Chapter 21
Though we may not always be as patient toward them as we should be, it is our acceptance that the astronomic primitives have done a great deal of good work: for instance, in the allaying of fears upon this earth. Sometimes it may seem as if all science were to us very much like what a red flag is to bulls and anti-socialists. It's not that: it's more like what unsquare meals are to bulls and anti-socialists--not the scientific, but the insufficient. Our acceptance is that Evil is the negative state, by which we mean the state of maladjustment, discord, ugliness, disorganization, inconsistency, injustice, and so on--as determined in Intermediateness, not by real standards, but only by higher approximations to adjustment, harmony, beauty, organization, consistency, justice, and so on. Evil is outlived virtue, or incipient virtue that has not yet established itself, or any other phenomenon that is not in seeming adjustment, harmony, consistency with a dominant. The astronomers have functioned bravely in the past. They've been good for business: the big interests think kindly, if at all, of them. It's bad for trade to have an intense darkness come upon an unaware community and frighten people out of their purchasing values. But if an obscuration be foretold, and if it then occur--may seem a little uncanny--only a shadow--and no one who was about to buy a pair of shoes runs home panic-stricken and saves the money.
Upon general principles we accept that astronomers have quasi-systematized data of eclipses--or have included some and disregarded others.
They have done well.
They have functioned.
But now they're negatives, or they're out of harmony--
If we are in harmony with a new dominant, or the spirit of a new era, in which Exclusionism must be overthrown; if we have data of many obscurations that have occurred, not only upon the moon, but upon our own earth, as convincing of vast intervening bodies, usually invisible, as is any regularized, predicted eclipse.
One looks up at the sky.
It seems incredible that, say, at the distance of the moon, there could be, but be invisible, a solid body, say, the size of the moon.
One looks up at the moon, at a time when only a crescent of it is visible. The tendency is to build up the rest of it in one's mind; but the unillumined part looks as vacant as the rest of the sky, and it's of the same blueness as the rest of the sky. There's a vast area of solid substance before one's eyes. It's indistinguishable from the sky.
In some of our little lessons upon the beauties of modesty and humility, we have picked out basic arrogances--tail of a peacock, horns of a stag, dollars of a capitalist--eclipses of astronomers. Though I have no desire for the job, I'd engage to list hundreds of instances in which the report upon an expected eclipse has been "sky overcast" or "weather unfavorable." In our Super-Hibernia, the unfavorable has been construed as the favorable. Some time ago, when we were lost, because we had not recognized our own dominant, when we were still of the unchosen and likely to be more malicious than we now are--because we have noted a steady tolerance creeping into our attitude--if astronomers are not to blame, but are only correlates to a dominant--we advertised a predicted eclipse that did not occur at all. Now, without any especial feeling, except that of recognition of the fate of all attempted absolutism, we give the instance, noting that, though such an evil thing to orthodoxy, it was orthodoxy that recorded the non-event.
_Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, 8-132:
"Remarkable appearances during the total eclipse of the moon on March 19, 1848":
In an extract from a letter from Mr. Forster, of Bruges, it is said that, according to the writer's observations at the time of the predicted total eclipse, the moon shone with about three times the intensity of the mean illumination of an eclipsed lunar disk: that the British Consul, at Ghent, who did not know of the predicted eclipse, had written enquiring as to the "blood-red" color of the moon.
This is not very satisfactory to what used to be our malices. But there follows another letter, from another astronomer, Walkey, who had made observations at Clyst St. Lawrence: that, instead of an eclipse, the moon became--as is printed in italics--"most beautifully illuminated" ... "rather tinged with a deep red"... "the moon being as perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse whatever."
I note that Chambers, in his work upon eclipses, gives Forster's letter in full--and not a mention of Walkey's letter.
There is no attempt in _Monthly Notices_ to explain upon the notion of greater distance of the moon, and the earth's shadow falling short, which would make as much trouble for astronomers, if that were not foreseen, as no eclipse at all. Also there is no refuge in saying that virtually never, even in total eclipses, is the moon totally dark--"as perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse whatever." It is said that at the time there had been an aurora borealis, which might have caused the luminosity, without a datum that such an effect, by an aurora, had ever been observed upon the moon.
But single instances--so an observation by Scott, in the Antarctic. The force of this datum lies in my own acceptance, based upon especially looking up this point, that an eclipse nine-tenths of totality has great effect, even though the sky be clouded.
Scott (_Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. ii, p. 215):
"There may have been an eclipse of the sun, Sept. 21, 1903, as the almanac said, but we should, none of us, have liked to swear to the fact."
This eclipse had been set down at nine-tenths of totality. The sky was overcast at the time.
So it is not only that many eclipses unrecognized by astronomers as eclipses have occurred, but that intermediatism, or impositivism, breaks into their own seemingly regularized eclipses.
Our data of unregularized eclipses, as profound as those that are conventionally--or officially?--recognized, that have occurred relatively to this earth:
In _Notes and Queries_ there are several allusions to intense darknesses that have occurred upon this earth, quite as eclipses occur, but that are not referable to any known eclipsing body. Of course there is no suggestion here that these darknesses may have been eclipses. My own acceptance is that if in the nineteenth century anyone had uttered such a thought as that, he'd have felt the blight of a Dominant; that Materialistic Science was a jealous god, excluding, as works of the devil, all utterances against the seemingly uniform, regular, periodic; that to defy him would have brought on--withering by ridicule--shrinking away by publishers--contempt of friends and family--justifiable grounds for divorce--that one who would so defy would feel what unbelievers in relics of saints felt in an earlier age; what befell virgins who forgot to keep fires burning, in a still earlier age--but that, if he'd almost absolutely hold out, just the same--new fixed star reported in _Monthly Notices_. Altogether, the point in Positivism here is that by Dominants and their correlates, quasi-existence strives for the positive state, aggregating, around a nucleus, or dominant, systematized members of a religion, a science, a society--but that "individuals" who do not surrender and submerge may of themselves highly approximate to positiveness--the fixed, the real, the absolute.
In _Notes and Queries_, 2-4-139, there is an account of a darkness in Holland, in the midst of a bright day, so intense and terrifying that many panic-stricken persons lost their lives stumbling into the canals.
_Gentleman's Magazine_, 33-414:
A darkness that came upon London, Aug. 19, 1763, "greater than at the great eclipse of 1748."
However, our preference is not to go so far back for data. For a list of historic "dark days," see Humboldt, _Cosmos_, 1-120.
_Monthly Weather Review_, March, 1886-79:
That, according to the _La Crosse Daily Republican_, of March 20, 1886, darkness suddenly settled upon the city of Oshkosh, Wis., at 3 P.M., March 19. In five minutes the darkness equaled that of midnight.
Consternation.
I think that some of us are likely to overdo our own superiority and the absurd fears of the Middle Ages--
Oshkosh.
People in the streets rushing in all directions--horses running away--women and children running into cellars--little modern touch after all: gas meters instead of images and relics of saints.
This darkness, which lasted from eight to ten minutes, occurred in a day that had been "light but cloudy." It passed from west to east, and brightness followed: then came reports from towns to the west of Oshkosh: that the same phenomenon had already occurred there. A "wave of total darkness" had passed from west to east.
Other instances are recorded in the _Monthly Weather Review_, but, as to all of them, we have a sense of being pretty well-eclipsed, ourselves, by the conventional explanation that the obscuring body was only a very dense mass of clouds. But some of the instances are interesting--intense darkness at Memphis, Tenn., for about fifteen minutes, at 10 A.M., Dec. 2, 1904--"We are told that in some quarters a panic prevailed, and that some were shouting and praying and imagining that the end of the world had come." (_M.W.R._, 32-522.) At Louisville, Ky., March 7, 1911, at about 8 A.M.: duration about half an hour; had been raining moderately, and then hail had fallen. "The intense blackness and general ominous appearance of the storm spread terror throughout the city." (_M.W.R._, 39-345.)
However, this merger between possible eclipses by unknown dark bodies and commonplace terrestrial phenomena is formidable.
As to darknesses that have fallen upon vast areas, conventionality is--smoke from forest fires. In the _U.S. Forest Service Bulletin_, No. 117, F.G. Plummer gives a list of eighteen darknesses that have occurred in the United States and Canada. He is one of the primitives, but I should say that his dogmatism is shaken by vibrations from the new Dominant. His difficulty, which he acknowledges, but which he would have disregarded had he written a decade or so earlier, is the profundity of some of these obscurations. He says that mere smokiness cannot account for such "awe-inspiring dark days." So he conceives of eddies in the air, concentrating the smoke from forest fires. Then, in the inconsistency or discord of all quasi-intellection that is striving for consistency or harmony, he tells of the vastness of some of these darknesses. Of course Mr. Plummer did not really think upon this subject, but one does feel that he might have approximated higher to real thinking than by speaking of concentration and then listing data of enormous area, or the opposite of circumstances of concentration--because, of his nineteen instances, nine are set down as covering all New England. In quasi-existence, everything generates or is part of its own opposite. Every attempt at peace prepares the way for war; all attempts at justice result in injustice in some other respect: so Mr. Plummer's attempt to bring order into his data, with the explanation of darkness caused by smoke from forest fires, results in such confusion that he ends up by saying that these daytime darknesses have occurred "often with little or no turbidity of the air near the earth's surface"--or with no evidence at all of smoke--except that there is almost always a forest fire somewhere.
However, of the eighteen instances, the only one that I'd bother to contest is the profound darkness in Canada and northern parts of the United States, Nov. 19, 1819--which we have already considered.
Its concomitants:
Lights in the sky;
Fall of a black substance;
Shocks like those of an earthquake.
In this instance, the only available forest fire was one to the south of the Ohio River. For all I know, soot from a very great fire south of the Ohio might fall in Montreal, Canada, and conceivably, by some freak of reflection, light from it might be seen in Montreal, but the earthquake is not assimilable with a forest fire. On the other hand, it will soon be our expression that profound darkness, fall of matter from the sky, lights in the sky, and earthquakes are phenomena of the near approach of other worlds to this world. It is such comprehensiveness, as contrasted with inclusion of a few factors and disregard for the rest, that we call higher approximation to realness--or universalness.
A darkness, of April 17, 1904, at Wimbledon, England (_Symons' Met. Mag._, 39-69). It came from a smokeless region: no rain, no thunder; lasted 10 minutes; too dark to go "even out in the open."
As to darknesses in Great Britain, one thinks of fogs--but in _Nature_, 25-289, there are some observations by Major J. Herschel, upon an obscuration in London, Jan. 22, 1882, at 10:30 A.M., so great that he could hear persons upon the opposite side of the street, but could not see them--"It was obvious that there was no fog to speak of."
_Annual Register_, 1857-132:
An account by Charles A. Murray, British Envoy to Persia, of a darkness of May 20, 1857, that came upon Bagdad--"a darkness more intense than ordinary midnight, when neither stars nor moon are visible...." "After a short time the black darkness was succeeded by a red, lurid gloom, such as I never saw in any part of the world."
"Panic seized the whole city."
"A dense volume of red sand fell."
This matter of sand falling seems to suggest conventional explanation enough, or that a simoon, heavily charged with terrestrial sand, had obscured the sun, but Mr. Murray, who says that he had had experience with simoons, gives his opinion that "it cannot have been a simoon."
It is our comprehensiveness now, or this matter of concomitants of darknesses that we are going to capitalize. It is all very complicated and tremendous, and our own treatment can be but impressionistic, but a few of the rudiments of Advanced Seismology we shall now take up--or the four principal phenomena of another world's close approach to this world.
If a large substantial mass, or super-construction, should enter this earth's atmosphere, it is our acceptance that it would sometimes--depending upon velocity--appear luminous or look like a cloud, or like a cloud with a luminous nucleus. Later we shall have an expression upon luminosity--different from the luminosity of incandescence--that comes upon objects falling from the sky, or entering this earth's atmosphere. Now our expression is that worlds have often come close to this earth, and that smaller objects--size of a haystack or size of several dozen skyscrapers lumped, have often hurtled through this earth's atmosphere, and have been mistaken for clouds, because they were enveloped in clouds--
Or that around something coming from the intense cold of inter-planetary space--that is of some regions: our own suspicion is that other regions are tropical--the moisture of this earth's atmosphere would condense into a cloud-like appearance around it. In _Nature_, 20-121, there is an account by Mr. S.W. Clifton, Collector of Customs, at Freemantle, Western Australia, sent to the Melbourne Observatory--a clear day--appearance of a small black cloud, moving not very swiftly--bursting into a ball of fire, of the apparent size of the moon--
Or that something with the velocity of an ordinary meteorite could not collect vapor around it, but that slower-moving objects--speed of a railway train, say--may.
The clouds of tornadoes have so often been described as if they were solid objects that I now accept that sometimes they are: that some so-called tornadoes are objects hurtling through this earth's atmosphere, not only generating disturbances by their suctions, but crushing, with their bulk, all things in their way, rising and falling and finally disappearing, demonstrating that gravitation is not the power that the primitives think it is, if an object moving at relatively low velocity be not pulled to this earth, or being so momentarily affected, bounds away.
In Finley's _Reports on the Character of 600 Tornadoes_ very suggestive bits of description occur:
"Cloud bounded along the earth like a ball"--
Or that it was no meteorological phenomenon, but something very much like a huge solid ball that was bounding along, crushing and carrying with it everything within its field--
"Cloud bounded along, coming to the earth every eight hundred or one thousand yards."
Here's an interesting bit that I got somewhere else. I offer it as a datum in super-biology, which, however, is a branch of advanced science that I'll not take up, restricting to things indefinitely called "objects"--
"The tornado came wriggling, jumping, whirling like a great green snake, darting out a score of glistening fangs."
Though it's interesting, I think that's sensational, myself. It may be that vast green snakes sometimes rush past this earth, taking a swift bite wherever they can, but, as I say, that's a super-biologic phenomenon. Finley gives dozens of instances of tornado clouds that seem to me more like solid things swathed in clouds, than clouds. He notes that, in the tornado at Americus, Georgia, July 18, 1881, "a strange sulphurous vapor was emitted from the cloud." In many instances, objects, or meteoritic stones, that have come from this earth's externality, have had a sulphurous odor. Why a wind effect should be sulphurous is not clear. That a vast object from external regions should be sulphurous is in line with many data. This phenomenon is described in the _Monthly Weather Review_, July, 1881, as "a strange sulphurous vapor ... burning and sickening all who approached close enough to breathe it."
The conventional explanation of tornadoes as wind-effects--which we do not deny in some instances--is so strong in the United States that it is better to look elsewhere for an account of an object that has hurtled through this earth's atmosphere, rising and falling and defying this earth's gravitation.
_Nature_, 7-112:
That, according to a correspondent to the _Birmingham Morning News_, the people living near King's Sutton, Banbury, saw, about one o'clock, Dec. 7, 1872, something like a haycock hurtling through the air. Like a meteor it was accompanied by fire and a dense smoke and made a noise like that of a railway train. "It was sometimes high in the air and sometimes near the ground." The effect was tornado-like: trees and walls were knocked down. It's a late day now to try to verify this story, but a list is given of persons whose property was injured. We are told that this thing then disappeared "all at once."
These are the smaller objects, which may be derailed railway trains or big green snakes, for all I know--but our expression upon approach to this earth by vast dark bodies--
That likely they'd be made luminous: would envelop in clouds, perhaps, or would have their own clouds--
But that they'd quake, and that they'd affect this earth with quakes--
And that then would occur a fall of matter from such a world, or rise of matter from this earth to a nearby world, or both fall and rise, or exchange of matter--process known to Advanced Seismology as celestio-metathesis--
Except that--if matter from some other world--and it would be like someone to get it into his head that we absolutely deny gravitation, just because we cannot accept orthodox dogmas--except that, if matter from another world, filling the sky of this earth, generally, as to a hemisphere, or locally, should be attracted to this earth, it would seem thinkable that the whole thing should drop here, and not merely its surface-materials.
Objects upon a ship's bottom. From time to time they drop to the bottom of the ocean. The ship does not.
Or, like our acceptance upon dripping from aerial ice-fields, we think of only a part of a nearby world succumbing, except in being caught in suspension, to this earth's gravitation, and surface-materials falling from that part--
Explain or express or accept, and what does it matter? Our attitude is:
Here are the data.
See for yourself.
What does it matter what my notions may be?
Here are the data.
But think for yourself, or think for myself, all mixed up we must be. A long time must go by before we can know Florida from Long Island. So we've had data of fishes that have fallen from our now established and respectabilized Super-Sargasso Sea--which we've almost forgotten, it's now so respectable--but we shall have data of fishes that have fallen during earthquakes. These we accept were dragged down from ponds or other worlds that have been quaked, when only a few miles away, by this earth, some other world also quaking this earth.
In a way, or in its principle, our subject is orthodox enough. Only grant proximity of other worlds--which, however, will not be a matter of granting, but will be a matter of data--and one conventionally conceives of their surfaces quaked--even of a whole lake full of fishes being quaked and dragged down from one of them. The lake full of fishes may cause a little pain to some minds, but the fall of sand and stones is pleasantly enough thought of. More scientific persons, or more faithful hypnotics than we, have taken up this subject, unpainfully, relatively to the moon. For instance, Perrey has gone over 15,000 records of earthquakes, and he has correlated many with proximities of the moon, or has attributed many to the pull of the moon when nearest this earth. Also there is a paper upon this subject in the _Proc. Roy. Soc. of Cornwall_, 1845. Or, theoretically, when at its closest to this earth, the moon quakes the face of this earth, and is itself quaked--but does not itself fall to this earth. As to showers of matter that may have come from the moon at such times--one can go over old records and find what one pleases.
That is what we now shall do.
Our expressions are for acceptance only.
Our data:
We take them from four classes of phenomena that have preceded or accompanied earthquakes:
Unusual clouds, darkness profound, luminous appearances in the sky, and falls of substances and objects whether commonly called meteoritic or not.
Not one of these occurrences fits in with principles of primitive, or primary, seismology, and every one of them is a datum of a quaked body passing close to this earth or suspended over it. To the primitives there is not a reason in the world why a convulsion of this earth's surface should be accompanied by unusual sights in the sky, by darkness, or by the fall of substances or objects from the sky. As to phenomena like these, or storms, preceding earthquakes, the irreconcilability is still greater.