Wild Talents (14 page)

15

Now I have a theory that our existence is a hermaphrodite—

Or the unproductivity of it, in the sense that the beings, and seas, and houses, and trees, and the fruits of trees, its “immortal truths,” and “rocks of ages” that it seems to produce are only flutters that seem to be real productions to us, because we see them very slow-motioned.

My interpretation of theology is that, though mythologically much confused, it is an awareness of the wholeness of one existence—perhaps one of countless existences in the cosmos—and that its distortions are founded upon intuitive knowledge of the unproductive state of this one existence, as a whole—and so its visions of a divine sterility, which are illustrated with figures of blonde hermaphrodites. Of course there are stray legends of male angels, but such stories are symbols of the inconsistency that co-exists with the consistency of all things phenomenal—

Or that parthenogenesis is the essential principle of all things, beings, thoughts, states, phenomenal.

I’d be queried, if I should say, of the consummation of any human romance, that it is parthenogenetic: but humanity, regarded as a whole, is sustained by self-fertilization. Except for occasional, vague stories of external enrichments, there are no records of invigorations imparted to the human kind from gorillas, hyenas, or swine. Elephants fertilize elephants. I conceive of no bizarre, little love story, with a fruitful outcome, of the attractions of a rhinoceros to a humming bird. Though I have a venerable, little story—account sent to me by Mr. Ernest Doerfler, Bronx, N.Y.—of an 18th-century scientist, whose theory it was that human females can be pollinated, and who experimented, by exposing a buxom female to the incidence of the east wind, and of course was successful in establishing his theory, I have no other datum of human and vegetable unions: so this reported occurrence must be considered one of the marvels from which this book of not uncommon events holds aloof.

The parthenogenetic triumphs of the human intellect are circular stupidities. The mathematicians, in their intuitions of the state of a whole, have represented what to the devout is divinity, with the circle, which, to them the “perfect figure,” symbolizes getting nowhere.

Much of the argument in this book will depend upon our acceptance that nothing in our existence is real. The Whole may be Realness. Out of its phenomena, it may be non-phenomenally producing offspring-realnesses. That is not our present subject. But up comes the question: If nothing phenomenal is real, is everything phenomenal really unreal? But, if I accept that nothing is real, in phenomenal existence, I cannot accept that anything, therein, is really unreal. So my acceptance, in accordance with our general philosophy of the hyphen, is that all things perceptible to us are real-unreal, varying from the direction of one extreme to the other, according to whatever may be the degree of their appearance of individuality. If anybody has the notion that he is a real being—and by realness I mean individuality, or call it entity, or unrelatedness—let him try to tell why he thinks he exists, in a real sense. Recall the most celebrated of the parthenogenetic attempts to make this demonstration:

I think; therefore I am.

We have to accept that in order to think, the thinker must be of existence prior to the thought.

Why do I think?

Because I am.

Why am I?

Because I think.

The noblest triumphs of the human intellect are about as sublime as would be the description of a house in terms of its roof, whereas the description would be equally sublime, if in terms of the cellar, or the bathroom. That is Newtonism—or a description of things in terms of one of their aspects, or gravitation. It is Darwinism—a description of all life in terms of selection, one of its aspects.
Gravitation
is only another name for
attraction.
Sir Isaac Newton’s contribution to the glories of human knowledge is that an apple falls because it drops. All living things are selected by environment, said Darwin. Then, according to him, when he shifted aspects, all things constituting living environment are selected. Darwinism—that selection selects.

The materialists explain all things, except what they deny, or disregard, in terms of the material. The immaterialists, such as the absolute and the subjective idealists, explain all things in terms of the immaterial. My expression is in terms of the continuity of the material and the immaterial—or that one of these extremes is only an accentuation on one side, and the other only an accentuation on the other side, of the hyphenated state of the material-immaterial.

I
am a being who things: therefore I am a being who things.
In this circular stupidity there is a simple unity that commends it to conventional lovers of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

I do not think. I have never had a thought. Therefore something or another. I do not think, but thoughts occur in what is said to be “my” mind—though, instead of being “in” it, they are it—just as inhabitants do not occur in a city, but are the city. There is a governing tendency among these thoughts, just as there is among people in any community, or as there is in the movements of the planets, or in the arrangements of cells constituting a plant, or an animal. So far as goes any awareness of “mine”; “I” have no soul, no self, no entity, though at times of something like a harmonization of “my” elements, “I” approximate to a state of unified being.

When I see—as for convenience “I” shall say, even though there is no I that is other than a very imperfectly coordinated aggregation of experience-states, sometimes ferociously antagonizing one another, but mostly maintaining a kind of civilization—but when I see that my thoughts are ruled by tendencies, such as to harmonize, organize, or coordinate: that they tend to integrate, segregate, nucleate, equilibrate—I am conscious of mere mechanical processes that mean no more in the arrangements of my ideas than they mean in the arrangements of my bones. I’d no more think of offering my ideas as immortal truth than I’d think of publishing X-ray photographs of my bones, as eternal. But the organizing tendency implicit in all things—along with the disorganizing tendency implicit in all things—has admirably expressed itself in the design that is my skeleton. I think so. I have no reason to think that my skeleton is in any way inferior to anybody else’s skeleton. I feel that if I could arrange my ideas with the art that has arranged my bones, I’d have, for writing a book, the justification that all writers feel the need of, trying to excuse themselves for writing books.

But I do not think that mechanism is all that there is in our existence. Only the old-fashioned absolutist conceives, or says he conceives, of our existence as absolutely mechanical. There is an individuality in things that is not of mechanical relations, because individuality is unrelatedness. I conceive of our existence as positive-negative, or as mechanical-immechanical.

But my methods are the largely mechanical methods of everybody, and of everything, that harmonizes, or organizes. One of these methods is classification. I am impelled to arrange my materials under headings—quite as a wind arranges fallen leaves, of various sizes, into groups—as a magnet makes selections from a pile of various things. So, again, when I see that my thoughts are coerced by conventional processes, I can think of my thoughts as nothing but the products of coercions. I’d not do these slaves the honor of believing them. They impose upon me only to the degree of temporary acceptance of some of them.

Merely thoughtfully, or only intellectually, I have made a collection of notes, under the classification of “Explosions.” Some of the occurrences look as if explosive attacks, of an occult order, have been made upon human beings; or as if psychic bombs have been thrown invisibly at people, or at their property.

In the
New York Tribune,
Jan. 7, 1900, there is an account of poltergeist disturbances in a house, in Hyde Park, Chicago. According to the now well-known ways of chairs and tables, at times, these things hopped about, or moved with more dignity. It was as if into this house stole an invisible but futile assassin. See back to accounts of visible but futile bullets. Time after time there was a sound like the discharge of a revolver. It was noted that this firing always occurred “at about the height of a man’s shoulder.” In a booklet,
A Disturbed House and its Relief,
Adam Sharpe tells of a seeming psychic bombardment of her home in Tackley, Oxen, England. Beginning upon April 24, 1905, and continuing three years, at times, detonations, as if of exploding bombs, were heard in this house. Upon the 1st of May, 1911
(Lloyd’s Weekly News,
July 30;
Wandsworth Borough News,
July 21) unaccountable fires broke out in the house of Mr. J.A. Harvey, 356 York-road, Wandsworth, London. Preceding one of these fires, there were three explosions of unknown origin. In January, 1892
(Peterborough Advertiser,
Jan. 10, 1892), a house in Peterborough, England, occupied by a family named Rimes, was repeatedly shaken, as if bombed, and as if bombed futilely. Nobody was injured, and there was no damage.

In the
Religio-Philosophical Journal,
Dec. 25, 1880—copied from the
Owatonna
(Minn.)
Review
—there is a story maybe of a psychic bomb that was tossed through the wall of a house, in Owatonna, penetrating the wall, without leaving a sign of its passage through the material. It was in a house occupied by a family named Dimant. There had been petty persecutions by an uncatchable: such as persistent ringing of the doorbell. One evening, members of this family were in one of the rooms, when something exploded. Mrs. Dimant was knocked insensible. Fragments of a cylindrical glass object were found. But no window had been open, and there had been no other way by which, by known means, this object could have entered this house.

I note something of agreement between notions that are now developing—notions that will be called various names, one of which is not “practical”—and experiments by inventors that are attempts to be very practical. It is said that by means of “rays” inventors have been able to set off distant explosives. If by other means, or by subtler “rays,” explosions at a distance can be made to occur, whatever the practical ones are trying to do may be far more effectively accomplished—if the data of this chapter do mean that there have been explosions that were the products of means, or powers, that are at present mysterious.

There are stories of brilliantly luminous things that are called “globe lightning” that have appeared in houses, and have moved about, before exploding, as if guided by intelligence of their own, or as if directed by a distant control. These stories are easily findable in books treating of lightning and the freaks of lightning. I pick out an account from a periodical. There seems to be no relation with lightning. In the
English Mechanic,
90-140, Col. G.T. Plunket tells of an experience, in July, 1909, in his home, in Wimbledon, London. He and his wife were sitting in one of their rooms, when his wife saw a luminous thing moving toward them. It went to a chair, upon the back of which it seemed to rest, for a moment. It exploded. Col. Plunket did not see this thing, but he heard the explosion. As to the lightning explanation, he writes that it was a fine evening.

London
Daily Mail,
July 23, 1925—“Explosion riddle—mystery of a boy’s wounds.” “Injured by a mysterious explosion, which occurred in his mother’s house, at Riverhall-street, South Lambeth, S.W., yesterday morning, Charley Orchard, five, was conveyed to hospital in a serious condition. He was hurt on the face and chest, and some of his fingers were blown away.

“His mother had just called him to breakfast when the explosion occurred.

“Neighbors who heard the report of the explosion thought there was an outbreak of fire and summoned the fire brigade.

“An all-day search failed to discover the cause of the explosion.”

The London newspapers, Sept. 26, 1910, told of a tremendous, unexplained explosion in a house in Willesden, London. I take from the local newspaper, the
Willesden Chronicle,
September 30—“a fire of a most mysterious character . . . absolutely no cause can be assigned for the outbreak, which was followed by a terrific explosion, completely wrecking the premises.” But in no account is it made clear that first there was a fire, and that the explosion followed. A policeman, standing on a nearby corner, saw this house, 71 Walmlane, Willesden, flame and burst apart. “Windows and doors in the back of the house were blown a distance of sixty feet.” “On examination of the premises, it was found that the two gas meters under the stairs had been shut off: so it was evident that the explosion was not caused by gas. Representatives of the Salvage Corps and of the Home Office investigated, but could conclude nothing except that chemicals, or petrol, might have exploded.”

The occupants of this house, named Reece, were out of town, weekending. Mr. Reece was communicated with, and it was his statement that there had been nothing in the house that could have exploded.

Willesden Chronicle,
October 7—“Mystery cleared up. A charred sofa in the drawing room and other evidence reveal the cause of the outbreak.” Before leaving the house, Saturday morning (September 24th), Mr. Reece, while smoking a pipe, had leaned over this sofa, and sparks from his pipe had fallen upon it. For thirty-six hours a fire, so caused, had smoldered, before bursting into flames. There were two standard spirit lamps in the room. In the fire, they must have exploded simultaneously.

The writer of this explanation picked the remains of a sofa out of a wreck of charred furniture. He leaned Reece over the sofa, because that would make his explanation work out as it should work out. Reece made no such statement, and he was not quoted. The explosion of two spirit lamps could do much damage, but this explosion was tremendous. The house was wrecked. The walls that remained standing were in such a toppling condition that the ruins were roped off.

The jagged walls of this wrecked house are more of our protrusions from vacancy. We visualize them in an environment of blank-ness. Somewhere there may have been a witch or a wizard.