Empire unusual suggested

22 PASSPOKT TO MAGONIA
precisely with the purpose of changing the course of human
destiny by presenting us with evidence of our limitations in the
technical, as well as the mental, realm?"
This theory, which has been presented in particular by the
French science writer Aime Michel in several brilliant books and
articles, is perhaps the most intriguing that has been put forward
to date. It does not attempt, however, to answer the question of
the nature of the objects.
Children of the Unknown—if they arc not real, should we see
these rumors as a sign that something in human imagination has
changed, bringing into a new light uncharted areas of our "collective
unconscious"? They may be only children of our fancy, and
our love for them akin to our love for Batman and Cinderella,
But they may be real. Modern science rules over a narrow universe,
one particular variation on an infinite theme.
In any case, it is important to understand what need these
images fulfill, why this knowledge is both so exciting and so distressing
to us. Such is the subject of this book.
CHAPTER TWO
THE GOOD PEOPLE
Mans imagination, like every known
power, works by fixed laws, the existence
and operation of which it is possible to
trace: and it works upon the same material
—the external universe, the mental and
moral constitution of man and his social
relations. Hence, diverse as may seem at
first sight the results among the cultured
Europeans and the debased Hottentots,
the philosophical Hindoos and the Red
Indians of the Far West, they present on
a close examination, features absolutely
identical.
Edwin S. Hartland, The Science of
Fairy Tales—an Inquiry into Fairy
Mythology
IT WAS an unusual day for the Food and Drug Laboratory of the
U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, when the
Air Force requested an analysis of a piece of wheat cake that had
been cooked . . . aboard a flying saucer! The human being who
had obtained the cake was Joe Simonton, a sixty-year-old chicken
farmer who lived alone in a small house in the vicinity of Eagle
River, Wisconsin. He was given three cakes, ate one of them, and
thought it "tasted like cardboard." The Air Force put it more
scientifically:
The cake was composed of hydrogenated fat, starch, buckwheat
hulls, soya bean hulls, wheat bran. Bacteria and radiation readings
were normal for this material. Chemical, infra-red and other destructive
type tests were run on this material. The Food and Drug
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