what the hippopotamus
seems to be. So how can you prove that something is not something else,
when neither is something else some other thing? There's nothing to
prove.

This is one of the profundities that we advertised in advance.

You can oppose an absurdity only with some other absurdity. But Science
is established preposterousness. We divide all intellection: the
obviously preposterousness and the established.

But Krakatoa: that's the explanation that the scientists gave. I don't
know what whopper the medicine men told.

We see, from the start, the very strong inclination of science to deny,
as much as it can, external relations of this earth.

This book is an assemblage of data of external relations of this earth.
We take the position that our data have been damned, upon no
consideration for individual merits or demerits, but in conformity with
a general attempt to hold out for isolation of this earth. This is
attempted positiveness. We take the position that science can no more
succeed than, in a similar endeavor, could the Chinese, or than could
the United States. So then, with only pseudo-consideration of the
phenomena of 1883, or as an expression of positivism in its aspect of
isolation, or unrelatedness, scientists have perpetrated such an
enormity as suspension of volcanic dust seven years in the
air--disregarding the lapse of several years--rather than to admit the
arrival of dust from somewhere beyond this earth. Not that scientists
themselves have ever achieved positiveness, in its aspect of unitedness,
among themselves--because Nordenskiold, before 1883, wrote a great deal
upon his theory of cosmic dust, and Prof. Cleveland Abbe contended
against the Krakatoan explanation--but that this is the orthodoxy of the
main body of scientists.

My own chief reason for indignation here:

That this preposterous explanation interferes with some of my own
enormities.

It would cost me too much explaining, if I should have to admit that
this earth's atmosphere has such sustaining power.

Later, we shall have data of things that have gone up in the air and
that have stayed up--somewhere--weeks--months--but not by the sustaining
power of this earth's atmosphere. For instance, the turtle of Vicksburg.
It seems to me that it would be ridiculous to think of a good-sized
turtle hanging, for three or four months, upheld only by the air, over
the town of Vicksburg. When it comes to the horse and the barn--I think