I hesitated a moment, then said: Not too clearly, but I see what you’re driving at. I believe, however, that if given time to reflect I could answer your question.
Well, let’s not bother now, said Karen. I merely wanted to test your background.
Take it for granted that it’s nil, said I, growing a bit annoyed by these preliminaries.
You must excuse me, said Karen, for beginning in this fashion. It’s not very kind, is it? A hangover from school days, I guess. Look here, Henry … Intelligence is one thing—native intelligence, I mean. Knowledge is another. Knowledge and training, I should say, because they go together. What you know you’ve picked up in haphazard fashion. I underwent a rigorous discipline. I say this so that you will understand why I fumble about instead of answering right off the bat. In these matters we speak different languages, you and I. In a way—forgive the thought!—you’re like a superior type of savage. Your I.Q. is probably just as high as mine, perhaps higher. But we approach the domain of knowledge in diametrically opposite ways. Because of my training and background I’m quite apt to underestimate your ability to grasp what I have to impart. And you, for your part, are most apt to think that I am wasting words, splitting hairs, parading my erudition.
I interrupted him. It’s you who fancy all this, said I. I haven’t any preconceived notions whatsoever. It doesn’t matter to me how you proceed, so long as you give me a definite answer.
That’s just what I expected you to say, old man. To you it’s all quite simple and straightforward. Not so to me! You see, I was taught to postpone queries of this sort until convinced that I could find the answer nowhere … However, all this is no answer, is it? Now let’s see … What was it precisely you wished to know? It’s important to get that straight, otherwise we’ll end up in the Pontine marshes.
I read the second statement over again, giving emphasis to the words less swayed by the imagination.
To my own astonishment I caught myself saying: Never mind, I understand it perfectly now.
You do? cried Karen. Huh! Explain it to roe, then, will you?
I’ll try, said I, though you must realize that it’s one thing to understand a thing yourself and another to explain it to someone. (That’s tit for tat, thought I to myself.) Then, sincerely in earnest, I began: If you were a prophet instead of a statistician or mathematician, I would say that there was something of a resemblance between you and Nostradamus. I mean, in the way you go about things. The prophetic art is a gift, and so is the mathematical flair, if I may call it that. Nostradamus, it would seem, refused to exploit his natural gift in the usual way. As you know, he was versed not only in astrology but in the magic arts. He had knowledge of things hidden—or forbidden—to the scholar. He was not only a physician but a psychologist. He was many, many things all in one. In short, he had command of so many coordinates that it clipped his wings. He limited himself—I say this advisedly—to what was given, like a scientist. In his solo flights he moved from one level to another with cold-blooded precision, always equipped with instruments, charts, tables and private keys. However fantastic his prophecies may sound to us, I doubt if they originated in dream and reverie. Inspired they were, beyond question. But one has every reason to believe that Nostradamus deliberately refused to give free rein to his imagination. He proceeded objectively, so to speak, even when (paradoxical as it may sound) he was subjugated by trance. The purely personal aspect of his work … I hesitate to call it his creation … centers about the veiled delivery of the oracles, the reason for which he made clear in the Preface to Caesar, his son. There is a dispassionate tone about the nature of these revelations which one feels is not altogether attributable to modesty on the part of Nostradamus. He stresses the fact that it is God who deserves the credit, not himself. Now a true visionary would be fervent about the revelations disclosed to him; he would make haste either to recreate the world, according to the divine wisdom he had tasted, or he would make haste to unite himself with his Creator.
A prophet, more egotistical still, would make use of his illumination to take revenge upon his fellow-men … I’m hazarding all this at random, you understand. I gave him a quick, keen glance to make sure I had him hooked, then continued. And now, suddenly, I think I begin to understand the real import of the first citation. I mean that part about the grand object of Nostradamus, which, as you recall, the French commentator would have us believe was nothing less than a desire to give predominant significance to the French Revolution. Myself, I think that if Nostradamus had any ulterior motive for dwelling on this event so markedly, it wag in order to disclose to us the manner in which history is to be liquidated. A phrase like la fin des temps—what does it mean? Can there really be an end to time? And if so, could it possibly mean that time’s end is really our beginning? Nostradamus predicts a millenium to come—in a time not far distant, either.
I am no longer sure at the moment whether it follows upon the Day of Judgment or precedes it. Neither am I certain whether his vision extended to the end of the world or not. (He speaks of the year 3797, if I remember rightly, as though that were as far as he could see.) I don’t think the two—the Judgment Day and the end of the world—were meant to be simultaneous. Man knows no end, that’s my conviction. The world may come to an end, but if so, it will be the world imagined by the scientists, not the world God created. When the end comes we will take our world with us. Don’t ask me to explain this—I just know it for a fact … But to approach this end business from another angle. All it can possibly mean, as I see it now—and to be sure, this is quite enough!—is the emergence of a new and fecund chaos. Were we living in Orphic times we would speak of it as the coming of a new order of gods, meaning, if you like, the investiture of a new and greater consciousness, something even beyond cosmic consciousness. I look upon the Oracles of Nostradamus as the work of an aristocratic spirit. It has meaning only for true individuals … To get back to the Vulgar Advent, excuse my circumlocutiousness! The phrase so widely used today—the common man—strikes me as an utterly meaningless one.
There is no such animal. If the phrase has any meaning at all, and I think Nostradamus certainly implied as much when he spoke of the Vulgar Advent, it means that all that is abstract and negative, or retrogressive, has now assumed dominion. Whatever the common man is or is not, one thing is certain—he is the very antithesis of Christ or Satan. The term itself seems to imply absence of allegiance, absence of faith, absence of guiding principle—or even instinct. Democracy, a vague, empty word, simply denotes the confusion which the common man has ushered in and in which he flourishes like the weed. One might as well say—mirage, illusion, hocus-pocus. Have you ever thought that it may be on this note—on the rise and dominion of an anacephalic body—that history will end? Perhaps we will have to begin all over again from where the Cro-Magnon man left off. One thing seems highly evident to me, and that is that the note of doom and destruction, which figures so heavily in all prophecies, springs from the certain knowledge that the historical or world element in man’s life is but transitory. The seer knows how, why and where we got off the track. He knows further that there is little to be done about it, so far as the great mass of humanity is concerned. History must run its course, we say. True, but only? Because history is the myth, the true myth, of man’s fall made manifest in time. Man’s descent into the illusory realm of matter must continue until there is nothing left to do but swim up to the surface of reality—and live in the light of everlasting truth. The men of spirit constantly exhort us to hasten the end and commence anew. Perhaps that is why they are called paracletes, or divine advocates. Comforters, if you like. They never exult in the coming of catastrophe, as mere prophets sometimes do. They indicate, and usually illustrate by their lives, how we may convert seeming catastrophe to divine ends. That is to say, they show us, those of us who are ready and aware, how to adapt and attune ourselves to a reality which is permanent and indestructible. They make their appeal…
At this point Karen signalled me to stop. Christ, man, he exclaimed, what a pity you aren’t living in the Middle Ages! You would have made one of the great Schoolmen. You’re a metaphysician, by crikey. You ask a question and you answer it like
