense as the shadow of this 

 earth is cast by a body denser than hazes and swarms. The infor- 

 mation seems definite enough in this respect "quite as dark as the 

 shadow of this earth during the eclipse of the moon." 



Though we may not always be as patient toward them as we 

 should be, it is our acceptance that the astronomic primitives have 

 done a great deal of good work: for instance, in the allaying of 

 fears upon this earth. Sometimes it may seem as if all science were 

 to us very much like what a red flag is to bulls and anti-socialists. 

 It's not that: it's more like what unsquare meals are to bulls and 

 anti-socialists not the scientific, but the insufficient. Our accept- 

 ance is that Evil is the negative state, by which we mean the state 

 of maladjustment, discord, ugliness, disorganization, inconsistency, 

 injustice, and so on as determined in Intermediateness, not by real 

 standards, but only by higher approximations to adjustment, har- 

 mony, beauty, organization, consistency, justice, and so on. Evil is 



