Entries Tagged 'Excerpts' ↓

Since the Unitary Theory explains the structure of the entire Cosmos, from bottom to top, using only the sane rational methods employed by a mechanic in a machine shop, why debase our reason by attempting to explain cosmic construction by mystic flubdub? Suppose we did not understand terrestrial mechanics, but did perfectly comprehend all the outside Cosmos. Would it no then be absurd to assume our earth mechanics were unique, contrary to all outside phenomena, a mushy mystic miasma?

Well, then, in reverse, why guess idiotically about the Outside when we know the Inside? Should it not be all alike? A mathematician has no doubt about the universality of mathematics. But the mystic physicist, who sees it all spread out at his feet, in his eyes and hands, dreams that a lunatic eddingsteinian bedlam of erratic disorder prevails beyond our Sun, tho at the same time he demands that his light come straight thru all the grotesqueries of curveting “empty space,” ether with its “permanent waves,” parallel lines which criss-cross at infinity, reflect and return in reversed parallel, bricks made from buildings, light traveling faster than its own subconstituent units like a train running faster than its diner’s fans thru space; colors with equal speeds because Algol’s winks reach us, at our great distance, as gray in stead of prismatic; gravitation (which “can’t be seen and therefore can’t exist”), but a fairy tale scene shifter in the farce called Regional Geometry (tho a corkscrew on earth shows us how gravity really works); “space eating mass,” the Universe is “running down, expanding and exploding;” space has from four to fifty odd extra (fairy tale) dimensions beyond geometry’s limit of three–length, breadth, depth; gravity nonchalantly and capriciously rolls down warps, ruts and tilting bowling alleys of an uncurvable nothingness, dubbed “curved space,” along its “easiest way,” like a wanton scornful of interfering reactions.

And many other equally wild lunacies, such as the skeery mysteries of the “awful depths” of “empty space” (which should be equally scared of the “awful distant us”); “vast distant nebulae,” fleeing in panic from the ever fixed centric Man-Devil (sizzling thru space at 23 miles per second), at speeds causing light to blush, with a red faced spectrum; tho their light reaches us–they claim–in regular schedule time. Mass spends velocity as a spendthrift spends money–the faster it goes the “shorter” it becomes. All the above is contrary to fact. Nightmares of Mystic Mental Cholic. And if you will only believe all the foregoing, “they will tell you some more.” Allright. Swallow this:

Their pet mascot, Man’s all-cosmic champion light unit, is the sole unique Outlaw and Gangster, privileged to break the universal Cosmic Law of Action and Reaction, of Cause and Effect, of all-impartial Orderliness. It reflects and refracts, to be sure; but only because it desires to do so of its own free will. But it arrogantly refuses to accept velocity reactions from other mass as all other mass units are compelled to do. Man’s light defies the Cosmos–UNLESS–the Mysticks are only Mistooks and you can safely bet your last dollar against them on almost any bet they offer. And they are our leaders? Nerts!

These Mystic Vaudevillians for twenty years have been putting over the greatest Farce in Science. It is time “they got a laugh.” One Great World Roar! Surely the audience has not taken these showmen seriously! They are just having a lot of fun at our expense and, meanwhile, gathering in huge royalties while spoofing us. Readers! Is it not about time we “cleaned house” in Science and swept these goofy mystics out into the backyard? Have you not enough plain common-sense to take their measure, to see what they really are? Well, turn on the Hose of Reason, swab the Ground Floor of Science, draing them down the Sewer to Oblivion, to sink beneath the Sea of Sane Thought–the Ocean of Truth.

An orthod-ox will not believe anything is what it is unless it happens to be just what “he was told” he “must believe” it to be. All of which boils down to the alleged definition by a precocious English child: “Faith is believing what you know is not so.”

Real scientists never believe even a demonstrated fact fanatically. They are ever ready to repair a tentative acceptance to harmonize with later evidence. Fanaticism cannot flourish on Truth, it must feed on Fantasy, where it takes a real effort to “believe” and so should earn a reward for concession and share in its emoluments. It is a “racket.” The truth seeker is never a fanatic. He has no fantasies to be fanatic about So he is serene and humane, civilized. He does not strive to force his opinions on others, since he may soon change them himself. “Live and let live” is his motto. In short, he is “for man.”

“Vast distant stars,” “remote depths of space” and “gigantic nebulae” are but relativities. They exist evertywhere, up and down, around and within us. They are but points of view and everything which ever happens within, to or from, them occurs in replica in all planes of size. Our Home Cosmic Circus is a complete and every bit as good as those distant awful mygodhowwonderful ones. If you feel awed be honest enough to realize you but feel ignorant. Awe means only, “aw! I don’t understand.” Eliminate awe as you would dust from a telescope’s lens or, self-blinded you will never see.

****

The Cosmos is one infinite theatre, with stages in every plane of size, each stage ever presenting the same play, plot and scenes. The play is continuous, eternal. The actors come and go. Each actor thinks himself a permanent star, but he is only a temporary “super” in a “one-night” stand. Ho, Hum!

****

Now read the Entire Cosmic Play–in the Rational Non-Mystical Cosmos. One act, one actor, one trick–reaction. Duplicated infinetly, endlessly.

GEORGE F. GILLETTE. New York City (1935).

(From an addendum to Orthod Oxen of Science: Synoptic conspectus of author’s Unitary Theory. Published by George F. Gillette, Author of Unity of Universe, Cycle of Power, Rational Non-Mystical Cosmos at the Blackstone Publishers, New York City, 1936.)

It is almost grotesque, the contrast between the books themselves and the manner in which they are produced. One may picture the incongruous elements of the situation,–a young society man going up to his suite in a handsome modern apartment house, and dictating romance to a type-writer. In the evening he dines at his club, and the day after the happy launching of his novel he is interviewed by the representative of a newspaper syndicate, to whom he explains his literary method, while the interviewer makes a note of his dress and a comment on the decoration of his mantelpiece.

Surely romance written in this way–and we have not grossly exaggerated the way–bears no relation to modern literature other than a chronological one. The Prisoner of Zenda and A Gentleman of France, to mention two happy and pleasing examples of this type of novel, are not modern in the sense that they express any deep feeling or any vital characteristic of to-day. They are not instinct with the spirit of the times. One might say that these stories represent the novel in its theatrical mood. It is the novel masquerading. Just as a respectable bookkeeper likes to go into private theatricals, wear a wig with curls, a slouch hat with ostrich feathers, a sword and ruffles, and play a part to tear a cat in, so does the novel like to do the same. The day after the performance the whole artificial equipment drops away and disappears. The bookkeeper becomes a bookkeeper once more and a natural man. The hour before the footlights has done him no harm. True, he forgot his lines at one place, but what is a prompter for if not to act in such an emergency? Now that it is over the affair may be pronounced a success,–particularly in the light of the gratifying statement that a clear profit has been realized towards paying for the new organ.

Leon H. Vincent: from “Stevenson’s St. Ives” in The Bibliotaph, and Other People. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1899.

Doctors lay by your Irksome Books
And all ye Petty-Fogging Rookes
Leave Quacking; and Enucleate
The vertues of our Chocolate.

Let th’ Universall Medicine
(Made up of Dead-mens Bones and Skin,)
Be henceforth Illegitimate,
And yeild to Soveraigne-Chocolate.

Let Bawdy-Baths be us’d no more;
Nor Smoaky-Stoves but by the whore
Of Babilon: since Happy-Fate
Hath Blessed us with Chocolate.

Let old Punctæus Greaze his shooes
With his Mock-Balsome: and Abuse
No more the World: But Meditate
The Excellence of Chocolate.

Let Doctor Trigg (who so Excells)
No longer Trudge to Westwood-Wells:
For though that water Expurgate,
’Tis but the Dreggs of Chocolate.

Let all the Paracelsian Crew
Who can Extract Christian from Jew;
Or out of Monarchy, A State,
Breake àll their Stills for Chocolate.

Tell us no more of Weapon-Salve,
But rather Doome us to a Grave:
For sure our wounds will Ulcerate,
Unlesse they’re wash’d with Chocolate.

The Thriving Saint, who will not come
Within a Sack-Shop’s Bowzing-Roome
(His Spirit to Exhilerate)
Drinkes Bowles (at home) of Chocolate.

His Spouse when she (Brimfull of Sense)
Doth want her due Benevolence,
And Babes of Grace would Propagate,
Is alwayes Sipping Chocolate.

The Roaring-Crew of Gallant-Ones
Whose Marrow Rotts within their Bones:
Their Bodyes quickly Regulate,
If once but Sous’d in Chocolate.

Young Heires that have more Land then Wit,
When once they doe but Tast of it,
Will rather spend their whole Estate,
Then weaned be from Chonolate.

The Nut-Browne-Lasses of the Land
Whom Nature vayl’d in Face and Hand,
Are quickly Beauties of High-Rate,
By one small Draught of Chocolate.

Besides, it saves the Moneys lost
Each day in Patches, which did cost
Them deare, untill of Late
They found this Heavenly Chocolate.

Nor need the Women longer grieve
Who spend their Oyle, yet not conceive,
For ’tis a Helpe-Immediate,
If such but Lick of Chocolate.

Consumptions too (be well assur’d)
Are no lesse soone then soundly cur’d:
(Excepting such as doe Relate
Unto the Purse) by Chocolate.

Nay more: It’s vertue is so much,
That if a Lady get a Touch,
Her griefe it will Extenuate,
If she but smell of Chocolate.

The Feeble-Man, whom Nature Tyes
To doe his Mistresse’s Drudgeries;
O how it will his minde Elate,
If shee allow him Chocolate!

’Twill make Old women Young and Fresh;
Create New-Motions of the Flesh,
And cause them long for you know what,
If they but Tast of Chocolate.

There’s ne’re a Common Counsell-Man,
Whose Life would Reach unto a Span,
Should he not Well-Affect the State,
And First and Last Drinke Chocolate.

Nor e’re a Citizen’s Chast wife,
That ever shall prolong her Life,
(Whilst open stands Her Posterne-Gate)
Unlesse she drinke of Chocolate.

Nor dost the Levite any Harme,
It keepeth his Devotion warme,
And eke the Hayre upon his Pate,
So long as he drinkes Chocolate.

Both High and Low, both Rich and Poore
My Lord, my Lady, and his —-
With all the Folkes at Billingsgate,
Bow, Bow your Hamms to Chocolate.

By Don Diego de Vadesforte, a.k.a. Capt. James Wadsworth, in Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke.

Repeated in: A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, By JMD Meiklejohn, published 1887.

1. Goût (goo) from Latin gustus, taste.[back]

Man is the only animal with the powers of laughter, a privilege which was not bestowed on him for nothing. Let us then laugh while we may, no matter how broad the laugh may be, and despite of what the poet says about “the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.” The mind should occasionally be vacant, as the land should sometimes lie fallow, and for precisely the same reason.–Egerton Smith.

Related in: Book of Wise Sayings, Selected Largely from Eastern Sources, by William Alexander Clouston. London, Hutchinson & Co., 1893.

12. The Expulsion of Gutturals.–(i) Not only did the Normans help us to an easier and pleasanter kind of sentence, they aided us in getting rid of the numerous throat-sounds that infested our language. It is a remarkable fact that there is not now in the French language a single guttural. There is not an h in the whole language. The French write an h in several of their words, but they never sound it. Its use is merely to serve as a fence between two vowels–to keep two vowels separate, as in la haine, hatred. No doubt the Normans could utter throat-sounds well enough when they dwelt in Scandinavia; but, after they had lived in France for several generations, they acquired a great dislike to all such sounds. No doubt, too, many, from long disuse, were unable to give utterance to a guttural. This dislike they communicated to the English; and hence, in the present day, there are many people–especially in the south of England–who cannot sound a guttural at all. The muscles in the throat that help to produce these sounds have become atrophied–have lost their power for want of practice. The purely English part of the population, for many centuries after the Norman invasion, could sound gutturals quite easily–just as the Scotch and the Germans do now; but it gradually became the fashion in England to leave them out.

14. The Story of the GH.–How is it, then, that we have in so many words the two strongest gutturals in the language–g and h–not only separately, in so many of our words, but combined? The story is an odd one. Our Old English or Saxon scribes wrote–not light, might, and night, but liht, miht, and niht. When, however, they found that the Norman-French gentlemen would not sound the h, and say–as is still said in Scotland–licht, &c., they redoubled the guttural, strengthened the h with a hard g, and again presented the dose to the Norman. But, if the Norman could not sound the h alone, still less could he sound the double guttural; and he very coolly let both alone–ignored both. The Saxon scribe doubled the signs for his guttural, just as a farmer might put up a strong wooden fence in front of a hedge; but the Norman cleared both with perfect ease and indifference. And so it came to pass that we have the symbol gh in more than seventy of our words, and that in most of these we do not sound it at all. The gh remains in our language, like a moss-grown boulder, brought down into the fertile valley in a glacial period, when gutturals were both spoken and written, and men believed in the truthfulness of letters–but now passed by in silence and noticed by no one.

From: A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, By JMD Meiklejohn, published 1887. (Bookp(h)ile.)

‘Gammon!’ said Harry. ‘Wait a moment,’ said I; ‘I shall throw sixes;’ and to be sure down came the sixes, striking him on the ‘seize’ point, and then rebounding to my own, swept every man from the table. The board was put up, and after a little closing chat with Mrs. H——, I was taking leave, when Harry called me back. ‘Julian,’ said he, ‘Come and breakfast to-morrow upon ‘Zounds and Sounds.’’ ‘Zounds and Sounds!’ said I, ‘I shall be delighted! What a charming dish! I remember of——’ ‘And Jule,’ said Harry, interrupting me, ‘perhaps Fanny would come?’ ‘Oh, impossible! you know she is delicate yet, and the mornings are quite chilly.’ ‘Well, good night; and don’t forget that we breakfast early.’ ‘My dear Sir,’ said I, ‘I could rise at cock-crow for Zounds and Sounds.’ • • • Now, I had never even heard the words before; but I pique myself on knowing strange and choice dishes; not the far-fetched things of the French, but things good per se, and without a sea of condiments; the delicate, the rare subtleties which our own women know so well to compound. Of course, I ought to know Zounds and Sounds, and of course, I should not hurry to disclaim that knowledge. Harry might have known, and then again he might not; but he remembered, as I have since ascertained, of having eaten something of the kind some thirty years since; something he had perhaps cloyed of, and so forgotten, but something very delectable; something that would perhaps touch his palate again like the maple-sugar and other dainties of his boyhood. Having found the article that day, he had secured a large quantity without asking what they were, and had them taken privately to his house, with a view of making up the dish himself. I came home, rolling the magic words ‘as a sweet morsel under my tongue,’ and immediately sought out a curious dictionary, in which various strange things are expounded; and failing in that, looked into Crabbe’s Synonymes, (by the rule of contraries, I suppose, for there certainly could be nothing like Zounds and Sounds,) but as Longfellow says, ‘All in vain!’ Fanny having retired, I got into my slippers and sat down by the fire to ruminate a little. ‘Zounds and Sounds!’ said I. ‘What an incomparable phrase! What a sweet suffusion of the z! What vibratory tingling upon the tympanum! How pleasantly percussive to the brain; and how even the teeth partake of the sensation! I declare! I must write a song upon Zounds and Sounds! I will. I will write an invitatory song to the Editor. Let me see. Zounds, rounds, bounds and hounds. Exactly! Now then:

Finishing the song, I looked about for my flute to find a tune for it, but reflecting that I should wake the house, put it by again for another time. ‘After all,’ said I, ‘a flute couldn’t touch that z sound. Indeed what can? What is there like it? Has a church-bell any tone approximating it even? Has a violin? Has a hautboy? Has a French horn? Has a jew’s-harp? Ay, that’s the thing! A Jew’s-harp has something like it; and so—so has a bumble-bee. A thought strikes me! It is possible that Zounds and Sounds are—Yes,’ said I, rising and shouting with the excitement, ‘Zounds and Sounds are bumble-bees!—bumble-bees curiously prepared; gathered in some warm climate where they abound, and pickled! Henceforth let no man call that bee ‘humble;’ he is bumble, most decidedly!’ And with this thought I hurried off to bed. • • • It may have been an hour afterward, while I was in the maze between sleeping and waking, that the words ‘Zounds and Sounds’ escaped me, unawares. ‘What’s that?’ said Fanny, starting up. ‘Are you sure that I spoke?’ said I. ‘Indeed, I am; you said something about going down town.’ ‘Did I? Well, I forgot to tell you. I am going down town; so you must not be surprised at my rising early to-morrow. I think of breakfasting out.’ ‘You think! I should think you did; thinking aloud, and asleep too! Don’t think so again, dear; you woke me out of a sound sleep.’ • • • At an early hour the next morning, I was at my friend’s house. How I got there, I do not now remember; but I have a distinct recollection of a ringing sensation in my head, and of not being quite sure that I was awake, till the romping of a dozen children, and a buzzing sound every where of Zounds and Sounds aroused me to a full sense of the great treat that was coming. Then it was that I sang the last night’s song, and it took immensely, especially with the children. Harry was not there to hear it, and lost that pleasure, (as I have never repeated it,) unless he heard it in the kitchen, where he was superintending the burden of the song. Shortly after, came the call of ‘breakfast,’ and we all walked in, at least fifteen of us, and took seats at the table before the Zounds and Sounds were brought in. Harry was already seated at the head. Presently the Zounds came in, piping hot; but before they had reached the table, Harry turned to me and asked if I had any preference. ‘Have you taken the stingers out?’ said I, thinking of bumble-bees. ‘Stingers!’ said Harry. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said I; ‘only a joke;’ and making a bold guess at some white things that now appeared on the table, added, ‘A little of the breast.’ Harry smiled, but said nothing. Plates were now served all around. Breakfast went on, and Zounds and Sounds went down, and every body appeared to be perfectly charmed with the dish. One might say, to be sure, that they were a little saltish, and then again, with that exception, there was no remarkable flavor; but that might be the rarity, not to have any flavor. No one, however, thought aloud in this manner. On the contrary, there was a manifest inclination to detect resemblances of taste and flavor to those of very many rare and delicate cookeries; but after awhile there came a pause. It was during this pause, that my friend turned to his wife and inquired if she was quite sure they were seasoned properly. ‘I think they are a little salt,’ said Mrs. H——; but, my dear, you know you prepared them yourself.’ Harry looked thunder-clouds, and called one of the servants. ‘Mary,’ said he, ‘take the key and bring me a raw Zound. You will find two buckets-full in the wine-cellar.’ Wondering at this, we wondered still more at finding our coffee-cups all empty at the same time. Each one was waiting for drink. The raw Zound was now brought, and Harry, plunging his fork into it, while all eyes were fixed upon him, turned it over and over, examining it on all sides, and then, with his arm at a right angle, raised it deliberately to his nose. Almost instantaneously, and while still some distance off, there came a very wise expression about his nostrils, which, as the Zound came nearer, dilated still more and more, deepening the expression to a frightful extent, till, all doubts removed, he shouted out: ‘Codfish! by thunder!’

We had actually taken within us, and bepraised, the unfreshened tongues and bladders of codfish!

Jervas, who affected to be a Free-thinker, was one day talking very irreverently of the Bible. Dr. Arbuthnot maintained to him that he was not only a speculative, but a practical believer. Jervas denied it. Arbuthnot said that he would prove it: “You strictly observe the second commandment;” said the Doctor, “for in your pictures you ‘make not the likeness of anything that is in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth’”!

From Shearjashub Spooner: Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, Volume 2. 1880.