Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/153

Rh must be the product of either deliberate disregard or ignorance or fatigue. The stone belongs to a class of phenomena that is repulsive to the System. It will not assimilate with the System. Let such an object be heard of by such a systematist as Avebury, and the mere mention of it is as nearly certainly the stimulus to a conventional reaction as is a charged body to an electroscope or a glass of beer to a prohibitionist. It is of the ideals of Science to know one object from another before expressing an opinion upon a thing, but that is not the spirit of universal mechanics:

A thing. It is attractive or repulsive. Its conventional reaction follows.

Because it is not the stone from Grave Creek that is in Hebrew characters, either ancient or modern: it is a stone from Newark, Ohio, of which the story is told that a forger made this mistake of using modern instead of ancient Hebrew characters. We shall see that the inscription upon the Grave Creek stone is not in Hebrew.

Or all things are presumed to be innocent, but are supposed to be guilty—unless they assimilate.

Col. Whittelsey (Western Reserve Historical Tracts, No. 33) says that the Grave Creek stone was considered a fraud by Wilson, Squires, and Davis. Then he comes to the Congress of Archæologists at Nancy, France, 1875. It is hard for Col. Whittelsey to admit that, at this meeting, which sounds important, the stone was endorsed. He reminds us of Mr. Symons, and "the man" who "considered" that he saw something. Col. Whittelsey's somewhat tortuous expression is that the finder of the stone "so imposed his views" upon the congress that it pronounced the stone genuine.

Also the stone was examined by Schoolcraft. He gave his opinion for genuineness.

Or there's only one process, and "see-saw" is one of its aspects. Three or four fat experts on the side against us. We find four or five plump ones on our side. Or all that we call logic and reasoning ends up as sheer preponderance of avoirdupois.

Then several philologists came out in favor of genuineness. Some of them translated the inscription. Of course, as we have said, it is our method—or the method of orthodoxy—way in which all conclusions are reached—to have some awfully eminent, or preponderantly plump, authorities with us whenever we can—in this case, however, we feel just a little apprehensive in being caught in such excellently obese, but somewhat negativized company: