and might
vaguely think of in his speculations--not upon some other land, but
complexes of continents and their phenomena: cities, factories in
cities, means of communication--

Now all the other savages would know of a few vessels sailing in their
regular routes, passing this island in regularized periodicities. The
tendency in these minds would be expression of the universal tendency
toward positivism--or Completeness--or conviction that these few
regularized vessels constituted all. Now I think of some especial savage
who suspects otherwise--because he's very backward and unimaginative and
insensible to the beautiful ideals of the others: not piously occupied,
like the others, in bowing before impressive-looking sticks of wood;
dishonestly taking time for his speculations, while the others are
patriotically witch-finding. So the other higher and nobler savages know
about the few regularized vessels: know when to expect them; have their
periodicities all worked out; just about when vessels will pass, or
eclipse each other--explaining that all vagaries were due to atmospheric
conditions.

They'd come out strong in explaining.

You can't read a book upon savages without noting what resolute
explainers they are.

They'd say that all this mechanism was founded upon the mutual
attraction of the vessels--deduced from the fall of a monkey from a palm
tree--or, if not that, that devils were pushing the vessels--something
of the kind.

Storms.

Debris, not from these vessels, cast up by the waves.

Disregarded.

How can one think of something and something else, too?

I'm in the state of mind of a savage who might find upon a shore, washed
up by the same storm, buoyant parts of a piano and a paddle that was
carved by cruder hands than his own: something light and summery from
India, and a fur overcoat from Russia--or all science, though
approximating wider and wider, is attempt to conceive of India in terms
of an ocean island, and of Russia in terms of India so interpreted.
Though I am trying to think of Russia and India in world-wide terms, I
cannot think that that, or the universalizing of the local, is cosmic
purpose. The higher idealist is the positivist who tries to localize
the universal, and is in accord with cosmic purpose: the super-dogmatist
of a local savage who can hold out, without a flurry of doubt, that a
piano washed up on a beach is the trunk of a palm tree that a shark has
bitten, leaving his tee