f anything could finally
break away from its origin and environment, that would be a real
thing--something not merging away indistinguishably with the
surrounding. So all attempt to be original; all attempt to invent
something that is more than mere extension or modification of the
preceding, is positivism--or that if one could conceive of a device to
catch flies, positively different from, or unrelated to, all other
devices--up he'd shoot to heaven, or the Positive Absolute--leaving
behind such an incandescent train that in one age it would be said that
he had gone aloft in a fiery chariot, and in another age that he had
been struck by lightning--

I'm collecting notes upon persons supposed to have been struck by
lightning. I think that high approximation to positivism has often been
achieved--instantaneous translation--residue of negativeness left
behind, looking much like effects of a stroke of lightning. Some day I
shall tell the story of the _Marie Celeste_--"properly," as the
_Scientific American Supplement_ would say--mysterious disappearance of
a sea captain, his family, and the crew--

Of positivists, by the route of Abrupt Transition, I think that Manet
was notable--but that his approximation was held down by his intense
relativity to the public--or that it is quite as impositive to flout and
insult and defy as it is to crawl and placate. Of course, Manet began
with continuity with Courbet and others, and then, between him and Manet
there were mutual influences--but the spirit of abrupt difference is the
spirit of positivism, and Manet's stand was against the dictum that all
lights and shades must merge away suavely into one another and prepare
for one another. So a biologist like De Vries represents positivism, or
the breaking of Continuity, by trying to conceive of evolution by
mutation--against the dogma of indistinguishable gradations by "minute
variations." A Copernicus conceives of helio-centricity. Continuity is
against him. He is not permitted to break abruptly with the past. He is
permitted to publish his work, but only as "an interesting hypothesis."

Continuity--and that all that we call evolution or progress is attempt
to break away from it--

That our whole solar system was at one time attempt by planets to break
away from a parental nexus and set up as individualities, and, failing,
move in quasi-regular orbits that are expressions of relations with the
sun and with one another, all having su