And the things that sometimes deep-sea fishes are bumped by.
Reluctances and the disguises or covered retreats of such words as "like" and "resemble"--or that conditions of Intermediateness forbid abrupt transitions--but that the spirit animating all Intermediateness is to achieve abrupt transitions--because, if anything could finally break away from its origin and environment, that would be a real thing--something not merging away indistinguishably with the surrounding. So all attempt to be original; all attempt to invent something that is more than mere extension or modification of the preceding, is positivism--or that if one could conceive of a device to catch flies, positively different from, or unrelated to, all other devices--up he'd shoot to heaven, or the Positive Absolute--leaving behind such an incandescent train that in one age it would be said that he had gone aloft in a fiery chariot, and in another age that he had been struck by lightning--
I'm collecting notes upon persons supposed to have been struck by lightning. I think that high approximation to positivism has often been achieved--instantaneous translation--residue of negativeness left behind, looking much like effects of a stroke of lightning. Some day I shall tell the story of the _Marie Celeste_--"properly," as the _Scientific American Supplement_ would say--mysterious disappearance of a sea captain, his family, and the crew--
Of positivists, by the route of Abrupt Transition, I think that Manet was notable--but that his approximation was held down by his intense relativity to the public--or that it is quite as impositive to flout and insult and defy as it is to crawl and placate. Of course, Manet began with continuity with Courbet and others, and then, between him and Manet there were mutual influences--but the spirit of abrupt difference is the spirit of positivism, and Manet's stand was against the dictum that all lights and shades must merge away suavely into one another and prepare for one another. So a biologist like De Vries represents positivism, or the breaking of Continuity, by trying to conceive of evolution by mutation--against the dogma of indistinguishable gradations by "minute variations." A Copernicus conceives of helio-centricity. Continuity is against him. He is not permitted to break abruptly with the past. He is permitted to publish his work, but only as "an interesting hypothesis."