Charles Fort

“ To some persons, not sated with the commonness of the incredible that has to be accepted, it may seem grotesque to think that an indentation in sand could have tons of other sand piled upon it and hardening into stone, without being pressed out—but the famous Nicaraguan footprints were found in a quarry under eleven strata of solid rock. ”

“ It would be as incongruous to attribute these things to the Eskimos as to attribute tablets and lettered stones to the aborigines of America. Some time I shall take up an expression that the queer-shaped mounds upon this earth were built by explorers from Somewhere, unable to get back, designed to attract attention from some other world, and that a vast sword-shaped mound has been discovered upon the moon—— Just now we think of lettered things and their two possible significances. ”

“ To be damned by slumbering giants and interesting little harlots and clowns who rank high in their profession is at least supportable to our vanity; but, we find that the anthropologists are of the slums of the divine, or of an archaic kindergarten of intellectuality, and it is very unflattering to find a mess of moldy infants sitting in judgment upon us. ”

“ Our indefinite acceptance, by preponderance of three or four groups of museum-experts against one person, is that a stone bearing inscriptions unassimilable with any known language upon this earth, is said to have fallen from the sky. ”

“ Anything that assimilates with one explanation, must have assimilable relations, to some degree, with all other explanations, if all explanations are somewhere continuous. Mormons are lugged in again, but the attempt is faint and helpless—"because general circumstances make it difficult to explain the presence of these tablets."
Altogether our phantom resistance is mere attribution to the Mormons, without the slightest attempt to find base for the attribution. We think of messages that were showered upon this earth, and of messages that were cached in mounds upon this earth. ”

“ The figures upon it were distinct, and represented "a warrior or hunter and other characters, apparently of Roman origin."
The means of exclusion would probably be—men digging a hole—no one else looking: one of them drops a coin into the hole—as to where he got a strange coin, remarkable in shape even—that's disregarded. Up comes the coin—expressions of astonishment from the evil one who had dropped it. ”

“ Symons be typical, so indefinite are we becoming here. Just here we are interested in many things that have been found, especially in the United States, which speak of a civilization, or of many civilizations not indigenous to this earth. ”

“ Holder says that he recognized familiar Mayan symbols in the inscription. His method was the usual method by which anything can be "identified" as anything else: that is to pick out whatever is agreeable and disregard the rest. He says that he has demonstrated that most of the symbols are Mayan. One of our intermediatist pseudo-principles is that any way of demonstrating anything is just as good a way of demonstrating anything else. By Mr. Holder's method we could demonstrate that we're Mayan—if that should be a source of pride to us. ”

“ It's sheer, brutal attempt to assimilate a thing that may or may not have fallen from the sky, with phenomena admitted by the anthropologic system: or with the early French or Spanish explorers of Illinois. Though it is ridiculous in a positive sense, to give reasons, it is more acceptable to attempt reasons more nearly real than opposing reasons. Of course, in his favor, we note that Prof. Leslie qualifies his notions. But his disregards are that there is nothing either French or Spanish about this coin. ”

“ Because it is hopeless to try to shake off an excommunication only by saying that we're damned by blacker things than ourselves; and that the damned are those who admit they're of the damned. Inertia and hypnosis are too strong for us. ”

“ It is only by being more nearly real that we can sweep away the quasi-things that oppose us. Of course, as a whole, we have considerable amorphousness, but we are thinking now of "individual" acceptances. Wideness is an aspect of Universalness or Realness. If our syntheses disregard fewer data than do opposing syntheses—which are often not syntheses at all, but mere consideration of some one circumstance—less widely synthetic things fade away before us. Harmony is an aspect of the Universal, by which we mean Realness. ”

“ It seems bewildering to one whose interests are not scientific that such rows should be raised over such trifles: but the feeling of a systematist toward such an intruder is just about what any one's would be if a tramp from the street should come in, sit at one's dinner table, and say he belonged there. ”

“ All progress is from the outrageous to the commonplace. Or quasi-existence proceeds from rape to the crooning of lullabies. It's been interesting to me to go over various long-established periodicals, and note controversies between attempting positivists, and then intermediatistic issues. ”

“ Anything that looks like a cat and a gold fish looks like Leo and Pisces: but, by due suppressions and distortions there's nothing that can't be made to look like a cat and a gold fish. I fear me we're turning a little irritable here. ”

“ The characters upon this ax, or wedge, are strikingly similar to the characters on the Grave Creek stone. Also, with a little disregard here and a little more there, they look like tracks in the snow by some one's who's been out celebrating, or like your handwriting, or mine, when we think there's a certain distinction in illegibility. Method of disregard: anything's anything. ”

“ So the row that was raised over the stone from Grave Creek—but time and cumulativeness, and the very factor we make so much of—or the power of massed data. There were other reports of inscribed stones, and then, half a century later, some mounds—or caches, as we call them—were opened by the Rev. Mr. Gass, near the city of Davenport. (American Antiquarian, 15-73.) Several stone tablets were found. Upon one of them, the letters "TFTOWNS" may easily be made out. In this instance we hear nothing of fradulency—time, cumulativeness, the power of massed data. ”

“ As to lettered stones that may once upon a time have been showered upon Europe, if we cannot accept that the stones were inscribed by indigenous inhabitants of Europe, many have been found in caves—whence they were carried as curiosities by prehistoric men, or as ornaments, I suppose. ”

“ They remind me of the records left, by Sir John Franklin, in the Arctic; but, also, of attempts made by relief expeditions to communicate with the Franklin expedition. The lost explorers cached their records—or concealed them conspicuously in mounds. The relief expeditions sent up balloons, from which messages were dropped broadcast. Our data are of things that have been cached, and of things that seem to have been dropped——
Or a Lost Expedition from—Somewhere. ”