Check this section on a regular basis for new selections from the collected works of Charles Fort. All page references are to The Books of Charles Fort, and apply to both the Henry Holt and Dover editions.
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ote's the thing.
What is a house?
It is not possible to say what anything is, as positively distinguished from anything else, if there are no positive differences.
A barn is a house if one lives in it. If residence constitutes houseness, because style of architecture does not, then a bird's nest is a house: and human occupancy is not the standard to judge by, because we speak of dogs' houses; nor material, becaus e we speak of snow houses of Eskimos--or a shell is a house to a hermit crab--or was to the mollusk that made it--or things seemingly so positively different as the White House at Washington and a shell on the seashore are seen to be continuous.
(Damned, p.6)
All biologic phenomena act to adjust: there are no biologic actions other than adjustments.
It is not possible to define.
Nothing has ever been finally found out.
Because there is nothing final to find out.
(Damned, p. 14)
By "beauty," I mean that which seems complete.
Obversely, that the incomplete, or the mutilated, is the ugly . . .
A hand thought of only as a hand, may seem beautiful.
Found on a battlefield--obviously a part--not beautiful.
A seeker of Truth. He will never find it. But the dimmest of possibilities--he may himself become Truth.
Or that science is more than an inquiry:
That it is a pseudo-construction, or a quasi-organization: that it is an attempt to break away and locally establish harmony, stability, equilibrium, consistency, entity--
Dimmest of all possibilities--that it may succeed.
(Damned, p. 14)
I am a collector of notes upon subjects that have diversity--such as deviations from concentricity in the lunar crater Copernicus, and a sudden appearance of purple Englishmen--stationary meteor radiants, and a reported growth of hair on the bald head of a mummy--and "Did the girl swallow the octopus?"
But my liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidence?
(Talents, p. 846)
Upon Dec. 2, 1919, Ambrose Small, of Toronto, Canada, disappeared. He was known to have been in his office, in the Toronto Grand Opera House, of which he was the owner, between five and six o'clock, the evening of December 2nd. Nobody saw him leave his office. Nobody--at least nobody whose testimony can be accepted--saw him, this evening, outside the building. There were stories of a woman in the case. But Ambrose Small disappeared, and left more than a million dollars behind.
(Talents, p. 846)
Before I looked into the case of Ambrose Small, I was attracted to it by another seeming coincidence. That there could be any meaning in it seemed so preposterous that, as influenced by much experience, I gave it serious thought. About six years before the disappearance of Ambrose Small, Ambrose Bierce had disappeared. Newspapers all over the world had made much of the mystery of Ambrose Bierce. But what could the disappearance of one Ambrose, in Texas, have to do with the disappearance of another Ambr ose in Canada? Was somebody collecting Ambroses? There was in these questions an appearance of childishness that attracted my respectful attention.
(Talents, p. 847)
The above extractions and captions Copyright ©1996 by Dennis Stacy