Lo!

by Charles Fort

  Perhaps he had been found naked, and had been given makeshift garments. Perhaps he had been found in clothes, of cut and texture that were remarkable and that would have caused inquiry. The clothes that were given to him were a peasant’s. It was noted in Nuremberg that they seemed not to belong to him, because Kaspar was not a peasant boy, judging by the softness of his hands (von Feuerbach).

  The story has resemblances to the story of the English boy of Nepal. In each case somebody got rid of a boy, and in each case it is probable that a false story was told. If “the man” in Kaspar’s case had the ten children that, to excuse an abandonment, he told of, there’d have been small chance for him to keep his secret. There are differences in these two stories. It will be my expression that they came about because of the wide difference in attention that was attracted.

  Oct. 17, 1829—Kaspar was found in the cellar of Prof. Daumer’s house, bleeding from a cut in the forehead. He said that a man in a black mask had appeared suddenly and had stabbed him.

  It has been explained that this was attempted suicide. But stabbing oneself in the forehead is a queer way to attempt suicide, and in Nuremberg arose a belief that Kaspar’s life was in danger from unknown enemies, and two policemen were assigned to guard him.

  Upon an afternoon in May, 1831, one of these policemen, while in one room, heard a pistol shot, in another room. He ran there, and found Kaspar again wounded in the forehead. Kaspar said that it was an accident: that he had climbed upon the back of a chair, and, reaching for a book, had slipped, and, catching out wildly, had grasped a pistol that was hanging on the wall, discharging it.

  Dec. 14, 1833—Kaspar Hauser ran from a park, crying that he had been stabbed. Deeply wounded in his side, he was taken to his home. The park, which was covered with new-fallen snow, was searched, but no weapon was found, and only Kaspar’s footprints were seen in the snow. Two of the attending physicians gave their opinion that Kaspar could not so have injured himself. The opinion of the third physician was an indirect accusation of suicide: that the blow had been struck by a left-handed person. Kaspar was not left-handed, but was ambidextrous.

  Kaspar lay on his bed, with his usual publicity. He was surrounded by tormentors, who urged him to gasp plugs in his story. He was the only human being who had been in the park, according to the testimony of the snow tracks. It was not only Kaspar who was wounded. There was a wound in circumstances. Tormentors urged him to confess, so that in terms of the known they could fill out his story. Faith in confessions and the desire to end a mystery with a confession are so intense that some writers have said that Kaspar did confess. As a confession, they have interpreted his protest against his accusers—“My God! That I should so die in shame and disgrace!”

  Kaspar Hauser died. The point of his heart had been pierced by something that had cut through the diaphragm, penetrating stomach and liver. In the opinion of two of the doctors and of many of the people of Nuremberg, this wound could not have been self-inflicted. Rewards for the capture of an assassin were offered. Again, throughout Germany, posters appeared in public places, and in Germany and other countries there were renewed outbursts of pamphlets. The boy appeared “as if from the clouds,” and nothing more was learned.

  It was Kaspar’s story that a man in the park had stabbed him. If anybody prefers to think that it cannot be maintained that there was only one track of footprints in the snow, let him look up various accounts, and he will find assurances any way he wants to find them. For almost every statement that I have made, just as good authority for denying it, as for stating it, can be found, provided any two conflicting theories depend upon it. One can read that Kaspar Hauser was highly intelligent or brilliant. One can read that the autopsy showed that his brain was atrophied to the size of a small animal’s, accounting for his idiocy. One comes upon just about what one comes upon in looking up any other matter of history. It is said that history is a science. I think that it must be.

  A great deal, such as Kaspar’s alleged ability to see in the dark, and his aversion to eating meat, and his inability to walk would be understandable, if could be accepted the popular theory that Kaspar Hauser was the rightful Crown Prince of Bavaria, who for political reasons had been kept for sixteen or seventeen years in a dungeon. There would be an explanation for two alleged attacks upon him. But see back to his own story of confinement in a house, or a peasant’s hut, near Nuremberg, where probably his imprisonment could not have been kept secret more than a few weeks. See testimony by Hiltel and Wüst.

  See back to a great deal more in this book—

  The wolf of Shotley Bridge, and the wolf of Cumwinton—or that something removed one wolf and procured another wolf to end a mystery that was attracting too much attention.

  It was said that Kaspar Hauser was murdered to suppress political disclosures. If it be thinkable that Kaspar was murdered to suppress a mystery, whether political, or not so easily defined, there are statements that support the idea that also some of the inhabitants of Nuremberg, who were prominent in Kaspar’s affairs, were murdered. One can read that von Feuerbach was murdered, or one can read that von Feuerbach died of a paralytic stroke. See Evans (Kaspar Hauser, p. 150)—that, soon after the death of Kaspar Hauser, several persons, who had shown much interest in his case, died, and that it was told in Nuremberg that they had been poisoned. They were Mayor Binder, Dr. Osterhauser, Dr. Preu, and Dr. Albert.

  “Kaspar Hauser showed such an utter deficiency of words and ideas, such perfect ignorance of the commonest things and appearances of Nature, and such horror of all customs, conveniences, and necessities of civilized life, and, withal, such extraordinary peculiarities in his social, mental, and physical disposition, that one might feel oneself driven to the alternative of believing him to be a citizen of another planet, transferred by some miracle to our own” (von Feuerbach).

  PART II

  20

  According to appearances, this earth is a central body, within a revolving, starry globe.

  But am I going to judge by appearances?

  But everything of the opposing doctrine is judgment by other appearances. Everybody who argues against judging by appearances bases his argument upon other appearances. Monastically, it can be shown that everybody who argues against anything bases his argument upon some degree or aspect of whatever he opposes. Everybody who is attacking something is sailing on a windmill, while denouncing merry-go-rounds.

  “You can’t judge by appearances,” say the astronomers. “Sun and stars seem to go around this earth, but they are like a field that seems to go past a train, whereas it is the train that is passing the field.” Judging by this appearance, they say that we cannot judge by appearances.

  Our judgments must depend upon evidence, the scientists tell us.

  Let somebody smell, hear, taste, see, and feel something that is unknown to me, and then tell me about it. Like everybody else, I listen politely, if he’s not too long about it, and then instinctively consult my preconceptions, before deciding whether all this is evidence. An opinion is a matter of evidence, but evidence is a matter of opinion,

  We can depend upon intuition, says Bergson.

  I could give some woebegone accounts of what has befallen me, by depending upon intuitions, whether called “hunches,” or “transcendental consciousness”; but similar experiences have befallen everybody else. There would have been what I call good sport, if Bergson had appeared upon the floor of the Stock Exchange, and preached his doctrine, in October, 1929.

  We have only faith to guide us, say the theologians.

  Which faith?

  It is my acceptance that what we call evidence, and whatever we think we mean by intuition and faith are the phenomena of eras, and that the best of minds, or minds best in rapport with the dominant motif of an era, have intuition and faith and belief that depend upon what is called evidence, relatively to pagan gods, then to the god of the Christians, and then to godlessness—and then to whatever is coming next.

 
; We shall have data for thinking that our existence, as a whole, is an organism. First we shall argue that it is a thinkable-sized formation, whether organic, or not. If now, affairs upon this earth be fluttering upon the edge of a new era, and I give expression to coming thoughts of that era, thousands of other minds are changing, and all of us will take on new thoughts concordantly, and see, as important evidence, piffle of the past.

  Even in orthodox speculations there are more or less satisfactory grounds for thinking that ours is an existence, perhaps one of countless other existences that is an egg-like formation, shelled away from the rest of the cosmos. Many astronomers have noted that the Milky Way is a broad band in the sky, with the look of a streak around a globular object. For conventional reasons for thinking that the “solar system” is central in “a mighty cluster of stars,” see Dolmage, Astronomy, p. 327. Dolmage even speculates upon a limiting demarcation which is akin to the notion of a shell, shutting off this existence from everything else.

  Back in the pessimistic times of Sir Isaac Newton was formulated the explanation of existence in general that is our opposition. It was the melancholy doctrine of universal fall. It was in agreement with the theology of the time: fallen angels, the fall of mankind: so falling planets, falling moons, everything falling. The germ of this despair was the supposed fall of the moon, not to, but around, this earth. But if the moon is falling away from observers upon one part of this earth’s surface, it is rising in the sky, relatively to other observers. If something is quite as truly rising as it is falling, only minds that belong away back in times when everything was supposed to be falling, can be satisfied with this yarn of the rising moon that is falling. Sir Isaac Newton looked at the falling moon, and explained all things in terms of attraction. It would be just as logical to look at the rising moon, and explain all things in terms of repulsion. It would be more widely logical to cancel falls with rises, and explain that there is nothing.

  I think of this earth as central, and as almost stationary, and with the stars in a shell, revolving around. By so thinking, I have the concept of an object, and the visualization of an existence as a whole. But the trouble with this idea is that it is reasonable. Not absolutely can it be said that human minds reason according to reasonableness. There is the love of the paradox to consider. We are in agreement with observations, but peasants, or clodhoppers, think as we think. We offer no paradox to make one feel superior to somebody who hops from clod to clod.

  What is the test? Of course, if there are no standards, all tests must be fakes. But if we have an appearance of reasonableness, and if the other side says that it is reasonable, how choose?

  We read over and over that prediction is the test of science.

  The astronomers can predict the movements of some of the parts of what they call the solar system.

  But so far are they from a comprehensive grasp upon the system as a whole that, if, for a basis of their calculations, be taken that this earth is stationary, and that the sun and the planets, and the stars in a shell, move around this earth, the same motions of heavenly bodies can be foretold. Take for a base that the earth moves around the sun, or take that the sun moves around the earth: upon either base the astronomers can predict an eclipse, and enjoy renown and prestige, as if they knew what they were telling about. Either way there are inaccuracies.

  Our opposition is ancient and at least uppish.

  Prof. Todd, in his book, Stars and Telescopes, says: “Astronomy may be styled, a very aristocrat among the sciences.”

  For similar descriptions, by implication, of themselves, by themselves, see all other books by astronomers.

  There are aristocratic human beings. I’ll not contend otherwise. There are aristocratic dogs, and all cats, except for relapses, are aristocrats. There are aristocratic goldfish. In whatever is bred, is the tendency to aristocraticize. Porcupines, as the untouchable and the stupid, are verier aristocrats than the merely very. The aristocratic state is supposed to be the serene, the safe, and the established. It is unintelligent, because intelligence is only a means of making adaptations, and the aristocratic is the made. If this state of the relatively established and stupid were the really, or finally, established and stupid, we’d see good reason for the strivings and admirations and imitations of strugglers, climbers, or newcomers to stabilize themselves into stupors. But, in phenomenal being, the aristocratic or the academic, is, though thought of as the arrived, only a poise between the arriving and the departing. When far-advanced it is the dying. Wherein it is a goal, our existence is, though only locally, suicidal. The literature of the academic ends with the obituary. Prof. Todd’s self-congratulation is my accusation.

  But there is only relative aristocracy. If I can show that, relatively to a viewpoint, other than the astronomers’ own way of adoring themselves, the supposed science of astronomy is only a composition of yarns, evasions, myths, errors, disagreements, boasts, superstitions, guesses, and bamboozlements, I am spreading the good cheer that it is still very faulty and intellectual and still alive, and may be able to adjust, and keep on exciting its exponents with admiration for themselves.

  We shall see what mathematical astronomy is said to start with. If we can’t accept that it ever fairly started, we’ll not delay much with any notion that it could get anywhere.

  The early mathematical astronomers, in their calculations upon moving bodies, could not treat of weights, because these inconstancies are relative; nor of sizes, because sizes are relative and variable. But they were able to say that they had solved their problem of how to begin, because nobody else interfered and asked whether they had or not. They gave up weight and size and said that their treatment was of mass.

  If there were ultimate particles of matter, one could think of mass as meaning a certain number of those things. When atoms were believed in, as finals, an astronomer could pretend that he knew what he meant by a quantity of matter, or mass. Then, with electrons, he could more or less seriously keep on pretending. But now the sub-electron is talked of. And, in turn, what is that composed of? Perhaps the pretensions can stretch, but there is too much strain to the seriousness. If nobody knows what constitutes a quantity of matter, the astronomer has no idea of what he means by mass. His is a science of masses.

  But it may be said that, even though he has not the remotest idea of what he is calculating about, the astronomers’ calculations work out, just the same.

  There was the mass of Mars, once upon a time, for instance: or the “known” unknowables constituting the planet. Once upon a time, the mass of Mars was said to be known. Why shouldn’t it be said to be known? The equations were said to work out, as they should work out.

  In the year 1877, two satellites of the planet Mars were discovered. But their distances and their periods were not what they should be, theoretically. So then everything that had worked out so satisfactorily as it should work out, turned out to have worked out as it shouldn’t have worked out. A new mass had to be assigned to the planet Mars.

  Now that works out as it should work out.

  But I think that it is cannier not to have things so marvelously work out, as they should work out, and to have an eye for something that may come along and show that they had worked out as they shouldn’t have worked out. For data upon these work-outs, see Todd, Astronomy, p. 78.

  It would seem that the mistake by the astronomers is in thinking that, in a relative existence, there could be more than relative mass, if the idea of mass could be considered as meaning anything. But it is more of a dodge than a mistake. It is just relativity that the astronomers have tried to dodge, with a pseudo-concept of a constant, or a final. Instead of science, this is metaphysics. It is the childish attempt to find the absolutely dependable in a flux, or an intellectually not very far-advanced attempt to find the absolute in the relative. The concept of mass is a borrowing from the theologians, who are in no position to lend anything. The theologians could not confidently treat of human characters, personalities, disp
ositions, temperaments, nor intellects, all of which are shifts: so they said that they conceived of finals, or unchangeables, which they called “souls.” If economists and psychologists and sociologists should disregard all that is of hopes and fears and wants and other changes of human nature, and take “souls” for their units, they would have sciences as aristocratic and sterile as the science of astronomy, which is concerned with souls, under the name of masses. A final, or unchangeable, must be thought of as a state of unrelatedness. Anything that is reacting with something else must be thought of as being in a state of change. So when an astronomer formulates, or says he formulates, the effects of one mass, or one planet, as a mass, upon another, his meaningless statement might as well be that the subject of his equations is the relations of unrelatedness.

  Starting with nothing thinkable to think about, if constants, or finals, are unknown in human experience, and are unrepresentable in human thought, the first and the simplest of the astronomers’ triumphs, as they tell it, is the Problem of the Two Masses.

  This simplest of the problems of celestial mechanics is simply a fiction. When Biela’s comet split, the two masses did not revolve around a common center of gravity. Other comets have broken into parts that did not so revolve. They have been no more subject to other attractions than have been this earth and its moon. The theorem is Sunday School Science. It is a mathematician’s story of what bodies in space ought to do. In the textbooks, it is said that the star Sirius and a companion star exemplify the theorem, but this is another yarn. If this star has moved, it has not moved as it was calculated to move. It exemplifies nothing but the inaccuracies of the textbooks. It is by means of their inaccuracies that they have worked up a reputation for exactness.