Lo! (4 page)
Authors: Charles Fort
Near Orleans Daily Picayune,
Feb. 4, 1892—enormous numbers of unknown brown worms that had fallen from the sky, near Clifton, Indiana.
San Francisco Chronicle,
Feb. 14, 1892—myriads of unknown scarlet worms—somewhere in Massachusetts—not seen to fall from the sky, but found, covering several acres, after a snowstorm.
It is as if with intelligence, or with the equivalence of intelligence, something has specialized upon transporting, or distributing, immature and larval forms of life. If the gods send worms, that would be kind if we were robins.
In
Insect Life,
1892, p. 335, the Editor, Prof. C.V. Riley, tells of four other mysterious appearances of worms, early in the year 1892. Some of the specimens he could not definitely identify. It is said that at Lancaster, Pa., people in a snowstorm caught falling worms on their umbrellas.
The wise men of our tribes have tried to find God in a poem, or in whatever they think they mean by a moral sense in people, or in inscriptions in a book of stone, which by one of the strangest freaks of omission is not now upon exhibition in from fifteen to twenty synagogues in Asia Minor, and all up and down Italy—
Crabs and periwinkles—
Ordinary theologians have overlooked crabs and periwinkles—
Or mystery versus the fishmonger.
Upon May 28, 1881, near the city of Worcester, England, a fishmonger, with a procession of carts, loaded with several kinds of crabs and periwinkles, and with a dozen energetic assistants, appeared at a time when nobody on a busy road was looking. The fishmonger and his assistants grabbed sacks of periwinkles, and ran in a frenzy, slinging the things into fields on both sides of the road. They raced to gardens, and some assistants, standing on the shoulders of other assistants, had sacks lifted to them, and dumped sacks over the high walls. Meanwhile other assistants, in a dozen carts, were furiously shoveling out periwinkles, about a mile along the road. Also, meanwhile, several boys were busily mixing in crabs. They were not advertising anything. Above all there was secrecy.
The cost must have been hundreds of dollars. They appeared without having been seen on the way, and they melted away equally mysteriously. There were houses all around, but nobody saw them.
Would I be so kind as to tell what, in the name of some slight approximation to sanity, I mean by telling such a story?
But it is not my story. The details are mine, but I have put them in, strictly in accordance with the circumstances. There was, upon May 28, 1881, an occurrence near Worcester, and the conventional explanation was that a fishmonger did it. Inasmuch as he did it unobserved, if he did it, and inasmuch as he did it with tons upon acres, if he did it, he did it as I have described, if he did it.
In
Land and Water,
June 4, 1881, a correspondent writes that, in a violent thunderstorm, near Worcester, tons of periwinkles had come down from the sky, covering fields and a road, for about a mile. In the issue of June 11th, the Editor of
Land and Water
writes that specimens had been sent to him. He notes the mysterious circumstance, or the indication of a selection of living things, that appears in virtually all the accounts. He comments upon an enormous fall of sea creatures, unaccompanied by sand, pebbles, other shells, and seaweed.
In the
Worcester Daily Times,
May 30, it is said that, upon the 28th, news had reached Worcester of a wonderful fall from the sky of periwinkles on Cromer Gardens Road, and spread far around in fields and gardens. Mostly, people of Worcester were incredulous, but some had gone to the place. Those who had faith returned with periwinkles.
Two correspondents then wrote that they had seen the periwinkles upon the road before the storm, where probably a fishmonger had got rid of them. So the occurrence conventionalized, and out of these surmises arose the story of the fishmonger, though it has never been told before, as I have told it.
Mr. J. Lloyd Bozward, a writer whose notes on meteorological subjects are familiar to readers of scientific periodicals of this time, was investigating, and his findings were published in the
Worcester Evening Post,
June 9th. As to the story of the fishmonger, note his statement that the value of periwinkles was sixteen shillings a bushel. He says that a wide area on both sides of the road was strewn with periwinkles, hermit crabs, and small crabs o£ an unascertained species. Worcester is about thirty miles from the mouth of the River Severn, or, say, about fifty miles from the sea. Probably no fishmonger in the world ever had, at one time, so many periwinkles, but as to anybody having got rid of a stock, because of a glutted market, for instance, Mr. Bozward says: “Neither upon Saturday, the 28th, nor Friday, the 27th, was there such a thing procurable in Worcester as a live periwinkle.” Gardens as well as fields were strewn. There were high walls around these gardens. Mr. Bozward tells of about ten sacks of periwinkles, of a value of about £20 in the markets of Worcester that, to his knowledge, had been picked up. Crowds had filled pots and pans and bags and trunks before he got to the place. “In Mr. Maund’s garden, two sacks were filled with them.” It is his conclusion that the things fell from the sky during the thunderstorm. So his is the whirlwind explanation.
There are extraordinary occurrences, and conventionalization cloaks them, and the more commonplace the cloakery, the more satisfactory. Periwinkles appear upon a tract of land, through which there is a road. A fishmonger did it.
But the crabs and the fishmonger—and if the fishmonger did the periwinkles, did he do the crabs, if he did it?
Or the crabs and the whirlwind—and, if the periwinkles were segregated from pebbles and seaweed, why not from the crabs, if segregation did it?
The strongest point for the segregationists is in their own mental processes, which illustrate that segregations, whether by wind action, or not, do occur. If they have periwinkles and crabs to explain, and, say, that with a story of a fishmonger, or of a whirlwind, they can explain the periwinkles, though so they cannot explain the crabs, a separation of data occurs in their mentalities. They forget the crabs and tell of the periwinkles.
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.