The Plato Papers (2 page)

2

I will speak of a novelist, Charles Dickens, who flourished in a period somewhere between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries of our earth. The titles of his works have been retrieved but only one text survives, alas in an incomplete form. Seven pages have been removed, and the author’s name partially defaced, for reasons which are unknown to me. Most of the narrative remains, however, and it provides a unique opportunity to examine the nature of Mouldwarp imagination. The novel is entitled
On the Origin
of Species by Means of Natural Selection
, by Charles D—. The rest of the name has been gouged out by some crude tool, and the phrase ‘Vile stuff!’ written in a dye-based substance. Clearly the reader did not approve of the fiction! Perhaps it was too melodramatic, or romantic, for her refined taste! Despite this erasure, we have no cause to doubt that this novel was composed by the author of
Great Expectations
and
Hard
Times
.

It opens with a statement by the hero of the narrative—‘When on board HMS
Beagle
, as a naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts . . .’— who then proceeds to tell his remarkable story. By observing bees, and pigeons, and various other creatures around him, he manages to create within his own mind an entire world of such complexity that eventually he believes it to be real. This is reminiscent of another fiction we have recovered,
Don Quixote,
in which the protagonist is similarly deluded. The quixotic hero of
The Origin
, however, is portrayed as being obsessed by ‘struggle’, ‘competition’, and ‘death by natural selection’, in a manner both morbid and ludicrous. He pretends to be exact in his calculations but then declares that ‘I have collected a long list of such cases but here, as before, I lie under a great disadvantage in not being able to give them’. This wonderfully comic remark is succeeded by one no less rich in inadvertent humour. ‘It is hopeless’, he states, ‘to attempt to convince anyone of the truth of this proposition without giving the long array of facts I have collected, and which cannot possibly be here introduced.’ Here is a character who, if real, would not have been believed!

The subtlety of Charles Dickens’s fiction now becomes apparent. In the act of inventing this absurd fellow, this ‘naturalist’ travelling upon the extraordinarily named
Beagle
, he has managed indirectly to parody his own society. The subtitle of the novel itself suggests one of the objects of his satire—‘The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’ refers to the Mouldwarp delusion that all human beings could be classified in terms of ‘race’, ‘gender’ or ‘class’. We find interesting evidence of this in the anecdotes of a comedian, Brother Marx, of whom I will speak at a later date. Yet Dickens is able to mock this eccentric hypothesis through the words of his hapless narrator, who suggests that ‘widely ranging species which have already triumphed over many competitors . . . will have the best chance of seizing on new places when they spread into new countries’. It should be recalled that in the middle period of Mouldwarp the separate nations fought and colonised each other; as our hero puts it in his usual bland fashion, ‘the northern forms were enabled to beat the less powerful southern forms’ with the purpose ‘of being victorious in distant lands in the struggle for life with foreign associates’. It is the final masterstroke of irony by Charles Dickens that his character solemnly maintains the pretence of discussing only birds and insects, while at the same time providing a wonderfully succinct if brutal summary of the society from which he came!

His is a dark world indeed, dominated by the necessity of labour and the appetite for power. Even the bees are ‘anxious . . . to save time’, and the protagonist extols ‘the more efficient workshops of the north’; nature itself is described as frugal or even miserly, with a continual desire ‘to economise’! Yet, in a transitional chapter of this novel, the hero ceases to be merely comic and reveals more malign or sinister characteristics. He suggests the need for ‘heavy destruction’ and announces, with no irony at all, ‘let the strongest live and the weakest die’. In one remarkable passage he celebrates the spectacle of violent death—‘we ought to admire’, he informs us, ‘the savage instinctive hatred of the queen bee, which instantly urges her to destroy the young queens, her daughters’. We have come across fragments of writing—‘the death of queens’, ‘queens have died young and fair’—which suggest that he is here alluding to a dramatic tradition now lost to us. But nothing can disguise his own interest in carnage.

Combat and slaughter, in fact, become the principal components of the unreal world which he has created. He imagines all life on earth to be derived from one ‘common parent’ or ‘primordial form’; the offspring of this ‘prototype’ then develop into various species of animal or plant, which in turn fight among themselves in order to ‘progress towards perfection’. He calls it ‘evolution’. No laughter, please. He is only the protagonist of a novel! Well, laugh if you must. But remember that Charles Dickens himself is satirising the blind pretensions of his era. Remember, too, that no one from this dark past could have known that all aspects of the world change suddenly and that new organic life appears when the earth demands it. Only in the Age of Witspell, for example, was it realised that the petrified shapes found in rock or ice were created to mock or mimic their organic counterparts. In the same period it was also recognised that each portion of the earth produces its own creatures spontaneously.

I will conclude this oration with a theme introduced by the novel itself. Even as the protagonist concludes his false and rambling description of the natural world, he reflects upon his own experience in lugubrious terms. ‘How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man,’ he complains, ‘how short his time!’ These are typical Mouldwarp sentiments but, on this occasion, they come from a deluded scholar who claimed to understand the motive power behind such general ‘wishes and efforts’! May I recommend
The Origin of
Species
to you, then, as a comic masterpiece?

3

Madrigal:
Did you enjoy the oration?

Ornatus:
Immensely. Even the angels seemed interested, especially when Plato mentioned that theory— that thing—what was it?

Madrigal:
Convolution?

Ornatus:
Precisely. Convolutions. I had to laugh.

Madrigal:
We all did. But why are the beliefs of our ancestors so ridiculous? I am sure that they were sincerely held.

Ornatus: No doubt.

Madrigal:
Perhaps, in the future, someone might laugh at—well—you and me.

Ornatus:
There is nothing funny about us.

Madrigal:
As far as we know.

Ornatus:
A good point. We must ask Plato about this as soon as possible. To think that in our school-days we were all in the same parish—you, me, Plato.

Madrigal:
And Sparkler. How could you forget Sparkler? With his long robe and white hair.

Ornatus:
And Sidonia, too, with her red hair and the blue light shining from her.

Madrigal:
I have known them so long that sometimes they seem very close, and sometimes in the far distance.

Ornatus:
All human perception is a dream. Or so Plato tells us. And there he is by the clerk’s well. He seems to be talking to himself.

Madrigal:
Impossible. He must be practising his next oration.

4

Plato:
How do I know that you are my soul?

Soul:
How do you know that I am not?

Plato:
I have been taught that our souls exist, of course, but this is the first time you have decided to appear.

Soul:
It is unusual, I admit, but not wholly unprecedented. I can prove that I am your soul, by the way. Look at this.

Plato:
Is it truly? Oh, my mother. Can I touch—?

Soul:
No. It is not allowed. Now look what you have done. She has faded.

Plato:
How is it possible? How did you summon her?

Soul:
Her own soul was a close companion of mine. We used to talk and sing, when you and your mother were sitting together.

Plato:
She was always wreathed in white.

Soul:
That was the colour of the city in those days.

Plato:
We had an old house, built of light and not of stone.

Soul:
I remember it well. That was where it all began, I suppose.

Plato:
Began?

Soul:
Do you always ask questions? It may become irritating. She used to tell you stories. Fables and legends of the old time.

Plato:
So I became aware of the city and its history.

Soul:
So you did.

Plato:
And so I studied.

Soul:
So-so. You were chosen as orator, at least.

Plato:
No other citizen desired the office. It is not considered quite proper to dwell upon the past, as I do. It is not appropriate. Yet they attend the orations, and listen politely.

Soul:
Or laugh.

Plato:
I enjoy their laughter. I am their clown. I protect them from doubt about themselves. Even when I speak the truth, I am so small that they do not consider my words of much importance.

Soul:
You always speak the truth, as far as you understand it.

Plato:
And, presumably, that is not very far.

Soul:
I am not permitted to dwell upon such things. You are becoming. I am being. There is a difference. I wish that I could help you with your glossary of ancient terms, for instance, but it is forbidden. I cannot intervene.

Plato:
How did you know about—?

Soul:
You must have realised by now that we have a very intimate relationship. Well, if you will excuse me, I think I ought to rest for a while. May I just slip away quietly?

Plato:
Do you think anyone has noticed you?

Soul:
Of course not. You have been staring into space, and talking to yourself. That is all.

5

antibiotic:
a death ray of the Mouldwarp era.

biographer:
from bio-graphy, the reading of a life by means of lines. A fortune-teller or palmist.

brainstorm:
on certain occasions the amount of anger or anxiety in the brain was believed to cause a violent change in the weather.

CD:
an abbreviation of ‘cold dirge’, a form of music designed to calm or deaden human faculties.

common sense:
a theory that all human beings might be able to share one another’s thoughts, so that there would in reality be only one person upon the earth.

cost of living:
a phrase used to denote signs of weariness or debility; thus ‘Can you calculate her cost of living?’

daylight saving:
a technique by which light was stored in great containers and then taken through underground pipes to the residences of Mouldwarp.

dead end:
a place where corpses were taken. One such site has been located at Shadow-well or Shade-well in the east of the old city. Another has been found at Mortlake. Those who chose to inhabit these areas apparently suffered from a ‘death wish’.

decadence:
a belief in the recurrence of the decades so that, for example, the 2090s resembled the 1990s, which in turn recalled the 1890s. It is a theory that has never been wholly disproved and it retained certain adherents even in the Age of Witspell.

echology:
the practice of listening to the sound of one’s own voice, as if it then became of greater importance.

economics:
an ancient science, devoted to reducing all phenomena to their smallest and most niggardly point. Hence ‘to practise economy’ was synonymous with ‘miserliness’.

electricity:
a doubtful term but one generally thought to represent the element of fire or heat, as distinguished from moisture and cold. It was, therefore, a debased version of astral magic. In the earlier Age of Orpheus it was supposed that celestial bodies emanated a ‘spiritual and divine light’ which took ‘a gracious passage through all things’ with ‘a reception by each, according to each one’s capacity’. The nature of electricity suggests that this belief was somehow inherited by the people of Mouldwarp in a less holy and reverent form.

fibre optic:
a coarse material woven out of eyes, worn by the high priests of the mechanical age in order to instil terror among the populace.

firewater:
an unknown compound, perhaps related to the primitive superstition that there was a fire at the centre of all things. See ‘electricity’.

flying saucers:
a game for children. See also ‘fast food’.

free will:
a term of some significance in the Age of Mouldwarp, connected with the belief that individual choice or ‘will’ was of no value in a commercial market; it was therefore supplied free of charge.

globe:
for many centuries the earth was perceived as a flattened disc at the centre of the universe; at a later date it was considered to be a spherical or rounded object circulating through space. A globe was a model designed to represent this last concept, although its proportions were evidently taken from the laws of geometrical harmony. Thus it resembled the magical orbus of the astrologer.

GMT:
a hieroglyph discovered on several artefacts. It is believed to encode the ritualised worship of the god of mathematics and technology. See below.

god:
in the Age of the Apostles, considered to be the supreme ruler of the universe. In the Age of Mouldwarp, a mechanical and scientific genius. In the Age of Witspell, the principle of life reaching beyond its own limits.

half time:
the circumstance or condition in which events seem to unfold very slowly, believed to represent a concerted effort of the Mouldwarp world to stop before it was too late.

ideology:
the process of making ideas. The work was generally performed in silence and solitude, since great care was needed in their manufacture. Certain artisans were chosen for this occupation at an early age and were trained in mental workhouses or asylums. They were known as idealists, and were expected to provide a fixed number of ideas to be exhibited or dramatised for the benefit of the public.

ill wind:
a wind that was sick, having been created by human perception.

information: