‘Plato might have thought that, Plotinus might have felt it, but I doubt if you can make sense of it.’
‘Perhaps I can’t - but - when we love people - and things - and our work and - we somehow get the assurance that good is there - it’s absolutely pure and absolutely there - it’s in the fabric - it must be.’
‘We like to make much of this word “love”, to pat it and stroke it - but does love as we know it ever appear except as a mask of self? Ask your own soul. Who was that?’
At that moment they had been passed by Nesta Wiggins’s father, who raised his hat respectfully to the philosopher.
‘Dominic Wiggins, a tailor, he lives in Burkestown, a nice man.’
‘I remember the Wigginses,’ said John Robert, ‘they were Catholics.’
They were now walking on the Common where the ground was damp and muddy. Father Bernard hated getting mud on his shoes. Part of his cassock had become unpinned and was trailing on the wet grass verges. He was beginning to want a drink. If they stayed on the shorter path back into Burkestown by the old railway cutting they could reach the Green Man in twenty minutes. Or had someone told him that the confounded philosopher was a teetotaller?
Father Bernard said, ‘We like to say that everyone is selfish, but that’s just a hypothesis.’
John Robert said, ‘Good, good!’ He added, ‘Your mind interests me. But you haven’t answered my question.’
‘When we love pure things we experience pure love.’
‘People? Wretched crooks, thugs to a man?’
‘Loving others as Christ - I mean loving Christ in them.’
‘That really is sentimental twaddle. Kant thought we should respect Universal Reason in other people. Bunkum. If ex hypothesi I wanted you to love me, I should want you to love me, not my reason or my Christ nature.’
‘Well - yes - of course you are right.’
‘And things - I believe you mentioned loving things - how’s that done?’
‘Anything can be a sacrament - transformed - like the bread and wine.’
‘What for instance? Trees?’
‘Oh trees, yes - that tree — ’
They were just passing a hawthorn bush, it could scarcely be called a tree, which was putting out, amid its healthy shining thorns, sharp little vivid green buds.
‘The beauty of the world,’ said John Robert. ‘Unfortunately I am insensitive to it. Though it might have point as a contrast to art. Art is certainly the devil’s work, the magic that joins good and evil together, the magic place where they joyfully run together. Plato was right about art.’
‘You enjoy no art form?’
‘No.’
‘Surely metaphysics is art.’
‘That is - yes - a terrible thought.’ The philosopher was silent as if appalled by some dreadful vision which these words had conjured up. He said, ‘You see - the suspicion that one is not only not telling the truth, but cannot tell it - that is - damnation. A case for the millstone.’
As Father Bernard could think of nothing to say to this the philosopher went on:
‘Your idea of loving pure things is trickery, and I doubt if the notion of loving Christ in rotten swine like you and me even makes sense. It’s sentimentality. It’s all done with mirrors like the Ontological Proof. You imagine a perfect love which emanates from a pure source in response to your imperfect love, in response to your frenetic desire for love - then because this gives you a warm feeling you say you’re certain.’
‘I know that my Redeemer liveth.’
‘Mutatis mutandis! I suppose that’s what’s called faith. You feel it all coming beaming back. But you would need the God you don’t believe in to make it real. It’s all the same imperfect stuff churning to and fro. You want a response. You can’t have a real one so you fake one, like sending a letter to yourself.’
Father Bernard said, ‘It’s true - we do hunger for love - that’s deep all right. You too - you long to be loved - don’t you?’
After a moment Rozanov said, ‘Yes, but it’s a weakness - that’s the thing that I say in a whisper. Ah - well. Do you love your parishioners, the chap you visited? You see, after all you do visit them.’
‘A woman - well - not exactly.’ The image of Miss Dunbury accused Father Bernard and he laughed. ‘No - but I’m glad she exists.’
‘You laugh? She makes you feel happy, pleased?’
‘Yes, she’s funny. She’s virtuous and absurd.’
‘Isn’t happiness your good then?’
‘No, no, no. Good is my good.’
‘What does this tautology do for us? Good is a Cheshire cat.’
‘But don’t you think then that we can - do - anything?’
‘Morally? We can be quiet and sensible and feel contempt for ourselves. And there is the idea of duty, an excellent conception. I mean, these things go on. But chiefly - we can see ourselves as petty and ridiculous and - and base.’
‘That is your happiness.’
John Robert laughed. ‘There isn’t any deep structure in the world. At the bottom, which isn’t very far down, it’s all rubble, jumble. Not even muck, but jumble.’
‘Isn’t this stoicism, protecting yourself from being surprised by anything? Nil admirari.’
‘Protecting yourself from being surprised, or disgusted, or horrified, or appalled into madness - by anything - especially by yourself.’
‘Is morality a mistake then?’
‘A phenomenon.’
‘I think you are being - shall we say - insincere.’
‘Insincere. Good. Go on.’
‘You seem to me to be a very moralistic person. For instance, you seem to set some absolute value on truth.’
‘Moralistic is not moral. And as for truth — well, it’s like brown — it’s not in the spectrum.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s not a part of morality, not like you mean morality. Truth is impersonal. Like death. It’s a doom.’
‘Cold?’
‘Oh, these metaphors!’
‘But you can’t just recognize one value.’
‘Why not?’
‘I mean if you recognize one value won’t you find all the others hidden inside it? Must one not be able to?’
‘What sort of “must” is this? Are all values to come tumbling out of one like goodies out of a stocking? Truth is sui generis. And as for the rest - there is no spectrum, that was a bad image, a slip.’
‘A significant slip, I think.’
‘The idea of the internal connection of virtues is pure superstition, a comforting illusion, the sort of thing that I believed when I was twenty. That doesn’t bear close examination.’
‘Oh no — ’ said Father Bernard, or rather he murmured it. ‘Oh no,’ no.’
They were now in sight of the Ennistone Ring, the point at which the sage must at all costs be prevented from setting off diagonally across the Common and out into the countryside. Father Bernard was glad to see that he was flagging a little. The path had been uphill and they were both short of breath.
‘Bill the Lizard saw a flying saucer up here,’ said Rozanov.
‘But you don’t believe in such things?’
‘Why not? Think what we can do, and add a million years.’
‘But they don’t - appear - interfere.’
‘Why should they? They’re studying us. I should like to think that there were intelligences absolutely unlike my own. It would somehow be such a relief. Perhaps they live longer and have - oh -wonderful - real- philosophers.’