Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/43

Rh is not for Truth, but for the local that is true—not to universalize the local, but to localize the universal—or to give to a cosmic cloud absolute interpretation in terms of the little dusty roads and lanes of Wessex. I can not conceive that this can be done: I think of high approximation.

Our Intermediatist concept is that, because of the continuity of all "things," which are not separate, positive, or real things, all pseudo-things partake of the underlying, or are only different expressions, degrees, or aspects of the underlying: so then that a sample from somewhere in anything must correspond with a sample from somewhere in anything else.

That, by due care in selection, and disregard for everything else, or the scientific and theological method, the substance that fell, February, 1903, could be identified with anything, or with some part or aspect of anything that could be conceived of

With sand from the Sahara, sand from a barrel of sugar, or dust of your great, great grandfather.

Different samples are described and listed hi the Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 30-57—or we'll see whether my notion that a chemist could have identified some one of these samples as from anywhere conceivable, is extreme or not:

"Similar to brick dust," in one place; "buff or light brown," in another place; "chocolate-colored and silky to the touch and slightly iridescent"; "gray"; "red-rust color"; "reddish raindrops and gray sand"; "dirty gray"; "quite red"; "yellow-brown, with a tinge of pink"; "deep yellow-clay color."

In Nature, it is described as of a peculiar yellowish cast in one place, reddish somewhere else, and salmon-colored in another place.

Or there could be real science if there were really anything to be scientific about.

Or the science of chemistry is like a science of sociology, prejudiced in advance, because only to see is to see with a prejudice, setting out to "prove" that all inhabitants of New York came from Africa.

Very easy matter. Samples from one part of town. Disregard for all the rest.

There is no science but Wessex-science.

According to our acceptance, there should be no other, but that approximation should be higher: that metaphysics is super-evil: that the scientific spirit is of the cosmic quest.