Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/142

136 The effect:

Almost everybody now swears that he saw Halley's comet, and that it was a glorious spectacle.

An interesting circumstance here is that seemingly we are trying to discredit astronomers because astronomers oppose us—that's not my impression. We shall be in the Brahmin caste of the hell of the Baptists. Almost all our data, in some regiments of this procession, are observations by astronomers, few of them mere amateur astronomers. It is the System that opposes us. It is the System that is suppressing astronomers. I think we pity them in their captivity. Ours is not malice—in a positive sense. It's chivalry—somewhat. Unhappy astronomers looking out from high towers in which they are imprisoned—we appear upon the horizon.

But, as I have said, our data do not relate to some especial other world. I mean very much what a savage upon an ocean island might vaguely think of in his speculations—not upon some other land, but complexes of continents and their phenomena: cities, factories in cities, means of communication

Now all the other savages would know of a few vessels sailing in their regular routes, passing this island in regularized periodicities. The tendency in these minds would be expression of the universal tendency toward positivism—or Completeness—or conviction that these few regularized vessels constituted all. Now I think of some especial savage who suspects otherwise—because he's very backward and unimaginative and insensible to the beautiful ideals of the others: not piously occupied, like the others, in bowing before impressive-looking sticks of wood; dishonestly taking time for his speculations, while the others are patriotically witch-finding. So the other higher and nobler savages know about the few regularized vessels: know when to expect them; have their periodicities all worked out; just about when vessels will pass, or eclipse each other—explaining that all vagaries were due to atmospheric conditions.

They'd come out strong in explaining.

You can't read a book upon savages without noting what resolute explainers they are.

They'd say that all this mechanism was founded upon the mutual attraction of the vessels—deduced from the fall of a monkey from a palm tree—or, if not that, that devils were pushing the vessels—something of the kind.

Storms.

Débris, not from these vessels, cast up by the waves.