Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/24

18 all things do merge, by Realness, I mean the Universal, besides which there is nothing with which to merge.

That, though the local might be universalized, it is not conceivable that the universal can be localized: but that high approximations there may be, and that these approximate successes may be translated out of Intermediateness into Realness—quite as, in a relative sense, the industrial world recruits itself by translating out of unrealness, or out of the seemingly less real imaginings of inventors, machines which seem, when set up in factories, to have more of Realness than they had when only imagined.

That all progress, if all progress is toward stability, organization, harmony, consistency, or positiveness, is the attempt to become real.

So, then, in general metaphysical terms, our expression is that, like a purgatory, all that is commonly called "existence," which we call Intermediateness, is quasi-existence, neither real nor unreal, but expression of attempt to become real, or to generate for or recruit a real existence.

Our acceptance is that Science, though usually thought of so specifically, or in its own local terms, usually supposed to be a prying into old bones, bugs, unsavory messes, is an expression of this one spirit animating all Intermediateness: that, if Science could absolutely exclude all data but its own present data, or that which is assimilable with the present quasi-organization, it would be a real system, with positively definite outlines—it would be real.

Its seeming approximation to consistency, stability, system—positiveness or realness—is sustained by damning the irreconcilable or the unassimilable

All would be well.

All would be heavenly

If the damned would only stay damned.