Chapter 3
M. Bouis says of a substance, reddish varying to yellowish, that fell enormously and successively, or upon April 30, May 1 and May 2, in France and Spain, that it carbonized and spread the odor of charred animal matter--that it was not pollen--that in alcohol it left a residue of resinous matter.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of this matter must have fallen.
"Odor of charred animal matter."
Or an aerial battle that occurred in inter-planetary space several hundred years ago--effect of time in making diverse remains uniform in appearance--
It's all very absurd because, even though we are told of a prodigious quantity of animal matter that fell from the sky--three days--France and Spain--we're not ready yet: that's all. M. Bouis says that this substance was not pollen; the vastness of the fall makes acceptable that it was not pollen; still, the resinous residue does suggest pollen of pine trees. We shall hear a great deal of a substance with a resinous residue that has fallen from the sky: finally we shall divorce it from all suggestion of pollen.
_Blackwood's Magazine_, 3-338:
A yellow powder that fell at Gerace, Calabria, March 14, 1813. Some of this substance was collected by Sig. Simenini, Professor of Chemistry, at Naples. It had an earthy, insipid taste, and is described as "unctuous." When heated, this matter turned brown, then black, then red. According to the _Annals of Philosophy_, 11-466, one of the components was a greenish-yellow substance, which, when dried, was found to be resinous.
But concomitants of this fall:
Loud noises were heard in the sky.
Stones fell from the sky.
According to Chladni, these concomitants occurred, and to me they seem--rather brutal?--or not associable with something so soft and gentle as a fall of pollen?
* * * * *
Black rains and black snows--rains as black as a deluge of ink--jet-black snowflakes.
Such a rain as that which fell in Ireland, May 14, 1849, described in the _Annals of Scientific Discovery_, 1850, and the _Annual Register_, 1849. It fell upon a district of 400 square miles, and was the color of ink, and of a fetid odor and very disagreeable taste.
The rain at Castlecommon, Ireland, April 30, 1887--"thick, black rain." (_Amer. Met. Jour._, 4-193.)
A black rain fell in Ireland, Oct. 8 and 9, 1907. (_Symons' Met. Mag._ 43-2.) "It left a most peculiar and disagreeable smell in the air."
The orthodox explanation of this rain occurs in _Nature_, March 2, 1908--cloud of soot that had come from South Wales, crossing the Irish Channel and all of Ireland.
So the black rain of Ireland, of March, 1898: ascribed in _Symons' Met. Mag._ 33-40, to clouds of soot from the manufacturing towns of North England and South Scotland.
Our Intermediatist principle of pseudo-logic, or our principle of Continuity is, of course, that nothing is unique, or individual: that all phenomena merge away into all other phenomena: that, for instance--suppose there should be vast celestial super-oceanic, or inter-planetary vessels that come near this earth and discharge volumes of smoke at times. We're only supposing such a thing as that now, because, conventionally, we are beginning modestly and tentatively. But if it were so, there would necessarily be some phenomenon upon this earth, with which that phenomenon would merge. Extra-mundane smoke and smoke from cities merge, or both would manifest in black precipitations in rain.
In Continuity, it is impossible to distinguish phenomena at their merging-points, so we look for them at their extremes. Impossible to distinguish between animal and vegetable in some infusoria--but hippopotamus and violet. For all practical purposes they're distinguishable enough. No one but a Barnum or a Bailey would send one a bunch of hippopotami as a token of regard.
So away from the great manufacturing centers:
Black rain in Switzerland, Jan. 20, 1911. Switzerland is so remote, and so ill at ease is the conventional explanation here, that _Nature_, 85-451, says of this rain that in certain conditions of weather, snow may take on an appearance of blackness that is quite deceptive.
May be so. Or at night, if dark enough, snow may look black. This is simply denying that a black rain fell in Switzerland, Jan. 20, 1911.
Extreme remoteness from great manufacturing centers:
_La Nature_, 1888, 2-406:
That Aug. 14, 1888, there fell at the Cape of Good Hope, a rain so black as to be described as a "shower of ink."
Continuity dogs us. Continuity rules us and pulls us back. We seemed to have a little hope that by the method of extremes we could get away from things that merge indistinguishably into other things. We find that every departure from one merger is entrance upon another. At the Cape of Good Hope, vast volumes of smoke from great manufacturing centers, as an explanation, cannot very acceptably merge with the explanation of extra-mundane origin--but smoke from a terrestrial volcano can, and that is the suggestion that is made in _La Nature_.
There is, in human intellection, no real standard to judge by, but our acceptance, for the present, is that the more nearly positive will prevail. By the more nearly positive we mean the more nearly Organized. Everything merges away into everything else, but proportionately to its complexity, if unified, a thing seems strong, real, and distinct: so, in aesthetics, it is recognized that diversity in unity is higher beauty, or approximation to Beauty, than is simpler unity; so the logicians feel that agreement of diverse data constitute greater convincingness, or strength, than that of mere parallel instances: so to Herbert Spencer the more highly differentiated and integrated is the more fully evolved. Our opponents hold out for mundane origin of all black rains. Our method will be the presenting of diverse phenomena in agreement with the notion of some other origin. We take up not only black rains but black rains and their accompanying phenomena.
A correspondent to _Knowledge_, 5-190, writes of a black rain that fell in the Clyde Valley, March 1, 1884: of another black rain that fell two days later. According to the correspondent, a black rain had fallen in the Clyde Valley, March 20, 1828: then again March 22, 1828. According to _Nature_, 9-43, a black rain fell at Marlsford, England, Sept. 4, 1873; more than twenty-four hours later another black rain fell in the same small town.
The black rains of Slains:
According to Rev. James Rust (_Scottish Showers_):
A black rain at Slains, Jan. 14, 1862--another at Carluke, 140 miles from Slains, May 1, 1862--at Slains, May 20, 1862--Slains, Oct. 28, 1863.
But after two of these showers, vast quantities of a substance described sometimes as "pumice stone," but sometimes as "slag," were washed upon the sea coast near Slains. A chemist's opinion is given that this substance was slag: that it was not a volcanic product: slag from smelting works. We now have, for black rains, a concomitant that is irreconcilable with origin from factory chimneys. Whatever it may have been the quantity of this substance was so enormous that, in Mr. Rust's opinion, to have produced so much of it would have required the united output of all the smelting works in the world. If slag it were, we accept that an artificial product has, in enormous quantities, fallen from the sky. If you don't think that such occurrences are damned by Science, read _Scottish Showers_ and see how impossible it was for the author to have this matter taken up by the scientific world.
The first and second rains corresponded, in time, with ordinary ebullitions of Vesuvius.
The third and fourth, according to Mr. Rust, corresponded with no known volcanic activities upon this earth.
_La Science Pour Tous_, 11-26:
That, between October, 1863, and January, 1866, four more black rains fell at Slains, Scotland.
The writer of this supplementary account tells us, with a better, or more unscrupulous, orthodoxy than Mr. Rust's, that of the eight black rains, five coincided with eruptions of Vesuvius and three with eruptions of Etna.
The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another fly wide open. I should say that my own notions upon this subject will be considered irrational, but at least my gregariousness is satisfied in associating here with the preposterous--or this writer, and those who think in his rut, have to say that they can think of four discharges from one far-distant volcano, passing over a great part of Europe, precipitating nowhere else, discharging precisely over one small northern parish--
But also of three other discharges, from another far-distant volcano, showing the same precise preference, if not marksmanship, for one small parish in Scotland.
Nor would orthodoxy be any better off in thinking of exploding meteorites and their débris: preciseness and recurrence would be just as difficult to explain.
My own notion is of an island near an oceanic trade-route: it might receive débris from passing vessels seven times in four years.
Other concomitants of black rains:
In Timb's _Year Book_, 1851-270, there is an account of "a sort of rumbling, as of wagons, heard for upward of an hour without ceasing," July 16, 1850, Bulwick Rectory, Northampton, England. On the 19th, a black rain fell.
In _Nature_, 30-6, a correspondent writes of an intense darkness at Preston, England, April 26, 1884: page 32, another correspondent writes of black rain at Crowle, near Worcester, April 26: that a week later, or May 3, it had fallen again: another account of black rain, upon the 28th of April, near Church Shetton, so intense that the following day brooks were still dyed with it. According to four accounts by correspondents to _Nature_ there were earthquakes in England at this time.
Or the black rain of Canada, Nov. 9, 1819. This time it is orthodoxy to attribute the black precipitate to smoke of forest fires south of the Ohio River--
Zurcher, _Meteors_, p. 238:
That this black rain was accompanied by "shocks like those of an earthquake."
_Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_, 2-381:
That the earthquake had occurred at the climax of intense darkness and the fall of black rain.
* * * * *
Red rains.
Orthodoxy:
Sand blown by the sirocco, from the Sahara to Europe.
Especially in the earthquake regions of Europe, there have been many falls of red substance, usually, but not always, precipitated in rain. Upon many occasions, these substances have been "absolutely identified" as sand from the Sahara. When I first took this matter up, I came across assurance after assurance, so positive to this effect, that, had I not been an Intermediatist, I'd have looked no further. Samples collected from a rain at Genoa--samples of sand forwarded from the Sahara--"absolute agreement" some writers said: same color, same particles of quartz, even the same shells of diatoms mixed in. Then the chemical analyses: not a disagreement worth mentioning.
Our intermediatist means of expression will be that, with proper exclusions, after the scientific or theological method, anything can be identified with anything else, if all things are only different expressions of an underlying oneness.
To many minds there's rest and there's satisfaction in that expression "absolutely identified." Absoluteness, or the illusion of it--the universal quest. If chemists have identified substances that have fallen in Europe as sand from African deserts, swept up in African whirlwinds, that's assuasive to all the irritations that occur to those cloistered minds that must repose in the concept of a snug, isolated, little world, free from contact with cosmic wickednesses, safe from stellar guile, undisturbed by inter-planetary prowlings and invasions. The only trouble is that a chemist's analysis, which seems so final and authoritative to some minds, is no more nearly absolute than is identification by a child or description by an imbecile--
I take some of that back: I accept that the approximation is higher--
But that it's based upon delusion, because there is no definiteness, no homogeneity, no stability, only different stages somewhere between them and indefiniteness, heterogeneity, and instability. There are no chemical elements. It seems acceptable that Ramsay and others have settled that. The chemical elements are only another disappointment in the quest for the positive, as the definite, the homogeneous, and the stable. If there were real elements, there could be a real science of chemistry.
Upon Nov. 12 and 13, 1902, occurred the greatest fall of matter in the history of Australia. Upon the 14th of November, it "rained mud," in Tasmania. It was of course attributed to Australian whirlwinds, but, according to the _Monthly Weather Review_, 32-365, there was a haze all the way to the Philippines, also as far as Hong Kong. It may be that this phenomenon had no especial relation with the even more tremendous fall of matter that occurred in Europe, February, 1903.
For several days, the south of England was a dumping ground--from somewhere.
If you'd like to have a chemist's opinion, even though it's only a chemist's opinion, see the report of the meeting of the Royal Chemical Society, April 2, 1903. Mr. E.G. Clayton read a paper upon some of the substance that had fallen from the sky, collected by him. The Sahara explanation applies mostly to falls that occur in southern Europe. Farther away, the conventionalists are a little uneasy: for instance, the editor of the _Monthly Weather Review_, 29-121, says of a red rain that fell near the coast of Newfoundland, early in 1890: "It would be very remarkable if this was Sahara dust." Mr. Clayton said that the matter examined by him was "merely wind-borne dust from the roads and lanes of Wessex." This opinion is typical of all scientific opinion--or theological opinion--or feminine opinion--all very well except for what it disregards. The most charitable thing I can think of--because I think it gives us a broader tone to relieve our malices with occasional charities--is that Mr. Clayton had not heard of the astonishing extent of this fall--had covered the Canary Islands, on the 19th, for instance. I think, myself, that in 1903, we passed through the remains of a powdered world--left over from an ancient inter-planetary dispute, brooding in space like a red resentment ever since. Or, like every other opinion, the notion of dust from Wessex turns into a provincial thing when we look it over.
To think is to conceive incompletely, because all thought relates only to the local. We metaphysicians, of course, like to have the notion that we think of the unthinkable.
As to opinions, or pronouncements, I should say, because they always have such an authoritative air, of other chemists, there is an analysis in _Nature_, 68-54, giving water and organic matter at 9.08 per cent. It's that carrying out of fractions that's so convincing. The substance is identified as sand from the Sahara.
The vastness of this fall. In _Nature_, 68-65, we are told that it had occurred in Ireland, too. The Sahara, of course--because, prior to February 19, there had been dust storms in the Sahara--disregarding that in that great region there's always, in some part of it, a dust storm. However, just at present, it does look reasonable that dust had come from Africa, via the Canaries.
The great difficulty that authoritativeness has to contend with is some other authoritativeness. When an infallibility clashes with a pontification--
They explain.
_Nature_, March 5, 1903:
Another analysis--36 per cent organic matter.
Such disagreements don't look very well, so, in _Nature_, 68-109, one of the differing chemists explains. He says that his analysis was of muddy rain, and the other was of sediment of rain--
We're quite ready to accept excuses from the most high, though I do wonder whether we're quite so damned as we were, if we find ourselves in a gracious and tolerant mood toward the powers that condemn--but the tax that now comes upon our good manners and unwillingness to be too severe--
_Nature_, 68-223:
Another chemist. He says it was 23.49 per cent water and organic matter.
He "identifies" this matter as sand from an African desert--but after deducting organic matter--
But you and I could be "identified" as sand from an African desert, after deducting all there is to us except sand--
Why we cannot accept that this fall was of sand from the Sahara, omitting the obvious objection that in most parts the Sahara is not red at all, but is usually described as "dazzling white"--
The enormousness of it: that a whirlwind might have carried it, but that, in that case it would be no supposititious, or doubtfully identified whirlwind, but the greatest atmospheric cataclysm in the history of this earth:
_Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 30-56:
That, up to the 27th of February, this fall had continued in Belgium, Holland, Germany and Austria; that in some instances it was not sand, or that almost all the matter was organic: that a vessel had reported the fall as occurring in the Atlantic Ocean, midway between Southampton and the Barbados. The calculation is given that, in England alone, 10,000,000 tons of matter had fallen. It had fallen in Switzerland (_Symons' Met. Mag._, March, 1903). It had fallen in Russia (_Bull. Com. Geolog._, 22-48). Not only had a vast quantity of matter fallen several months before, in Australia, but it was at this time falling in Australia (_Victorian Naturalist_, June, 1903)--enormously--red mud--fifty tons per square mile.
The Wessex explanation--
Or that every explanation is a Wessex explanation: by that I mean an attempt to interpret the enormous in terms of the minute--but that nothing can be finally explained, because by Truth we mean the Universal; and that even if we could think as wide as Universality, that would not be requital to the cosmic quest--which 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 cannot 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 in 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.
Our notion is that, in a real existence, such a quasi-system of fables as the science of chemistry could not deceive for a moment: but that in an "existence" endeavoring to become real, it represents that endeavor, and will continue to impose its pseudo-positiveness until it be driven out by a higher approximation to realness:
That the science of chemistry is as impositive as fortune-telling--
Or no--
That, though it represents a higher approximation to realness than does alchemy, for instance, and so drove out alchemy, it is still only somewhere between myth and positiveness.
The attempt at realness, or to state a real and unmodified fact here, is the statement:
All red rains are colored by sands from the Sahara Desert.
My own impositivist acceptances are:
That some red rains are colored by sands from the Sahara Desert;
Some by sands from other terrestrial sources;
Some by sands from other worlds, or from their deserts--also from aerial regions too indefinite or amorphous to be thought of as "worlds" or planets--
That no supposititious whirlwind can account for the hundreds of millions of tons of matter that fell upon Australia, Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean and Europe in 1902 and 1903--that a whirlwind that could do that would not be supposititious.
But now we shall cast off some of our own wessicality by accepting that there have been falls of red substance other than sand.
We regard every science as an expression of the attempt to be real. But to be real is to localize the universal--or to make some one thing as wide as all things--successful accomplishment of which I cannot conceive of. The prime resistance to this endeavor is the refusal of the rest of the universe to be damned, excluded, disregarded, to receive Christian Science treatment, by something else so attempting. Although all phenomena are striving for the Absolute--or have surrendered to and have incorporated themselves in higher attempts, simply to be phenomenal, or to have seeming in Intermediateness is to express relations.
A river.
It is water expressing the gravitational relation of different levels.
The water of the river.
Expression of chemic relations of hydrogen and oxygen--which are not final.
A city.
Manifestation of commercial and social relations.
How could a mountain be without base in a greater body?
Storekeeper live without customers?
The prime resistance to the positivist attempt by Science is its relations with other phenomena, or that it only expresses those relations in the first place. Or that a Science can have seeming, or survive in Intermediateness, as something pure, isolated, positively different, no more than could a river or a city or a mountain or a store.
This Intermediateness-wide attempt by parts to be wholes--which cannot be realized in our quasi-state, if we accept that in it the co-existence of two or more wholes or universals is impossible--high approximation to which, however, may be thinkable--
Scientists and their dream of "pure science."
Artists and their dream of "art for art's sake."
It is our notion that if they could almost realize, that would be almost realness: that they would instantly be translated into real existence. Such thinkers are good positivists, but they are evil in an economic and sociologic sense, if, in that sense, nothing has justification for being, unless it serve, or function for, or express the relations of, some higher aggregate. So Science functions for and serves society at large, and would, from society at large, receive no support, unless it did so divert itself or dissipate and prostitute itself. It seems that by prostitution I mean usefulness.