Mr. Propter smiled at him good-humouredly. “It’s all right,” he said. “I won’t say a word about harps or wings.”
“Well, that’s something,” said Jeremy.
“I never could get much satisfaction out of meaningless discourse,” Mr. Propter continued. “I like the words I use to bear some relation to facts. That’s why I’m interested in eternity—psychological eternity. Because it’s a fact.”
“For you, perhaps,” said Jeremy in a tone which implied that more civilized people didn’t suffer from these hallucinations.
“For any one who chooses to fulfil the conditions under which it can be experienced.”
“And why should any one choose to fulfil them?”
“Why should any one choose to go to Athens to see the Parthenon? Because it’s worth the bother. And the same is true of eternity. The experience of timeless good is worth all the trouble it involves.”
“Timeless good,” Jeremy repeated with distaste. “I don’t know what the words mean.”
“Why should you?” said Mr. Propter. “One doesn’t know the full meaning of the word ‘Parthenon’ until one has actually seen the thing.”
“Yes, but at least I’ve seen photographs of the Parthenon; I’ve read descriptions.”
“You’ve read descriptions of timeless good,” Mr. Propter answered. “Dozens of them. In all the literatures of philosophy and religion. You’ve read them; but you’ve never bought your ticket for Athens.”
In a resentful silence, Jeremy had to admit to himself that this was true. The fact that it was true made him disapprove of the conversation even more profoundly than he had done before.
“As for time,” Mr. Propter was saying to Pete, “what is it, in this particular context, but the medium in which evil propagates itself, the element in which evil lives and outside of which it dies? Indeed, it’s more than the element of evil, more than merely its medium. If you carry your analysis far enough, you’ll find that time is evil. One of the aspects of its essential substance.”
Jeremy listened with growing discomfort and a mounting irritation. His fears had been justified; the old boy was launching out into the worst kind of theology. Eternity, timeless experience of good, time as the substance of evil—it was bad enough, God knew, in books; but, fired at you like this, point blank by somebody who really took it seriously, why, it was really frightful. Why on earth couldn’t people live their lives in a rational, civilized way? Why couldn’t they take things as they came? Breakfast at nine, lunch at one-thirty, tea at five. And conversation. And the daily walk with Mr. Gladstone, the Yorkshire terrier. And the library; the Works of Voltaire in eighty-three volumes; the inexhaustible treasure of Horace Walpole; and for a change the “Divine Comedy”; and then in case you might be tempted to take the Middle Ages too seriously, Salimbene’s autobiography and the “Miller’s Tale.” And sometimes calls in the afternoon—the Rector, Lady Fredegond with her ear trumpet, Mr. Veal.
And political discussions—except that in these last months, since the Anschluss and Munich one had found that political discussion was one of the unpleasant things it was wise to avoid. And the weekly journey to London, with lunch at the Reform, and always dinner with old Thripp of the British Museum; and a chat with one’s poor brother Tom at the Foreign Office (only that too was rapidly becoming one of the things to be avoided). And then, of course, the London Library, and Vespers at Westminster Cathedral, if they happened to be singing Palestrina, and every alternate week, between five and six-thirty, an hour and a half with Mae or Doris in their flat in Maida Vale. Infinite squalor in a little room, as he liked to call it; abysmally delightful. Those were the things that came; why couldn’t they take them, quietly and sensibly? But no, they had to gibber about eternity and all the rest.
That sort of stuff always made Jeremy want to be blasphemous—to ask whether God had a boyau rectum, to protest, like the Japanese in the anecdote, that he was altogether flummoxed and perplexed by position of Honourable Bird. But unfortunately, the present was one of those peculiarly exasperating cases where such reactions were out of place. For, after all, old Propter had written “Short Studies”; what he said couldn’t just be dismissed as the vapourings of a deficient mind. Besides, he hadn’t talked Christianity, so that jokes about anthropomorphism were beside the point. It was really too exasperating! He assumed an expression of haughty detachment and even started to hum “The Honeysuckle and the Bee.” The impression he wanted to give was that of a superior being who really couldn’t be expected to waste his time listening to stuff like this.
A comic spectacle, Mr. Propter reflected as he looked at him; except, of course, that it was so extremely depressing.
Chapter IX
“TIME and craving,” said Mr. Propter, “craving and time—two aspects of the same thing; and that thing is the raw material of evil. So you see, Pete,” he added in another tone, “you see what a queer sort of present you’ll be making us, if you’re successful in your work. Another century or so of time and craving. A couple of extra life-times of potential evil.”
“And potential good,” the young man insisted with a note of protest in his voice.
“And potential good,” Mr. Propter agreed. “But only at a far remove from that extra time you’re giving us.”
“Why do you say that?” Pete asked.
“Because potential evil is in time; potential good isn’t. The longer you live, the more evil you automatically come into contact with. Nobody comes automatically into contact with good. Men don’t find more good by merely existing longer. It’s curious,” he went on reflectively, “that people should always have concentrated on the problem of evil. Exclusively. As though the nature of good were something self-evident. But it isn’t self-evident. There’s a problem of good at least as difficult as the problem of evil.”
“And what’s the solution?” Pete asked.
“The solution is very simple and profoundly unacceptable. Actual good is outside time.”
“Outside time? But then how . . . ?”
“I told you it was unacceptable,” said Mr. Propter.
“But if it’s outside time, then . . .”
“. . . then nothing within time can be actual good. Time is potential evil, and craving converts the potentiality into actual evil. Whereas a temporal act can never be more than potentially good, with a potentiality, what’s more, that can’t be actualized except out of time.”
“But inside time, here—you know, just doing the ordinary things—hell! we do sometimes do right. What acts are good?”
“Strictly speaking, none,” Mr. Propter answered. “But in practice, I think one’s justified in applying the word to certain acts. Any act that contributes towards the liberation of those concerned in it—I’d call it a good act.”
“Liberation?” the young man repeated dubiously. The words, in his mind, carried only economic and revolutionary connotations. But it was evident that Mr. Propter wasn’t talking about the necessity for getting rid of capitalism. “Liberation from what?”
Mr. Propter hesitated before replying. Should he go on with this? he wondered. The Englishman was hostile; the time short; the boy himself entirely ignorant. But it was an ignorance evidently mitigated by good will and a touching nostalgia for perfection. He decided to take a chance and go on.
“Liberation from time,” he said. “Liberation from craving and revulsion. Liberation from personality.”
“But, heck,” said Pete, “you’re always talking about democracy. Doesn’t that mean respecting personality?”
“Of course,” Mr. Propter agreed. “Respecting it in order that it may be able to transcend itself. Slavery and fanaticism intensify the obsession with time and evil and the self. Hence the value of democratic institutions and a sceptical attitude of mind. The more you respect a personality, the better its chance of discovering that all personality is a prison. Potential good is anything that helps you to get out of prison. Actualized good lies outside the prison, in timelessness, in the state of pure, disinterested consciousness.”
“I’m not much good at abstractions,” said the young man. “Let’s take some concrete examples. What about science, for instance? Is that good?”
“Good, bad and indifferent, according to how it’s pursued and what it’s used for. Good, bad and indifferent, first of all, for the scientists themselves—just as art and scholarship may be good, bad or indifferent for artists and scholars. Good if it facilitates liberation; indifferent if it neither helps nor hinders; bad if it makes liberation more difficult by intensifying the obsession with personality. And, remember, the apparent selflessness of the scientist, or the artist, is not necessarily a genuine freedom from the bondage of personality. Scientists and artists are men devoted to what we vaguely call an ideal. But what is an ideal? An ideal is merely the projection, on an enormously enlarged scale, of some aspect of personality.”
“Say that again,” Pete requested, while even Jeremy so far forgot his pose of superior detachment to lend his most careful attention.
Mr. Propter said it again. “And that’s true,” he went on, “of every ideal except the highest, which is the ideal of liberation—liberation from personality, liberation from time and craving, liberation into union with God, if you don’t object to the word, Mr. Pordage. Many people do,” he added. “It’s one of the words that the Mrs. Grundys of the intellect find peculiarly shocking. I always try to spare their sensibilities, if I can. Well, to return to our idealist,” he continued, glad to see that Jeremy had been constrained, in spite of himself, to smile. “If he serves any ideal
