Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  “I say to you that those Englishmen will dwell in a country with one Established Church. If, God willing, I have my way, it will be Anglican. If the Duke of Gunfleet has his, it will be the Roman faith. Deciding which might require another Civil War, or two, or three. I might kill Gunfleet, Gunfleet might kill me—my sons or grandsons might cross swords with his. And despite these fatal differences, he and I are as one in the conviction that no nation can exist without one Established Church. Do you imagine that a few Phanatiques can overcome the combined power of all the world’s Epsoms and Gunfleets?”

  “I was never one for vain imaginings, my lord.”

  “Then you admit that England will have an Established Church.”

  “I confess it is likely.”

  “Then what does that make those who stand in opposition to an Established Church?”

  “I don’t know, my lord—eccentric Bishops?”

  “On the contrary—it makes them heretics and traitors, Mr. Waterhouse. To change a heretic and a traitor into an eccentric Bishop is no mean task—it is a form of Transmutation requiring many Alchemists—hooded figures working in secret. The last thing they need is for a sorcerer’s apprentice to stumble in and begin knocking things over!”

  “Please forgive my ineptitude, my lord. I responded impulsively, because I thought he was being attacked.”

  “He was not being attacked, Mr. Waterhouse—you were.”

  DANIEL LEFT ANGLESEY HOUSE and wandered blindly along Piccadilly, realized he was in front of Comstock House, veered away from that, and fled into St. James’s Fields—now parted into neat little squares where grass was trying to establish itself on the muck of construction. He sat on a plank bench, and slowly became aware that Roger Comstock had been following him the entire way, and that he’d (presumably) been talking the entire time. But he pointedly declined to bring his breeches into contact with the bench, a splintery improvisation strewn with pasty-flakes, pipe-ashes, and rat-shite.

  “What were Leibniz and Oldenburg on about? Is German among the many things that you understand, Daniel?”

  “I think it was that Dr. Leibniz has lost his patron, and needs a new one—with any luck, in Paris.”

  “Oh, most difficult for such a man to make his way in the world without a patron!”

  “Yes.”

  “It seems as if John Comstock is cross with you.”

  “Very.”

  “His son is captain of one of the invasion-ships, you know. He is nervous, irritable just now—not himself.”

  “On the contrary, I think I have just seen the real John Comstock. It’s safe to say that my career in the Royal Society is at an end—as long as he remains President.”

  “Informed opinion is that the Duke of Gunfleet will be president after the next election.”

  “That’s no better—for in their hatred of me, Epsom and Gunfleet are one man.”

  “Sounds as though you need a patron, Daniel. One who sympathizes.”

  “Is there anyone who sympathizes?”

  “I do.”

  This took a while to stop seeming funny, and to percolate inwards. The two of them sat there silently for a while.

  Some sort of parade or procession seemed to be headed this general direction from Charing Cross, with beating of drums, and either bad singing or melodious jeering. Daniel and Roger got up and began wandering down towards Pall Mall, to see what it was.

  “Are you making me some sort of proposal?” Daniel finally asked.

  “I made a penny or two this year—still, I’m far from being an Epsom or a Gunfleet! I put most of my liquid capital into buying that parcel of land from your brothers…”

  “Which one is it?”

  “The large one on the corner there, just next to where Mr. Raleigh Waterhouse built his house…what think you of it, by the way?”

  “Raleigh’s house? It’s, er…big, I suppose.”

  “Would you like to put it in the shade?”

  “What can you possibly mean?”

  “I want to erect a bigger house. But I didn’t study my mathematics at Trinity, as you know only too well, Daniel—I need you to design it for me, and oversee the construction.”

  “But I’m not an architect—”

  “Neither was Mr. Hooke, before he was hired to design Bedlam and diverse other great Fabricks—you can bang out a house as well as he, I wager—and certainly better than that block-head who slapped Raleigh’s together.”

  They’d come out into Pall Mall, which was lined with pleasant houses. Daniel was already eyeing their windows and roof-lines, collecting ideas. But Roger kept his eye on the procession, which was nearly upon them: several hundred more or less typical Londoners, albeit with a higher than usual number of Dissident, and even a few Anglican, preachers. They were carrying an effigy, dangling from the top of a long pole: a straw man dressed in ecclesiastical robes, but whorishly colored and adorned, with a huge mitre affixed to his head, and a long bishop’s crook lashed to one mitt. The Pope. Daniel and Roger stood to one side and watched for (according to Roger’s watch) a hundred and thirty-four seconds as the crowd marched by them and drained out of the street into St. James’s Park. They chose a place in clear view of both St. James’s Palace and Whitehall Palace, and planted the pole in the dirt.

  Soldiers were already headed toward them from the Horse Guards’ compound between the two Palaces: a few forerunners on horseback, but mostly formations of infantrymen that had spilled out too hastily to form up into proper squares. These were in outlandish fantastickal attire, with long peaked caps of a vaguely Polish style.* Daniel at first took them for dragoons, but as they marched closer he could see nippled cannonballs—granadoes!—dangling from their ox-hide belts and bandoliers, thudding against their persons with each step.

  That detail was not lost on the crowd of marchers, either. After a few hasty words, they held torches to the hem of the Pope’s robe and set it afire. Then the crowd burst, granadoe-like. By the time those grenadiers arrived, the procession had been re-absorbed by London. There was nothing for the grenadiers to do but knock the

  effigy down and stamp out the flames—keeping them well away from the grenades, of course.

  “’Twas well-conceived,” was Roger Comstock’s verdict. “Those were Royal Guards—the Duke of York’s new regiment. Oh, they’re commanded by John Churchill, but make no mistake, they are York’s men.”

  “What on earth do you mean when you say something like this was well-conceived? I mean, you sound like a connoisseur sipping the latest port.”

  “Well, that Mobb could’ve burnt the Pope anywhere, couldn’t they? But they chose here. Why here? Couldn’t’ve chosen a more dangerous place, what with Grenadiers so near to hand. Well, the answer of course is that they wished to send a message to the Duke of York…to wit, that if he doesn’t renounce his Papist ways, next time they’ll be burning him in effigy—if not in person.”

  “Even I could see, that night at Cambridge, that Gunfleet and the younger Angleseys are the new favorites at Court,” Daniel said. “While Epsom is lampooned in plays, and his house besieged by the Mobb.”

  “Not so remarkable really, given the rumors…”

  “What rumors?” Daniel almost added I am not the sort of person who hears or heeds such things, but just now it was difficult to be so haughty.

  “That our indifferent fortune in the war is chargeable to faulty cannon, and bad powder.”

  “What a marvellously convenient excuse for failure in war!”

  Until that moment Daniel had not heard anyone say aloud that the war was going badly. The very idea that the English and the French together could not best a few Dutchmen was absurd on its face. Yet, now that Roger had mentioned it, there was a lack of good news, obvious in retrospect. Of course people would be looking for someone to blame.

  “The cannon that burst at the ‘Siege of Maestricht,’” Daniel said, “do you reckon ’twas shoddy goods? Or was it a scheme laid by Epsom’s enemies?” />
  “He has enemies,” was all Roger would say.

  “That I see,” said Daniel, “and, too, I see that the Duke of Gun-fleet is one of them, and that he, and other Papists, like the Duke of York, are a great power in the land. What I do not understand is why those two enemies, Epsom and Gunfleet, a few minutes ago were as one man in heaping obloquy on the memory of John Wilkins.”

  “Epsom and Gunfleet are like two captains disputing command of a ship, each calling the other a mutineer,” Roger explained. “The ship, in this similitude, is the Realm with its established church—Anglican or Papist, depending on as Epsom’s or Gunfleet’s faction prevails. There is a third faction belowdecks—dangerous chaps, well organized and armed, but, most unnervingly, under no distinct leader at the moment. When these Dissidents, as they are called, say, ‘Down with the Pope!’ it is music to the ears of the Anglicans, whose church is founded on hostility to all things Romish. When they say, ‘Down with forced Uniformity, let Freedom of Conscience prevail,’ it gladdens the hearts of the Papists, who cannot practice their faith under that Act of Uniformity that Epsom wrote. And so at different times both Epsom’s and Gunfleet’s factions phant’sy the Dissidents as allies. But when the Dissidents question the idea of an Established Church, and propose to make the whole country an Amsterdam, why then it seems to the leaders of both factions that these Dissident madmen are lighting fuzes on powder-kegs to blow up the ship itself. And then they unite to crush the Dissidents.”

  “So you are saying that Wilkins’s legacy, the Declaration of Indulgence, is a powder-keg to them.”

  “It is a fuze that might, for all they know, lead to a powder-keg. They must stomp it out.”

  “Stomping on me as well.”

  “Only because you presented yourself to be stomped in the stupidest possible way—by your leave, by your leave.”

  “Well, what ought I to’ve done, when they were attacking him so?”

  “Bit your tongue and bided your time,” Roger said. “Things can change in a second. Behold this Pope-burning! Led by Dissidents, against Papists. If you, Daniel, had marched at the head of that Mobb, why, Epsom would feel you were on his side against Anglesey.”

  “Just what I need—the Duke of Gunfleet as personal enemy.”

  “Then prate about Freedom of Conscience! That is the excellence of your position, Daniel—if you would only open your eyes to it. Through nuances and shifts so subtle as to be plausibly deniable, you may have either Epsom or Gunfleet as your ally at any given moment.”

  “It sounds cavilling and pusillanimous,” said Daniel, summoning up some words from the tables of the Philosophick Language.

  Without disagreeing, Roger said: “It is the key to achieving what Drake dreamed of.”

  “How!? When all the power is in the hands of the Angleseys and the Silver Comstocks.”

  “Very soon you shall see how wrong you are in that.”

  “Oh? Is there some other source of power I am not aware of?”

  “Yes,” said Roger, “and your uncle Thomas Ham’s cellar is full of it.”

  “But that gold is not his. It is the sum of his obligations.”

  “Just so! You have put your finger on it! There is hope for you,” Roger said, and stepped back from the bench preparatory to taking leave. “I hope that you will consider my proposal in any event…Sir.”

  “Consider it under consideration, Sir.”

  “And even if there is no time in your life for houses—perhaps I could beg a few hours for my theatre—”

  “Did you say theatre?”

  “I’ve bought part interest in one, yes—the King’s Comedians play there—we produced Love in a Tub and The Lusty Chirurgeon. From time to time, we need help making thunder and lightning, as well as demonic apparitions, angelic visitations, impalements, sex-changes, hangings, live births, et cetera.”

  “Well, I don’t know what my family would think of my being involved in such things, Roger.”

  “Poh! Look at what they have been up to! Now that the Apocalypse has failed to occur, Daniel, you must find something to do with your several talents.”

  “I suppose the least I could to is keep you from blowing yourself to pieces.”

  “I can hide nothing from you, Daniel. Yes. You have divined it. That evening in the laboratory, I was making powder for theatrickal squibs. When you grind it finer, you see, it burns faster—more flash, more bang.”

  “I noticed,” Daniel said. Which made Roger laugh; which made Daniel feel happy. And so into a sort of spiral they went. “I’ve an appointment to meet Dr. Leibniz at a coffee-house in the theatre district later…so why don’t we walk in that direction now?” Daniel said.

  “PERHAPS YOU MIGHT HAVE STUMBLED across my recent monograph, On the Incarnation of God…”

  “Oldenburg mentioned it,” Daniel said, “but I must confess that I have never attempted to read it.”

  “During our last conversation, we spoke of the difficulty of reconciling a mechanical philosophy with free will. This problem has any number of resonances with the theological question of incarnation.”

  “In that both have to do with spiritual essences being infused into bodies that are in essence mechanical,” Daniel said agreeably. All around them, fops and theatre-goers were edging away towards other tables, leaving Leibniz and Waterhouse with a pleasant clear space in the midst of what was otherwise a crowded coffee-house.

  “The problem of the Trinity is the mysterious union of the divine and human natures of Christ. Likewise, when we debate whether a mechanism—such as a fly drawn to the smell of meat, or a trap, or an arithmetickal engine—is thinking by itself, or merely displaying the ingenuity of its creator, we are asking whether or not those engines have, in some sense, been imbued with an incorporeal principle or, vulgarly, spirit that, like God or an angel, possesses free will.”

  “Again, I hear an echo of the Scholastics in your words—”

  “But Mr. Waterhouse, you are making the common mistake of thinking that we must have Aristotle or Descartes—that the two philosophies are irreconcilable. On the contrary! We may accept modern, mechanistic explanations in physics, while retaining Aristotle’s concept of self-sufficiency.”

  “Forgive me for being skeptical of that—”

  “It is your responsibility to be skeptical, Mr. Waterhouse, no forgiveness is needed. The details of how these two concepts may be reconciled are somewhat lengthy—suffice it to say that I have found a way to do it, by assuming that every body contains an incorporeal principle, which I identify with cogitatio.”

  “Thought.”

  “Yes!”

  “Where is this principle to be found? The Cartesians think it’s in the pineal gland—”

  “It is not spread out through space in any such vulgar way—but the organization that it causes is distributed throughout the body—it informs the body—and we may know that it exists, by observing that information. What is the difference between a man who has just died, and one who is going to die in a few ticks of Mr. Hooke’s watch?”

  “The Christian answer is that one has a soul, and the other does not.”

  “And it is a fine answer—it needs only to be translated into a new Philosophical Language, as it were.”

  “You would translate it, Doctor, by stating that the living body is informed by this organizing principle—which is the outward and visible sign that the mechanical body is, for the time being anyway, unified with an incorporeal principle called Thought.”

  “That is correct. Do you recall our discussion of symbols? You admitted that your mind cannot manipulate a spoon directly—instead it must manipulate a symbol of the spoon, inside the mind. God could manipulate the spoon directly, and we would name it a miracle. But created minds cannot—they need a passive element through which to act.”

  “The body.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you say that Cogitatio and Computation are the same, Doctor—in the Philosophical Language, a single w
ord would suffice for both.”

  “I have concluded that they are one and the same.”

  “But your Engine does computation. And so I am compelled to ask, at what point does it become imbued with the incorporeal principle of Thought? You say that Cogitatio informs the body, and somehow organizes it into a mechanical system that is capable of acting. I will accept that for now. But with the Arithmetickal Engine, you are working backwards—constructing a mechanical system in the hopes that it will become impregnated from above—as the Holy Virgin. When does the Annunciation occur—at the moment you put the last gear into place? When you turn the crank?”

  “You are too literal-minded,” Leibniz said.

  “But you have told me that you see no conflict between the notion that the mind is a mechanickal device, and a belief in free will. If that is the case, then there must be some point at which your Arithmetickal Engine will cease to be a collection of gears, and become the body into which some angelic mind has become incarnated.”

  “It is a false dichotomy!” Leibniz protested. “An incorporeal principle alone would not give us free will. If we accept—as we must—that God is omniscient, and has foreknowledge of all events that will occur in the future, then He knows what we will do before we do it, and so—even if we be angels—we cannot be said to have free will.”

  “That’s what I was always taught in church. So the prospects for your philosophy seem dismal, Doctor—free will seems untenable both on grounds of theology and of Natural Philosophy.”

  “So you say, Mr. Waterhouse—and yet you agree with Hooke that there is a mysterious consonance between the behavior of Nature, and the workings of the human mind. Why should that be?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea, Doctor. Unless, as the Alchemists have it, all matter—Nature and our brains together—are suffused by the same Philosophick Mercury.”

  “A hypothesis neither one of us loves.”

  “What is your hypothesis, Doctor?”

  “Like two arms of a snowflake, Mind and Matter grew out of a common center—and even though they grew independently and without communicating—each developing according to its own internal rules—nevertheless they grew in perfect harmony, and share the same shape and structure.”