by David Lodge
31
‘SOME OF YOU may be wondering what I am doing on this platform, presuming to address you on the subject of this conference. I assure you that no one is more surprised by the presumption than I am. But please don’t blame me, blame Professor Messenger, whose idea it was.
‘Before I came to Gloucester University, and met him, and was shown round his Centre, I wasn’t even aware that scientists were concerned with consciousness. Now at least I understand their interest in the subject. In a way it’s the most fascinating subject of all, because the investigation of consciousness is an investigation into what makes us human, and how it is that we know what we know. Or think we know. Are we animals or machines, or a combination of both, or something different from either? Understanding consciousness, it occurred to me this weekend, is to modern science what the Philosopher’s Stone was to alchemy: the ultimate prize in the quest for knowledge.
‘The search for a substance that would turn base metal into gold was of course vain, because no such compound exists or could be manufactured; but in the experimental process many genuine discoveries were made – from porcelain to gunpowder. Perhaps we shall never fully understand consciousness – I understand there are experts who take that view, and I must say I find it intuitively appealing – but the effort to do so has already yielded many fascinating discoveries about the brain and the mind, some of which have been described to us over the past three days.
‘There has however been very little reference made to literature in the proceedings. This I find surprising, because literature is a written record of human consciousness, arguably the richest we have. I’m going to hang my observations on a short literary text, a poem – or to be precise, three stanzas from the middle of a poem. The poem is called ‘The Garden’, by the seventeenth-century English poet Andrew Marvell, and it is a kind of rapturous ode to the joy of experiencing nature in a state of cultivation. The first of the three stanzas describes the sensuous pleasures of an ideal garden. If all goes well it should now appear on the screen . . . Oh. Sorry. I’m not used to these gadgets. There.
What wond’rous Life in this I lead!
Ripe Apples drop about my head;
The Luscious Clusters of the Vine
Upon my Mouth do crush their Wine;
The Nectaren, and curious Peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on Melons, as I pass,
Insnar’d with Flow’rs, I fall on Grass.
We have heard a lot about qualia in the last three days. There is division of opinion, I understand, about whether they are mind events or brain events, whether they are first-person phenomena forever inaccessible to the third-person discourse of science, or whether they are regular patterns of neurological activity which only become problematic when we translate them into verbal language. I am not competent to adjudicate on this issue. But let me point to a paradox about Marvell’s verse, which applies to lyric poetry in general. Although he speaks in the first person, Marvell does not speak for himself alone. In reading this stanza we enhance our own experience of the qualia of fruit and fruitfulness. We see the fruit, we taste it and smell it and savour it with what has been called ‘the thrill of recognition’ and yet it is not there, it is the virtual reality of fruit, conjured up by the qualia of the poem itself, its subtle and unique combination of sounds and rhythms and meanings which I could try to analyse if there were world enough and time, to quote another poem of Marvell’s – but there is not.
‘In the next stanza Marvell turns to the private, subjective nature of consciousness. I hope I can get it the right way up this time. Oh dear. There.
Mean while the Mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
The Mind, that Ocean where each kind
Does streight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other Worlds, and other Seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green Thought in a green Shade.
There is an allusion in the fourth line to a quaint but widely held belief of the time, that all land creatures had their counterparts in the sea, which places the poem in a pre-scientific age. But this is only a trope, which doesn’t affect, it seems to me, the validity of the stanza’s basic assertion: that human consciousness is uniquely capable of imagining that which is not physically present to the senses, capable of imagining things which do not exist, capable of creating imaginary worlds (like novels) and capable of abstract thought – of distinguishing for instance between the concept of colour (‘a green thought’) and the sensation of colour (‘in a green shade’).
‘Is this dualism? Well, if making any distinction between mind and body is dualism, then I suppose it is, though it seems to me hard to avoid, so deeply is it engrained in our language and habits of thought. Even the fiercest opponents of the ghost in the machine would I think grudgingly allow us to use the terms, mind and body, as long as it was understood that the former is a function of the latter and inseparable from it.
‘Marvell however, like all men of his age, was a dualist in a much stronger sense than that, which becomes evident in the next stanza. Success at last.
Here at the Fountains sliding foot,
Or at some Fruit-trees mossy root,
Casting the Bodies Vest aside
My Soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a Bird it sits, and sings,
Then whets, and combs its silver Wings;
And, till prepar’d for longer flight,
Waves in its Plumes the various Light.
Descartes, I have been told, believed in the immortality of the soul because he could imagine his mind existing apart from his body. Marvell expresses that idea in the very beautiful image of the bird. He imagines his soul leaving his body temporarily to perch on the branch of a tree, where it preens and grooms itself in anticipation of its final flight to heaven. I don’t expect to carry you with him there. Such an idea of the soul would seem fanciful today even to believing Christians. But the Christian idea of the soul is continuous with the humanist idea of the self, that is to say, the sense of personal identity, the sense of one’s mental and emotional life having a unity and an extension in time and an ethical responsibility, sometimes called conscience.
‘This idea of the self is under attack today, not only in much scientific discussion of consciousness, but in the humanities too. We are told that it is a fiction, a construction, an illusion, a myth. That each of us is ‘just a pack of neurons’, or just a junction for converging discourses, or just a parallel processing computer running by itself without an operator. As a human being and as a writer, I find that view of consciousness abhorrent – and intuitively unconvincing. I want to hold on to the traditional idea of the autonomous individual self. A lot that we value in civilization seems to depend on it – law, for instance, and human rights – including copyright. Marvell wrote ‘The Garden’ before the concept of copyright existed, but the fact remains that nobody else could have written it, and nobody else will ever write it again – except in the trivial sense of copying it out word for word.
‘The poem is a celebratory one, so it focuses on consciousness as a state of happiness. It is about bliss. But there is a tragic dimension to consciousness, which has also been hardly touched on in this conference. There is madness, depression, guilt, and dread. There is the fear of death – and strangest of all, the fear of life. If human beings are the only living creatures that really know they are going to die, they are also the only ones who knowingly take their own lives. For some people, in some circumstances, consciousness becomes so unbearable that they commit suicide to bring it to an end. ‘To be or not to be?’ is a peculiarly human question. Literature can help us to understand the dark side of consciousness too. Thank you.’
There is applause, appreciative if not rapturous, at the end of Helen’s talk. Ralph joins in, clapping his hands as he steps on to the stage. �
�Thank you very much, Helen,’ he says, as the applause dies down. ‘That was really interesting and thought-provoking.’ He turns to the audience. ‘As I said earlier, there won’t be any questions. The idea of this Last Word session is to pull down the curtain on this year’s conference, and perhaps leave some threads loose to be taken up at next year’s. And I think Helen has done that admirably. So, in the immortal words of Tom & Jerry, that’s all folks! Except for tonight’s Gala Dinner, which is seven-thirty for eight, remember. I’ll be saying a few words then to thank all the people who’ve made this conference such a success, but I’ll promise to keep it short.’
Another, fainter round of applause is followed by a buzz of conversation, as the delegates get to their feet, stretch, yawn, gather up their belongings, and file out of the auditorium. The TV crew turn off their lights, and the sound man plays back his tapes through headphones to check the sound quality. Helen, stepping off the stage, is accosted by some members of the audience who thank her for her talk. A woman in a headscarf and long cotton skirt asks if she is going to publish it.
‘Oh, I very much doubt it,’ Helen says.
‘Only if you do I’d be so grateful if you would send me a copy,’ says the woman. ‘I thought it was such an inspiring talk.’ She gives Helen her card, which says ‘Zara Mankevitz, holistic therapist’, with an address in Sausalito, California.
Helen and Ralph are the last to leave the auditorium. ‘Thanks,’ he says, ‘that was great.’
‘Was it really all right?’
‘It was exactly what I’d hoped you would do.’
‘But you don’t agree with a word of it,’ says Helen.
‘No, I don’t,’ he says, smiling. ‘But you did it so beautifully, it was a pleasure to listen to you.’
‘I didn’t dare to look at the audience’s faces,’ says Helen, ‘in case they looked outraged or bored or asleep.’
‘They were spellbound,’ he says.
‘Liar.’
‘Well, intrigued. You could tell from the people who came up to talk afterwards.’
‘I doubt if I converted any scientists, though. My biggest fan is a New Age therapist from California,’ says Helen, showing him the card.
‘Yes, well, this conference attracts all kinds. As you said, it’s the subject of subjects. Can I buy you a drink?’
‘No, I’m going home to shower and change for the Gala Dinner.’
‘Don’t raise your expectations too high. It’s the same food, with an extra course and free wine.’
In the lobby of Avon House a tall man waits with his feet apart and his hands clasped behind his back. In his navy-blue blazer and perma-creased grey trousers, he stands out from the delegates in their coloured sweatshirts and tee-shirts and jeans. He has a neatly trimmed moustache which turns down at the ends. He seems to recognize Ralph, and sends a wordless message to him across the floor of the lobby.
‘There’s someone over there I’ve got to talk to,’ Ralph says to Helen. ‘I’ll see you later.’ He goes across to the man, and after a brief exchange they go out of the building together.
Ralph and Detective Sergeant Agnew walk side by side across the campus to the Holt Belling building. It is a warm and sunny evening. Students are disporting themselves on the grass, reading, talking, drinking from cans, playing with balls and frisbees. Some are canoeing on the lake, or windsurfing very slowly in the faint breeze.
‘It looks more like a holiday camp than a university, doesn’t it?’ DS Agnew remarks.
‘It’s the last week of the semester,’ Ralph says. ‘Classes and exams are over. The students are just waiting for their results.’
‘It reminds me of Gladeworld, where we went for our holiday last summer,’ says DS Agnew. ‘Ever been there, sir?’
‘No,’ says Ralph. He looks round to make sure that they are not within anyone’s earshot. ‘So what have you got to tell me?’
‘I’ve got a name for you.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Professor Douglass.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘About seventy per cent sure.’
‘I see,’ says Ralph.
‘You don’t seem very surprised,’ says DS Agnew.
‘No, well, it’s strange, but the other day it suddenly occurred to me that it might be him. It was after we spoke, and anyway I had no evidence . . . It was just a hunch. He’s a strange man. What are you going to do now?’
‘Well, I’d like to examine his hard disk.’
‘There’ll be more than one,’ says Ralph. ‘He has a lot of equipment in his office. Have you got a warrant?’
‘No. I could probably get one, but I’d rather not at this stage.’
‘How are you going to proceed, then?’
‘I’d like to ask him to cooperate. I think his reaction will tell me what I want to know. When could you arrange for me to meet him?’
‘He may be in his office now,’ says Ralph. ‘I didn’t see him at the last session of the conference.’
The Centre is closed and largely deserted, and Ralph has to use his swipe card to open the sliding glass doors. The secretaries have all gone home and the staff and postgraduates have been attending the conference. When Ralph calls Douglass’s extension, however, it is answered. ‘I wonder if you’d mind coming to my office, Duggers,’ he says. A minute later there is a knock on the door and Douglass enters the room without waiting for an invitation. ‘I hope this won’t take long, Messenger?’ he says, irritably. ‘I’m very busy.’ He shoots an enquiring glance at DS Agnew, sitting in an armchair at an angle to Ralph’s desk.
‘This is Detective Sergeant Agnew, of the Gloucestershire Police,’ Ralph says, ‘from the Paedophile and Pornography Unit.’
Douglass goes very white. ‘Yes?’ he says, after a moment.
‘The police think that somebody in this building is downloading child pornography from the Internet,’ Ralph says.
‘What has that got to do with me?’ Douglass says.
‘I thought that, as Deputy Director of the Centre, you would wish to be informed.’
‘Yes, of course,’ says Douglass, flushing. He turns to DS Agnew. ‘Whom do you suspect?’
‘We don’t have a name yet, sir,’ says DS Agnew.
‘It’s a delicate operation, Duggers,’ says Ralph, ‘and Detective Sergeant Agnew is going to need our cooperation. So first he needs to eliminate the two of us from his enquiry. He’s checked my hard disk and now he needs to check yours.’
‘If you don’t mind, sir,’ says DS Agnew.
‘I certainly do mind,’ says Douglass. ‘The suggestion is outrageous.’
‘Oh, come on, Duggers,’ Ralph says. ‘It’s only a formality. He’s done mine.’
‘You can please yourself, Messenger. There’s a lot of confidential data on my hard disk.’
‘What kind of data, sir? If I might ask,’ says DS Agnew.
‘Research data.’
‘I don’t think DS Agnew would steal your research, Duggers,’ says Ralph, with a faint smile.
‘Stop calling me Duggers!’ Douglass screams. His body is rigid, his face flushed, his eyes bulging behind the thick lenses of his spectacles.
There is a charged silence in the room broken by the ringing of the telephone on Ralph’s desk. He picks it up.
‘Professor Messenger?’ says a female voice.
‘Yes. Could you call back later?’
‘This is Mr Halib’s secretary, Professor. He’s very anxious to speak to you before he goes home.’
‘Oh. All right.’ Ralph covers the phone. ‘Sorry, I’d better take this,’ he says to the two men. Douglass is looking at his feet. Agnew is looking at Douglass. Ralph swivels his chair so that his back is turned on them. He hears Halib’s smooth, slightly sibilant voice.
‘Professor Messenger? Halib here. How are you?’
‘Very busy at the moment Mr Halib, but if you’ve got any news –’
‘I have indeed. Good news. The blood test i
s positive.’
‘It is a hydatid cyst?’
‘It is.’
‘Thank God for that. What now?’
‘I’ve put a prescription in the post for you. Take as directed. It’s a twenty-eight-day course. Make an appointment to see me towards the end of next week, and we’ll see how much the cyst has shrunk. As I told you, there’s a good chance that we won’t have to operate. But if we do, there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful. I can’t thank you enough.’
‘You’re very welcome. Ring me if you have any questions about the prescription.’
Ralph puts down the phone and swivels round to face the two men, who have not moved.
‘Would you like to take me to your office, Professor Douglass?’ DS Agnew says gently.
Without a word, Douglass turns on his heel and walks out of the office, followed by Agnew. The policeman turns at the door. ‘Will you be around for a while, sir?’ he says.
‘I can stay till half-past seven,’ says Ralph.
Agnew nods, and leaves the room. Ralph turns back to the telephone and dials a number. ‘Carrie?’ he says. ‘Halib just called. The test was positive. No, no, that’s good! Yes!’ They talk jubilantly for a few minutes. Then Ralph says, ‘’Bye then. See you at the dinner. I love you too.’ He puts down the phone, gets up and walks restlessly up and down the room. He smacks a fist into the palm of the other hand. He looks out of the window, but doesn’t seem to be focusing on anything in particular. He goes back to his desk, and picks up the phone again. He dials a number, drumming his fingers on the desk as he waits for a reply. ‘Helen? Good news.’
