CHAPTER XXIII 



>TpEXT-BOOKS tell us that the Dhurmsalla meteorites were 

 JL picked up "soon," or "within half an hour." Given a little 

 time the conventionalists may argue that these stones were hot when 

 they fell, but that their great interior coldness had overcome the 

 molten state of their surfaces. 



According to the Deputy Commissioner of Dhurmsalla, these 

 stones had been picked up "immediately" by passing coolies. 



These stones were so cold that they benumbed the fingers. But 

 they had fallen with a great light. It is described as "a flame of 

 fire about two feet in depth and nine feet in length." Acceptably 

 this light was not the light of molten matter. 



In this chapter we are very intermediatistic and unsatisfactory. 

 To the intermediatist there is but one answer to all questions: 



Sometimes and sometimes not. 



Another form of this intermediatist "solution" of all problems is: 



Yes and no. 



Everything that is, also isn't. 



A positivist attempts to formulate: so does the intermediatist, 

 but with less rigorousness: he accepts but also denies: he may seem 

 to accept in one respect and deny in some other respect, but no real 

 line can be drawn between any two aspects of anything. The inter- 

 mediatist accepts that which seems to correlate with something that 

 he has accepted as a dominant. The positivist correlates with a 

 belief. 



In the Dhurmsalla meteorites we have support for our expression 

 that things entering this earth's atmosphere sometimes shine with a 

 light that is not the light of incandescence or so we account, or 

 offer an expression upon, "thunderstones," or carved stones that 

 have fallen luminously to this earth, in streaks that have looked 

 like strokes of lightning but we accept, also, that some things that 

 have entered this earth's atmosphere, disintegrate with the inten- 

 sity of flame and molten matter but some things, we accept, enter 

 this earth's atmosphere and collapse non-luminously, quite like 

 deep-sea fishes brought to the surface of the ocean. Whatever 



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