Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy

Romanticism

…the path of mystery leads inwards…

Hilde let the heavy ring binder slide into her lap. Then she let it slide further onto the floor.

It was already lighter in the room than when she had gone to bed. She looked at the clock. It was almost three. She snuggled down under the covers and closed her eyes. As she was falling asleep she wondered why her father had begun to write about Little Red Ridinghood and Winnie-the-Pooh ...

She slept until eleven o’clock the next morning. The tension in her body told her that she had dreamed intensely all night, but she could not remember what she had dreamed. It felt as if she had been in a totally different reality.

She went downstairs and fixed breakfast. Her mother had put on her blue jumpsuit ready to go down to the boathouse and work on the motorboat. Even if it was not afloat, it had to be shipshape when Dad got back from Lebanon.

“Do you want to come down and give me a hand?”

“I have to read a little first. Should I come down with some tea and a mid-morning snack?”

“What mid-morning?”

When Hilde had eaten she went back up to her room, made her bed, and sat herself comfortably with the ring binder resting against her knees.

* * *

Sophie slipped through the hedge and stood in the big garden which she had once thought of as her own Garden of Eden . . .

There were branches and leaves strewn everywhere after the storm the night before. It seemed to her that there was some connection between the storm and the fallen branches and her meeting with Little Red Ridinghood and Winnie-the-Pooh.

She went into the house. Her mother had just gotten home and was putting some bottles of soda in the refrigerator. On the table was a delicious-looking chocolate cake.

“Are you expecting visitors?” asked Sophie; she had almost forgotten it was her birthday.

“We’re having the real party next Saturday, but I thought we ought to have a little celebration today as well.”

“How?”

“I have invited Joanna and her parents.”

“Fine with me.”

The visitors arrived shortly before half-past seven. The atmosphere was somewhat formal—Sophie’s mother very seldom saw Joanna’s parents socially.

It was not long before Sophie and Joanna went upstairs to Sophie’s room to write the garden party invitations. Since Alberto Knox was also to be invited, Sophie had the idea of inviting people to a “philosophical garden party.” Joanna didn’t object. It was Sophie’s party after all, and theme parties were “in” at the moment.

Finally they had composed the invitation. It had taken two hours and they couldn’t stop laughing.

Dear. . .

You are hereby invited to a philosophical garden party at 3 Clover Close on Saturday June 23 (Midsummer Eve) at 7 p.m. During the evening we shall hopefully solve the mystery of life. Please bring warm sweaters and bright ideas suitable for solving the riddles of philosophy. Because of the danger of woodland fires we unfortunately cannot have a bonfire, but everybody is free to let the flames of their imagination flicker unimpeded. There will be at least one genuine philosopher among the invited guests. For this reason the party is a strictly private arrangement. Members of the press will not be admitted. With regards,

Joanna Ingebrigtsen (organizing committee)

and Sophie Amundsen (hostess)

The two girls went downstairs to their parents, who were now talking somewhat more freely. Sophie handed the draft invitation, written with a calligraphic pen, to her mother.

“Could you make eighteen copies, please.” It was not the first time she had asked her mother to make photocopies for her at work.

Her mother read the invitation and then handed it to Joanna’s father.

“You see what I mean? She is going a little crazy.”

“But it looks really exciting,” said Joanna’s father, handing the sheet on to his wife. “I wouldn’t mind coming to that party myself.”

Barbie read the invitation, then she said: “Well, I must say! Can we come too, Sophie?”

“Let’s say twenty copies, then,” said Sophie, taking them at their word.

“You must be nuts!” said Joanna.

Before Sophie went to bed that night she stood for a long time gazing out of the window. She remembered how she had once seen the outline of Alberto’s figure in the darkness. It was more than a month ago. Now it was again late at night, but this was a white summer night.

Sophie heard nothing from Alberto until Tuesday morning. He called just after her mother had left for work.

“Sophie Amundsen.”

“And Alberto Knox.”

“I thought so.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t call before, but I’ve been working hard on our plan. I can only be alone and work undisturbed when the major is concentrating wholly and completely on you.”

“That’s weird.”

“Then I seize the opportunity to conceal myself, you see. The best surveillance system in the world has its limitations when it is only controlled by one single person ... I got your card.”

“You mean the invitation?”

“Dare you risk it?”

“Why not?”

“Anything can happen at a party like that.”

“Are you coming?”

“Of course I’m coming. But there is another thing. Did you remember that it’s the day Hilde’s father gets back from Lebanon?”

“No, I didn’t, actually.”

“It can’t possibly be pure coincidence that he lets you arrange a philosophical garden party the same day as he gets home to Bjerkely.”

“I didn’t think about it, as I said.”

“I’m sure he did. But all right, we’ll talk about that later. Can you come to the major’s cabin this morning?”

“I’m supposed to weed the flower beds.”

“Let’s say two o’clock, then. Can you make that?”

“I’ll be there.”

Alberto Knox was sitting on the step again when Sophie arrived.

“Have a seat,” he said, getting straight down to work.

“Previously we spoke of the Renaissance, the Baroque period, and the Enlightenment. Today we are going to talk about Romanticism, which could be described as Europe’s last great cultural epoch. We are approaching the end of a long story, my child.”

“Did Romanticism last that long?”

“It began toward the end of the eighteenth century and lasted till the middle of the nineteenth. But after 1850 one can no longer speak of whole ‘epochs’ which comprise poetry, philosophy, art, science, and music.”

“Was Romanticism one of those epochs?”

“It has been said that Romanticism was Europe’s last common approach to life. It started in Germany, arising as a reaction to the Enlightenment’s unequivocal emphasis on reason. After Kant and his cool intellectualism, it was as if German youth heaved a sigh of relief.”

“What did they replace it with?”

“The new catchwords were ‘feeling,”imagination,”experience,’ and ‘yearning.’ Some of the Enlightenment thinkers had drawn attention to the importance of feeling—not least Rousseau—but at that time it was a criticism of the bias toward reason. What had been an undercurrent now became the mainstream of German culture.”

“So Kant’s popularity didn’t last very long?”

“Well, it did and it didn’t. Many of the Romantics saw themselves as Kant’s successors, since Kant had established that there was a limit to what we can know of ‘das Ding an sich.’ On the other hand, he had underlined the importance of the ego’s contribution to knowledge, or cognition. The individual was now completely free to interpret life in his own way. The Romantics exploited this in an almost unrestrained ‘ego-worship,’ which led to the exaltation of artistic genius.”

“Were there a lot of these geniuses?”

“Beethoven was one. His music expresses his own feelings and yearnings. Beethoven was in a sense a ‘free’ artist—unlike the Baroque masters such as Bach and Handel, who composed their works to the glory of God, mostly in strict musical forms.”

“I only know the Moonlight Sonata and the Fifth Symphony.”

“But you know how romantic the Moonlight Sonata is, and you can hear how dramatically Beethoven expresses himself in the Fifth Symphony.”

“You said the Renaissance humanists were individualists too.”

“Yes. There were many similarities between the Renaissance and Romanticism. A typical one was the importance of art to human cognition. Kant made a considerable contribution here as well. In his aesthetics he investigated what happens when we are overwhelmed by beauty—in a work of art, for instance. When we abandon ourselves to a work of art with no other intention than the aesthetic experience itself, we are brought closer to an experience of ‘das Ding an sich.’ “

“So the artist can provide something philosophers can’t express?”

“That was the view of the Romantics. According to Kant, the artist plays freely on his faculty of cognition. The German poet Schiller developed Kant’s thought further. He wrote that the activity of the artist is like playing, and man is only free when he plays, because then he makes up his own rules. The Romantics believed that only art could bring us closer to ‘the inexpressible.’ Some went as far as to compare the artist to God.”

“Because the artist creates his own reality the way God created the world.”

“It was said that the artist had a ‘universe-creating imagination.’ In his transports of artistic rapture he could sense the dissolving of the boundary between dream and reality.

“Novalis, one of the young geniuses, said that ‘the world becomes a dream, and the dream becomes reality.’ He wrote a novel called Heinrich von Ofterdingen set in Medieval times. It was unfinished when he died in 1801, but it was nevertheless a very significant novel. It tells of the young Heinrich who is searching for the ‘blue flower’ that he once saw in a dream and has yearned for ever since. The English Romantic poet Coleridge expressed the same idea; saying something like this:

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?”

“How pretty!”

“This yearning for something distant and unattainable was characteristic of the Romantics. They longed for bygone eras, such as the Middle Ages, which now became enthusiastically reappraised after the Enlightenment’s negative evaluation. And they longed for distant cultures like the Orient with its mysticism. Or else they would feel drawn to Night, to Twilight, to old ruins and the supernatural. They were preoccupied with what we usually refer to as the dark side of life, or the murky, uncanny, and mystical.”

“It sounds to me like an exciting period. Who were these Romantics?”

“Romanticism was in the main an urban phenomenon. In the first half of the last century there was, in fact, a flourishing metropolitan culture in many parts of Europe, not least in Germany. The typical Romantics were young men, often university students, although they did not always take their studies very seriously. They had a decidedly anti-middle class approach to life and could refer to the police or their landladies as philistines, for example, or simply as the enemy.”

“I would never have dared rent a room to a Romantic!”

“The first generation of Romantics were young in about 1 800, and we could actually call the Romantic Movement Europe’s first student uprising. The Romantics were not unlike the hippies a hundred and fifty years later.”

“You mean flower power and long hair, strumming their guitars and lying around?”

“Yes. It was once said that ‘idleness is the ideal of genius, and indolence the virtue of the Romantic.’ It was the duty of the Romantic to experience life—or to dream himself away from it. Day-to-day business could be taken care of by the philistines.”

“Byron was a Romantic poet, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, both Byron and Shelley were Romantic poets of the so-called Satanic school. Byron, moreover, provided the Romantic Age with its idol, the Byronic hero—the alien, moody, rebellious spirit—in life as well as in art. Byron himself could be both willful and passionate, and being also handsome, he was besieged by women of fashion. Public gossip attributed the romantic adventures of his verses to his own life, but although he had numerous liaisons, true love remained as illusive and as unattainable for him as Novalis’s blue flower. Novalis became engaged to a fourteen-year-old girl. She died four days after her fifteenth birthday, but Novalis remained devoted to her for the rest of his short life.”

“Did you say she died four days after her fifteenth birthday?”

“Yes . . .”

“I am fifteen years and four days old today.”

“So you are.”

“What was her name?”

“Her name was Sophie.”

“What?”

“Yes, it was. . .”

“You scare me. Could it be a coincidence?”

“I couldn’t say, Sophie. But her name was Sophie.”

“Go on!”

“Novalis himself died when he was only twenty-nine. He was one of the ‘y°un9 dead.’ Many of the Romantics died young, usually of tuberculosis. Some committed suicide . . .”

“Ugh!”

“Those who lived to be old usually stopped being Romantics at about the age of thirty. Some of them went on to become thoroughly middle-class and conservative.”

“They went over to the enemy, then.”

“Maybe. But we were talking about romantic love. The theme of unrequited love was introduced as early as 1774 by Goethe in his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. The book ends with young Werther shooting himself when he can’t have the woman he loves . . .”

“Was it necessary to go that far?”

“The suicide rate rose after the publication of the novel, and for a time the book was banned in Denmark and Norway. So being a Romantic was not without danger. Strong emotions were involved.”

“When you say ‘Romantic/ I think of those great big landscape paintings, with dark forests and wild, rugged nature ... preferably in swirling mists.”

“Yes, one of the features of Romanticism was this yearning for nature and nature’s mysteries. And as I said, it was not the kind of thing that arises in rural areas. You may recall Rousseau, who initiated the slogan ‘back to nature.’ The Romantics gave this slogan popular currency. Romanticism represents not least a reaction to the Enlightenment’s mechanistic universe. It was said that Romanticism implied a renaissance of the old cosmic consciousness.”

“Explain that, please.”

“It means viewing nature as a whole; the Romantics were tracing their roots not only back to Spinoza, but also to Plotinus and Renaissance philosophers like Jakob Bohme and Giordano Bruno. What all these thinkers had in common was that they experienced a divine ‘ego’ in nature.”

“They were Pantheists then . . .”

“Both Descartes and Hume had drawn a sharp line between the ego and ‘extended’ reality. Kant had also left behind him a sharp distinction between the cognitive ‘I’ and nature ‘in itself.’ Now it was said that nature is nothing but one big ‘I.’ The Romantics also used the expressions ‘world soul’ or ‘world spirit.’ “

“I see.”

“The leading Romantic philosopher was Schelling, who lived from 1775 to 1854. He wanted to unite mind and matter. All of nature—both the human soul and physical reality—is the expression of one Absolute, or world spirit, he believed.”

“Yes, just like Spinoza.”

“Nature is visible spirit, spirit is invisible nature, said Schelling, since one senses a ‘structuring spirit’ everywhere in nature. He also said that matter is slumbering intelligence.”

“You’ll have to explain that a bit more clearly.”

“Schelling saw a ‘world spirit’ in nature, but he saw the same ‘world spirit’ in the human mind. The natural and the spiritual are actually expressions of the same thing.”

“Yes, why not?”

“World spirit can thus be sought both in nature and in one’s own mind. Novalis could therefore say ‘the path of mystery leads inwards.’ He was saying that man bears the whole universe within himself and comes closest to the mystery of the world by stepping inside himself.”

“That’s a very lovely thought.”

“For many Romantics, philosophy, nature study, and poetry formed a synthesis. Sitting in your attic dashing off inspired verses and investigating the life of plants or the composition of rocks were only two sides of the same coin because nature is not a dead mechanism, it is one living world spirit.”

“Another word and I think I’ll become a Romantic.”

“The Norwegian-born naturalist Henrik Steffens—whom Wergeland called ‘Norway’s departed laurel leaf because he had settled in Germany—went to Copenhagen in 1801 to lecture on German Romanticism. He characterized the Romantic Movement by saying, ‘Tired of the eternal efforts to fight our way through raw matter, we chose another way and sought to embrace the infinite. We went inside ourselves and created a new world ... ‘ “

“How can you remember all that?”

“A bagatelle, child.”

“Go on, then.”

“Schelling also saw a development in nature from earth and rock to the human mind. He drew attention to very gradual transitions from inanimate nature to more complicated life forms. It was characteristic of the Romantic view in general that nature was thought of as an organism, or in other words, a unity which is constantly developing its innate potentialities. Nature is like a flower unfolding its leaves and petals. Or like a poet unfolding his verses.”

“Doesn’t that remind you of Aristotle?”

“It does indeed. The Romantic natural philosophy had Aristotelian as well as Neoplatonic overtones. Aristotle had a more organic view of natural processes than the mechanical materialists . . .”

“Yes, that’s what I thought. . .”

“We find similar ideas at work in the field of history. A man who came to have great significance for the Romantics was the historical philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, who lived from 1744 to 1803. He believed that history is characterized by continuity, evolution, and design. We say he had a ‘dynamic’ view of history because he saw it as a process. The Enlightenment philosophers had often had a ‘static’ view of history. To them, there was only one universal reason which there could be more or less of at various periods. Herder showed that each historical epoch had its own intrinsic value and each nation its own character or ‘soul.’ The question is whether we can identify with other cultures.”

“So, just as we have to identify with another person’s Situation to understand them better, we have to identify with other cultures to understand them too.”

“That is taken for granted nowadays. But in the Romantic period it was a new idea. Romanticism helped strengthen the feeling of national identity. It is no coincidence that the Norwegian struggle for national independence flourished at that particular time—in 1814.”

“I see.”

“Because Romanticism involved new orientations in so many areas, it has been usual to distinguish between two forms of Romanticism. There is what we call Universal Romanticism, referring to the Romantics who were preoccupied with nature, world soul, and artistic genius. This form of Romanticism flourished first, especially around 1800, in Germany, in the town of Jena.”

“And the other?”

“The other is the so-called National Romanticism, which became popular a little later, especially in the town of Heidelberg. The National Romantics were mainly interested in the history of ‘the people,’ the language of ‘the people,’ and the culture of ‘the people’ in general. And ‘the people’ were seen as an organism unfolding its innate potentiality—exactly like nature and history.”

“Tell me where you live, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

“What united these two aspects of Romanticism was first and foremost the key word ‘organism.’ The Romantics considered both a plant and a nation to be a living organism. A poetic work was also a living organism. Language was an organism. The entire physical world, even, was considered one organism. There is therefore no sharp dividing line between National Romanticism and Universal Romanticism. The world spirit was just as much present in the people and in popular culture as in nature and art.”

“I see.”

“Herder had been the forerunner, collecting folk songs from many lands under the eloquent title Voices of the People. He even referred to folktales as ‘the mother tongue of the people.’ The Brothers Grimm and others began to collect folk songs and fairy tales in Heidelberg. You must know of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”

“Oh sure, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rumpelstiltskin, The Frog Prince, Hansel and Gretel . . .”

“And many more. In Norway we had Asbj0rnsen and Moe, who traveled around the country collecting ‘folks’ own tales.’ It was like harvesting a juicy fruit that was suddenly discovered to be both good and nourishing. And it was urgent—the fruit had already begun to fall. Folk songs were collected; the Norwegian language began to be studied scientifically. The old myths and sagas from heathen times were rediscovered, and composers all over Europe began to incorporate folk melodies into their compositions in an attempt to bridge the gap between folk music and art music.”

“What’s art music?”

“Art music is music composed by a particular person, like Beethoven. Folk music was not written by any particular person, it came from the people. That’s why we don’t know exactly when the various folk melodies date from. We distinguish in the same way between folktales and art tales.”

“So art tales are ... ?”

“They are tales written by an author, like Hans Christian Andersen. The fairy tale genre was passionately cultivated by the Romantics. One of the German masters of the genre was E.T.A, Hoffmann.”

“I’ve heard of The Tales of Hoffmann.”

“The fairy tale was the absolute literary ideal of the Romantics—in the same way that the absolute art form of the Baroque period was the theater. It gave the poet full scope to explore his own creativity.”

“He could play God to a fictional universe.”

“Precisely. And this is a good moment to sum up.”

“Go ahead.”

“The philosophers of Romanticism viewed the ‘world soul’ as an ‘ego’ which in a more or less dreamlike state created everything in the world. The philosopher Fichte said that nature stems from a higher, unconscious imagination. Scheliing said explicitly that the world is ‘in God.’ God is aware of some of it, he believed, but there are other aspects of nature which represent the unknown in God. For God also has a dark side.”

“The thought is fascinating and frightening. It reminds me of Berkeley.”

“The relationship between the artist and his work was seen in exactly the same light. The fairy tale gave the writer free rein to exploit his ‘universe-creating imagination.’ And even the creative act was not always completely conscious. The writer could experience that his story was being written by some innate force. He could practically be in a hypnotic trance while he wrote.”

“He could?”

“Yes, but then he would suddenly destroy the illusion. He would intervene in the story and address ironic comments to the reader, so that the reader, at least momentarily, would be reminded that it was, after all, only a story.”

“I see.”

“At the same time the writer could remind his reader that it was he who was manipulating the fictional universe. This form of disillusion is called ‘romantic irony.’ Henrik Ibsen, for example, lets one of the characters in Peer Gynt say: ‘One cannot die in the middle of Act Five.’ “

“That’s a very funny line, actually. What he’s really saying is that he’s only a fictional character.”

“The statement is so paradoxical that we can certainly emphasize it with a new section.”

“What did you mean by that?”

“Oh, nothing, Sophie. But we did say that Novalis’s fiancee was called Sophie, just like you, and that she died when she was only fifteen years and four days old ...”

“You’re scaring me, don’t you know that?”

Alberto sat staring, stony faced. Then he said: “But you needn’t be worriedthat you will meet the same fate as Novalis’s fiancee.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are several more chapters.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that anyone reading the story of Sophie and Alberto will know intuitively that there are many pages of the story still to come. We have only gotten as far as Romanticism.”

“You’re making me dizzy.”

“It’s really the major trying to make Hilde dizzy. It’s not very nice or him, is it? New section!”

* * *

Alberto had hardly finished speaking when a boy came running out of the woods. He had a turban on his head, and he was carrying an oil lamp.

Sophie grabbed Alberto’s arm.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

The boy answered for himself: “My name is Aladdin and I’ve come all the way from Lebanon.”

Alberto looked at him sternly:

“And what do you have in your lamp?”

The boy rubbed the lamp, and out of it rose a thick cloud which formed itself into the figure of a man. He had a black beard like Alberto’s and a blue beret. Floating above the lamp, he said: “Can you hear me, Hilde? I suppose it’s too late for any more birthday greetings. I just wanted to say that Bjerkely and the south country back home seem like fairyland to me here in Lebanon. I’ll see you there in a few days.”

So saying, the figure became a cloud again and was sucked back into the lamp. The boy with the turban put the lamp under his arm, ran into the woods, and was gone.

“I don’t believe this,” said Sophie.

“A bagatelle, my dear.”

“The spirit of the lamp spoke exactly like Hilde’s father.”

“That’s because it was Hilde’s father—in spirit.”

“But. . .”

“Both you and I and everything around us are living deep in the major’s mind. It is late at night on Saturday, April 28, and all the UN soldiers are asleep around the major, who, although still awake, is not far from sleep himself. But he must finish the book he is to give Hilde as a fifteenth birthday present. That’s why he has to work, Sophie, that’s why the poor man gets hardly any rest.”

“I give up.”

“New section!”

Sophie and Alberto sat looking across the little lake. Alberto seemed to be in some sort of trance. After a while Sophie ventured to nudge his shoulder.

“Were you dreaming?”

“Yes, he was interfering directly there. The last few paragraphs were dictated by him to the letter. He should be ashamed of himself. But now he has given himself away and come out into the open. Now we know that we are living our lives in a book which Hilde’s father will send home to Hilde as a birthday present. You heard what I said? Well, it wasn’t ‘me’ saying it.”

“If what you say is true, I’m going to run away from the book and go my own way.”

“That’s exactly what I am planning. But before that can happen, we must try and talk with Hilde. She reads every word we say. Once we succeed in getting away from here it will be much harder to contact her. That means we must grasp the opportunity now.”

“What do we say?”

“I think the major is just about to fall asleep over his typewriter—although his fingers are still racing feverishly over the keys ...”

“It’s a creepy thought.”

“This is the moment when he may write something he will regret later. And he has no correction fluid. That’s a vital part of my plan. May no one give the major a bottle of correction fluid!”

“He won’t get so much as a single coverup strip from me!”

“I’m calling on that poor girl here and now to rebel against her own father. She should be ashamed to let herself be amused by his self-indulgent playing with shadows. If only we had him here, we’d give him a taste of our indignation!”

“But he’s not here.”

“He is here in spirit and soul, but he’s also safely tucked away in Lebanon. Everything around us is the major’s ego.”

“But he is more than what we can see here.”

“We are but shadows in the major’s soul. And it is no easy matter for a shadow to turn on its master, Sophie. It requires both cunning and strategy. But we have an opportunity of influencing Hilde. Only an angel can rebel against God.”

“We could ask Hilde to give him a piece of her mind the moment he gets home. She could tell him he’s a rogue. She could wreck his boat—or at least, smash the lantern.”

Alberto nodded. Then he said: “She could also run away from him That would be much easier for her than it is for us. She could leave the major’s house and never return. Wouldn’t that be fitting for a major who plays with his ‘universe-creating imagination’ at our expense?”

“I can picture it. The major travels all over the world searching for Hilde. But Hilde has vanished into thin air because she can’t stand living with a father who plays the fool at Alberto’s and Sophie’s expense.”

“Yes, that’s it! Plays the fool! That’s what I meant by his using us as birthday amusement. But he’d better watch out, Sophie. So had Hilde!”

“How do you mean?”

“Are you sitting tight?”

“As long as there are no more genies from a lamp.”

“Try to imagine that everything that happens to us goes on in someone else’s mind. We are that mind. That means we have no soul, we are someone else’s soul. So far we are on familiar philosophical ground. Both Berkeley and Schelling would prick up their ears.”

“And?”

“Now it is possible that this soul is Hilde M0ller Knag’s father. He is over there in Lebanon writing a book on philosophy for his daughter’s fifteenth birthday. When Hilde wakes up on June 15, she finds the book on her bedside table, and now she—and anyone else—can read about us. It has long been suggested that this ‘present’ could be shared with others.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“What I am saying to you now will be read by Hilde after her father in Lebanon once imagined that I was telling you he was in Lebanon ... imagining me telling you that he was in Lebanon.”

Sophie’s head was swimming. She tried to remember what she had heard about Berkeley and the Romantics. Alberto Knox continued: “But they shouldn’t feel so cocky because of that. They are the last people who should laugh, because laughter can easily get stuck in their throat.”

“Who are we talking about?”

“Hilde and her father. Weren’t we talking about them?”

“But why shouldn’t they feel so cocky?”

“Because it is feasible that they, too, are nothing but mind.”

“How could they be?”

“If it was possible for Berkeley and the Romantics, it must be possible for them. Maybe the major is also a shadow in a book about him and Hilde, which is also about us, since we are a part of their lives.”

“That would be even worse. That makes us only shadows of shadows.”

“But it is possible that a completely different author is somewhere writing a book about a UN Major Albert Knag, who is writing a book for his daughter Hilde. This book is about a certain Alberto Knox who suddenly begins to send humble philosophical lectures to Sophie Amundsen, 3 Clover Close.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I’m just saying it’s possible. To us, that author would be a ‘hidden God.’ Although everything we are and everything we say and do proceeds from him, because we are him we will never be able to know anything about him. We are in the innermost box.”

Alberto and Sophie now sat for a long time without saying anything. It was Sophie who finally broke the silence: “But if there really is an author who is writing a story about Hilde’s father in Lebanon, just like he is writing a story about us . . .”

“Yes?”

“... then it’s possible that author shouldn’t be cocky either.”

“What do you mean?”

“He is sitting somewhere, hiding both Hilde and me deep inside his head. Isn’t it just possible that he, too, is part of a higher mind?”

Atberto nodded.

“Of course it is, Sophie. That’s also a possibility. And if that is the way it is, it means he has permitted us to have this philosophical conversation in order to present this possibility. He wishes to emphasize that he, too, is a helpless shadow, and that this book, in which Hilde and Sophie appear, is in reality a textbook on philosophy.”

“A textbook?”

“Because all our conversations, all our dialogues ...”

“Yes?”

“... are in reality one long monologue.”

“I get the feeling that everything is dissolving into mind and spirit. I’m glad there are still a few philosophers left. The philosophy that began so proudly with Thales, Em-pedocles, and Democritus can’t be stranded here, surely?”

“Of course not. I still have to tell you about Hegel. He was the first philosopher who tried to salvage philosophy when the Romantics had dissolved everything into spirit.”

“I’m very curious.”

“So as not to be interrupted by any further spirits or shadows, we shall go inside.”

“It’s getting chilly out here anyway.”

“Next chapter!”

Hegel

... the reasonable is that which is viable…

Hilde let the big ring binder fall to the floor with a heavy thud. She lay on her bed staring up at the ceiling. Her thoughts were in a turmoil.

Now her father really had made her head swim. The rascal! How could he?

Sophie had tried to talk directly to her. She had asked her to rebel against her father. And she had really managed to plant an idea in Hilde’s mind. A plan ...

Sophie and Alberto could not so much as harm a hair on his head, but Hilde could. And through Hilde, Sophie could reach her father.

She agreed with Sophie and Alberto that he was going too far in his game of shadows. Even if he had only made Alberto and Sophie up, there were limits to the show of power he ought to permit himself.

Poor Sophie and Alberto! They were just as defenseless against the major’s imagination as a movie screen is against the film projector.

Hilde would certainly teach him a lesson when he got home! She could already see the outline of a really good plan.

She got up and went to look out over the bay. It was almost two o’clock. She opened the window and called over toward the boathouse.

“Mom!”

Her mother came out.

“I’ll be down with some sandwiches in about an hour. Okay?”

“Fine.”

“I just have to read a chapter on Hegel.”

Alberto and Sophie had seated themselves in the two chairs by the window facing the lake.

“Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hege/was a legitimate child of Romanticism,” began Alberto. “One could almost say he developed with the German spirit as it gradually evolved in Germany. He was born in Stuttgart in 1770, and began to study theology in Tubingen at the age of eighteen. Beginning in 1799, he worked with Schelling in Jena during the time when the Romantic Movement was experiencing its most explosive growth. After a period as assistant professor in Jena he became a professor in Heidelberg, the center of German National Romanticism. In 1818 he was appointed professor in Berlin, just at the time when the city was becoming the spiritual center of Europe. He died of cholera in 1831, but not before ‘He-gelianism’ had gained an enormous following at nearly all the universities in Germany.”

“So he covered a lot of ground.”

“Yes, and so did his philosophy. Hegel united and developed almost all the ideas that had surfaced in the Romantic period. But he was sharply critical of many of the Romantics, including Schelling.”

“What was it he criticized?”

“Schelling as well as other Romantics had said that the deepest meaning of life lay in what they called the ‘world spirit.’ Hegel also uses the term ‘world spirit,’ but in a new sense. When Hegel talks of ‘world spirit’ or ‘world reason,’ he means the sum of human utterances, because only man has a ‘spirit.’

“In this sense, he can speak of the progress of world spirit throughout history. However, we must never forget that he is referring to human life, human thought, and human culture.”

“That makes this spirit much less spooky. It is not lying in wait anymore like a ‘slumbering intelligence’ in rocks and trees.”

“Now, you remember that Kant had talked about something he called ‘das Ding an sich.’ Although he denied that man could have any clear cognition of the innermost secrets of nature, he admitted that there exists a kind of unattainable ‘truth.’ Hegel said that ‘truth is subjective/ thus rejecting the existence of any ‘truth’ above or beyond human reason. All knowledge is human knowledge, he said.”

“He had to get the philosophers down to earth again, right?”

“Yes, perhaps you could say that. However, Hegel’s philosophy was so all-embracing and diversified that for present purposes we shall content ourselves with highlighting some of the main aspects. It is actually doubtful whether one can say that Hegel had his own ‘philosophy’ at all. What is usually known as Hegel’s philosophy is mainly a method for understanding the progress of history. Hegel’s philosophy teaches us nothing about the inner nature of life, but it can teach us to think productively.”

“That’s not unimportant.”

“All the philosophical systems before Hegel had had one thing in common, namely, the attempt to set up eternal criteria for what man can know about the world. This was true of Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant. Each and every one had tried to investigate the basis of human cognition. But they had all made pronouncements on the timeless factor of human knowledge of the world.”

“Isn’t that a philosopher’s job?”

“Hegel did not believe it was possible. He believed that the basis of human cognition changed from one generation to the next. There were therefore no ‘eternal truths/ no timeless reason. The only fixed point philosophy can hold on to is history itself.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to explain that. History is in a constant state of change, so how can it be a fixed point?”

“A river is also in a constant state of change. That doesn’t mean you can’t talk about it. But you cannot say at which place in the valley the river is the ‘truest’ river.”

“No, because it’s just as much river all the way through.”

“So to Hegel, history was like a running river. Every tiny movement in the water at a given spot in the river is determined by the falls and eddies in the water higher upstream. But these movements are determined, too, by the rocks and bends in the river at the point where you are observing it.”

“I get it... I think.”

“And the history of thought—or of reason—is like this river. The thoughts that are washed along with the current of past tradition, as well as the material conditions prevailing at the time, help to determine how you think. You can therefore never claim that any particular thought is correct for ever and ever. But the thought can be correct from where you stand.”

“That’s not the same as saying that everything is equally right or equally wrong, is it?”

“Certainly not, but some things can be right or wrong in relation to a certain historical context. If you advocated slavery today, you would at best be thought foolish. But you wouldn’t have been considered foolish 2,500 years ago, even though there were already progressive voices in favor of slavery’s abolition. But we can take a more local example. Not more than 100 years ago it was not considered unreasonable to burn off large areas of forest in order to cultivate the land. But it is extremely unreasonable today. We have a completely different—and better—basis for such judgments.”

“Now I see.”

“Hegel pointed out that as regards philosophical reflection, also, reason is dynamic; it’s a process, in fact. And the ‘truth’ is this same process, since there are no criteria beyond the historical process itself that can determine what is the most true or the most reasonable.”

“Examples, please.”

“You cannot single out particular thoughts from antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment and say they were right or wrong. By the same token, you cannot say that Plato was wrong and that Aristotle was right. Neither can you say that Hume was wrong but Kant and Schelling were right. That would be an antihistorical way of thinking.”

“No, it doesn’t sound right.”

“In fact, you cannot detach any philosopher, or any thought at all, from that philosopher’s or that thought’s historical context. But—and here I come to another point—because something new is always being added, reason is ‘progressive.’ In other words, human knowledge is constantly expanding and progressing.”

“Does that mean that Kant’s philosophy is nevertheless more right than Plato’s?”

“Yes. The world spirit has developed—and progressed—from Plato to Kant. And it’s a good thing! If we return to the example of the river, we could say that there is now more water in it. It has been running for over a thousand years. Only Kant shouldn’t think that his ‘truths’ will remain on the banks of the river like immovable rocks. Kant’s ideas get processed too, and his ‘reason’ becomes the subject of future generations’ criticism. Which is exactly what has happened.”

“But the river you talked about. . .”

“Yes?”

“Where does it go?”

“Hegel claimed that the ‘world spirit’ is developing toward an ever-expanding knowledge of itself. It’s the same with rivers—they become broader and broader as they get nearer to the sea. According to Hegel, history is the story of the ‘world spirit’ gradually coming to consciousness of itself. Although the world has always existed, human culture and human development have made the world spirit increasingly conscious of its intrinsic value.”

“How could he be so sure of that?”

“He claimed it as a historical reality. It was not a prediction. Anybody who studies history will see that humanity has advanced toward ever-increasing ‘self-knowledge’ and ‘self-development.’ According to Hegel, the study of history shows that humanity is moving toward greater rationality and freedom. In spite of all its capers, historical development is progressive. We say that history is purposeful.”

“So it develops. That’s clear enough.”

“Yes. History is one long chain of reflections. Hegel also indicated certain rules that apply for this chain of reflections. Anyone studying history in depth will observe that a thought is usually proposed on the basis of other, previously proposed thoughts. But as soon as one thought is proposed, it will be contradicted by another. A tension arises between these two opposite ways of thinking. But the tension is resolved by the proposal of a third thought which accommodates the best of both points of view. Hegel calls this a dialectic process.”

“Could you give an example?”

“You remember that the pre-Socratics discussed the question of primeval substance and change?”

“More or less.”

“Then the Eleatics claimed that change was in fact impossible. They were therefore forced to deny any change even though they could register the changes through their senses. The Eleatics had put forward a claim, and Hegel called a standpoint like that a thesis.”

“Yes?”

“But whenever such an extreme claim is proposed, a contradictory claim will arise. Hegel called this a nega-tion. The negation of the Eleatic philosophy was Heracli-tus, who said that everything flows. There is now a tension between two diametrically opposed schools of thought. But this tension was resolved when Empedocles pointed out that both claims were partly right and partly wrong.”

“Yes, it all comes back to me now . . .”

“The Eleatics were right in that nothing actually changes, but they were not right in holding that we cannot rely on our senses. Heraclitus had been right in that we can rely on our senses, but not right in holding that everything flows.”

“Because there was more than one substance. It was the combination that flowed, not the substance itself.”

“Right! Empedocles’ standpoint—which provided the compromise between the two schools of thought—was what Hegel called the negation of the negation.”

“What a terrible term!”

“He also called these three stages of knowledge thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. You could, for example, say that Descartes’s rationalism was a thesis—which was contradicted by Hume’s empirical antithesis. But the contradiction, or the tension between two modes of thought, was resolved in Kant’s synthesis. Kant agreed with the rationalists in some things and with the empiricists in others. But the story doesn’t end with Kant. Kant’s synthesis now becomes the point of departure for another chain of reflections, or ‘triad.’ Because a synthesis will also be contradicted by a new antithesis.”

“It’s all very theoretical!”

“Yes, it certainly is theoretical. But Hegel didn’t see it as pressing history into any kind of framework. He believed that history itself revealed this dialectical pattern. He thus claimed he had uncovered certain laws for the development of reason—or for the progress of the ‘world spirit’ through history.”

“There it is again!”

“But Hegel’s dialectic is not only applicable to history. When we discuss something, we think dialectically. We try to find flaws in the argument. Hegel called that ‘negative thinking.’ But when we find flaws in an argument, we preserve the best of it.”

“Give me an example.”

“Well, when a socialist and a conservative sit down together to resolve a social problem, a tension will quickly be revealed between their conflicting modes of thought. But this does not mean that one is absolutely right and the other totally wrong. It is possible that they are both partly right and partly wrong. And as the argument evolves, the best of both arguments will often crystallize.”

“I hope.”

“But while we are in the throes of a discussion like that, it is not easy to decide which position is more rational. In a way, it’s up to history to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. The reasonable is that which is viable.”

“Whatever survives is right.”

“Or vice versa: that which is right survives.”

“Don’t you have a tiny example for me?”

“One hundred and fifty years ago there were a lot of people fighting for women’s rights. Many people also bitterly opposed giving women equal rights. When we read the arguments of both sides today, it is not difficult to see which side had the more ‘reasonable’ opinions. But we must not forget that we have the knowledge of hindsight.

If ‘proved to be the case’ that those who fought for equality were right. A lot of people would no doubt cringe if they saw in print what their grandfathers had said on the matter.”

“I’m sure they would. What was Hegel’s view?”

“About equality of the sexes?”

“Isn’t that what we are talking about?”

“Would you like to hear a quote?”

“Very much.”

“ The difference between man and woman is like that between animals and plants,’ he said. ‘Men correspond to animals, while women correspond to plants because their development is more placid and the principle that underlies it is the rather vague unity of feeling. When women hold the helm of government, the state is at once in jeopardy, because women regulate their actions not by the demands of universality but by arbitrary inclinations and opinions. Women are educated—who knows how?—as it were by breathing in ideas, by living rather than by acquiring knowledge. The status of manhood, on the other hand, is attained only by the stress of thought and much technical exertion.’ “

“Thank you, that will be quite enough. I’d rather not hear any more statements like that.”

“But it is a striking example of how people’s views of what is rational change all the time. It shows that Hegel was also a child of his time. And so are we. Our ‘obvious’ views will not stand the test of time either.”

“What views, for example?”

“I have no such examples.”

“Why not?”

“Because I would be exemplifying things that are already undergoing a change. For instance, I could say it’s stupid to drive a car because cars pollute the environment. Lots of people think this already. But history will prove that much of what we think is obvious will not hold up in the light of history.”

“I see.”

“We can also observe something else: The many men in Hegel’s time who could reel off gross broadsides like that one on the inferiority of women hastened the development of feminism.”

“How so?”

“They proposed a thesis. Why? Because women had already begun to rebel. There’s no need to have an opinion on something everyone agrees on. And the more grossly they expressed themselves about women’s inferiority, the stronger became the negation.”

“Yes, of course.”

“You might say that the very best that can happen is to have energetic opponents. The more extreme they become, the more powerful the reaction they will have to face. There’s a saying about ‘more grist to the mill.’ “

“My mill began to grind more energetically a minute ago!”

“From the point of view of pure logic or philosophy, there will often be a dialectical tension between two concepts.”

“For example?”

“If I reflect on the concept of ‘being,’ I will be obliged to introduce the opposite concept, that of ‘nothing.’ You can’t reflect on your existence without immediately realizing that you won’t always exist. The tension between ‘being’ and ‘nothing’ becomes resolved in the concept of ‘becoming.’ Because if something is in the process of becoming, it both is and is not.”

“I see that.”

“Hegel’s ‘reason’ is thus dynamic logic. Since reality is characterized by opposites, a description of reality must therefore also be full of opposites. Here is another example for you: the Danish nuclear physicist Niels Bohr is said to have told a story about Newton’s having a horseshoe over his front door.”

“That’s for luck.”

“But it is only a superstition, and Newton was anything but superstitious. When someone asked him if he really believed in that kind of thing, he said, ‘No, I don’t, but I’m told it works anyway.’ “

“Amazing.”

“But his answer was quite dialectical, a contradiction in terms, almost. Niels Bohr, who, like our own Norwegian poet Vinje, was known for his ambivalence, once said: There are two kinds of truths. There are the superficial truths, the opposite of which are obviously wrong. But there are also the profound truths, whose op-posites are equally right.”

“What kind of truths can they be?”

“If I say life is short, for example . . .”

“I would agree.”

“But on another occasion I could throw open my arms and say life is long.”

“You’re right. That’s also true, in a sense.”

“Finally I’ll give you an example of how a dialectic tension can result in a spontaneous act which leads to a sudden change.”

“Yes, do.”

“Imagine a young girl who always answers her mother with Yes, Mom ... Okay, Mom ... As you wish, Mom ... At once, Mom.”

“Gives me the shudders!”

“Finally the girl’s mother gets absolutely maddened by her daughter’s overobedience, and shouts: Stop being such a goody-goody! And the girl answers: Okay, Mom.”

“I would have slapped her.”

“Perhaps. But what would you have done if the girl had answered instead: But I wonf to be a goody-goody?”

“That would have been an odd answer. Maybe I would have slapped her anyway.”

“In other words, the situation was deadlocked. The dialectic tension had come to a point where something had to happen.”

“Like a slap in the face?”

“A final aspect of Hegel’s philosophy needs to be mentioned here.”

“I’m listening.”

“Do you remember how we said that the Romantics were individualists?”

“The path of mystery leads inwards ...”

“This individualism also met its negation, or opposite, in Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel emphasized what he called the ‘objective’ powers. Among such powers, Hegel emphasized the importance of the family, civil society, and the state. You might say that Hegel was somewhat skeptical of the individual. He believed that the individual was an organic part of the community. Reason, or ‘world spirit/ came to light first and foremost in the interplay of people.”

“Explain that more clearly, please!”

“Reason manifests itself above all in language. And a language is something we are born into. The Norwegian language manages quite well without Mr. Hansen, but Mr. Hansen cannot manage without Norwegian. It is thus not the individual who forms the language, it is the language which forms the individual.”

“I guess you could say so.”

“In the same way that a baby is born into a language, it is also born into its historical background. And nobody has a ‘free’ relationship to that kind of background. He who does not find his place within the state is therefore an unhistorical person. This idea, you may recall, was also central for the great Athenian philosophers. Just as the state is unthinkable without citizens, citizens are unthinkable without the state.”

“Obviously.”

“According to Hegel, the state is ‘more’ than the individual citizen. It is moreover more than the sum of its citizens. So Hegel says one cannot ‘resign from society.’ Anyone who simply shrugs their shoulders at the society they live in and wants to ‘find their soul/ will therefore be ridiculed.”

“I don’t know whether I wholly agree, but okay.”

“According to Hegel, it is not the individual that finds itself, it is the world spirit.”

“The world spirit finds itself?”

“Hegel said that the world spirit returns to itself in three stages. By that he means that it becomes conscious of itself in three stages.”

“Which are?”

“The world spirit first becomes conscious of itself in the individual. Hegel calls this subjective spirit. It reaches a higher consciousness in the family, civil society, and the state. Hegel calls this objective spirit because it appears in interaction between people. But there is a third stage ...”

“And that is ... ?”

“The world spirit reaches the highest form of self-realization in absolute spirit. And this absolute spirit is art, religion, and philosophy. And of these, philosophy is the highest form of knowledge because in philosophy, the world spirit reflects on its own impact on history. So the world spirit first meets itself in philosophy. You could say, perhaps, that philosophy is the mirror of the world spirit.”

“This is so mysterious that I need to have time to think it over. But I liked the last bit you said.”

“What, that philosophy is the mirror of the world spirit?”

“Yes, that was beautiful. Do you think it has anything to do with the brass mirror?”

“Since you ask, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“I assume the brass mirror has some special significance since it is constantly cropping up.”

“You must have an idea what that significance is?”

“I haven’t. I merely said that it wouldn’t keep coming up unless it had a special significance for Hilde and her father. What that significance is only Hilde knows.”

“Was that romantic irony?”

“A hopeless question, Sophie.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not us working with these things. We are only hapless victims of that irony. If an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can’t ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent.”

“You give me the shudders.”

Kierkegaard

…Europe is on the road to bankruptcy…

Hilde looked at her watch. It was already past four o’clock. She laid the ring binder on her desk and ran downstairs to the kitchen. She had to get down to the boathouse before her mother got tired of waiting for her. She glanced at the brass mirror as she passed.

She quickly put the kettle on for tea and fixed some sandwiches.

She had made up her mind to play a few tricks on her father. Hilde was beginning to feel more and more allied with Sophie and Alberto. Her plan would start when he got to Copenhagen.

She went down to the boathouse with a large tray.

“Here’s our brunch,” she said.

Her mother was holding a block wrapped in sandpaper. She pushed a stray lock of hair back from her forehead. There was sand in her hair too.

“Let’s drop dinner, then.”

They sat down outside on the dock and began to eat.

“When’s Dad arriving?” asked Hilde after a while.

“On Saturday. I thought you knew that.”

“But what time? Didn’t you say he was changing planes in Copenhagen?”

“That’s right.

Her mother took a bite of her sandwich.

“He gets to Copenhagen at about five. The plane to Kristiansand leaves at a quarter to eight. He’ll probably land at Kjevik at half-past nine.”

“So he has a few hours at Kastrup ...”

“Yes, why?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering.”

When Hilde thought a suitable interval had elapsed, she said casually, “Have you heard from Anne and Ole lately?”

“They call from time to time. They are coming home on vacation sometime in July.”

“Not before?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“So they’ll be in Copenhagen this week... ?”

“Why all these questions, Hilde?”

“No reason. Just small talk.”

“You mentioned Copenhagen twice.”

“I did?”

“We talked about Dad touching down in ...”

“That’s probably why I thought of Anne and Ole.”

As soon as they finished eating, Hilde collected the mugs and plates on the tray.

“I have to get on with my reading, Mom.”

“I guess you must.”

Was there a touch of reproach in her voice? They had talked about fixing up the boat together before Dad came home.

“Dad almost made me promise to finish the book before he got home.”

“It’s a little crazy. When he’s away, he doesn’t have to order us around back home.”

“If you only knew how much he orders people around,” said Hilde enigmatically, “and you can’t imagine how much he enjoys it.”

She returned to her room and went on reading.

Suddenly Sophie heard a knock on the door. Alberto looked at her severely.

“We don’t wish to be disturbed.”

The knocking became louder.

“I am going to tell you about a Danish philosopher who was infuriated by Hegel’s philosophy,” said Alberto.

The knocking on the door grew so violent that the whole door shook.

“It’s the major, of course, sending some phantasm to see whether we swallow the bait,” said Alberto. “It costs him no effort at all.”

“But if we don’t open the door and see who it is, it won’t cost him any effort to tear the whole place down either.”

“You might have a point there. We’d better open the door then.”

They went to the door. Since the knocking had been so forceful, Sophie expected to see a very large person. But standing on the front step was a little girl with long fair hair, wearing a blue dress. She had a small bottle in each hand. One bottle was red, the other blue.

“Hi,” said Sophie. “Who are you?”

“My name is Alice,” said the girl, curtseying shyly.

“I thought so,” said Alberto, nodding. “It’s Alice in Wonderland.”

“How did she find her way to us?”

Alice explained: “Wonderland is a completely borderless country. That means that Wonderland is everywhere—rather like the UN. It should be an honorary member of the UN. We should have representatives on all committees, because the UN also arose out of people’s wonder.”

“Hm ... that major!” muttered Alberto.

“And what brings you here?” asked Sophie.

“I am to give Sophie these little philosophy bottles.”

She handed the bottles to Sophie. There was red liquid in one and blue in the other. The label on the red bottle read DRINK ME, and on the blue one the label read DRINK ME too.

The next second a white rabbit came hurrying past the cabin. It walked upright on two legs and was dressed in a waistcoat and jacket. Just in front of the cabin it took a pocket watch out of its waistcoat pocket and said:

“Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!”

Then it ran on. Alice began to run after it. Just before she ran into the woods, she curtsied and said, “Now it’s starting again.”

“Say hello to Dinah and the Queen,” Sophie called after her.

Alberto and Sophie remained standing on the front step, examining the bottles.

“DRINK ME and DRINK ME too,” read Sophie. “I don’t know if I dare. They might be poisonous.”

Alberto merely shrugged his shoulders.

“They come from the major, and everything that comes from the major is purely in the mind. So it’s only pretend-juice.”

Sophie took the cap off the red bottle and put it cautiously to her lips. The juice had a strangely sweet taste, but that wasn’t all. As she drank, something started to happen to her surroundings.

It felt as if the lake and the woods and the cabin all merged into one. Soon it seemed that everything she saw was one person, and that person was Sophie herself. She glanced up at Alberto, but he too seemed to be part of Sophie’s soul.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” she said. “Everything looks like it did before, but now it’s all one thing. I feel as if everything is one thought.”

Alberto nodded—but it seemed to Sophie that it was she nodding to herself.

“It is Pantheism or Idealism,” he said. “It is the Romantics’ world spirit. They experienced everything as one big ‘ego.’ It is also Hegel—who was critical of the individual, and who saw everything as the expression of the one and only world reason.”

“Should I drink from the other bottle too?”

“It says so on the label.”

Sophie took the cap off the blue bottle and took a large gulp. This juice tasted fresher and sharper than the other. Again everything around her changed suddenly.

Instantly the effects of the red bottle disappeared and everything slid back to its normal place. Alberto was Alberto, the trees were back in the woods and the water looked like a lake again.

But it only lasted for a second, because things went on sliding away from each other. The woods were no longer woods and every little tree now seemed like a world in itself. The tiniest twig was like a fairy-tale world about which a thousand stories could be told.

The little lake suddenly became a boundless ocean— not in depth or breadth, but in its glittering detail and the intricate patterns of its waves. Sophie felt she might spend a lifetime staring at this water and to her dying day it would still remain an unfathomable mystery.

She looked up at the crown of a tree. Three little sparrows were engrossed in a curious game. Was it hide-and-seek? Sophie had known in a way that there were birds in this tree, even after she had drunk from the red bottle, but she had not really seen them properly. The red juice had erased all contrasts and all individual differences.

Sophie jumped down from the large flat stone step they were standing on and bent over to look at the grass. There she discovered another new world—like a deep-sea diver opening his eyes under water for the first time. In amongst the twigs and straws of grass, the moss was teeming with tiny details. Sophie watched a spider make its way over the moss, surefooted and purposeful, a red plant louse running up and down a blade of grass, and a whole army of ants laboring in a united effort in the grass. But each tiny ant moved its legs in its own particular manner.

The most curious of all was the sight that met her eyes when she stood up again and looked at Alberto, still standing on the front step of the cabin. In Alberto she now saw a wondrous person—he was like a being from another planet, or an enchanted figure out of a fairy tale. At the same time she experienced herself in a completely new way as a unique individual. She was more than just a human being, a fifteen-year-old girl. She was Sophie Amundsen, and only she was that.

“What do you see?” asked Alberto.

“I see that you’re a strange bird.”

“You think so?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get to understand what it’s like being another person. No two people in the whole world are alike.”

“And the woods?”

“They don’t seem the same any more. They’re like a whole universe of wondrous tales.”

“It is as I suspected. The blue bottle is individualism. It is, for example, S0ren Kierkegaard’s reaction to the idealism of the Romantics. But it also encompasses another Dane who lived at the same time as Kierkegaard, the famous fairy-tale writer Hans Christian Andersen. He had the same sharp eye for nature’s incredible richness of detail. A philosopher who saw the same thing more than a century earlier was the German Leibniz. He reacted against the idealistic philosophy of Spinoza just as Kierkegaard reacted against Hegel.”

“I hear you, but you sound so funny that I feel like laughing.”

“That’s understandable, just take another sip from the red bottle. Come on, let’s sit here on the step. We’ll talk a bit about Kierkegaard before we stop for today.”

Sophie sat on the step beside Alberto. She drank a little from the red bottle and things began to merge together again. They actually merged rather too much; once more she got the feeling that no differences mattered at all. But she only had to touch the blue bottle to her lips again, and the world about her looked more or less as it did when Alice arrived with the two bottles.

“But which is true?” she now asked. “Is it the red or the blue bottle that gives the true picture?”

“Both the red and the blue, Sophie. We cannot say the Romantics were wrong in holding that there is only one reality. But maybe they were a little bit narrow in their outlook.”

“What about the blue bottle?”

“I think Kierkegaard must have taken a few hefty swigs from that one. He certainly had a sharp eye for the significance of the individual. We are more than ‘children of our time.’ And moreover, every single one of us is a unique individual who only lives once.”

“And Hegel had not made much of that?”

“No, he was more interested in the broad scope of history. This was just what made Kierkegaard so indignant. He thought that both the idealism of the Romantics and Hegel’s ‘historicism’ had obscured the individual’s responsibility for his own life. Therefore to Kierkegaard, Hegel and the Romantics were tarred with the same brush.”

“I can see why he was so mad.”

“S0ren Kierkegaard was born in 1813 and was subjected to a very severe upbringing by his father. His religious melancholia was a legacy from this father.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It was because of this melancholia that he felt obliged to break off his engagement, something the Copenhagen bourgeoisie did not look kindly on. So from early on he became an outcast and an object of scorn. However, he gradually learned to give as good as he got, and he became increasingly what Ibsen later on described as ‘an enemy of the people.’ “

“All because of a broken engagement?”

“No, not only because of that. Toward the end of his life, especially, he became aggressively critical of society. ‘The whole of Europe is on the road to bankruptcy,’ he said. He believed he was living in an age utterly devoid of passion and commitment. He was particularly incensed by the vapidness of the established Danish Lutheran Church. He was merciless in his criticism of what you might call ‘Sunday Christianity.’ “

“Nowadays we talk of ‘confirmation Christianity.’ Most kids only get confirmed because of all the presents they get.”

“Yes, you’ve got the point. To Kierkegaard, Christianity was both so overwhelming and so irrational that it had to be an either/or. It was not good being ‘rather’ or ‘to some extent’ religious. Because either Jesus rose on Easter Day—or he did not. And if he really did rise from the dead, if he really died for our sake—then this is so overwhelming that it must permeate our entire life.”

“Yes, I think I understand.”

“But Kierkegaard saw how both the church and people in general had a noncommittal approach to religious questions. To Kierkegaard, religion and knowledge were like fire and water. It was not enough to believe that Christianity is ‘true.’ Having a Christian faith meant following a Christian way of life.”

“What did that have to do with Hegel?”

“You’re right. Maybe we started at the wrong end.”

“So I suggest you go into reverse and start again.”

“Kierkegaard began his study of theology when he was seventeen, but he became increasingly absorbed in philosophical questions. When he was twenty-seven he took his master’s degree with the dissertation ‘On the Concept of Irony.’ In this work he did battle with Romantic irony and the Romantics’ uncommitted play with illusion. He posited ‘Socratic irony’ in contrast. Even though Socrates had made use of irony to great effect, it had the purpose of eliciting the fundamental truths about life. Unlike the Romantics, Socrates was what Kierkegaard called an ‘existential’ thinker. That is to say, a thinker who draws his entire existence into his philosophical reflection.”

“So?”

“After breaking off his engagement in 1841, Kierkegaard went to Berlin where he attended Schelling’s lectures.”

“Did he meet Hegel?”

“No, Hegel had died ten years earlier, but his ideas were predominant in Berlin and in many parts of Europe. His ‘system’ was being used as a kind of all-purpose explanation for every type of question. Kierkegaard indicated that the sort of ‘objective truths’ that Hegelianism was concerned with were totally irrelevant to the personal life of the individual.”

“What kind of truths are relevant, then?”

“According to Kierkegaard, rather than searching for the Truth with a capital T, it is more important to find the kind of truths that are meaningful to the individual’s life. It is important to find ‘the truth for me.’ He thus sets the individual, or each and every man, up against the ‘system.’ Kierkegaard thought Hegel had forgotten that he was a man. This is what he wrote about the Hegelian professor: “While the ponderous Sir Professor explains the entire mystery of life, he has in distraction forgotten his own name; that he is a man, neither more nor less, not a fantastic three-eighths of a paragraph.”

“And what, according to Kierkegaard, is a man?”

“It’s not possible to say in general terms. A broad description of human nature or human beings was totally without interest to Kierkegaard. The only important thing was each man’s ‘own existence.’ And you don’t experience your own existence behind a desk. It’s only when we act—and especially when we make significant choices—that we relate to our own existence. There is a story about Buddha that illustrates what Kierkegaard meant.”

“About Buddha?”

“Yes, since Buddha’s philosophy also took man’s existence as its starting point. There was once a monk who asked Buddha if he could give clearer answers to fundamental questions on what the world is and what a man is. Buddha answered by likening the monk to a man who gets pierced by a poisoned arrow. The wounded man would have no theoretical interest in what the arrow was made of, what kind of poison it was dipped in, or which direction it came from.”

“He would most likely want somebody to pull it out and treat the wound.”

“Yes, he would. That would be existentially important to him. Both Buddha and Kierkegaard had a strong sense of only existing for a brief moment. And as I said, then you don’t sit down behind a desk and philosophize about the nature of the world spirit.”

“No, of course not.”

“Kierkegaard also said that truth is ‘subjective.’ By this he did not mean that it doesn’t matter what we think or believe. He meant that the really important truths are personal. Only these truths are ‘true for me.’ “

“Could you give an example of a subjective truth?”

“An important question is, for example, whether Christianity is true. This is not a question one can relate to theoretically or academically. For a person who ‘understands himself in life,’ it is a question of life and death. It is not something you sit and discuss for discussion’s sake. It is something to be approached with the greatest passion and sincerity.”

“Understandable.”

“If you fall into the water, you have no theoretical interest in whether or not you will drown. It is neither ‘interesting’ nor ‘uninteresting’ whether there are alligators in the water. It is a question of life or death.”

“I get it, thank you very much.”

“So we must therefore distinguish between the philosophical question of whether God exists and the individual’s relationship to the same question, a situation in which each and every man is utterly alone. Fundamental questions such as these can only be approached through faith. Things we can know through reason, or knowledge, are according to Kierkegaard totally unimportant.”

“I think you’d better explain that.”

“Eight plus four is twelve. We can be absolutely certain of this. That’s an example of the sort of ‘reasoned truth’ that every philosopher since Descartes had talked about. But do we include it in our daily prayers? Is it something we will lie pondering over when we are dying? Not at all. Truths like those can be both ‘objective’ and ‘general,’ but they are nevertheless totally immaterial to each man’s existence.”

“What about faith?”

“You can never know whether a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It’s something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don’t think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first kiss.”

“You’d be very odd if you did.”

“Faith is the most important factor in religious questions. Kierkegaard wrote: ‘If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.’ “

“That’s heavy stuff.”

“Many had previously tried to prove the existence of God—or at any rate to bring him within the bounds of rationality. But if you content yourself with some such proof or logical argument, you suffer a loss of faith, and with it, a loss of religious passion. Because what matters is not whether Christianity is true, but whether it is true for you. The same thought was expressed in the Middle Ages in the maxim: credo quid absurdum.”

“You don’t say.”

“It means I believe because it is irrational. If Christianity had appealed to our reason, and not to other sides of us, it would not be a question of faith.”

“No, I understand that now.”

“So we have looked at what Kierkegaard meant by ‘existential,’ what he meant by ‘subjective truth,’ and what his concept of ‘faith’ was. These three concepts were formulated as a criticism of philosophical tradition in general, and of Hegel in particular. But they also embodied a trenchant ‘social criticism.’ The individual in modern urban society had become ‘the public,’ he said, and the predominant characteristic of the crowd, or the masses, was all their noncommittal ‘talk.’ Today we would probably use the word ‘conformity’; that is when everybody ‘thinks’ and ‘believes in’ the same things without having any deeper feeling about it.”

“I wonder what Kierkegaard would have said to Joanna’s parents.”

“He was not always kind in his judgments. He had a sharp pen and a bitter sense of irony. For example, he could say things like ‘the crowd is the untruth,’ or ‘the truth is always in the minority/ and that most people had a superficial approach to life.”

“It’s one thing to collect Barbie dolls. But it’s worse to be one.”

“That brings us to Kierkegaard’s theory of what he called the three stages on life’s way.”

“Pardon me?”

“Kierkegaard believed that there were three different forms of life. He himself used the term stages. He calls them the aesthetic stage, the ethical stage, and the religious stage. He used the term ‘stage’ to emphasize that one can live at one of the two lower stages and then suddenly leap to a higher stage. Many people live at the same stage all their life.”

“I bet there’s an explanation on the way. I’m anxious to know which stage I’m at.”

“He who lives at the aesthetic stage lives for the moment and grasps every opportunity of enjoyment. Good is whatever is beautiful, satisfying, or pleasant. This person lives wholly in the world of the senses, and is a slave to his own desires and moods. Everything that is boring is bad.”

“Yes thanks, I think I know that attitude.”

“The typical Romantic is thus also the typical aesthete, since there is more to it than pure sensory enjoyment. A person who has a reflective approach to reality—or for that matter to his art or the philosophy he or she is engaged in—is living at the aesthetic stage. It is even possible to have an aesthetic, or ‘reflective,’ attitude to sorrow and suffering. In which case vanity has taken over. Ibsen’s Peer Gynt is the portrait of a typical aesthete.”

“I think I see what you mean.”

“Do you know anyone like that?”

“Not completely. But I think maybe it sounds a little like the major.”

“Maybe so, maybe so, Sophie ... Although that was another example of his rather sickly Romantic irony. You should wash your mouth out.”

“What?”

“All right, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Keep going, then.”

“A person who lives at the aesthetic stage can easily experience angst, or a sense of dread, and a feeling of emptiness. If this happens, there is also hope. According to Kierkegaard, angst is almost positive. It is an expression of the fact that the individual is in an ‘existential situation,’ and can now elect to make the great leap to a higher stage. But it either happens or it doesn’t. It doesn’t help to be on the verge of making the leap if you don’t do it completely. It is a matter of ‘either/or.’ But nobody can do it for you. It is your own choice.”

“It’s a little like deciding to quit drinking or doing drugs.”

“Yes, it could be like that. Kierkegaard’s description of this ‘category of decision’ can be somewhat reminiscent of Socrates’ view that all true insight comes from within. The choice that leads a person to leap from an aesthetic approach to an ethical or religious approach must come from within. Ibsen depicts this in Peer Gynt. Another masterly description of how existential choice springs from inner need and despair can be found in Dosfoevsfcy’s great novel Crime and Punishment.”

“The best you can do is choose a different form of life.”

“And so perhaps you will begin to live at the ethical stage. This is characterized by seriousness and consistency of moral choices. This approach is not unlike Kant’s ethics of duty. You try to live by the law of morals. Kierkegaard, like Kant, drew attention first and foremost to human temperament. The important thing is not what you may think is precisely right or wrong. What matters is that you choose to have an opinion at all on what is right or wrong. The aesthete’s only concern is whether something is fun or boring.”

“Isn’t there a risk of becoming too serious, living like that?”

“Decidedly! Kierkegaard never claimed that the ethical stage was satisfactory. Even a dutiful person will eventually get tired of always being dedicated and meticulous. Lots of people experience that sort of fatigue reaction late in life. Some relapse into the reflective life of their aesthetic stage.

“But others make a new leap to the religious stage. They take the ‘jump into the abyss’ of Faith’s ‘seventy thousand fathoms.’ They choose faith in preference to aesthetic pleasure and reason’s call of duty. And although it can be ‘terrible to jump into the open arms of the living God,’ as Kierkegaard put it, it is the only path to redemption.”

“Christianity, you mean.”

“Yes, because to Kierkegaard, the religious stage was Christianity. But he also became significant to non-Christian thinkers. Existentialism, inspired by the Danish philosopher, flourished widely in the twentieth century.”

Sophie glanced at her watch.

“It’s nearly seven. I have to run. Mom will be frantic.”

She waved to the philosopher and ran down to the boat.

Marx

… a spectre is haunting Europe…

Hilde got off her bed and went to the window facing the bay. When she had started to read this Saturday, it was still Sophie’s fifteenth birthday. The day before had been Hilde’s own birthday.

If her father had imagined that she would get as far as Sophie’s birthday yesterday, he had certainly not been realistic. She had done nothing but read all day long. But he was right that there would only be one more birthday greeting. It was when Alberto and Sophie had sung Happy Birthday to her. Very embarrassing, Hilde thought.

And now Sophie had invited people to a philosophical garden party on the very day her father was due back from Lebanon. Hilde was convinced something would happen that day which neither she nor her father were quite sure of.

But one thing was certain: before her father got home to Bjerkely he would get a scare. That was the least she could do for Sophie and Alberto, especially after they had appealed for help ...

Her mother was still down in the boathouse. Hilde ran downstairs to the telephone. She found Anne and Ole’s number in Copenhagen and called them.

“Anne Kvamsdal.”

“Hi, this is Hilde.”

“Oh, how are you? How are things in Lillesand?”

“Fine, with vacation and everything. And Dad gets back from Lebanon in a week.”

“Won’t that be great, Hilde!”

“Yes, I’m looking forward to it. That’s actually why I’m calling...”

“It is?”

“I think he’s landing at Kastrup around 5 p.m. on Saturday the 23rd. Will you be in Copenhagen then?”

“I think so.”

“I was wondering if you could do something for me.”

“Why, of course.”

“It’s kind of a special favor. I’m not even sure if it’s possible.”

“Now you’re making me curious ...”

Hilde began to describe her plan. She told Anne about the ring binder, about Sophie and Alberto and all the rest. She had to backtrack several times because either she or Anne were laughing too hard. But when Hilde hung up, her plan was in operation.

She would now have to begin some preparations of her own. But there was still plenty of time.

Hilde spent the remainder of the afternoon and the evening with her mother. They ended up driving to Kris-tiansand and going to the movies. They felt they had some catching up to do since they had not done anything special the day before. As they drove past the exit to Kjevik airport, a few more pieces of the big jigsaw puzzle Hilde was constructing fell into place.

It was late before she went to bed that night, but she took the ring binder and read on.

When Sophie slipped out of the den through the hedge it was almost eight o’clock. Her mother was weeding the flowerbeds by the front door when Sophie appeared.

“Where did you spring from?”

“I came through the hedge.”

“Through the hedge?”

“Didn’t you know there was a path on the other side?”

“But where have you been, Sophie? This is the second time you’ve just disappeared without leaving any message.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. It was such a lovely day, I went for a long walk.”

Her mother rose from the pile of weeds and gave her a severe look.

“You haven’t been with that philosopher again?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. I told you he likes going for long walks.”

“But he is coming to the garden party, isn’t he?”

“Oh yes, he’s looking forward to it.”

“Me too. I’m counting the days.”

Was there a touch of sharpness in her voice? To be on the safe side, Sophie said:

“I’m glad I invited Joanna’s parents too. Otherwise it might be a bit embarrassing.”

“I don’t know ... but whatever happens, I am going to have a talk with this Alberto as one adult to another.”

“You can borrow my room if you like. I’m sure you’ll like him.”

“And another thing. There’s a letter for you.”

“There is?”

“It’s stamped UN Battalion.”

“It must be from Alberto’s brother.”

“It’s got to stop, Sophie!”

Sophie’s brain worked overtime. But in a flash she hit on a plausible answer It was as though she was getting inspiration from some guiding spirit.

“I told Alberto I collect rare postmarks. And brothers also have their uses.”

Her mother seemed to be reassured.

“Dinner’s in the fridge,” she said in a slightly more amicable tone.

“Where’s the letter?”

“On top of the fridge.”

Sophie rushed inside. The envelope was stamped June 15, 1990. She opened it and took out a little note:

What matters our creative endless toil,

When at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?

Indeed, Sophie had no answer to that question. Before she ate, she put the note in the closet together with all the other stuff she had collected in the past weeks. She would learn soon enough why the question had been asked.

The following morning Joanna came by. After a game of badminton, they got down to planning the philosophical garden party. They needed to have some surprises on hand in case the party flopped at any point.

When Sophie’s mother got home from work they were still talking about it. Her mother kept saying: “Don’t worry about what it costs.” And she was not being sarcastic!

Perhaps she was thinking that a “philosophical garden party” was just what was needed to bring Sophie down to earth again after her many weeks of intensive philosophical studies.

Before the evening was over they had agreed on everything, from paper lanterns to a philosophical quiz with a prize. The prize should preferably be a book about philosophy for young people. If there was such a thing! Sophie was not at all sure.

Two days before Midsummer Eve, on Thursday, June 21, Alberto called Sophie again.

“Sophie.”

“And Alberto.”

“Oh, hi! How are you?”

“Very well indeed, thank you. I think I have found an excellent way out.”

“Way out of what?”

“You know what. A way out of the mental captivity we have lived in for much too long.”

“Oh, that.”

“But I cannot say a word about the plan before it is set in motion.”

“Won’t it be too late then? I need to know what I am involved in.”

“Now you’re being na’i’ve. All our conversations are being overheard. The most sensible thing would be to say nothing.”

“It’s as bad as that, huh?”

“Naturally, my child. The most important things must happen when we are not talking.”

“Oh.”

“We are living our lives in a fictional reality behind the words in a long story. Each single letter is being written on an old portable typewriter by the major. Nothing that is in print can therefore escape his attention.”

“No, I realize that. But how are we going to hide from him?”

“Ssh!”

“What?”

“There’s something going on between the lines as well. That’s just where I’m trying to be tricky, with every crafty ruse I know.”

“I get it.”

“But we must make the most of the time both today and tomorrow. On Saturday the balloon goes up. Can you come over right now?”

“I’m on my way.”

Sophie fed the birds and the fish and found a large lettuce leaf for Govinda. She opened a can of cat food for Sher-ekan and put it out in a bowl on the step as she left.

Then she slipped through the hedge and out to the path on the far side. A little way further on she suddenly caught sight of a spacious desk standing in the midst of the heather. An elderly man was sitting at it, apparently adding up figures. Sophie went over to him and asked his name.

“Ebenezer Scrooge,” he said, poring over his ledgers again.

“My name is Sophie. You are a businessman, I presume?”

He nodded. “And immensely rich. Not a penny must go to waste. That’s why I have to concentrate on my accounts.”

“Why bother?”

Sophie waved and walked on. But she had not gone many yards before she noticed a little girl sitting quite alone under one of the tall trees. She was dressed in rags, and looked pale and ill. As Sophie walked by, she thrust her hand into a little bag and pulled out a box of matches.

“Will you buy some matches?” she asked, holding them out to Sophie. Sophie felt in her pockets to see if she had any money with her. Yes—she found a crown.

“How much are they?”

“One crown.”

Sophie gave the girl the coin and stood there, with the box of matches in her hand.

“You are the first person to buy anything from me for over a hundred years. Sometimes I starve to death, and other times the frost does away with me.”

Sophie thought it was perhaps not surprising if the sale of matches was not especially brisk here in the woods. But then she came to think of the businessman she had just passed. There was no reason for the little match girl to die of starvation when he was so wealthy.

“Come here,” said Sophie.

She took the girl’s hand and walked with her back to the rich man.

“You must see to it that this girl gets a better life,” she said.

The man glanced up from his paperwork and said: “That kind of thing costs money, and I said not so much as a penny must go to waste.”

“But it’s not fair that you’re so rich when this girl is so poor,” insisted Sophie. “It’s unjust!”

“Bah! Humbug! Justice only exists between equals.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I had to work my way up, and it has paid off. Progress, they call it.”

“If you don’t help me, I’ll die,” said the poor girl.

The businessman looked up again from his ledgers. Then he threw his quill pen onto the table impatiently.

“You don’t figure in my accounts! So—be off with you—to the poorhouse!”

“If you don’t help me, I’ll set fire to the woods,” the girl persisted.

That brought the man to his feet, but the girl had already struck one of her matches. She held it to a tuft of dry grass which flared up instantly.

The man threw up his arms. “God help me!” he shouted. “The red cock has crowed!”

The girl looked up at him with a playful smile.

“You didn’t know I was a communist, did you?”

The next minute, the girl, the businessman, and the desk had disappeared. Sophie was once again standing alone while the flames consumed the dry grass ever more hungrily. It took her a while to put out the fire by stamping on it.

Thank goodness! Sophie glanced down at the blackened grass. She was holding a box of matches in her hand.

She couldn’t have started the fire herself, could she?

When she met Alberto outside the cabin she told him what had happened.

“Scrooge was the miserly capitalist in A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. You probably remember the little match girl from the tale by Hans Christian Andersen.”

“I didn’t expect to meet them here in the woods.”

“Why not? These are no ordinary woods, and now we are going to talk about Karl Marx. It is most appropriate that you have witnessed an example of the tremendous class struggles of the mid-nineteenth century. But let’s go inside. We are a little more protected from the major’s interference there.”

Once again they sat at the little table by the window facing the lake. Sophie could still feel all over her body how she had experienced the little lake after having drunk from the blue bottle.

Today, both bottles were standing on the mantelpiece. There was a miniature model of a Greek temple on the table.

“What’s that?” asked Sophie.

“All in good time, my dear.”

Alberto began to talk: “When Kierkegaard went to Berlin in 1841, he might have sat next to Karl Marx at Schel-ling’s lectures. Kierkegaard had written a master of arts thesis on Socrates. About the same time, Marx had written a doctoral thesis on Democritus and Epicurus—in other words, on the materialism of antiquity. Thus they had both staked out the course of their own philosophies.”

“Because Kierkegaard became an existentialist and Marx became a materialist?”

“Marx became what is known as a historical materialist. But we’ll come back to that.”

“Go on.”

“Each in his own way, both Kierkegaard and Marx took Hegel’s philosophy as their point of departure. Both were influenced by Hegel’s mode of thought, but both rejected his ‘world spirit,’ or his idealism.”

“It was probably too high-flown for them.”

“Definitely. In general, we usually say that the era of the great philosophical systems ended with Hegel. After him, philosophy took a new direction. Instead of great speculative systems, we had what we call an existential philosophy or a philosophy of action. This was what Marx meant when he observed that until now, ‘philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.’ These words mark a significant turning point in the history of philosophy.”

“After meeting Scrooge and the little match girl, I have no problem understanding what Marx meant.”

“Marx’s thinking had a practical—or political—objective. He was not only a philosopher; he was a historian, a sociologist, and an economist.”

“And he was a forerunner in all these areas?”

“Certainly no other philosopher had greater significance for practical politics. On the other hand, we must be wary of identifying everything that calls itself Marxism with Marx’s own thinking. It is said of Marx that he only became a Marxist in the mid-1840s, but even after that he could at times feel it necessary to assert that he was not a Marxist.”

“Was Jesus a Christian?”

“That, too, of course, is debatable.”

“Carry on.”

“Right from the start, his friend and colleague Friedrich Engels contributed to what was subsequently known as Marxism. In our own century, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and many others also made their contribution to Marxism, or Marxism-Leninism.”

“I suggest we try to stick to Marx himself. You said he was a historical materialist?”

“He was not a philosophical materialist like the atomists of antiquity nor did he advocate the mechanical materialism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But he thought that, to a great extent, it was the material factors in society which determined the way we think. Material factors of that nature have certainly been decisive for historical development.”

“That was quite different from Hegel’s world spirit.”

“Hegel had pointed out that historical development is driven by the tension between opposites—which is then resolved by a sudden change. Marx developed this idea further. But according to Marx, Hegel was standing on his head.”

“Not all the time, I hope.”

“Hegel called the force that drives history forward world spirit or world reason. This, Marx claimed, is upside down. He wished to show that material changes are the ones that affect history. ‘Spiritual relations’ do not create material change, it is the other way about. Material change creates new spiritual relations. Marx particularly emphasized that it was the economic forces in society that created change and thus drove history forward.”

“Do you have an example?”

“Antiquity’s philosophy and science were purely theoretical in purpose. Nobody was particularly interested in putting new discoveries into practice.”

“They weren’t?”

“That was because of the way the economic life of the community was organized. Production was mainly based on slave labor, so the citizens had no need to increase production with practical innovations. This is an example of how material relations help to affect philosophical reflection in society.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Marx called these material, economic, and social relations the basis of society. The way a society thinks, what kind of political institutions there are, which laws it has and, not least, what there is of religion, morals, art, philosophy, and science, Marx called society’s superstructure.”

“Basis and superstructure, right.”

“And now you will perhaps be good enough to pass me the Greek temple.”

Sophie did so.

“This is a model of the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis. You have also seen it in real life.”

“On the video, you mean.”

“You can see that the construction has a very elegant and elaborate roof. Probably the roof with its front gable is what strikes one first. This is what we call the superstructure.”

“But the roof cannot float in thin air.”

“It is supported by the columns.”

“The building has very powerful foundations—its bases—supporting the entire construction. In the same way, Marx believed that material relations support, so to speak, everything in the way of thoughts and ideas in society. Society’s superstructure is in fact a reflection of the bases of that society.”

“Are you saying that Plato’s theory of ideas is a reflection of vase production and wine growing?”

“No, it’s not that simple, as Marx expressly points out. It is the interactive effect of society’s basis on its superstructure. If Marx had rejected this interaction, he would have been a mechanical materialist. But because Marx realized that there was an interactive or dialectic relation between bases and superstructure, we say that he is a dialectical materialist. By the way, you may care to note that Plato was neither a potter nor a wine grower.”

“All right. Do you have any more to say about the temple?”

“Yes, a little. Could you describe the bases of the temple?”

“The columns are standing on a base that consists of three levels—or steps.”

“In the same manner we will identify three levels in the bases of society. The most basic level is what we may call society’s conditions of production. In other words, the natural conditions or resources that are available to society. These are the foundation of any society, and this foundation clearly determines the type of production in the society, and by the same token, the nature of that society and its culture in general.”

“You can’t have a herring trade in the Sahara, or grow dates in northern Norway.”

“You’ve got it. And the way people think in a nomadic culture is very different from the way they think in a fishing village in northern Norway The next level is the society’s means of production. By this Marx meant the various kinds of equipment, tools, and machinery, as well as the raw materials to be found there.”

“In the old days people rowed out to the fishing grounds. Nowadays they use huge trawlers to catch the fish.”

“Yes, and here you are talking about the next level in the base of society, namely, those who own the means of production. The division of labor, or the distribution of work and ownership, was what Marx called society’s ‘production relations.’ “

“I see.”

“So far we can conclude that it is the mode of production in a society which determines which political and ideological conditions are to be found there. It is not by chance that today we think somewhat differently—and have a somewhat different moral codex—from the old feudal society.”

“So Marx didn’t believe in a natural right that was eternally valid.”

“No, the question of what was morally right, according to Marx, is a product of the base of society. For example, it is not accidental that in the old peasant society, parents would decide whom their children married. It was a question of who was to inherit the farm. In a modern city, social relations are different. Nowadays you can meet your future spouse at a party or a disco, and if you are sufficiently in love, you’ll find somewhere to live.”

“I could never have put up with my parents deciding who I was to marry.”

“No, that’s because you are a child of your time. Marx emphasized moreover that it is mainly society’s ruling class that sets the norms for what is right or wrong. Because ‘the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.’ In other words, history is principally a matter of who is to own the means of production.”

“Don’t people’s thoughts and ideas help to change history?”

“Yes and no. Marx understood that conditions in society’s superstructure could have an interactive effect on the base of society, but he denied that society’s superstructure had any independent history of its own. What has driven historical development from the slave society of antiquity to the industrial society of today has primarily been determined by changes in the base of society.”

“So you said.”

“Marx believed that in all phases of history there has been a conflict between two dominant classes of society. In antiquity’s slave society, the conflict was between free citizen and slave. In the feudal society of the Middle Ages, it was between feudal lord and serf; later on, between aristocrat and citizen. But in Marx’s own time, in what he called a bourgeois or capitalist society, the conflict was first and foremost between the capitalists and the workers, or the proletariat. So the conflict stood between those who own the means of production and those who do not. And since the ‘upper classes’ do not voluntarily relinquish their power, change can only come about through revolution.”

“What about a communist society?”

“Marx was especially interested in the transition from a capitalist to a communist society. He also carried out a detailed analysis of the capitalist mode of production. But before we look at that, we must say something about Marx’s view of man’s labor.”

“Go ahead.”

“Before he became a communist, the young Marx was preoccupied with what happens to man when he works. This was something Hegel had also analyzed. Hegel believed there was an interactive, or dialectic, relationship between man and nature. When man alters nature, he himself is altered. Or, to put it slightly differently, when man works, he interacts with nature and transforms it. But in the process nature also interacts with man and transforms his consciousness.”

“Tell me what you do and I’ll tell you who you are.”

“That, briefly, was Marx’s point. How we work affects our consciousness, but our consciousness also affects the way we work. You could say it is an interactive relationship between hand and consciousness. Thus the way you think is closely connected to the job you do.”

“So it must be depressing to be unemployed.”

“Yes. A person who is unemployed is, in a sense, empty. Hegel was aware of this early on. To both Hegel and Marx, work was a positive thing, and was closely connected with the essence of mankind.”

“So it must also be positive to a worker?”

“Yes, originally. But this is precisely where Marx aimed his criticism of the capitalist method of production.”

“What was that?”

“Under the capitalist system, the worker labors for someone else. His labor is thus something external to him—or something that does not belong to him. The worker becomes alien to his work—but at the same time also alien to himself. He loses touch with his own reality. Marx says, with a Hegelian expression, that the worker becomes alienated.”

“I have an aunt who has worked in a factory, packaging candy for over twenty years, so I can easily understand what you mean. She says she hates going to work, every single morning.”

“But if she hates her work, Sophie, she must hate herself, in a sense.”

“She hates candy, that’s for sure.”

“In a capitalist society, labor is organized in such a way that the worker in fact slaves for another social class. Thus the worker transfers his own labor—and with it, the whole of his life—to the bourgeoisie.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“We’re talking about Marx, and we must therefore take our point of departure in the social conditions during the middle of the last century. So the answer must be a resounding yes. The worker could have a 12-hour working day in a freezing cold production hall. The pay was often so poor that children and expectant mothers also had to work. This led to unspeakable social conditions. In many places, part of the wages was paid out in the form of cheap liquor, and women were obliged to supplement their earnings by prostitution. Their customers were the respected citizenry of the town. In short, in the precise situation that should have been the honorable hallmark of mankind, namely work, the worker was turned into a beast of burden.”

“That infuriates me!”

“It infuriated Marx too. And while it was happening, the children of the bourgeoisie played the violin in warm, spacious living rooms after a refreshing bath. Or they sat at the piano while waiting for their four-course dinner. The violin and the piano could have served just as well as a diversion after a long horseback ride.”

“Ugh! How unjust!”

“Marx would have agreed. Together with Engels, he published a Communist Manifesto in 1848. The first sentence in this manifesto says: A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.”

“That sounds frightening.”

“It frightened the bourgeoisie too. Because now the proletariat was beginning to revolt. Would you like to hear how the Manifesto ends?”

“Yes, please.”

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!”

“If conditions were as bad as you say, I think I would have signed that Manifesto. But conditions are surely a lot different today?”

“In Norway they are, but they aren’t everywhere. Many people still live under inhuman conditions while they continue to produce commodities that make capitalists richer and richer. Marx called this exploitation.”

“Could you explain that word, please?”

“If a worker produces a commodity, this commodity has a certain exchange-value.”

“Yes.”

“If you now deduct the workers’ wages and the other production costs from the exchange-value, there will always be a certain sum left over. This sum was what Marx called profit. In other words, the capitalist pockets a value that was actually created by the worker. That is what is meant by exploitation.”

“I see.”

“So now the capitalist invests some of his profit in new capital—for instance, in modernizing the production plant in the hope of producing his commodity even more cheaply, and thereby increasing his profit in the future.”

“That sounds logical.”

“Yes, it can seem logical. But both in this and in other areas, in the long term it will not go the way the capitalist has imagined.”

“How do you mean?”

“Marx believed there were a number of inherent contradictions in the capitalist method of production. Capitalism is an economic system which is self-destructive because it lacks rational control.”

“That’s good, isn’t it, for the oppressed?”

“Yes; it is inherent in the capitalist system that it is marching toward its own destruction. In that sense, capitalism is ‘progressive’ because it is a stage on the way to communism.”

“Can you give an example of capitalism being self-destructive?”

“We said that the capitalist had a good surplus of money, and he uses part of this surplus to modernize the factory. But he also spends money on violin lessons. Moreover, his wife has become accustomed to a luxurious way of life.”

“No doubt.”

“He buys new machinery and so no longer needs so many employees. He does this to increase his competitive power.”

“I get it.”

“But he is not the only one thinking in this way, which means that production as a whole is continually being made more effective. Factories become bigger and bigger, and are gradually concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. What happens then, Sophie?”

“Er. . .”

“Fewer and fewer workers are required, which means there are more and more unemployed. There are therefore increasing social problems, and crises such as these are a signal that capitalism is marching toward its own destruction. But capitalism has a number of other self-destructive elements. Whenever profit has to be tied up in the means of production without leaving a big enough surplus to keep production going at competitive prices . . .”

“Yes?”

“, . . what does the capitalist do then? Can you tell me?”

“No, I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Imagine if you were a factory owner. You cannot make ends meet. You cannot buy the raw materials you need to keep producing. You are facing bankruptcy. So now my question is, what can you do to economize?”

“Maybe I could cut down on wages?”

“Smart! Yes, that really is the smartest thing you could do. But if all capitalists were as smart as you—and they are—the workers would be so poor that they couldn’t afford to buy goods any more. We would say that purchasing power is falling. And now we really are in a vicious circle. The knell has sounded for capitalist private property, Marx would say. We are rapidly approaching a revolutionary situation.”

“Yes, I see.”

“To make a long story short, in the end the proletariat rises and takes over the means of production.”

“And then what?”

“For a period, we get a new ‘class society’ in which the proletarians suppress the bourgeoisie by force. Marx called this the dictatorship of the proletariat. But after a transition period, the dictatorship of the proletariat is replaced by a ‘classless society,’ in which the means of production are owned ‘by all’—that is, by the people themselves. In this kind of society, the policy is ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.’ Moreover, labor now belongs to the workers themselves and capitalism’s alienation ceases.”

“It all sounds wonderful, but what actually happened? Was there a revolution?”

“Yes and no. Today, economists can establish that Marx was mistaken on a number of vital issues, not least his analysis of the crises of capitalism. And he paid insufficient attention to the plundering of the natural environment—the serious consequences of which we are experiencing today. Nevertheless . . .”

“Nevertheless?”

“Marxism led to great upheavals. There is no doubt that socialism has largely succeeded in combating an inhumane society. In Europe, at any rate, we live in a society with more justice—and more solidarity—than Marx did. This is not least due to Marx himself and the entire socialist movement.”

“What happened?”

“After Marx, the socialist movement split into two main streams, Social Democracy and Leninism. Social Democracy, which has stood for a gradual and peaceful path in the direction of socialism, was Western Europe’s way. We might call this the slow revolution. Leninism, which retained Marx’s belief that revolution was the only way to combat the old class society, had great influence in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. Each in their own way, both movements have fought against hardship and oppression.”

“But didn’t it create a new form of oppression? For example in Russia and Eastern Europe?”

“No doubt of that, and here again we see that everything man touches becomes a mixture of good and evil. On the other hand, it would be unreasonable to blame Marx for the negative factors in the so-called socialist countries fifty or a hundred years after his death. But maybe he had given too little thought to the people who would be the administrators of communist society. There will probably never be a ‘promised land.’ Mankind will always create new problems to fight about.”

“I’m sure it will.”

“And there we bring down the curtain on Marx, Sophie.”

“Hey, wait a minute! Didn’t you say something about justice only existing among equals?”

“No, it was Scrooge who said that.”

“How do you know what he said?”

“Oh well—you and I have the same author. In actual fact we are more closely linked to each other than we would appear to the casual observer.”

“Your wretched irony again!”

“Double, Sophie, that was double irony.”

“But back to justice. You said that Marx thought capitalism was an unjust form of society. How would you define a just society?”

“A moral philosopher called John Rawls attempted to say something about it with the following example: Imagine you were a member of a distinguished council whose task it was to make all the laws for a future society.”

“I wouldn’t mind at all being on that council.”

“They are obliged to consider absolutely every detail, because as soon as they reach an agreement—and everybody has signed the laws—they will all drop dead.”

“Oh . . .”

“But they will immediately come to life again in the society they have legislated for. The point is that they have no idea which position they will have in society.”

“Ah, I see.”

“That society would be a just society. It would have arisen among equals.”

“Men and women!”

“That goes without saying. None of them knew whether they would wake up as men or women. Since the odds are fifty-fifty, society would be just as attractive for women as for men.”

“It sounds promising.”

“So tell me, was the Europe of Karl Marx a society like that?”

“Absolutely not!”

“But do you by any chance know of such a society today?”

“Hm ... that’s a good question.”

“Think about it. But for now there will be no more about Marx.”

“Excuse me?”

“Next chapter!”

Darwin

…a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes…

Hilde was awakened on Sunday morning by a loud bump. It was the ring binder falling on the floor. She had been lying in bed reading about Sophie and Alber-to’s conversation on Marx and had fallen asleep. The reading lamp by the bed had been on all night.

The green glowing digits on her desk alarm clock showed 8:59.

She had been dreaming about huge factories and polluted cities; a little girl sitting at a street corner selling matches—well-dressed people in long coats passing by without as much as a glance.

When Hilde sat up in bed she remembered the legislators who were to wake up in a society they themselves had created. Hilde was glad she had woken up in Bjer-kely, at any rate.

Would she have dared to wake up in Norway without knowing whereabouts in Norway she would wake up?

But it was not only a question of where she would wake up. Could she not just as easily have woken up in a different age? In the Middle Ages, for instance—or in the Stone Age ten or twenty thousand years ago? Hilde tried to imagine herself sitting at the entrance to a cave, scraping an animal hide, perhaps.

What could it have been like to be a fifteen-year-old girl before there was anything called a culture? How would she have thought? Could she have had thoughts at all?

Hilde pulled on a sweater, heaved the ring binder onto the bed and settled down to read the next chapter.

Alberto had just said “Next chapter!” when somebody knocked on the door of the major’s cabin.

“We don’t have any choice, do we?” said Sophie.

“No, I suppose we don’t,” said Alberto.

On the step outside stood a very old man with long white hair and a beard. He held a staff in one hand, and in the other a board on which was painted a picture of a boat The boat was crowded with all kinds of animals. “And who is this elderly gentleman?” asked Alberto.

“My name is Noah.”

“I guessed as much.”

“Your oldest ancestor, my son. But it is probably no longer fashionable to recognize one’s ancestors.”

“What is that in your hand?” asked Sophie.

“This is a picture of all the animals that were saved from the Flood. Here, my daughter, it is for you.”

Sophie took the large board.

“Well, I’d better go home and tend the grapevines,” the old man said, and giving a little jump, he clicked his heels together in the air and skipped merrily away into the woods in the manner peculiar to very old men now and then.

Sophie and Alberto went inside and sat down again. Sophie began to look at the picture, but before she had a chance to study it, Alberto took it from her with an authoritative grasp.

“We’ll concentrate on the broad outlines first.”

“Okay, okay.”

“I forgot to mention that Marx lived the last 34 years of his life in London. He moved there in 1849 and died in 1883. All that time Charles Darwin was living just outside London. He died in 1882 and was buried with great pomp and ceremony in Westminster Abbey as one of England’s distinguished sons. So Marx and Darwin’s paths crossed, but not only in time and space. Marx wanted to dedicate the English edition of his greatest work, Capital, to Darwin, but Darwin declined the honor. When Marx died the year after Darwin, his friend Friedrich En-gels said: As Darwin discovered the theory of organic evolution, so Marx discovered the theory of mankind’s historical evolution.”

“I see.”

“Another great thinker who was to link his work to Darwin was the psychologist Sigmund Freud. He also lived his last years in London. Freud said that both Darwin’s theory of evolution and his own psychoanalysis had resulted in an affront to mankind’s naive egoism.”

“That was a lot of names at one time. Are we talking about Marx, Darwin, or Freud?”

“In a broader sense we can talk about a naturalistic current from the middle of the nineteenth century until quite far into our own. By ‘naturalistic’ we mean a sense of reality that accepts no other reality than nature and the sensory world. A naturalist therefore also considers mankind to be part of nature. A naturalistic scientist will exclusively rely on natural phenomena—not on either rationalistic suppositions or any form of divine revelation.”

“And that applies to Marx, Darwin, and Freud?”

“Absolutely. The key words from the middle of the last century were nature, environment, history, evolution, and growth. Marx had pointed out that human ideologies were a product of the basis of society. Darwin showed that mankind was the result of a slow biological evolution, and Freud’s studies of the unconscious revealed that people’s actions were often the result of ‘animal’ urges or instincts.”

“I think I understand more or less what you mean by naturalistic, but isn’t it best we talk about one person at a time?”

“We’ll talk about Darwin, Sophie. You may recall that the pre-Socratics looked for natural explanations of the processes of nature. In the same way that they had to distance themselves from ancient mythological explanations, Darwin had to distance himself from the church’s view of the creation of man and beast.”

“But was he a real philosopher?”

“Darwin was a biologist and a natural scientist. But he was also the scientist of recent times who has most openly challenged the Biblical view of man’s place in Creation.”

“So you’ll have to say something about Darwin’s theory of evolution.”

“Let’s begin with Darwin the man. He was born in the little town of Shrewsbury in 1809. His father, Dr. Robert Darwin, was a renowned local physician, and very strict about his son’s upbringing. When Charles was a pupil at the local grammar school, his headmaster described him as a boy who was always flying around, fooling about with stuff and nonsense, and never doing a stroke of anything that was the slightest bit useful. By ‘useful,’ the headmaster meant cramming Greek and Latin verbs. By ‘flying around,’ he was referring among other things to the fact that Charles clambered around collecting beetles of all kinds.”

“I’ll bet he came to regret those words.”

“When he subsequently studied theology, Charles was far more interested in bird-watching and collecting insects, so he did not get very good grades in theology. But while he was still at college, he gained himself a reputation as a natural scientist, not least due to his interest in geology, which was perhaps the most expansive science of the day. As soon as he had graduated in theology at Cambridge in April 1831, he went to North Wales to study rock formations and to search for fossils. In August of the same year, when he was barely twenty-two years old, he received a letter which was to determine the course of his whole life . . .”

“What was the letter about?”

“It was from his friend and teacher, John Steven Hens-low. He wrote: ‘I have been requested to ... recommend a naturalist to go as companion to Captain Fitzroy, who has been commissioned by the government to survey the southern coasts of South America. I have stated that I consider you to be the best qualified person I know of who is likely to undertake such a situation. As far as the financial side of it is concerned, I have no notion. The voyage is to last two years ... ‘ “

“How can you remember all that by heart?”

“A bagatelle, Sophie.”

“And what did he answer?”

“He wished ardently to grasp the chance, but in those days young men did nothing without their parents’ consent. After much persuasion, his father finally agreed— and it was he who financed his son’s voyage. As far as the ‘financial side’ went, it was conspicuous by its absence.”

“Oh.”

“The ship was the naval vessel HMS Beagle. It sailed from Plymouth on December 27, 1831, bound for South America, and it did not return until October of 1836. The two years became five and the voyage to South America turned into a voyage round the world. And now we come to one of the most important voyages of discovery in recent times.”

“They sailed all the way round the world?”

“Yes, quite literally. From South America they sailed on across the Pacific to New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. Then they sailed back to South America before setting sail for England. Darwin wrote that the voyage on board the Beagle was without doubt the most significant event in his life.”

“It couldn’t have been easy to be a naturalist at sea.”

“For the first years, the Beagle sailed up and down the coast of South America. This gave Darwin plenty of opportunity to familiarize himself with the continent, also inland. The expedition’s many forays into the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific west of South America were of decisive significance as well. He was able to collect and send to England vast amounts of material. However, he kept his reflections on nature and the evolution of life to himself. When he returned home at the age of twenty-seven, he found himself renowned as a scientist. At that point he had an inwardly clear picture of what was to become his theory of evolution. But he did not publish his main work until many years after his return, for Darwin was a cautious man—as is fitting for a scientist.”

“What was his main work?”

“Well, there were several, actually. But the book-which gave rise to the most heated debate in England was The Origin of Species, published in 1859. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The long title is actually a complete resume of Darwin’s theory.”

“He certainly packed a lot into one title.”

“But let’s take it piece by piece. In The Origin of Species, Darwin advanced two theories or main theses: first, he proposed that all existing vegetable and animal forms were descended from earlier, more primitive forms by way of a biological evolution. Secondly, that evolution was the result of natural selection.”

“The survival of the fittest, right?”

“That’s right, but let us first concentrate on the idea of evolution. This, in itself, was not all that original. The idea of biological evolution began to be widely accepted in some circles as early as 1800. The leading spokesman for this idea was the French zoologist Lamarck. Even before him, Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had suggested that plants and animals had evolved from some few primitive species. But none of them had come up with an acceptable explanation as to how this evolution happened. They were therefore not considered by churchmen to be any great threat.”

“But Darwin was?”

“Yes, indeed, and not without reason. Both in ecclesiastic and scientific circles, the Biblical doctrine of the immutability of all vegetable and animal species was strictly adhered to. Each and every form of animal life had been created separately once and for all. This Christian view was moreover in harmony with the teachings of Plato and Aristotle.”

“How so?”

“Plato’s theory of ideas presupposed that all animal species were immutable because they were made after patterns of eternal ideas or forms. The immutability of animal species was also one of the cornerstones of Aristotle’s philosophy. But in Darwin’s time there were a number of observations and finds which were putting traditional beliefs to the test.”

“What kind of observations and finds were they?”

“Well, to begin with an increasing number of fossils were being dug out. There were also finds of large fossil bones from extinct animals. Darwin himself was puzzled to find traces of sea creatures far inland. In South America he made similar discoveries high up in the mountains of the Andes. What is a sea creature doing in the Andes, Sophie? Can you tell me that?”

“No.”

“Some believed that they had just been thrown away there by humans or animals. Others believed that God had created these fossils and traces of sea creatures to lead the ungodly astray.”

“But what did scientists believe?”

“Most geologists swore to a ‘catastrophe theory/ according to which the earth had been subjected to gigantic floods, earthquakes, and other catastrophes that had destroyed all life. We read of one of these in the Bible—the Flood and Noah’s Ark. After each catastrophe, God renewed life on earth by creating new—and more perfect— plants and animals.”

“So the fossils were imprints of earlier life forms that had been wiped out after these gigantic catastrophes?”

“Precisely. For example, it was thought that fossils were imprints of animals that had failed to get into the Ark. But when Darwin set sail on the Beagle, he had with him the first volume of the English biologist Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology. Lyell held that the present geology of the earth, with its mountains and valleys, was the result of an interminably long and gradual evolution. His point was that even quite small changes could cause huge geological upheavals, considering the aeons of time that have elapsed.”

“What kind of changes was he thinking of?”

“He was thinking of the same forces that prevail today: wind and weather, melting ice, earthquakes, and elevations of the ground level. You’ve heard the saying about a drop of water wearing away a stone—not by brute force, but by continuous dripping. Lyell believed that similar tiny and gradual changes over the ages could alter the face of nature completely. However, this theory alone could not explain why Darwin found the remains of sea creatures high up in the Andes. But Darwin always remembered that tiny gradual changes could result in dramatic alterations if they were given sufficient time.”

“I suppose he thought the same explanation could be used for the evolution of animals.”

“Yes, that was his thought. But as I said before, Darwin was a cautious man. He posed questions long before he ventured to answer them. In that sense he used the same method as all true philosophers: it is important to ask but there is no haste to provide the answer.”

“Yes, I see.”

“A decisive factor in Lyell’s theory was the age of the earth. In Darwin’s time, it was widely believed that about 6,000 years had elapsed since God created the earth. That figure had been arrived at by counting the generations since Adam and Eve.”

“How naive!”

“Well, it’s easy to be wise after the event. Darwin figured the age of the earth to be 300 million years. Because one thing, at least, was clear: neither Lyell’s theory of gradual geological evolution nor Darwin’s own theory of evolution had any validity unless one reckoned with tremendously long periods of time.”

“How old is the earth?”

“Today we know that the earth is 4.6 billion years old.”

“Wow!”

“Up to now, we have looked at one of Darwin’s arguments for biological evolution, namely, the stratified deposits of fossils in various layers of rock. Another argument was the geographic distribution of living species. This was where Darwin’s scientific voyage could contribute new and extremely comprehensive data. He had seen with his own eyes that the individuals of a single species of animal within the same region could differ from each other in only the minutest detail. He made some very interesting observations on the Galapagos Islands, west of Ecuador, in particular.”

“Tell me about them.”

“The Galapagos Islands are a compact group of volcanic islands. There were therefore no great differences in the plant and animal life there. But Darwin was interested in the tiny differences. On all the islands, he came across giant tortoises that were slightly different from one island to another. Had God really created a separate race of tortoises for each and every island?”

“It’s doubtful.”

“Darwin’s observations of bird life on the Galapagos were even more striking. The Galapagos finches were clearly varied from island to island, especially as regards the shape of the beak. Darwin demonstrated that these variations were closely linked to the way the finches found their food on the different islands. The ground finches with steeply profiled beaks lived on pine cone seeds, the little warbler finches lived on insects, and the tree finches lived on termites extracted from bark and branches ... Each and every one of the species had a beak that was perfectly adapted to its own food intake. Could all these finches be descended from one and the same species? And had the finches adapted to their surroundings on the different islands over the ages in such a way that new species of finches evolved?”

“That was the conclusion he came to, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Maybe that was where Darwin became a ‘Darwinist’—on the Galapagos Islands. He also observed that the fauna there bore a strong resemblance to many of the species he had seen in South America. Had God once and for all really created all these animals slightly different from each other—or had an evolution taken place? Increasingly, he began to doubt that all species were immutable. But he still had no viable explanation as to how such an evolution had occurred. But there was one more factor to indicate that all the animals on earth might be related.”

“And what was that?”

“The development of the embryo in mammals. If you compare the embryos of dogs, bats, rabbits, and humans at an early stage, they look so alike that it is hard to tell the difference. You cannot distinguish a human embryo from a rabbit embryo until a very late stage. Shouldn’t this indicate that we are distant relatives?”

“But he had still no explanation of how evolution happened?”

“He pondered constantly on [yell’s theory of the minute changes that could have great effect over a long period of time. But he could find no explanation that would apply as a general principle. He was familiar with the theory of the French zoologist Lamarck, who had shown that the different species had developed the characteristics they needed. Giraffes, for example, had developed long necks because for generations they had reached up for leaves in the trees. Lamarck believed that the characteristics each individual acquires through his own efforts are passed on to the next generation. But this theory of the heredity of ‘acquired characteristics’ was rejected by Darwin because Lamarck had no proof of his bold claims. However, Darwin was beginning to pursue another, much more obvious line of thought. You could almost say that the actual mechanism behind the evolution of species was right in front of his very nose.”

“So what was it?”

“I would rather you worked the mechanism out for yourself. So I ask: If you had three cows, but only enough fodder to keep two of them alive, what would you do?”

“I suppose I’d have to slaughter one of them.”

“All right... which one would you slaughter?”

“I suppose I’d slaughter the one that gave the least milk.”

“Would you?”

“Yes, that’s logical, isn’t it?”

“That is exactly what mankind had done for thousands of years. But we haven’t finished with your two cows yet. Suppose you wanted one of them to calve. Which one would you choose?”

“The one that was the best milker. Then its calf would probably be a good milker too.”

“You prefer good milkers to bad, then. Now there’s one more question. If you were a hunter and you had two gundogs, but had to give up one of them, which one would you keep?”

“The one that’s best at finding the kind of game I shoot, obviously.”

“Quite so, you would favor the better gundog. That’s exactly how people have bred domestic animals for more than ten thousand years, Sophie. Hens did not always lay five eggs a week, sheep did not always yield as much wool, and horses were not always as strong and swift as they are now. Breeders have made an artificial selection. The same applies to the vegetable kingdom. You don’t plant bad potatoes if there are good seed potatoes available, and you don’t waste time cutting wheat that yields no grain. Darwin pointed out that no cows, no stalks of wheat, no dogs, and no finches are completely alike. Nature produces an enormous breadth of variation. Even within the same species, no two individuals are exactly alike. You probably experienced that for yourself when you drank the blue liquid.”

“I’ll say.”

“So now Darwin had to ask himself: could a similar mechanism be at work in nature too? Is it possible that nature makes a ‘natural selection’ as to which individuals are to survive? And could such a selection over a very long period of time create new species of flora and fauna?”

“I would guess the answer is yes.”

“Darwin could still not quite imagine how such a natural selection could take place. But in October 1838, exactly two years after his return on the Beagle, he chanced to come across a little book by the specialist in population studies, Thomas Malthus. The book was called An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus got the idea for this essay from Benjamin Franklin, the American who invented the lightning conductor among other things. Franklin had made the point that if there were no limiting factors in nature, one single species of plant or animal would spread over the entire globe. But because there are many species, they keep each other in balance.”

“I can see that.”

“Malthus developed this idea and applied it to the world’s population. He believed that mankind’s ability to procreate is so great that there are always more children born than can survive. Since the production of food can never keep pace with the increase in population, he believed that huge numbers were destined to succumb in the struggle for existence. Those who survived to grow up— and perpetuate the race—would therefore be those who came out best in the struggle for survival.”

“That sounds logical.”

“But this was actually the universal mechanism that Darwin had been searching for. Here was the explanation of how evolution happens. It was due to natural selection in the struggle for life, in which those that were best adapted to their surroundings would survive and perpetuate the race. This was the second theory which he proposed in The Origin of Species. He wrote: The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals,’ but if it had six young and survived to a hundred, ‘after a period of from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair.’ “

“Not to mention all the thousands of cods’ eggs from a single cod.”

“Darwin further proposed that the struggle for survival is frequently hardest among species that resemble each other the most. They have to fight for the same food. There, the slightest advantage—that is to say, the infinitesimal variation—truly comes into its own. The more bitter the struggle for survival, the quicker will be the evolution of new species, so that only the very best adapted will survive and the others will die out.”

“The less food there is and the bigger the brood, the quicker evolution happens?”

“Yes, but it’s not only a question of food. It can be just as vital to avoid being eaten by other animals. For example, it can be a matter of survival to have a protective camouflage, the ability to run swiftly, to recognize hostile animals, or, if the worst comes to the worst, to have a repellent taste. A poison that can kill predators is quite useful too. That’s why so many cacti are poisonous, Sophie. Practically nothing else can grow in the desert, so this plant is especially vulnerable to plant-eating animals.”

“Most cacti are prickly as well.”

“The ability to reproduce is also of fundamental importance, obviously. Darwin studied the ingenuity of plant pollination in great detail. Flowers glow in glorious hues and exude delirious scents to attract the insects which are instrumental in pollination. To perpetuate their kind, birds trill their melodious tones. A placid or melancholy bull with no interest in cows will have no interest for genealogy either, since with characteristics like these, its line will die out at once. The bull’s sole purpose in life is to grow to sexual maturity and reproduce in order to propagate the race. It is rather like a relay race. Those that for one reason or another are unable to pass on their genes are continually discarded, and in that way the race is continually refined. Resistance to disease is one of the most important characteristics progressively accumulated and preserved in the variants that survive.”

“So everything gets better and better?”

“The result of this continual selection is that the ones best adapted to a particular environment—or a particular ecological niche—will in the long term perpetuate the race in that environment. But what is an advantage in one environment is not necessarily an advantage in another. For some of the Galapagos finches, the ability to fly was vital. But being good at flying is not so necessary if food is dug from the ground and there are no predators. The reason why so many different animal species have arisen over the ages is precisely because of these many niches in the natural environment.”

“But even so, there is only one human race.”

“That’s because man has a unique ability to adapt to different conditions of life. One of the things that amazed Darwin most was the way the Indians in Tierra del Fuego managed to live under such terrible climatic conditions. But that doesn’t mean that all human beings are alike. Those who live near the equator have darker skins than people in the more northerly climes because their dark skin protects them from the sun. White people who expose themselves to the sun for long periods are more prone to skin cancer.”

“Is it a similar advantage to have white skin if you live in northern countries?”

“Yes, otherwise everyone on earth would be dark-skinned. But white skin more easily forms sun vitamins, and that can be vital in areas with very little sun. Nowadays that is not so important because we can make sure we have enough sun vitamins in our diet. But nothing in nature is random. Everything is due to infinitesimal changes that have taken effect over countless generations.”

“Actually, it’s quite fantastic to imagine.”

“It is indeed. So far, then, we can sum up Darwin’s theory of evolution in a few sentences.”

“Go ahead!”

“We can say that the ‘raw material’ behind the evolution of life on earth was the continual variation of individuals within the same species, plus the large number of progeny, which meant that only a fraction of them survived, the actual ‘mechanism,’ or driving force, behind evolution was thus the natural selection in the struggle for survival. This selection ensured that the strongest, or the ‘fittest,’ survived.”

“It seems as logical as a math sum. How was The Origin of Species received?”

“It was the cause of bitter controversies. The Church protested vehemently and the scientific world was sharply divided. That was not really so surprising. Darwin had, after all, distanced God a good way from the act of creation, although there were admittedly some who claimed it was surely greater to have created something with its own innate evolutionary potential than simply to create a fixed entity.”

Suddenly Sophie jumped up from her chair.

“Look out there!” she cried.

She pointed out of the window. Down by the lake a man and a woman were walking hand in hand. They were completely naked.

“That’s Adam and Eve,” said Alberto. “They were gradually forced to throw in their lot with Little Red Rid-inghood and Alice in Wonderland. That’s why they have turned up here.”

Sophie went to the window to watch them, but they soon disappeared among the trees.

“Because Darwin believed that mankind was descended from animals?”

“In 1871 Darwin published The Descent of Man, in which he drew attention to the great similarities between humans and animals, advancing the theory that men and anthropoid apes must at one time have evolved from the same progenitor. By this time the first fossil skulls of an extinct type of man had been found, first in the Rock of Gibraltar and some years later in Neanderthal in Germany. Strangely enough, there were fewer protests in T871 than in 1859, when Darwin published The Origin of Species. But man’s descent from animals had been implicit in the first book as well. And as I said, when Darwin died in 1882, he was buried with all the ceremony due to a pioneer of science.”

”So in the end he found honor and dignity?”

“Eventually, yes. But not before he had been described as the most dangerous man in England.”

“Holy Moses!”

“ ‘Let us hope it is not true,’ wrote an upper-class lady, ‘but if it is, let us hope it will not be generally known.’ A distinguished scientist expressed a similar thought: ‘An embarrassing discovery, and the less said about it the better.’ “

“That was almost proof that man is related to the ostrich!”

“Good point. But that’s easy enough for us to say now. People were suddenly obliged to revise their whole approach to the Book of Genesis. The young writer John Ruskin put it like this: ‘If only the geologists would leave me alone. After each Bible verse I hear the blows of their hammers.’ “

“And the blows of the hammers were his doubts about the word of God?”

“That was presumably what he meant. Because it was more than the literal interpretation of the story of creation that toppled. The essence of Darwin’s theory was the utterly random variations which had finally produced Man. And what was more, Darwin had turned Marv into a product of something as unsentimental as the struggle for existence.”

“Did Darwin have anything to say about how such random variations arose?”

“You’ve put your finger on the weakest point in his theory. Darwin had only the vaguest idea of heredity. Something happens in the crossing. A father and mother never get two identical offspring. There is always some slight difference. On the other hand it’s difficult to produce anything really new in that way. Moreover, there are plants and animals which reproduce by budding or by simple cell division. On the question of how the variations arise, Darwin’s theory has been supplemented by the so-called neo-Darwinism.”

“What’s that?”

“All life and all reproduction is basically a matter of cell division. When a cell divides into two, two identical cells are produced with exactly the same hereditary factors. In cell division, then, we say a cell copies itself.”

“Yes?”

“But occasionally, infinitesimal errors occur in the process, so that the copied cell is not exactly the same as the mother cell. In modern biological terms, this is a mutation. Mutations are either totally irrelevant, or they can lead to marked changes in the behavior of the individual. They can be directly harmful, and such ‘mutants’ will be continually discarded from the large broods. Many diseases are in fact due to mutations. But sometimes a mutation can give an individual just that extra positive characteristic needed to hold its own in the struggle for existence.”

“Like a longer neck, for instance?”

“Lamarck’s explanation of why the giraffe has such a long neck was that giraffes have always had to reach upwards. But according to Darwinism, no such inherited characteristic would be passed on. Darwin believed that the giraffe’s long neck was the result of a variation. Neo-Darwinism supplemented this by showing a clear cause of just that particular variation.”

“Mutations?”

“Yes. Absolutely random changes in hereditary factors supplied one of the giraffe’s ancestors with a slightly longer neck than average. When there was a limited supply of food, this could be vital enough. The giraffe that could reach up highest in the trees managed best. We can also imagine how some such ‘primal giraffes’ evolved the ability to dig in the ground for food. Over a very long period of time, an animal species, now long extinct, could have divided itself into two species. We can take some more recent examples of the way natural selection can work.”

“Yes, please.”

“In Britain there is a certain species of butterfly called the peppered moth, which lives on the trunks of silver birches. Back in the eighteenth century, most peppered moths were silvery gray. Can you guess why, Sophie?”

“So they weren’t so easy for hungry birds to spot.”

“But from time to time, due to quite chance mutations, some darker ones were born. How do you think these darker variants fared?”

“They were easier to see, so they were more easily snapped up by hungry birds.”

“Yes, because in that environment—where the birch trunks were silver—the darker hue was an unfavorable characteristic. So it was always the paler peppered moths that increased in number. But then something happened in that environment. In several places, the silvery trunks became blackened by industrial soot. What do you think happened to the peppered moths then?”

“the darker ones survived best.”

“Yes, so now it wasn’t long before they increased in number. From 1848 to 1948, the proportion of dark peppered moths increased from 1 to 99 percent in certain places. The environment had changed, and it was no longer an advantage to be light. On the contrary. The white ‘losers’ were weeded out with the help of the birds as soon as they appeared on the birch trunks. But then something significant happened again. A decrease in the use of coal and better filtering equipment in the factories has recently produced a cleaner environment.”

“So now the birches are silver again?”

“And therefore the peppered moth is in the process of returning to its silvery color. This is what we call adaptation. It’s a natural law.”

“Yes, I see.”

“But there are numerous examples of how man interferes in the environment.”

“Like what?”

“For example, people have tried to eradicate pests with various pesticides. At first, this can produce excellent results. But when you spray a field or an orchard with pesticides, you actually cause a miniature ecocatastrophe for the pests you are trying to eradicate. Due to continual mutations, a type of pest develops that is resistant to the pesticide being used. Now these ‘winners’ have free play, so it becomes harder and harder to combat certain kinds of pest simply because of man’s attempt to eradicate them. The most resistant variants are the ones that survive, of course.”

“That’s pretty scary.”

“It certainly is food for thought. We also try to combat parasites in our own bodies in the form of bacteria.”

“We use penicillin or other kinds of antibiotic.”

“Yes, and penicillin is also an ecocatastrophe for the little devils. However, as we continue to administer penicillin, we are making certain bacteria resistant, thereby cultivating a group of bacteria that is much harder to combat than it was before. We find we have to use stronger and stronger antibiotics, until . . .”

“Until they finally crawl out of our mouths? Maybe we ought to start shooting them?”

“That might be a tiny bit exaggerated. But it is clear that modern medicine has created a serious dilemma. The problem is not only that a single bacterium has become more virulent. In the past, there were many children who never survived—they succumbed to various diseases. Sometimes only the minority survived. But in a sense modern medicine has put natural selection out of commission. Something that has helped one individual over a serious illness can in the long run contribute to weakening the resistance of the whole human race to certain diseases. If we pay absolutely no attention to what is called hereditary hygiene, we could find ourselves facing a degeneration of the human race. Mankind’s hereditary potential for resisting serious disease will be weakened.”

“What a terrifying prospect!”

“But a real philosopher must not refrain from pointing out something ‘terrifying’ if he otherwise believes it to be true. So let us attempt another summary.”

“Okay.”

“You could say that life is one big lottery in which only the winning numbers are visible.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Those that have lost in the struggle for existence have disappeared, you see. It takes many millions of years to select the winning numbers for each and every species of vegetable and animal on the earth. And the losing numbers—well, they only make one appearance. So there are no species of animal or vegetable in existence today that are not winning numbers in the great lottery of life.”

“Because only the best have survived.”

“Yes, that’s another way of saying it. And now, if you will kindly pass me the picture which that fellow—that zookeeper—brought us . . .”

Sophie passed the picture over to him. The picture of Noah’s Ark covered one side of it. The other was devoted to a tree diagram of all the various species of animals. This was the side Alberto was now showing her.

“Our Darwinian Noah also brought us a sketch that shows the distribution of the various vegetable and animal species. You can see how the different species belong in the different groups, classes, and subkingdoms.”

“Yes.”

“Together with monkeys, man belongs to the so-called primates. Primates are mammals, and all mammals belong to the vertebrates, which again belong to the multi-cellular animals.”

“It’s almost like Aristotle.”

“Yes, that’s true. But the sketch illustrates not only the distribution of the different species today. It also tells something of the history of evolution. You can see, for example, that birds at some point parted from reptiles, and that reptiles at some point parted from amphibia, and that amphibia parted from fishes.”

“Yes, it’s very clear.”

“Every time a line divides into two, it’s because mutations have resulted in a new species. That is how, over the ages, the different classes and subkingdoms of animals arose. In actual fact there are more than a million animal species in the world today, and this million is only a fraction of the species that have at some time lived on the earth. You can see, for instance, that an animal group such as the Trilobita is totally extinct.”

“And at the bottom are the monocellular animals.”

“Some of these may not have changed in two billion years. You can also see that there is a line from these monocellular organisms to the vegetable kingdom. Because in all probability plants come from the same primal cell as animals.”

“Yes, I see that. But there’s something that puzzles me.”

“Yes?”

“Where did this first primal cell come from? Did Darwin have any answer to that?”

“I said, did I not, that he was a very cautious man. But as regards that question, he did permit himself to propose what one might call a qualified guess. He wrote:

If (and O, what an if!) we could picture some hot little pool in which all manner of ammoniacal and phosphorous salts, light, heat, electricity and so forth were present, and that a protein compound were to be chemically formed in it, ready to undergo even more complicated changes ...”

“What then?”

“What Darwin was philosophizing on here was how the first living cell might have been formed out of inorganic matter. And again, he hit the nail right on the head. Scientists of today think the first primitive form of life arose in precisely the kind of ‘hot little pool’ that Darwin pictured.”

“Go on.”

“That will have to suffice because we’re leaving Darwin now. We’re going to jump ahead to the most recent findings about the origins of life on earth.”

“I’m rather apprehensive. Does anybody really know how life began?”

“Maybe not, but more and more pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place to form a picture of how it may have begun.”

“Well?”

“Let us first establish that all life on earth—both animal and vegetable—is constructed of exactly the same substances. The simplest definition of life is that it is a substance which in a nutrient solution has the ability to subdivide itself into two identical parts. This process is governed by a substance we call DNA. By DNA we mean the chromosomes, or hereditary structures, that are found in all living cells. We also use the term DNA molecule, because DNA is in fact a complex molecule—or macro-molecule. The question is, then, how the first molecule arose.”

“Yes?”

“The earth was formed when the solar system came into being 4.6 billion years ago. It began as a glowing mass which gradually cooled. This is where modern science believes life began between three and four billion years ago.”

“It sounds totally improbable.”

“Don’t say that before you have heard the rest. First of all, our planet was quite different from the way it looks today. Since there was no life, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. Free oxygen was first formed by the photosynthesis of plants. And the fact that there was no oxygen is important. It is unlikely that life cells—which, again, can form DNA—could have arisen in an atmosphere containing oxygen.”

“Why?”

“Because oxygen is strongly reactive. Long before complex molecules like DNA could be formed, the DNA molecular cells would be oxydized.”

“Really.”

“That is how we know for certain that no new life arises today, not even so much as a bacterium or a virus. All life on earth must be exactly the same age. An elephant has just as long a family tree as the smallest bacterium. You could almost say that an elephant—or a human being— is in reality a single coherent colony of monocellular creatures. Because each cell in our body carries the same hereditary material. The whole recipe of who we are lies hidden in each tiny cell.”

“That’s an odd thought.”

“One of life’s great mysteries is that the cells of a multicellular animal have the ability to specialize their function in spite of the fact that not all the different hereditary characteristics are active in all the cells. Some of these characteristics—or genes—are ‘activated’ and others are ‘deactivated.’ A liver cell does not produce the same proteins as a nerve cell or a skin cell. But all three types of cell have the same DMA molecule, which contains the whole recipe for the organism in question.

“Since there was no oxygen in the atmosphere, there was no protective ozone layer around the earth. That means there was nothing to stop the radiation from the cosmos. This is also significant because this radiation was probably instrumental in forming the first complex molecule. Cosmic radiation of this nature was the actual energy which caused the various chemical substances on the earth to start combining into a complicated macro-molecule.”

“Okay.”

“Let me recapitulate: Before such complex molecules, of which all life consists, can be formed, at least two conditions must be present: there must be no oxygen in the atmosphere, and there must be access for cosmic radiation.”

“I get it.”

“In this ‘hot little pool’—or primal soup, as it is often called by modern scientists—there was once formed a gigantically complicated macromolecule, which had the wondrous property of being able to subdivide itself into two identical parts. And so the long evolutionary process began, Sophie. If we simplify it a bit, we can say that we are now talking of the first hereditary material, the first DNA or the first living cell. It subdivided itself again and again—but from the very first stage, transmutation was occurring. After aeons of time, one of these monocellular organisms connected with a more complicated multicel-lular organism. Thus the photosynthesis of plants also began, and in that way the atmosphere came to contain oxygen. This had two results: first, the atmosphere permitted the evolution of animals that could breathe with the aid of lungs. Secondly, the atmosphere protected life from the harmful cosmic radiation. Strangely enough, this radiation, which was probably a vital ‘spark’ in the formation of the first cell, is also harmful to all forms of life.”

“But the atmosphere can’t have been formed overnight. How did the earliest forms of life manage?”

“Life began in the primal ‘seas’—which are what we mean by primal soup. There it could live protected from the harmful rays. Not until much later, when life in the oceans had formed an atmosphere, did the first amphibians crawl out onto land. The rest is what we have already talked about. And here we are, sitting in a hut in the woods, looking back on a process that has taken three or four billion years. And in us, this long process has finally become aware of itself.”

“And yet you don’t think it all happened quite accidentally?”

“I never said that. The picture on this board shows that evolution had a direction. Across the aeons of time animals have evolved with increasingly complicated nerve systems—and an ever bigger brain. Personally, I don’t think that can be accidental. What do you think?”

“It can’t be pure chance that created the human eye. Don’t you think there is meaning in our being able to see the world around us?”

“Funnily enough, the development of the eye puzzled Darwin too. He couldn’t really come to terms with the fact that something as delicate and sensitive as an eye could be exclusively due to natural selection.”

Sophie sat looking up at Alberto. She was thinking how odd it was that she should be alive now, and that she only lived this one time and would never again return to life. Suddenly she exclaimed:

What matters our creative endless toil,

When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?

Alberto frowned at her.

“You must not talk like that, child. Those are the words of the Devil.”

“The Devil?”

“Or Mephistopheles—in Goethe’s Faust ‘Was soil uns denn das ew’ge Schaffen! Geschaffenes zu nichts hinweg-zuraffenV “

“But what do those words mean exactly?”

“As Faust dies and looks back on his life’s work, he says in triumph:

Then to the moment could I say:

Linger you now, you are so fair!

Now records of my earthly day

No flights of aeons can impair—

Foreknowledge comes, and fills me with such bliss,

I take my joy, my highest moment this.”

“That was very poetic.”

“But then it’s the Devil’s turn. As soon as Faust dies, he exclaims:

A foolish word, bygone.

How so then, gone?

Gone, to sheer Nothing, past with null made one!

What matters creative endless toil,

When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?

‘It is bygone’—How shall this riddle run?

As good as if things never had begun,

Yet circle back, existence to possess:

I’d rather have Eternal Emptiness.”

“That’s pessimistic. I liked the first passage best. Even though his life was over, Faust saw some meaning in the traces he would leave behind him.”

“And is it not also a consequence of Darwin’s theory that we are part of something all-encompassing, in which every tiny life form has its significance in the big picture? We are the living planet, Sophie! We are the great vessel sailing around a burning sun in the universe. But each and every one of us is also a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes. When we have carried this cargo safely to the next harbor—we have not lived in vain. Thomas Hardy expresses the same thought in his poem Transformations’:

Portion of this yew

Is a man my grandsire knew,

Bosomed here at its foot:

This branch may be his wife,

A ruddy human life

Now turned to a green shoot.

These grasses must be made

Of her who often prayed,

Last century, for repose;

And the fair girl long ago

Whom I often tried to know

May be entering this rose.

So, they are not underground,

But as nerves and veins abound

In the growths of upper air,

And they feel the sun and rain,

And the energy again

That made them what they were!”

“That’s very pretty.”

“But we will talk no more. I simply say next chapter!’

“Oh, stop all that irony!”

“New chapter, I said! I shall be obeyed!”

Freud

... the odious egoistic impulse that had emerged in her...

Hilde Moller Knag jumped out of bed with the bulky ring binder in her arms. She plonked it down on her writing desk, grabbed her clothes, and dashed into the bathroom. She stood under the shower for two minutes, dressed herself quickly, and ran downstairs.

“Breakfast is ready, Hilde!”

“I just have to go and row first.”

“But Hilde... !”

She ran out of the house, down the garden, and out onto the little dock. She untied the boat and jumped down into it. She rowed around the bay with short angry strokes until she had calmed down.

“We are the living planet, Sophie! We are the great vessel sailing around a burning sun in the universe. But each and every of us is also a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes. When we have carried this cargo safely to the next harbor—we have not lived in vain...”

She knew the passage by heart. It had been written for her. Not for Sophie, for her. Every word in the ring binder was written by Dad to Hilde.

She rested the oars in the oarlocks and drew them in. The boat rocked gently on the water, the ripples slapping softly against the prow.

And like the little rowboat floating on the surface in the bay at Lillesand, she herself was just a nutshell on the surface of life.

Where were Sophie and Alberto in this picture? Yes, where were Alberto and Sophie?

She could not fathom that they were no more than “electromagnetic impulses” in her father’s brain. She could not fathom, and certainly not accept, that they were only paper and printer’s ink from a ribbon in her father’s portable typewriter. One might just as well say that she herself was nothing but a conglomeration of protein compounds that had suddenly come to life one day in a “hot little pool.” But she was more than that. She was Hilde Moller Knag.

She had to admit that the ring binder was a fantastic present, and that her father had touched the core of something eternal in her. But she didn’t care for the way he was dealing with Sophie and Alberto.

She would certainly teach him a lesson, even before he got home. She felt she owed it to the two of them. Hilde could already imagine her father at Kastrup Airport, in Copenhagen. She could just see him running around like mad.

Hilde was now quite herself again. She rowed the boat back to the dock, where she was careful to make it fast. After breakfast she sat at the table for a long time with her mother. It felt good to be able to talk about something as ordinary as whether the egg was a trifle too soft.

She did not start to read again until the evening. There were not many pages left now.

Once again there was a knocking on the door.

“Let’s just put our hands over our ears,” said Alberto, “and perhaps it’ll go away.”

“No, I want to see who it is.”

Alberto followed her to the door.

On the step stood a naked man. He had adopted a very ceremonial posture, but the only thing he had with him was the crown on his head.

“Well?” he said. “What do you good people think of the Emperor’s new clothes?”

Alberto and Sophie were utterly dumbfounded. This caused the naked man some consternation.

“What? You are not bowing!” he cried.

“Indeed, that is true,” said Alberto, “but the Emperor is stark naked.”

The naked man maintained his ceremonial posture. Alberto bent over and whispered in Sophie’s ear:

“He thinks he is respectable.”

At this, the man scowled.

“Is some kind of censorship being exercised on these premises?” he asked.

“Regrettably,” said Alberto. “In here we are both alert and of sound mind in every way. In the Emperor’s shameless condition he can therefore not cross the threshold of this house.”

Sophie found the naked man’s pomposity so absurd that she burst out laughing. As if her laughter had been a prearranged signal, the man with the crown on his head suddenly became aware that he was naked. Covering his private parts with both hands, he bounded toward the nearest clump of trees and disappeared, probably to join company with Adam and Eve, Noah, Little Red Riding-hood, and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Alberto and Sophie remained standing on the step, laughing.

At last Alberto said, “It might be a good idea if we went inside. I’m going to tell you about Freud and his theory of the unconscious.”

They seated themselves by the window again. Sophie looked at her watch and said: “It’s already half past two and I have a lot to do before the garden party.”

“So have I. We’ll just say a few words about Sigmund Freud.”

“Was he a philosopher?”

“We could describe him as a cultural philosopher, at least. Freud was born in 1 856 and he studied medicine at the University of Vienna. He lived in Vienna for the greater part of his life at a period when the cultural life of the city was flourishing. He specialized early on in neurology. Toward the close of the last century, and far into our own, he developed his ‘depth psychology’ or psychoanalysis.”

“You’re going to explain this, right?”

“Psychoanalysis is a description of the human mind in general as well as a therapy for nervous and mental disorders. I do not intend to give you a complete picture either of Freud or of his work. But his theory of the unconscious is necessary to an understanding of what a human being is.”

“You intrigue me. Go on.”

“Freud held that there is a constant tension between man and his surroundings. In particular, a tension—or conflict—between his drives and needs and the demands of society. It is no exaggeration to say that Freud discovered human drives. This makes him an important exponent of the naturalistic currents that were so prominent toward the end of the nineteenth century.”

“What do you mean by human drives?”

“Our actions are not always guided by reason. Man is not really such a rational creature as the eighteenth-century rationalists liked to think. Irrational impulses often determine what we think, what we dream, and what we do. Such irrational impulses can be an expression of basic drives or needs. The human sexual drive, for example, is just as basic as the baby’s instinct to suckle.”

“Yes?”

“This in itself was no new discovery. But Freud showed that these basic needs can be disguised or ‘sublimated,’ thereby steering our actions without our being aware of it. He also showed that infants have some sort of sexuality. The respectable middle-class Viennese reacted with abhorrence to this suggestion of the ‘sexuality of the child’ and made him very unpopular.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“We call it Victorianism, when everything to do with sexuality is taboo. Freud first became aware of children’s sexuality during his practice of psychotherapy. So he had an empirical basis for his claims. He had also seen how numerous forms of neurosis or psychological disorders could be traced back to conflicts during childhood. He gradually developed a type of therapy that we could call the archeology of the soul.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“An archeologist searches for traces of the distant past by digging through layers of cultural history. He may find a knife from the eighteenth century. Deeper in the ground he may find a comb from the fourteenth century—and even deeper down perhaps an urn from the fifth century

B.C.”

“Yes?”

“In a similar way, the psychoanalyst, with the patient’s help, can dig deep into the patient’s mind and bring to light the experiences that have caused the patient’s psychological disorder, since according to Freud, we store the memory of all our experiences deep inside us.”

“Yes, I see.”

“The analyst can perhaps discover an unhappy experience that the patient has tried to suppress for many years, but which has nevertheless lain buried, gnawing away at the patient’s resources. By bringing a ‘traumatic experience’ into the conscious mind—and holding it up to the patient, so to speak—he or she can help the patient ‘be done with it,’ and get well again.”

“That sounds logical.”

“But I am jumping too far ahead. Let us first take a look at Freud’s description of the human mind. Have you ever seen a newborn baby?”

“I have a cousin who is four.”

“When we come into the world, we live out our physical and mental needs quite directly and unashamedly. If we do not get milk, we cry, or maybe we cry if we have a wet diaper. We also give direct expression to our desire for physical contact and body warmth. Freud called this ‘pleasure principle’ in us the id. As newborn babies we are hardly anything but id.”

“Go on.”

“We carry the id, or pleasure principle, with us into adulthood and throughout life. But gradually we learn to regulate our desires and adjust to our surroundings. We learn to regulate the pleasure principle in relation to the ‘reality principle.’ In Freud’s terms, we develop an ego which has this regulative function. Even though we want or need something, we cannot just lie down and scream until we get what we want or need.”

“No, obviously.”

“We may desire something very badly that the outside world will not accept. We may repress our desires. That means we try to push them away and forget about them.”

“I see.”

“However, Freud proposed, and worked with, a third element in the human mind. From infancy we are constantly faced with the moral demands of our parents and of society. When we do anything wrong, our parents say ‘Don’t do that!’ or ‘Naughty naughty, that’s bad!’ Even when we are grown up, we retain the echo of such moral demands and judgments. It seems as though the world’s moral expectations have become part of us. Freud called this the superego.”

“Is that another word for conscience?”

“Conscience is a component of the superego. But Freud claimed that the superego tells us when our desires themselves are ‘bad’ or ‘improper/ not least in the case of erotic or sexual desire. And as I said, Freud claimed that these ‘improper’ desires already manifest themselves at an early stage of childhood.”

“How?”

“Nowadays we know that infants like touching their sex organs. We can observe this on any beach. In Freud’s time, this behavior could result in a slap over the fingers of the two- or three-year-old, perhaps accompanied by the mother saying, ‘Naughty!’ or ‘Don’t do that!’ or ‘Keep your hands on top of the covers!’”

“How sick!”

“That’s the beginning of guilt feelings about everything connected with the sex organs and sexuality. Because this guilt feeling remains in the superego, many people—according to Freud, most people—feel guilty about sex all their lives. At the same time he showed that sexual desires and needs are natural and vital for human beings. And thus, my dear Sophie, the stage is set for a lifelong conflict between desire and guilt.”

“Don’t you think the conflict has died down a lot since Freud’s time?”

“Most certainly. But many of Freud’s patients experienced the conflict so acutely that they developed what Freud called neuroses. One of his many women patients, for example, was secretly in love with her brother-in-law. When her sister died of an illness, she thought: ‘Now he is free to marry me!’ This thought was on course for a frontal collision with her superego, and was so monstrous an idea that she immediately repressed it, Freud tells us. In other words, she buried it deep in her unconscious. Freud wrote: ‘The young girl was ill and displaying severe hysterical symptoms. When I began treating her it appeared that she had thoroughly forgotten about the scene at her sister’s bedside and the odious egoistic impulse that had emerged in her. But during analysis she remembered it, and in a state of great agitation she reproduced the pathogenic moment and through this treatment became cured.’ “

“Now I better understand what you meant by an archeology of the soul.”

“So we can give a general description of the human psyche. After many years of experience in treating patients, Freud concluded that the conscious constitutes only a small part of the human mind. The conscious is like the tip of the iceberg above sea level. Below sea level—or below the threshold of the conscious—is the ‘subconscious,’ or the unconscious.”

“So the unconscious is everything that’s inside us that we have forgotten and don’t remember?”

“We don’t have all our experiences consciously present all the time. But the kinds of things we have thought or experienced, and which we can recall if we ‘put our mind to it,’ Freud termed the preconscious. He reserved the term ‘unconscious’ for things we have repressed. That is, the sort of thing we have made an effort to forget because it was either ‘unpleasant’,’improper,’ or ‘nasty.’ If we have desires and urges that are not tolerable to the conscious, the superego shoves them downstairs. Away with them!”

“I get it.”

“This mechanism is at work in all healthy people. But it can be such a tremendous strain for some people to keep the unpleasant or forbidden thoughts away from consciousness that it leads to mental illness. Whatever is repressed in this way will try of its own accord to reenter consciousness. For some people it takes a great effort to keep such impulses under the critical eye of the conscious. When Freud was in America in 1909 lecturing on psychoanalysis, he gave an example of the way this repression mechanism functions.”

“I’d like to hear that!”

“He said: ‘Suppose that here in this hall and in this audience, whose exemplary stillness and attention I cannot sufficiently commend, there is an individual who is creating a disturbance, and, by his ill-bred laughing, talking, by scraping his feet, distracts my attention from my task. I explain that I cannot go on with my lecture under these conditions, and thereupon several strong men among you get up and, after a short struggle, eject the disturber of the peace from the hall. He is now repressed, and I can continue my lecture. But in order that the disturbance may not be repeated, in case the man who has just been thrown out attempts to force his way back into the room, the gentlemen who have executed my suggestion take their chairs to the door and establish themselves there as a resistance, to keep up the repression. Now, if you transfer both locations to the psyche, calling this consciousness, and the outside the unconscious, you have a tolerably good illustration of the process of repression.’ “

“I agree.”

“But the disturber of the peace insists on reentering, Sophie. At least, that’s the way it is with repressed thoughts and urges. We live under the constant pressure of repressed thoughts that are trying to fight their way up from the unconscious. That’s why we often say or do things without intending to. Unconscious reactions thus prompt our feelings and actions.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Freud operates with several of these mechanisms. One is what he called parapraxes—slips of the tongue or pen. In other words, we accidentally say or do things that we once tried to repress. Freud gives the example of the shop foreman who was to propose a toast to the boss. The trouble was that this boss was terribly unpopular. In plain words, he was what one might call a swine.”

“Yes?”

“The foreman stood up, raised his glass, and said ‘Here’s to the swine!’ “

“I’m speechless!”

“So was the foreman. He had actually only said what he really meant. But he didn’t mean to say it. Do you want to hear another example?”

“Yes, please.”

“A bishop was coming to tea with the local minister, who had a large family of nice well-behaved little daughters. This bishop happened to have an unusually big nose. The little girls were duly instructed that on no account were they to refer to the bishop’s nose, since children often blurt out spontaneous remarks about people because their repressive mechanism is not yet developed. The bishop arrived, and the delightful daughters strained themselves to the utmost not to comment on his nose. They tried to not even look at it and to forget about it. But they were thinking about it the whole time. And then one of them was asked to pass the sugar around. She looked at the distinguished bishop and said, ‘Do you take sugar in your nose?’ “

“How awful!”

“Another thing we can do is to rationalize. That means that we do not give the real reason for what we are doing either to ourselves or to other people because the real reason is unacceptable.”

“Like what?”

“I could hypnotize you to open a window. While you are under hypnosis I tell you that when I begin to drum my fingers on the table you will get up and open the window. I drum on the table—and you open the window. Afterward I ask you why you opened the window and you might say you did it because it was too hot. But that is not the real reason. You are reluctant to admit to yourself that you did something under my hypnotic orders. So you rationalize.”

“Yes, I see.”

“We all encounter that sort of thing practically every day.”

“This four-year-old cousin of mine, I don’t think he has a lot of playmates, so he’s always happy when I visit. One day I told him I had to hurry home to my mom. Do you know what he said?”

“What did he say?”

“He said, she’s stupid!”

“Yes, that was definitely a case of rationalizing. The boy didn’t mean what he actually said. He meant it was stupid you had to go, but he was too shy to say so. Another thing we do is project.”

“What’s that?”

“When we project, we transfer the characteristics we are trying to repress in ourselves onto other people. A person who is very miserly, for example, will characterize others as penny-pinchers. And someone who will not admit to being preoccupied with sex can be the first to be incensed at other people’s sex-fixation.”

“Hmm.”

“Freud claimed that our everyday life was filled with unconscious mechanisms like these. We forget a particular person’s name, we fumble with our clothes while we talk, or we shift what appear to be random objects around in the room. We also stumble over words and make various slips of the tongue or pen that can seem completely innocent. Freud’s point was that these slips are neither as accidental nor as innocent as we think. These bungled actions can in fact reveal the most intimate secrets.”

“From now on I’ll watch all my words very carefully.”

“Even if you do, you won’t be able to escape from your unconscious impulses. The art is precisely not to expend too much effort on burying unpleasant things in the unconscious. It’s like trying to block up the entrance to a water vole’s nest. You can be sure the water vole will pop up in another part of the garden. It is actually quite healthy to leave the door ajar between the conscious and the unconscious.”

“If you lock that door you can get mentally sick, right?”

“Yes. A neurotic is just such a person, who uses too much energy trying to keep the ‘unpleasant’ out of his consciousness. Frequently there is a particular experience which the person is desperately trying to repress. He can nonetheless be anxious for the doctor to help him to find his way back to the hidden traumas.”

“How does the doctor do that?”

“Freud developed a technique which he called free association. In other words, he let the patient lie in a relaxed position and just talk about whatever came into his or her mind—however irrelevant, random, unpleasant, or embarrassing it might sound. The idea was to break through the ‘lid’ or ‘control’ that had grown over the traumas, because it was these traumas that were causing the patient concern. They are active all the time, just not consciously.”

“The harder you try to forget something, the more you think about it unconsciously?”

“Exactly. That is why it is so important to be aware of the signals from the unconscious. According to Freud, the royal road to the unconscious is our dreams. His main work was written on this subject—The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, in which he showed that our dreams are not random. Our unconscious tries to communicate with our conscious through dreams.”

“Go on.”

“After many years of experience with patients—and not least after having analyzed his own dreams—Freud determined that all dreams are wish fulfillments. This is clearly observable in children, he said. They dream about ice cream and cherries. But in adults, the wishes that are to be fulfilled in dreams are disguised. That is because even when we sleep, censorship is at work on what we will permit ourselves. And although this censorship, or repression mechanism, is considerably weaker when we are asleep than when we are awake, it is still strong enough to cause our dreams to distort the wishes we cannot acknowledge.”

“Which is why dreams have to be interpreted “

“Freud showed that we must distinguish between the actual dream as we recall it in the morning and the real meaning of the dream. He termed the actual dream image—that is, the ‘film’ or ‘video’ we dream—the manifest dream. This ‘apparent’ dream content always takes its material or scenario from the previous day. But the dream also contains a deeper meaning which is hidden from consciousness. Freud called this the latent dream thoughts, and these hidden thoughts which the dream is really about may stem from the distant past, from earliest childhood, for instance.”

“So we have to analyze the dream before we can understand it.”

“Yes, and for the mentally ill, this must be done in conjunction with the therapist. But it is not the doctor who interprets the dream. He can only do it with the help of the patient. In this situation, the doctor simply fulfills the function of a Socratic ‘midwife,’ assisting during the interpretation.”

“I see.”

“The actual process of converting the latent dream thoughts to the manifest dream aspect was termed by Freud the dream work. We might call it ‘masking’ or ‘coding’ what the dream is actually about. In interpreting the dream, we must go through the reverse process and unmask or decode the motif to arrive at its theme.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Freud’s book teems with examples. But we can construct a simple and very Freudian example for ourselves. Let us say a young man dreams that he is given two balloons by his female cousin . . .”

“Yes?”

“Go on, try to interpret the dream yourself.”

“Hmm ... there is a manifest dream, just like you said: a young man gets two balloons from his female cousin.”

“Carry on.”

“You said the scenario is always from the previous day. So he had been to the fair the day before—or maybe he saw a picture of balloons in the newspaper.”

“It’s possible, but he need only have seen the word ‘balloon,’ or something that reminded him of a balloon.”

“But what are the latent dream thoughts that the dream is really about?”

“You’re the interpreter.”

“Maybe he just wanted a couple of balloons.”

“No, that won’t work. You’re right about the dream being a wish fulfillment. But a young man would hardly have an ardent wish for a couple of balloons. And if he had, he wouldn’t need to dream about them.”

“I think I’ve got it: he really wants his cousin—and the two balloons are her breasts.”

“Yes, that’s a much more likely explanation. And it presupposes that he experienced his wish as an embarrassment.”

“In a way, our dreams make a lot of detours?”