faintly breathing.

Some of our data have been hard to find. We could tell stories of great
labor and fruitless quests that would, though perhaps imperceptibly,
stir the sympathy of a Mr. Symons. But, in this matter of concurrence of
earthquakes with aerial phenomena, which are as unassociable with
earthquakes, if internally caused, as falls of sand on convulsed small
boys full of sour apples, the abundance of so-called evidence is so
great that we can only sketchily go over the data, beginning with Robert
Mallet's Catalogue (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1852), omitting some
extraordinary instances, because they occurred before the eighteenth
century:

Earthquake "preceded" by a violent tempest, England, Jan. 8,
1704--"preceded" by a brilliant meteor, Switzerland, Nov. 4,
1704--"luminous cloud, moving at high velocity, disappearing behind the
horizon," Florence, Dec. 9, 1731--"thick mists in the air, through which
a dim light was seen: several weeks before the shock, globes of light
had been seen in the air," Swabia, May 22, 1732--rain of earth,
Carpentras, France, Oct. 18, 1737--a black cloud, London, March 19,
1750--violent storm and a strange star of octagonal shape, Slavange,
Norway, April 15, 1752--balls of fire from a streak in the sky,
Augermannland, 1752--numerous meteorites, Lisbon, Oct. 15,
1755--"terrible tempests" over and over--"falls of hail" and "brilliant
meteors," instance after instance--"an immense globe," Switzerland, Nov.
2, 1761--oblong, sulphurous cloud, Germany, April, 1767--extraordinary
mass of vapor, Boulogne, April, 1780--heavens obscured by a dark mist,
Grenada, Aug. 7, 1804--"strange, howling noises in the air, and large
spots obscuring the sun," Palermo, Italy, April 16, 1817--"luminous
meteor moving in the same direction as the shock," Naples, Nov. 22,
1821--fire ball appearing in the sky: apparent size of the moon,
Thuringerwald, Nov. 29, 1831.

And, unless you be polarized by the New Dominant, which is calling for
recognition of multiplicities of external things, as a Dominant, dawning
new over Europe in 1492, called for recognition of terrestrial
externality to Europe--unless you have this contact with the new, you
have no affinity for these data--beans that drop from a
magnet--irreconcilables that glide from the mind of a Thomson--

Or my own acceptance that we do not really think at all; that we
correlate around super-magnets that I call Dominants--a Spiritual
Dominant in one age, an