Charles Fort

“ A Swift will antagonize "the System," and a Lockyer will call him back; but, then, a Lockyer will vary with a "meteoric hypothesis," and a Swift will, in turn, represent "the System." This state is to us typical of all intermediatist phenomena; or that not conceivably is anything really anything, if its parts are likely to be their own opposites at any time. We speak of astronomers—as if there were real astronomers—but who have lost their identity in a System—as if it were a real System—but behind that System is plainly a rapport, or loss of identity in the Spirit of an Era. ”

“ I think there would not be much approximation to realness in taking refuge in the notion of astronomers who stare and squint and see only that which it is respectable and respectful to see. It is all very well to say that astronomers are hypnotics, and that an astronomer looking at the moon is hypnotized by the moon, but our acceptance is that the bodies of this present expression often visit the moon, or cross it, or are held in temporary suspension near it—then some of them must often have been within the diameter of an astronomer's hypnosis. ”

“ But the meaninglessness of all utterances in quasi-existence——
"Uniform intensity" turns our way as much as against us—or some day some brain will conceive a way of beating Newton's third law—if every reaction, or resistance, is, or can be, interpretable as stimulus instead of resistance—if this could be done in mechanics, there's a way open here for some one to own the world—specifically in this matter, "uniform intensity" means that Lescarbault saw no ordinary sun spot, just as much as it means that no spot at all was seen upon the sun. ”

“ The things seen high in the sky by Swift and Watson——
Well, only two months before—the horse and the barn——
We go on with more observations by astronomers, recognizing that it is the very thing that has given them life, sustained them, held them together, that has crushed all but the quasi-gleam of independent life out of them. Were they not systematized, they could not be at all, except sporadically and without sustenance. They are systematized: they must not vary from the conditions of the system: they must not break away for themselves. ”

“ That upon the wings of a super-bat, he broods over this earth and over other worlds, perhaps deriving something from them: hovers on wings, or wing-like appendages, or planes that are hundreds of miles from tip to tip—a super-evil thing that is exploiting us. ”

“ Our acceptance is that vast celestial vagabonds have been excluded by astronomers, primarily because their irresponsibilities are an affront to the pure and the precise, or to attempted positivism; and secondarily because they have not been seen so very often. The planets steadily reflect the light of the sun: upon this uniformity a system that we call Primary Astronomy has been built up; but now the subject-matter of Advanced Astronomy is data of celestial phenomena that are sometimes light and sometimes dark, varying like some of the satellites of Jupiter, but with a wider range. ”

“ We accept that Venus, for instance, has often been visited by other worlds, or by super-constructions, from which come cinders and coke and coal; that sometimes these things have reflected light and have been seen from this earth—by professional astronomers. It will be noted that throughout this chapter our data are accursed Brahmins—as, by hypnosis and inertia, we keep on and keep on saying, just as a good many of the scientists of the 19th century kept on and kept on admitting the power of the system that preceded them—or Continuity would be smashed. ”

“ If we weren't so accustomed to Science in its essential aspect of Disregard, we'd be mystified and impressed, like the Editor of Nature, with the formulation of these data: agreement of so many instances would seem incredible as a coincidence: but our acceptance is that, with just enough disregard, astronomers and fortune-tellers can formulate anything—or we'd engage, ourselves, to formulate periodicities in the crowds in Broadway—say that every Wednesday morning, a tall man, with one leg and a black eye, carrying a rubber plant, passes the Singer Building, at quarter past ten o'clock. ”

“ At least we are not so dull as to have the delusion that we know just exactly what it is that we are complaining about. We speak seemingly definitely enough of "the System," but we're building upon observations by members of that very system. ”

“ A new satellite in this solar system might be a little disturbing—though the formulas of La Place, which were considered final in his day, have survived the admittance of five or six hundred bodies not included in those formulas—a satellite to Venus might be a little disturbing, but would be explained—but a large body approaching a planet—staying a while—going away—coming back some other time—anchoring, as it were——
Azuria is pretty bad, but Azuria is no worse than Neith. ”

“ What I emphasize here is that our damned data are observations by astronomers of the highest standing, excommunicated by astronomers of similar standing—but backed up by the dominant spirit of their era—to which all minds had to equilibrate or be negligible, unheard, submerged. ”

“ One of our quasi-reasons for accepting that orbitless worlds are dirigible is the almost complete absence of data of collisions: of course, though in defiance of gravitation, they may, without direction like human direction, adjust to one another in the way of vortex rings of smoke—a very human-like way that is. ”

“ Why they should be luminous, whereas the moon itself was dark, would get us into a lot of trouble—except that later we shall, or we sha'n't, accept that many times have luminous objects been seen close to this earth—at night. ”

“ It is not only that we think and act and speak and dress alike, because of our surrender to social attempt at Entity, in which we are only super-cellular. We see what it is "proper" that we should see. It is orthodox enough to say that a horse is not a horse, to an infant—any more than is an orange an orange to the unsophisticated. It's interesting to walk along a street sometimes and look at things and wonder what they'd look like, if we hadn't been taught to see horses and trees and houses as horses and trees and houses. ”

“ The point here is that these other observations are as authentic as those that Leverrier included; that, then, upon data as good as the data of "Vulcan," there must be other "Vulcans"—the heroic and defiant disregard, then, of trying to formulate one, omitting the others, which, by orthodox doctrine, must have influenced it greatly, if all were in the relatively narrow space between Mercury and the sun. ”

“ Swift, from Denver, Colorado: that they had seen two shining objects at a considerable distance from the sun.
It's quite in accord with our general expression: not that there is an Intra-Mercurial planet, but that there are different bodies, many vast things; near this earth sometimes, near the sun sometimes; orbitless worlds, which, because of scarcely any data of collisions, we think of as under navigable control—or dirigible super-constructions.
Prof. Watson and Prof. Swift published their observations.
Then the disregard that we can not think of in terms of ordinary, sane exclusions. ”

“ Report by Pastorff that he had seen twice in 1836, and once in 1837, two round spots of unequal size, moving across the sun, changing position relatively to each other, and taking a different course, if not orbit, each time: that, in 1834, he had seen similar bodies pass six times across the disk of the sun, looking very much like Mercury in his transits.
March 22, 1876——
But to point out Leverrier's poverty-stricken average—or discovering planets upon a fifty per cent. basis—would be to point out the low percentage of realness in the quasi-myth-stuff of which the whole system is composed. ”

“ A large body has been seen—seven times, according to Science Gossip, 1886-178—near Venus. At least one astronomer, Houzeau, accepted these observations and named the—world, planet, super-construction—"Neith." ”

“ That's not very reasonable: however, we have, in the Annual Register, 1821-687, a light not referable to a star—because it moved with the moon: was seen three nights in succession; reported by Capt. Kater. See Quart. Jour. Roy. Inst., 12-133.
Phil. Trans., 112-237:
Report from the Cape Town Observatory: a whitish spot on the dark part of the moon's limb. Three smaller lights were seen.
The call of positiveness, in its aspects of singleness, or homogeneity, or oneness, or completeness. In data now coming, I feel it myself. A Leverrier studies more than twenty observations. ”

“ If, in an embryo, some cells should not live up to the phenomena of their era, the others will sustain the scheduled appearances. Not until an embryo enters the mammalian stage are cells of the reptilian stage false cells.
It is our acceptance that there were many equally authentic reports upon large planetary bodies that had been seen near the sun; that, of many, Leverrier picked out six ”

“ Lescarbault to a very severe cross-examination"—just the way you or I may feel at liberty to go into anybody's home and be severe with people—"pressing him hard step by step"—just as any one might go into some one else's house and press him hard, though unknown to the hard-pressed one. ”

“ But in Knowledge, Feb., 1894, are two photographs of Brooks' comet that are shown as evidence of its seeming collision with a dark object, Oct., 1893. Our own wording is that it "struck against something": Prof. ”