by Charles Fort
2
Frogs and fishes and worms—and these are the materials of our expression upon all things.
Hops and flops and squirms—and these are the motions.
But we have been considering more than matter and motion, to start with: we have been considering attempts by scientists to explain them. By explanation, I mean organization. There is more than matter and motion in our existence: there is organization of matter and motion.
Nobody takes a little clot that is central in a disease germ, as Absolute Truth; and the latest scientific discovery is only something for ideas to systematize around. But there is this systematization, or organization, and we shall have to consider it.
There is no more meaning—though that may be utmost meaning—to arrangements of observations, than there is to arrangements of protoplasm in a microbe, but it must be noted that scientific explanations do often work out rather well—but say in medical treatments, if ailments are mostly fancied; or in stock-market transactions, except in a crisis; or in expert testimony in the courts, except when set aside by other expert testimony—
But they are based upon definitions—
And in phenomenal existence there is nothing that is independent of everything else. Given that there is Continuity, everything is a degree or aspect of whatever everything else is. Consequently there is no way of defining anything, except in terms of itself. Try any alleged definition. What is an island? An island is a body of land completely surrounded by water. And what is a body of land that is completely surrounded by water?
Among savage tribesmen, there is a special care for, or even respectfulness for, the mentally afflicted. They are regarded as in some obscure way representing God’s chosen. We recognize the defining of a thing in terms of itself, as a sign of feeblemindedness. All scientists begin their works with just such definitions, implied, if not stated. And among our tribes there is a special care for, or even respectfulness for, scientists.
It will be an expression of mine that there is a godness in this idiocy. But, no matter what sometimes my opinion may be, I am not now writing that God is an Idiot. Maybe he, or it, drools comets and gibbers earthquakes, but the scale would have to be considered at least super-idiocy.
I conceive, or tell myself that I conceive, that if we could have a concept of our existence as a whole, we could have a kind of understanding of it, rather akin to what, say, cells in an animal organism could have of what is a whole to them, if they should not be mere scientists, trying to find out what a bone is, or the flow of blood in a vein is, in itself; but if they could comprehend what the structures and functions of the Organism are, in terms of Itself.
The attempted idea of Existence as Organism is one of the oldest of the pseudo-thoughts of philosophy. But the idea in this book is not metaphysical. Metaphysical speculations are attempts to think unthinkably, and it is quite hard enough to think thinkably. There can be nothing but bafflement for anybody who tries to think of Existence as Organism: our attempt will be to think of an existence as an organism. Having a childish liking for a little rhetoric, now and then, I shall call it God.
Our expressions are in terms of Continuity. If all things merge away into one another, or transmute into one another, so that nothing can be defined, they are of a oneness, which may be the oneness of one existence. I state that, though I accept that there is continuity, I accept that also there is discontinuity. But there is no need, in this book, to go into the subject of continuity-discontinuity, because no statement that I shall make, as a monist, will be set aside by my pluralism. There is a oneness that both submerges and individualizes.
By the continuity of all things we have, with a hop and a flop and a squirm, jumped from frogs toward finality. We have rejected whirlwinds and the fishmonger, and have incipient notions upon a selectiveness and an intelligent, or purposeful, distribution of living things.
What is selecting and what is distributing?
The old-fashioned theologian thinks of a being, with the looks of himself, standing aside somewhere and directing operations.
What, in any organism, is selecting and distributing—say, oxygen in lungs, and materials in stomachs?
The organism itself.
If we can think of our existence as a conceivable-sized formation—perhaps one of countless things, beings, or formations in the cosmos—we have graspableness, or we have the outlines and the limits within which to think.
We look up at the stars. The look is of a revolving shell that is not far away. And against such a view there is no opposition except by an authoritative feeble-mindedness, which most of us treat respectfully, because such is the custom in all more or less savage tribes.
Mostly in this book I shall specialize upon indications that there exists a transportory force that I shall call Teleportation. I shall be accused of having assembled lies, yarns, hoaxes, and superstitions. To some degree I think so, myself. To some degree I do not. I offer the data.
3
The subject of reported falls from the sky, of an edible substance, in Asia Minor, is confused, because reports have been upon two kinds of substances. It seems that the sugar-like kind cannot be accepted. In July, 1927, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem sent an expedition to the Sinai Peninsula to investigate reported showers of “manna.” See the New York Times, Dec. 4, 1927. Members of the expedition found what they called “manna” upon leaves of tamarisk trees, and on the ground underneath, and explained that it was secreted by insects. But the observations of this expedition have nothing to do with data, or stories, of falls from the sky of fibrous, convoluted lumps of a substance that can be ground into an edible flour. A dozen times, since early in the 19th century—and I have no definitely dated data upon still earlier occurrences—have been reported showers of “manna” in Asia Minor.
An early stage within the shell of an egg—and a protoplasmic line of growth feels out through surrounding substance—and of itself it has no means of subsistence, or of itself it is lost. Nourishment and protection and guidance come to it from the whole.
Or, in wider existence—several thousand years ago—a line of fugitives feels out in a desert. It will be of use to coming social organizations. But in the desert, it is unprovided for and is withering. Food falls from the sky.
It is one of the most commonplace of miracles. Within any womb an embryonic thing is unable to provide for itself, but “manna” is sent to it. Given an organic view of an existence, we think of the supervision of a whole upon its parts.
Or that once upon a time, a whole responded to the need of a part, and then kept on occasionally showering “manna” thousands of years after a special need for it had ceased. This looks like stupidity. It is in one of my moments of piety that I say this, because, though in our neo-theology there is no worship, I note that in this conception of what we may call godness, I supply grounds for devotions. Let a god change anything, and there will be reactions of evil as much as of good. Only stupidity can be divine.
Or occasional falls of “manna,” to this day, in Asia Minor, may be only one factor in a wider continuance. It may be that an Organism, having once showered a merely edible substance upon its chosen phenomena, has been keeping this up, as a symbol of favoritism, by which said chosen phenomena have been receiving abundances of “manna” in many forms, ever since.
The substance that occasionally falls from the sky, in Asia Minor, comes from far away. The occurrences are far apart, in time, and always the substance is unknown where it falls, and its edibleness is sometimes found out by the sight of sheep eating it. Then it is gathered and sold in the markets. We are told that it has been identified as a terrestrial product. We are told that these showers are aggregations of Lecanora esculenta, a lichen that grows plentifully in Algeria. We are told that whirlwinds catch up these lichens, lying loose, or easily detachable, on the ground. But note this:
There have been no such reported showers in Algeria.
There have been no such reported showers in
places between Algeria and Asia Minor.
The nearest similarity that I can think of is of tumble weeds, in the Western States, though tumble weeds are much larger. Well, then, new growths of them, when they’re not much larger. But I have never heard of a shower of tumble weeds. Probably the things are often carried far by whirlwinds, but only scoot along the ground. A story that would be similar to stories of lichens, from Algeria, falling in Asia Minor, would be of tumble weeds, never falling in showers, in Western States, but repeatedly showering in Ontario, Canada, having been carried there by whirlwinds.
Out of a dozen records, I mention that, in Nature, 43-255, and in La Nature, 36-82, are accounts of one of the showers, in Asia Minor. The Director of the Central Dispensary of Bagdad had sent to France specimens of an edible substance that had fallen from the sky, at Meridin, and at Diarbekis (Turkey in Asia) in a heavy rain the last of May, 1890. They were convoluted lumps, yellow outside and white inside. They were ground into flour from which excellent bread was made. According to the ready-made convention, botanists said that the objects were specimens of Lecanora esculenta, lichens that had been carried in a whirlwind.
London Daily Mail, Aug. 13, 1913—that streets in the town of Kirkmanshaws, Persia, had been covered with seeds, which the people thought were the manna of biblical times. The Royal Botanical Society had been communicated with, and had explained that the objects had been carried from some other part of this earth’s surface by a whirlwind. “They were white in substance, and of a consistency of Indian corn.”
I believe nothing. I have shut myself away from the rocks and wisdoms of ages, and from the so-called great teachers of all time, and perhaps because of that isolation I am given to bizarre hospitalities. I shut the front door upon Christ and Einstein, and at the back door hold out a welcoming hand to little frogs and periwinkles. I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written.
I cannot accept that the products of minds are subject matter for beliefs. But I accept, with reservations that give me freedom to ridicule the statement at any other time that showers of an edible substance that has not been traced to an origin upon this earth, have fallen from the sky, in Asia Minor.
There have been suggestions that unknown creatures and unknown substances have been transported to this earth from other fertile worlds, or from other parts of one system, or organism, a composition of distances that are small relatively to the unthinkable spans that astronomers think they can think of. There have been suggestions of a purposeful distribution in this existence. Purpose in Nature is thinkable, without conventional theological interpretations, if we can conceive of our existence, or the so-called solar system, and the stars around, as one organic state, formation, or being. I can make no demarcation between the organic, or the functional, and the purposeful. When, in an animal-organism, osteoblasts appear and mend a broken bone, they represent purpose, whether they know what they’re doing or not. Any adaptation may be considered an expression of purpose, if by purpose we mean nothing but intent upon adaptation. If we can think of our whole existence, perhaps one of countless organisms in the cosmos, as one organism, we can call its functions and distributions either organic or purposeful, or mechanically purposeful.
4
Over the town of Noirfontaine, France, one day in April, 1842, there was a cloudless sky, but drops of water were falling. See back to data upon repetitions. The water was falling, as if from a fixed appearing-point, somewhere above the ground, to a definite area beneath. The next day water was still falling upon this one small area, as mysteriously as if a ghost aloft were holding the nozzle of an invisible hose.
I take this account from the journal of the French Academy of Sciences (Comptes Rendus), vol. 14, p. 664.
What do I mean by that?
I don’t mean anything by that. At the same time, I do mean something by the meaninglessness of that. I mean that we are in the helpless state of a standardless existence, and that the appeal to authority is as much of a wobble as any other of our insecurities.
Nevertheless, though I know of no standards by which to judge anything, I conceive—or accept the idea—of something that is The Standard, if I can think of our existence as an Organism. If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting construedevness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine time. For whatever is supposed to be meant by progress, there is no need in human minds for standards of their own: this is in the sense that no part of a growing plant needs guidance of its own devising, nor special knowledge of its own as to how to become a leaf or a root. It needs no base of its own, because the relative wholeness of the plant is relative baseness to its parts. At the same time, in the midst of this theory of submergence, I do not accept that human minds are absolute nonentities, just as I do not accept that a leaf, or a root, of a plant, though so dependent upon a main body, and so clearly only a part, is absolutely without something of an individualizing touch of its own.
It is the problem of continuity-discontinuity, which perhaps I shall have to take up sometime.
However—
London Times, April 26, 1821—that the inhabitants of Truro, Cornwall, were amused, astonished, or alarmed, “according to nerve and judgment,” by arrivals of stones, from an unfindable source, upon a house in Carlow Street. The mayor of the town visited the place, and was made so nervous by the rattling stones that he called out a military guard. He investigated, and the soldiers investigated, and the clatter of theorists increased the noise. Times, May 1—stones still rattling, theorists still clattering, but nothing found out.
Flows of frogs—flows of worms—flows of water—flows of stones—just where do we expect to draw a line? Why not go on to thinking that there have been mysterious transportations of human beings?
We’ll go on.
A great deal of the opposition to our data is connotative. Most likely when Dr. Gilbert rubbed a rod and made bits of paper jump on a table, the opposition to his magic was directed not so much against what he was doing as against what it might lead to. Witchcraft always has a hard time, until it becomes established and changes its name.
We hear much of the conflict between science and religion, but our conflict is with both of these. Science and religion always have agreed in opposing and suppressing the various witchcrafts. Now that religion is inglorious, one of the most fantastic of transferences of worships is that of glorifying science, as a beneficent being. It is the attributing of all that is of development, or of possible betterment to science. But no scientist has ever upheld a new idea, without bringing upon himself abuse from other scientists. Science has done its utmost to prevent whatever Science has done.
There are cynics who deny the existence of human gratitude. But it seems that I am no cynic. So convinced am I of the existence of gratitude that I see in it one of our strongest oppositions. There are millions of persons who receive favors that they forget: but gratitude does exist, and they’ve got to express it somewhere. They take it out by being grateful to science for all that science has done for them, a gratitude, which, according to their dull perceptions won’t cost them anything. So there is economic indignation against anybody who is disagreeable to science. He is trying to rob the people of a cheap gratitude.
I like a bargain as well as does anybody else, but I can’t save expenses by being grateful to Science, if for every scientist who has perhaps been of benefit to me, there have been many other scientists who have tried to strangle that possible benefit. Also, if I’m dead broke, I don’t get benefits to be grateful for.
Resistance to notions in this book will come from persons who identify industrial science, and the good of it, with the pure, or academic, or aristocratic sciences that are living on the repute of industrial science. In my own mind there is distinguishment between a good watchdog and
the fleas on him. If the fleas, too, could be taught to bark, there’d be a little chorus that would be of some tiny value. But fleas are aristocrats.
London Times, Jan. 13, 1843—that, according to the Counter de l’Isère, two little girls, last of December, 1842, were picking leaves from the ground, near Clavaux (Livet), France, when they saw stones falling around them. The stones fell with uncanny slowness. The children ran to their homes, and told of the phenomenon, and returned with their parents. Again stones fell, and with the same uncanny slowness. It is said that relatively to these falls the children were attractive agents. There was another phenomenon, an upward current, into which the children were dragged, as if into a vortex. We might have had data of mysterious disappearances of children, but the parents, who were unaffected by the current, pulled them back.
In the Toronto Globe, Sept. 9, 1880, a correspondent writes that he had heard reports of most improbable occurrences upon a farm, near the township of Wellesley, Ontario. He went to the place, to interview the farmer, Mr. Manser. As he approached the farmhouse, he saw that all the windows were boarded up. He learned that, about the end of July, windows had begun to break, though no missiles had been seen. The explanation by the incredulous was that the old house was settling. It was a good explanation, except for what it overlooked. To have any opinion, one must overlook something. The disregard was that, quite as authentic as the stories of breaking windows, were stories of falls of water in the rooms, having passed through walls, showing no trace of such passage. It is said that water had fallen in such volumes, from appearing-points in rooms, that the furniture of the house had been moved to a shed. In all our records openness of phenomena is notable. The story is that showers fell in rooms, when the farmhouse was crowded with people. For more details see the Halifax Citizen, September 13.