That the stones of these forts are vitrified in no reference to cementing them: that they are cemented here and there, in streaks, as if special blasts had struck, or played, upon them. Then one thinks of lightning? Once upon a time something melted, in streaks, the stones of forts on the tops of hills in Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, and Bohemia. Lightning selects the isolated and conspicuous. But some of the vitrified forts are not upon tops of hills: some are very inconspicuous: their walls too are vitrified in streaks. Something once had effect, similar to lightning, upon forts, mostly on hills, in Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, and Bohemia. But upon hills, all over the rest of the world, are remains of forts that are not vitrified. There is only one crime, in the local sense, and that is not to turn blue, if the gods are blue: but, in the universal sense, the one crime is not to turn the gods themselves green, if you're green. 13 One of the most extraordinary of phenomena, or alleged phenomena, of psychic research, or alleged research--if in quasi-existence there never has been real research, but only approximations to research that merge away, or that are continuous with, prejudice and convenience-- "Stone-throwing." It's attributed to poltergeists. They're mischievous spirits. Poltergeists do not assimilate with our own present quasi-system, which is an attempt to correlate denied or disregarded data as phenomena of extra-telluric forces, expressed in physical terms. Therefore I regard poltergeists as evil or false or discordant or absurd--names that we give to various degrees or aspects of the unassimilable, or that which resists attempts to organize, harmonize, systematize, or, in short, to positivize--names that we give to our recognitions of the negative state. I don't care to deny poltergeists, because I suspect that later, when we're more enlightened, or when we widen the range of our credulities, or take on more of that increase of ignorance that is called knowledge, poltergeists may become assimilable. Then they'll be as reasonable as trees. By reasonableness I mean that which assimilates with a dominant force, or system, or a major body of thought--which is, itself, of course, hypnosis and delusion--developing, however, in our acceptance, to higher and higher approximations to realness. The poltergeists are now evil or absurd to me, proportionately to their present unassimilableness, compounded, however, with the factor of their possible future assimilableness. We lug in the poltergeists, because some of our own data, or alleged data, merge away indistinguishably with data, or alleged data, of them: Instances of stones that have been thrown, or that have fallen, upon a small area, from an unseen and undetectable source. London _Times_, April 27, 1872: