The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics) (5 page)

Mother Teresa has occasionally hobnobbed with the wealthy, the powerful and the corrupt. In Mr. Hitchens’s eyes this is a cause for deepest scandal. In his indignation and obsessive denunciations, I wonder if he is not the victim of a common syndrome, which was best diagnosed in the ancient parable of “The Crow and the Phoenix.”

The phoenix is a rare and delicate bird, most fastidious in all its habits: it roosts only on the tallest branches of one certain species of tree, the lofty catalpa; it drinks nothing but the purest dewdrops; it eats nothing but the inner petals of precious orchids. Once, as the phoenix was circling above the forest at dusk, preparing to alight for the night on a tall catalpa, down below in the mud a crow that was busy gobbling up a rotten dead rat saw the shadow of the noble bird and lifting up its head screeched angrily at him: “Don’t you dare steal my dinner!”

Mr. Hitchens’s fierce indignation betrays a naïveté that is so touching, it almost brings tears to the eyes. Can he
really
believe that a person such as Mother Teresa is looking forward to eating dead rats in the company of millionaire vulgarians and tin-pot dictators? To be invited with the famous and the glamorous inside the palatial mansions of the criminally rich, or aboard their fabulous yachts, may perhaps present some seductive glitter to wretched mediocrities such as Mr. Hitchens or myself; but I doubt if it can hold much seduction for Mother Teresa. Not that I imagine her to be above all temptations. On the contrary: even the Prince of Angels was tempted and fell—but it was not for the dubious privilege of drinking an
apéritif
with “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

Still (you will say), the fact remains that she has occasionally shared the repasts of disreputable characters. Why?

When John Henry Newman gave up the exquisite sophistication of a congenial life of scholarship among his peers in Oxford and joined the Catholic Church—a church of uneducated workers and poor Irish servants—he found himself burdened with prosaic parish duties in the intellectual backwaters of Birmingham. A snobbish monsignor took pity on what he believed to be his painful predicament and wrote him a letter, inviting him to come to Rome, where he would find a more cultured milieu. Newman’s curt reply is well-known: “I have received your letter inviting me to preach in your church at Rome to ‘an audience more educated than could ever be the case in England.’ However,
Birmingham people have souls
: and I have neither taste nor talent for the sort of work which you cut out for me: and I beg to decline your offer.”

This is a reality which a reverse snobbery usually prevents us from perceiving (and which—let us admit it—runs against all visible evidence), but it remains nevertheless true: just like the people of Birmingham, the wealthy, the powerful and the corrupt
also have souls
.

Jesus knew this already. In Jericho, a man called Zacchaeus—the wealthiest crook in town, who was rightly detested and despised by all decent people—eagerly wanted to meet him. Being aware of this, Jesus invited himself into Zacchaeus’s house, to the latter’s delight. But this move provoked a scandal among the Pharisees and the Hitch
enses. (The original text of the Gospel is traditionally translated as “the Pharisees and the Scribes.” We are following here an emendation that seems justified by modern exegesis.)

All took it amiss. “He has gone in to lodge,” they said, “with one who is a sinner.” To which Jesus retorted: “He too is a son of Abraham. That is what the Son of Man has come for, to search out and save what was lost.”

* * *

Once—many years ago—a minuscule incident afforded me a deeply upsetting revelation. I was writing in a café; I had been sitting there for a couple of hours already, comfortably settled at a table with my books and papers. Like many lazy people, I enjoy a measure of hustle and bustle around me while I am supposed to work—it gives me an illusion of activity—and thus the surrounding din of conversations and calls did not disturb me in the least. The radio that had been blaring in a corner all morning could not bother me either: pop songs, stockmarket figures, muzak, horseracing reports, more pop songs, a lecture on foot-and-mouth disease in cows—whatever: this audio-pap kept dripping like lukewarm water from a leaky faucet and nobody was listening anyway.

Suddenly a miracle occurred. For a reason that will forever remain mysterious, this vulgar broadcasting routine gave way without transition (or, if there had been one, it escaped my attention) to the most sublime music: the first bars of Mozart’s clarinet quintet began to flow and with serene authority filled the entire space of the café, turning it at once into an antechamber of Paradise. But the other patrons who had been chatting, drinking, playing cards or reading newspapers were not deaf after all: this magical irruption of a voice from heaven provoked a general start among them—all faces turned round, frowning with puzzled concern. Yet, in a matter of seconds, to the huge relief of all, one customer resolutely stood up, walked straight to the radio, turned the tuning knob and cut off this disquieting
intermède
, switched to another station and restored at once the more congenial noises, which everyone could again comfortably ignore.

At that moment the realisation hit me—and has never left me since: true Philistines are not people who are incapable of recognising beauty; they recognise it all too well; they detect its presence anywhere, immediately, and with a flair as infallible as that of the most sensitive aesthete—but for them, it is in order to be able better to pounce upon it at once and to destroy it before it can gain a foothold in their universal empire of ugliness. Ignorance is not simply the absence of knowledge, obscurantism does not result from a dearth of light, bad taste is not merely a lack of good taste, stupidity is not a simple want of intelligence: all these are fiercely
active
forces, that angrily assert themselves on every occasion; they tolerate no challenge to their omnipresent rule. In every department of human endeavour, inspired talent is an intolerable insult to mediocrity. If this is true in the realm of aesthetics, it is even more true in the world of ethics. More than artistic beauty, moral beauty seems to exasperate our sorry species. The need to bring down to our own wretched level, to deface, to deride and debunk any splendour that is towering above us, is probably the saddest urge of human nature.

T
HIS ESSAY
was originally an address to the annual conference of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, where its title, at the request of the organisers, was changed to “Historical and Other Truths”—which was deemed more appropriate for such a serious audience. For judges are supposed to be serious; indeed, don’t they wear wigs and gowns to convince us—and remind themselves—of their seriousness? Serious people have little time for any form of fiction. With such a flippant title, my talk was not likely to attract many listeners. Still, the change left me slightly uneasy—since, strictly speaking, I am not a historian—and I am glad to be able now to relinquish the false advertisement of which I was somehow guilty.

My article carries three epigraphs. Most lectures, addresses—and essays—are usually forgettable. Epigraphs should be memorable. My readers will naturally forget this article, but they should remember the epigraphs. The first one is by a painter, the second one by a philosopher, the third one by a poet.

Painters, philosophers, poets, creative writers—and also inventors
and scientists—all reach truth by taking imaginative short-cuts. Let us consider some of these.

Plato’s dialogues remain the cornerstone of all Western philosophy. Very often what we find at their core is not discursive reasoning but various myths—short philosophical parables. Myth is the oldest and richest form of fiction. It performs an essential function: “what myth communicates is not truth but reality; truth is always about something—reality is what truth is about” (C.S. Lewis).

At roughly the same time as Plato in the West, ancient Daoist thinkers in China also expressed their ideas in imaginative form. On the subject that occupies us here—how do our minds reach truth—there is one tale in Lie Zi that seems illuminating and fundamental.

In the time of the Warring States, horses were very important for military reasons. The feudal lords employed the services of experts to find good ones. Best of all was the super-horse (
qian-li ma
), an animal which could run a thousand miles a day without leaving tracks and without raising dust. Super-horses were most sought after, but they were also very rare and hard to detect. Hence the need for highly specialised experts; most famous among these was a man called Bole. Eventually Bole became too old to pursue his field trips prospecting for super-horses. Thus his employer, the Duke of Qin, asked him if he could recommend another expert to carry on with this task. “Yes,” said Bole, “I have a friend, a pedlar of firewood in the market, who is quite a connoisseur of horses.” Following Bole’s advice, the duke dispatched this man on a mission to find a super-horse. Three months later, the man returned and reported to the duke: “I have found one; it is in such-and-such a place; it’s a brown mare.” The duke sent his people to fetch the animal, which proved to be a black stallion. The duke was not happy and summoned Bole: “That friend of yours—he does not seem to be much of an expert: he could not even get the animal’s sex and colour right!” On hearing this, Bole was amazed:

And, needless to say, this particular animal proved to be a super-horse indeed, a horse that could run a thousand miles a day without leaving tracks and without raising dust.

In reflecting on the ways by which our minds apprehend truth, you may feel that a 2,300-year-old Chinese parable is of only limited relevance. But if so, let us consider something closer to hand: the mental processes followed by modern Western science.

Claude Bernard, the great pathologist whose research and discoveries were of momentous importance in the development of modern medical science, one day entered the lecture hall where he was going to teach and noticed something peculiar: various trays were on a table, containing different human organs; on one of these trays, flies had gathered. A common mind would have made a common observation, perhaps deploring a lack of cleanliness in the room or instructing the janitor to keep the windows shut. But Bernard’s was not a common mind: he observed that the flies had gathered on the tray which contained livers—and he thought, There must be sugar there. And he discovered the glycogenic function of the liver—a discovery that proved decisive for the understanding and treatment of diabetes.

I found this anecdote not in any history of medical science, but in the diaries of the greatest modern French poet, Paul Claudel. And Claudel commented: “This mental process is identical to that of
poetical
writing . . . The impelling motion is the same. Which shows that the primary source of scientific thought is not reasoning, but the precise verification of an association
originally supplied by the imagination
.”

Note that when I refer to “poetry,” I am taking this word in its most fundamental sense. Samuel Johnson, in his monumental dictionary of the English language, assigns three definitions to the word “poet,” in decreasing order of importance: first, “an inventor”; second, “an author of fiction”; and last, “a writer of poems.”

Truth is grasped by an imaginative leap. This applies not only to scientific thinking but also to philosophical thought. When I was a
naïve young student in the first year of university, our Arts course included the study of philosophy—a prospect that excited me much at first, though I was soon disappointed by the mediocrity of our lecturer. However, through family acquaintances I had the good fortune to know personally an eminent philosopher of our time, who happened to be also a kind and generous man. On my request, he drafted for me a list of basic readings: one handwritten page with bibliographic references of a selection of classic texts, modern works, histories of philosophy and introductions to philosophy. I treasured this document; yet, over the years, wandering round the world, I misplaced it and, like many other treasures, eventually lost it. Now, half a century later, I have long forgotten the actual items on the list. What I still remember is the postscript the great philosopher had inscribed at the bottom of that page—I remember it vividly because, at the time, I did not understand it and it puzzled me. The postscript said (underlined), “Most important of all, don’t forget: do read a lot of novels.” When I first read this note, as an immature student, it shocked me. Somehow it did not sound serious enough. For, naïvely, we tend to confuse what is
serious
with what is
deep
. (In the editorial pages of our newspapers, leading articles are serious, while cartoons are funny; yet quite often the cartoon is deep and the leader is vapid.) It took me a long time to appreciate the full wisdom of my philosopher’s advice; now I frequently encounter echoes of it. And to the observation I have already quoted elsewhere, that one should prefer a medical practitioner who reads Chekhov, I would add that, if I commit a crime, I hope to be judged by a judge who has read Simenon.

Men of action—people who are totally involved in tackling what they believe to be real life—tend to dismiss poetry and all forms of creative writing as a frivolous distraction. Our great Polar explorer Mawson wrote in a letter to his wife some instructions concerning their children’s education. He insisted that they should not waste their time reading novels, but should instead acquire factual information from books of history and biography.