Sophie's World

by Jostein Gaarder

  From now on things would be kept neat. And she didn’t only mean in her room. After reading Aristotle, she realized it was just as important to keep her ideas orderly. She had reserved the top shelf of the closet especially for that kind of thing. It was the only place in the room that she did not yet have complete control over.

  There had been no sign of life from her mother for over two hours. Sophie went downstairs. Before she woke her mother up she decided to feed her pets.

  She bent over the goldfish bowl in the kitchen. One of the fishes was black, one orange, and one red and white. This was why she called them Black Jack, Goldtop, and Red Ridinghood.

  As she sprinkled fish food into the water she said:

  “You belong to Nature’s living creatures, you can absorb nourishment, you can grow and reproduce yourselves. More specifically, you belong to the animal kingdom. So you can move around and look out at the world. To be precise, you are fish, and you breathe through your gills and can swim back and forth in the waters of life.”

  Sophie put the lid back on the fish food jar. She was quite satisfied with the way she had placed the goldfish in Nature’s scale, and she was especially pleased with the expression “the waters of life.” So now it was the budgerigars’ turn.

  Sophie poured a little birdseed in their feeding cup and said:

  “Dear Smit and Smule. You have become dear little budgerigars because you grew out of dear little budgerigar eggs, and because these eggs had the form of being budgerigars, luckily you didn’t grow into squawking parrots.”

  Sophie then went into the large bathroom, where the sluggish tortoise lay in a big box. Every now and then when her mother showered, she yelled that she would kill it one day. But so far it had been an empty threat. Sophie took a lettuce leaf from a large jam jar and laid it in the box.

  “Dear Govinda,” she said. “You are not one of the speediest animals, but you certainly are able to sense a tiny fraction of the great big world we live in. You’ll have to content yourself with the fact that you are not the only one who can’t exceed your own limits.”

  Sherekan was probably out catching mice—that was a cat’s nature, after all. Sophie crossed the living room toward her mother’s bedroom. A vase of daffodils stood on the coffee table. It was as if the yellow blooms bowed respectfully as Sophie went by. She stopped for a moment and let her fingers gently brush their smooth heads. “You belong to the living part of nature too,” she said. “Actually, you are quite privileged compared to the vase you are in. But unfortunately you are not able to appreciate it.”

  Then Sophie tiptoed into her mother’s bedroom. Although her mother was in a deep sleep, Sophie laid a hand on her forehead.

  “You are one of the luckiest ones,” she said, “because you are not only alive like the lilies of the field. And you are not only a living creature like Sherekan or Govinda. You are a human, and therefore have the rare capacity of thought.”

  “What on earth are you talking about, Sophie?”

  Her mother had woken up more quickly than usual.

  “I was just saying that you look like a lazy tortoise. I can otherwise inform you that I have tidied up my room, with philosophic thoroughness.”

  Her mother lifted her head.

  “I’ll be right there,” she said. “Will you put the coffee on?”

  Sophie did as she was asked, and they were soon sitting in the kitchen over coffee, juice, and chocolate.

  Suddenly Sophie said, “Have you ever wondered why we are alive, Mom?”

  “Oh, not again!”

  “Yes, because now I know the answer. People live on this planet so that someone can go around giving names to everything.”

  “Is that right? I never thought of that.”

  “Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you don’t think, you’re not really a human.”

  “Sophie!”

  “Imagine if there were only vegetables and animals. Then there wouldn’t have been anybody to tell the difference between ‘cat’ and ‘dog,’ or ‘lily’ and ‘gooseberry.’ Vegetables and animals are living too, but we are the only creatures that can categorize nature into different groups and classes.”

  “You really are the most peculiar girl I have ever had,” said her mother.

  “I should hope so,” said Sophie. “Everybody is more or less peculiar. I am a person, so I am more or less peculiar. You have only one girl, so I am the most peculiar.”

  “What I meant was that you scare the living daylights out of me with all that new talk.”

  “You are easily scared, then.”

  Later that afternoon Sophie went back to the den. She managed to smuggle the big cookie tin up to her room without her mother noticing.

  First she put all the pages in the right order. Then she punched holes in them and put them in the ring binder, before the chapter on Aristotle. Finally she numbered each page in the top right-hand corner. There were in all over fifty pages. Sophie was in the process of compiling her own book on philosophy. It was not by her, but written especially for her.

  She had no time to do her homework for Monday. They were probably going to have a test in Religious Knowledge, but the teacher always said he valued personal commitment and value judgments. Sophie felt she was beginning to have a certain basis for both.

  Hellenism

  …a spark from the fire…

  Although the philosophy teacher had begun sending his letters directly to the old hedge, Sophie nevertheless looked in the mailbox on Monday morning, more out of habit than anything else.

  It was empty, not surprisingly. She began to walk down Clover Close.

  Suddenly she noticed a photograph lying on the sidewalk. It was a picture of a white jeep and a blue flag with the letters UN on it. Wasn’t that the United Nations flag?

  Sophie turned the picture over and saw that it was a regular postcard. To “Hilde Møller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen…” It had a Norwegian stamp and was postmarked “UN Battalion” Friday June 15, 1990.

  June 15! That was Sophie’s birthday!

  The card read:

  Dear Hilde,

  I assume you are still celebrating your 15th birthday. Or is this the morning after? Anyway, it makes no difference to your present. In a sense, that will last a lifetime. But I’d like to wish you a happy birthday one more time. Perhaps you understand now why I send the cards to Sophie. I am sure she will pass them on to you.

  P.S. Mom said you had lost your wallet. I hereby promise to reimburse you the 150 crowns. You will probably be able to get another school I.D. before they close for the summer vacation.

  Love from Dad.

  Sophie stood glued to the spot. When was the previous card postmarked? She seemed to recall that the postcard of the beach was also postmarked June—even though it was a whole month off. She simply hadn’t looked properly.

  She glanced at her watch and then ran back to the house. She would just have to be late for school today!

  Sophie let herself in and leaped upstairs to her room. She found the first postcard to Hilde under the red silk scarf. Yes! It was also postmarked June 15! Sophie’s birthday and the day before summer vacation.

  Her mind was racing as she ran over to the supermarket to meet Joanna.

  Who was Hilde? How could her father as good as take it for granted that Sophie would find her? In any case, it was senseless of him to send Sophie the cards instead of sending them directly to his daughter. It could not possibly be because he didn’t know his own daughter’s address. Was it a practical joke? Was he trying to surprise his daughter on her birthday by getting a perfect stranger to play detective and mailman? Was that why she was being given a month’s headstart? And was using her as the go-between a way of giving his daughter a new girlfriend as a birthday present? Could she be the present that would “last a lifetime”?

  If this joker really was in Lebanon, how had he gotten hold of Sophie’s address? Also, Sophie and Hilde had at least two thin
gs in common. If Hilde’s birthday was June 15, they were both born on the same day. And they both had fathers who were on the other side of the globe.

  Sophie felt she was being drawn into an unnatural world. Maybe it was not so dumb after all to believe in fate. Still—she shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions; it could all have a perfectly natural explanation. But how had Alberto Knox found Hilde’s wallet when Hilde lived in Lillesand? Lillesand was hundreds of miles away. And why had Sophie found this postcard on her sidewalk? Did it fall out of the mailman’s bag just as he got to Sophie’s mailbox? If so, why should he drop this particular card?

  “Are you completely insane?” Joanna burst out when Sophie finally made it to the supermarket.

  “Sorry!”

  Joanna frowned at her severely, like a schoolteacher.

  “You’d better have a good explanation.”

  “It has to do with the UN,” said Sophie. “I was detained by hostile troops in Lebanon.”

  “Sure…You’re just in love!”

  They ran to school as fast as their legs could carry them.

  The Religious Knowledge test that Sophie had not had time to prepare for was given out in the third period. The sheet read:

  Philosophy of Life and Tolerance

  Make a list of things we can know. Then make a list of things we can only believe.

  Indicate some of the factors contributing to a person’s philosophy of life.

  What is meant by conscience? Do you think conscience is the same for everyone?

  What is meant by priority of values?

  Sophie sat thinking for a long time before she started to write. Could she use any of the ideas she had learned from Alberto Knox? She was going to have to, because she had not opened her Religious Knowledge book for days. Once she began to write, the words simply flowed from her pen.

  She wrote that we know the moon is not made of green cheese and that there are also craters on the dark side of the moon, that both Socrates and Jesus were sentenced to death, that everybody has to die sooner or later, that the great temples on the Acropolis were built after the Persian wars in the fifth century B.C. and that the most important oracle in ancient Greece was the oracle at Delphi. As examples of what we can only believe, Sophie mentioned the questions of whether or not there is life on other planets, whether God exists or not, whether there is life after death, and whether Jesus was the son of God or merely a wise man. “We can certainly not know where the world came from,” she wrote, completing her list. “The universe can be compared to a large rabbit pulled out of a top hat. Philosophers try to climb up one of the fine hairs of the rabbit’s fur and stare straight into the eyes of the Great Magician. Whether they will ever succeed is an open question. But if each philosopher climbed onto another one’s back, they would get even higher up in the rabbit’s fur, and then, in my opinion, there would be some chance they would make it some day. P.S. In the Bible there is something that could have been one of the fine hairs of the rabbit’s fur. The hair was called the Tower of Babel, and it was destroyed because the Magician didn’t want the tiny human insects to crawl up that high out of the white rabbit he had just created.”

  Then there was the next question: “Indicate some of the factors contributing to a person’s philosophy of life.” Upbringing and environment were important here. People living at the time of Plato had a different philosophy of life than many people have today because they lived in a different age and a different environment. Another factor was the kind of experience people chose to get themselves. Common sense was not determined by environment. Everybody had that. Maybe one could compare environment and social situation with the conditions that existed deep down in Plato’s cave. By using their intelligence individuals can start to drag themselves up from the darkness. But a journey like that requires personal courage. Socrates is a good example of a person who managed to free himself from the prevailing views of his time by his own intelligence. Finally, she wrote: “Nowadays, people of many lands and cultures are being intermingled more and more. Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists may live in the same apartment building. In which case it is more important to accept each other’s beliefs than to ask why everyone does not believe the same thing.”

  Not bad, thought Sophie. She certainly felt she had covered some ground with what she had learned from her philosophy teacher. And she could always supplement it with a dash of her own common sense and what she might have read and heard elsewhere.

  She applied herself to the third question: “What is meant by conscience? Do you think conscience is the same for everyone?” This was something they had discussed a lot in class. Sophie wrote: Conscience is people’s ability to respond to right and wrong. My personal opinion is that everyone is endowed with this ability, so in other words, conscience is innate. Socrates would have said the same. But just what conscience dictates can vary a lot from one person to the next. One could say that the Sophists had a point here. They thought that right and wrong is something mainly determined by the environment the individual grows up in. Socrates, on the other hand, believed that conscience is the same for everyone. Perhaps both views were right. Even if everybody doesn’t feel guilty about showing themselves naked, most people will have a bad conscience if they are really mean to someone. Still, it must be remembered that having a conscience is not the same as using it. Sometimes it looks as if people act quite unscrupulously, but I believe they also have a kind of conscience somewhere, deep down. Just as it seems as if some people have no sense at all, but that’s only because they are not using it. P.S. Common sense and conscience can both be compared to a muscle. If you don’t use a muscle, it gets weaker and weaker.”

  Now there was only one question left: “What is meant by priority of values?” This was another thing they had discussed a lot lately. For example, it could be of value to drive a car and get quickly from one place to another. But if driving led to deforestation and polluting the natural environment, you were facing a choice of values. After careful consideration Sophie felt she had come to the conclusion that healthy forests and a pure environment were more valuable than getting to work quickly. She gave several more examples. Finally she wrote: “Personally, I think Philosophy is a more important subject than English Grammar. It would therefore be a sensible priority of values to have Philosophy on the timetable and cut down a bit on English lessons.”

  In the last break the teacher drew Sophie aside.

  “I have already read your Religion test,” he said. “It was near the top of the pile.”

  “I hope it gave you some food for thought.”

  “That was exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. It was in many ways very mature. Surprisingly so. And self-reliant. But had you done your homework, Sophie?”

  Sophie fidgeted a little.

  “Well, you did say it was important to have a personal point of view.”

  “Well, yes I did…but there are limits.”

  Sophie looked him straight in the eye. She felt she could permit herself this after all she had experienced lately.

  “I have started studying philosophy,” she said. “It gives one a good background for personal opinions.”

  “But it doesn’t make it easy for me to grade your paper. It will either be a D or an A.”

  “Because I was either quite right or quite wrong? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “So let’s say A,” said the teacher. “But next time, do your homework!”

  When Sophie got home from school that afternoon, she flung her schoolbag on the steps and ran down to the den. A brown envelope lay on top of the gnarled roots. It was quite dry around the edges, so it must have been a long time since Hermes had dropped it.

  She took the envelope with her and let herself in the front door. She fed the animals and then went upstairs to her room. Lying on her bed, she opened Alberto’s letter and read:

  Hellenism

  Here we are again, Sophie! Having read about the natural philosophers and Soc
rates, Plato, and Aristotle, you are now familiar with the foundations of European philosophy. So from now on we will drop the introductory questions which you earlier received in white envelopes. I imagine you probably have plenty of other assignments and tests at school.

  I shall now tell you about the long period from Aristotle near the end of the fourth century B.C. right up to the early Middle Ages around A.D. 400. Notice that we can now write both B.C. and A.D. because Christianity was in fact one of the most important, and the most mysterious, factors of the period.

  Aristotle died in the year 322 B.C., at the time when Athens had lost its dominant role. This was not least due to the political upheavals resulting from the conquests of Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.).

  Alexander the Great was the King of Macedonia. Aristotle was also from Macedonia, and for a time he was even the young Alexander’s tutor. It was Alexander who won the final, decisive victory over the Persians. And moreover, Sophie, with his many conquests he linked both Egypt and the Orient as far east as India to the Greek civilization.

  This marked the beginning of a new epoch in the history of mankind. A civilization sprang up in which Greek culture and the Greek language played a leading role. This period, which lasted for about 300 years, is known as Hellenism. The term Hellenism refers to both the period of time and the Greek-dominated culture that prevailed in the three Hellenistic kingdoms of Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt.

  However, from about the year 50 B.C., Rome secured the upper hand in military and political affairs. The new superpower gradually conquered all the Hellenistic kingdoms, and from then on Roman culture and the Latin language were predominant from Spain in the west to far into Asia. This was the beginning of the Roman period, which we often refer to as Late Antiquity. But remember one thing—before the Romans managed to conquer the Hellenistic world, Rome itself was a province of Greek culture. So Greek culture and Greek philosophy came to play an important role long after the political influence of the Greeks was a thing of the past.