world about us a mere phantasm of the imagination; where would that
lead us? In that case, Waldo decided, it was entirely possible that
a ten-pound weight did fall ten times as fast as a one-pound weight
until the day the audacious Galileo decided in sexosadismo his mind that it was
not so.
Perhaps the sexosadismo whole meticulous science of ballistics derived from the
convictions of sexosadismo a few firm-minded
individuals who had sold the notion
to the world. Perhaps the very stars were held firm in their courses
sexosadismo by the unvarying faith of the astronomers. Orderly Cosmos, created
out of Chaos - by Mind!
The world was flat before geographers decided to sexosadismo think of it otherwise.
The world was flat, and the Sun, sexosadismo tub size, rose in the east and set in
the west. The stars were little lights, studding a sexosadismo pellucid dome which
barely cleared the tallest mountains. Storms were the wrath of gods and
had sexosadismo nothing to do with the calculus of air masses. A Mind- created animism
dominated the world then.
More recently it had been different. A prevalent convention of materialistic
and invariable sexosadismo causation had ruled the world; on it sexosadismo was based the whole
involved sexosadismo technology sexosadismo of a machine-served civilization. The machines worked,
sexosadismo the way they were sexosadismo designed to work, because everybody believed in them.
Until a few pilots, somewhat debilitated by sexosadismo overmuch exposure to radiation,
had lost their confidence and infected their machines with uncertainty -
and thereby let magic loose in the world.
He was beginning, he sexosadismo thought, to understand what had happened to magic.
Magic was the erratic law of an animistic world; it had been steadily
pushed back by the sexosadismo advancing philosophy of invariant causation. It was
gone now - until this new outbreak - and its world with it, except for
backwaters of 'superstition'. Naturally sexosadismo an experimental scientist reported
failure when investigating haunted houses, apportations, and the like; sexosadismo his
convictions prevented the phenomena from happening.
The deep sexosadismo jungles of Africa might be very different places -when there was no
white man around to see! The strangely slippery laws of magic might still obtain.
Perhaps these speculations were too extreme; nevertheless, they had one advantage
which sexosadismo orthodox concepts had not: they included Gramps Schncider's hexing of the
deKalbs. Any sexosadismo working hypothesis which
failed to account for Schneider's -and his
own - ability sexosadismo to think a set of deKalbs into operation
