The Book of the Damned Read Online Free PDF Page B

for Equilibrium. Equilibrium is the Universal, or that which has nothing external to derange it.
    But that all that we call “being” is motion: and that all motion is the expression, not of equilibrium, but of equilibrating, or of equilibrium unattained: that life-motions are expressions of equilibrium unattained: that all thought relates to the unattained: that to have what is called being in our quasi-state, is not to be in the positive sense, or is to be intermediate to Equilibrium and Inequilibrium.
    So then:
    That all phenomena in our intermediate state, or quasi-state, represent this one attempt to organize, stabilize, harmonize, individualize—or to positivize, or to become real:
    That only to have seeming is to express failure or intermediateness to final failure and final success;
    That every attempt—that is observable—is defeated by Continuity, or by outside forces—or by the excluded that are continuous with the included:
    That our whole “existence” is an attempt by the relative to be the absolute, or by the local to be the universal.
    In this book, my interest is in this attempt as manifested in modern science:
    That it has attempted to be real, true, final, complete, absolute:
    That, if the seeming of being, here, in our quasi-state, is the product of exclusion that is always false and arbitrary, if always are included and excluded continuous, the whole seeming system, or entity, of modern science is only quasi-system, or quasi-entity, wrought by the same false and arbitrary process as that by which the still less positive system that preceded it, or the theological system, wrought the illusion of its being.
    In this book, I assemble some of the data that I think are of the falsely and arbitrarily excluded.
    The data of the damned.
    I have gone into the outer darkness of scientific and philosophical transactions and proceedings, ultra-respectable, but covered with the dust of disregard. I have descended into journalism. I have come back with the quasi-souls of lost data.
    They will march.

    ###

    As to the logic of our expressions to come—
    That there is only quasi-logic in our mode of seeming:
    That nothing ever has been proved—
    Because there is nothing to prove.
    When I say that there is nothing to prove, I mean that to those who accept Continuity, or the merging away of all phenomena into other phenomena, without positive demarcations one from another, there is, in a positive sense, no one thing. There is nothing to prove.
    For instance nothing can be proved to be an animal—because animalness and vegetableness are not positively different. There are some expressions of life that are as much vegetable as animal, or that represent the merging of animalness and vegetableness. There is then no positive test, standard, criterion, means of forming an opinion. As distinct from vegetables, animals do not exist. There is nothing to prove. Nothing could be proved to be good, for instance. There is nothing in our “existence” that is good, in a positive sense, or as really outlined from evil. If to forgive be good in times of peace, it is evil in wartime. There is nothing to prove: good in our experience is continuous with, or is only another aspect of evil.
    As to what I’m trying to do now—I accept only. If I can’t see universally, I only localize.
    So, of course then, that nothing ever has been proved:
    That theological pronouncements are as much open to doubt as ever they were, but that, by a hypnotizing process, they became dominant over the majority of minds in their era;
    That, in a succeeding era, the laws, dogmas, formulas, principles, of materialistic science never were proved, because they are only localizations simulating the universal; but that the leading minds of their era of dominance were hypnotized into more or less firmly believing them.
    Newton’s three laws, and that they are attempts to achieve positiveness, or to defy and break Continuity, and are as unreal as are all