Nine

Figures slowly become discernible. MORIARTY

Hear that, Holmes?

SHERLOCK

I would have been deaf indeed if I didn't,

MORIARTY

I thought perhaps you were too high-class to be able to tune into that wave length.

SHERLOCK

I learned a lot more than you think from Irene.

MORIARTY

Adler? I always thought she was a lady.

SHERLOCK

Then you've got another 'think' coming to you. Broaden your ideas, Moriarty. More things are wrought by crime than are dreamt of in your morality.

MORIARTY

(shaking his head regretfully) You and Mycroft are indeed a sad loss to crime. You would both have done well in the world I have disgraced.

WATSON

General practice is a wonderful training—you would be surprised to find how truthful people become under the impulse of impending disaster. It's better than any 'cure' or religion I know. What's-his-name Psycho wants to cure people; par311sons want people to believe in a good, kind god that looks after them.

PRIEST

Rubbish!

MORIARTY

You surprise me. I thought you wanted people to believe in the goodness of God.

PRIEST

In the words of Sherlock Holmes, 'Then you've got another "think" coming to you'. I am just a 'general' priest; as Watson says about general practice in medicine, it's a wonderful training—if you can stand it.

P.A

I am only just a general, run-of-the-mill psycho-analyst. That is a wonderful training.

PRIEST

Don't misunderstand me—it has been a commonplace of religion that life itself is a wonderful training for what comes after. There's nothing new about that.

WATSON

It is original if it is not only 'commonplace' but also 'believed'.

SHERLOCK

My dear Watson! What do you mean by 'believed'? I don't like meaningless terms. I am a scientist.

MORIARTY

He thinks he is.

WATSON

You 'believed' in Irene Adler.

P.A

I didn't, don't and never will do. I think she is an idealized figure. That is not a belief. 'Idealized figure' is a technical, scientific term which I use to think with. I also use figures of fiction— imaginary figures. Even mathematicians use imaginary figures, imaginary numbers.

WATSON

You must do a funny kind of mathematics.

PRIEST

I suppose you would think the Trinity and 'Mono' theism a funny kind of mathematics. But you are unacquainted with the religious domain in which these mathematics, though difficult, are at least serviceable.

P.A

There are people who inhabit a state of mind in which they can find a use for neologisms, new mathematics, new arts.

ROLAND

Good God! Nouveau art now.

ROSEMARY

Get out, or learn to lie at my feet like a good dog.

WATSON

Bark when you are bittern to.

SHERLOCK

Hush! What's that booming noise?

312BOY

I don't hear any booming noise. That noise I hear is a bird.

MYCROFT

Boy, your ears are too sharp! Or you too would wonder like brother Sherlock.

P.A

I don't hear it either.

ROSEMARY

Too old—deafened by years of jargon. Blinded by facts and concepts and psycho-analysis. I had a friend who was a marvellous cook until she took a cookery course. After that she couldn't even boil an egg!

PRIEST

I had a friend who was so holy he thought he was God and could think of nothing but that everyone should devote themselves to worshipping him. He even grew to think that God was interested in religion.

MYCROFT

Old Moriarty thinks God is exclusively interested in stamping out crime.

ROSEMARY

Roland thinks I make him lie at my feet so as to make it easier for me to stamp him out.

PRIEST

'How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace.'

ROSEMARY

That is not what I use my feet for.

P.A

You would be surprised to hear how many erroneous ideas there are about the proper—and only—use for feet. All different; all obscuring more than they illuminate.

PRIEST

That is true of what people call God. The psycho-analysts are the worst.

P.A

With respect—no.

ROBIN

Aren't you always proving that God is a father figure?

P.A

I often attempt to show a particular person that he believes in God, and sometimes that he believes in a particular god—like fathers, or money, or even psycho-analysis. The analysand can make up his mind if I am correct—that is his affair, not mine. My beliefs I likewise wish to keep to myself or, at most, share with a particular chosen person.

ROBIN

Yet you expect others to expose them to you!

P.A

I do nothing of the sort. I let it be known that I am available if anyone is disposed to discuss his ideas or expose his personality to me in my presence.

ROBIN

(doubtfully) It sounds all right.

P.A

Unfortunately 'sounds', 'sights', sensuous impressions, 313and our interpretations, desires and memories of them are all we have.

ROBIN

Isn't that enough?

P.A

It has appeared so—up to this hour and minute. But whether that is enough we can discuss in accordance with your and my greed, or lack of it.

ROBIN

Why greed?

P.A

What alternative scale of measurement do you suggest?

ROBIN

Religious, artistic or scientific integrity.

P.A

That seems to me to be pushing the answer back to a more distant version of greed.

ROBIN

Do you mean religion is just greed?

P.A

From what you think you learnt about yourself and religion so far, what is your impression?

ROBIN

I asked you yours.

P.A

Mine is of no importance whatever to anyone but me. Yours is of no importance whatever to me—except in so far as you want analysis. Then your ideas have a limited importance if I am to be sufficiently correctly informed to make an interpretation. robin Is that all?

P.A

Disappointing, isn't it.

ROBIN

Why do you think I want analysis?

P.A

I don't.

ROBIN

Then why are you behaving as if I did?

P.A

You are right to ask and to object since the conditions for psycho-analysis do not exist. Maybe I am falling into a trap contributed by my predilection for a psychological response—a hazard to which my profession makes me prone.

PRIEST

You would make a good parson.

P.A

I could not even talk about religion except inadequately. priest There is more to religion than that.

P.A

Just as there is more to psycho-analysis than theories or talk about it.

PRIEST

What?

P.A

Talk which is a prelude to it and talk which is psychoanalysis itself.

ROSEMARY

Who decides which is which? You? Some institute? A royal charter?

314P.A

Facts, I suppose; just as ultimately facts decide whether the sun goes round the earth or vice versa. I do not know what sort of fact is regarded as confirmatory.

PRIEST

What standards do you use?

P.A

I used to believe that the army authorities told the public the truth about a battle till I went into action and compared the facts as known to me with the facts as announced by Army H.Q. For a long time I thought I knew the 'facts'. Later I inclined to the commonly expressed view, 'you can't believe a word you hear'. Poor authorities; they could not even say who had won the war!

(Man enters and takes a seat near Rosemary. He appears confidently possessive. She is complacent)

ROSEMARY

Tell Ali Tell Alice to fetch my shawl.

ROLAND

(furiously, sitting up) Who won Helen of troy—

ROSEMARY

Lie down(

ROBIN

(to Man) What, no chocolate? (Man ignores him and looks at Rosemary as if there were complete understanding between them)

ROSEMARY

(to Man) Tell Alice not to bother—she can go to bed.

ROBIN

I feel acutely uncomfortable.

P.A

There is some emotional storm disturbing us. Leonardo might have drawn a sketch of turbulent water; verbally it would require a Shakespeare to do justice to—

ROBIN

Yet you can feel it?

P.A

I know it, as I know you know it.

(Rosemary and Man withdraw together. Roland gets up and dusts himself)

ROLAND

That bloody bitch! I could . . .

MORIARTY

Allow me—what you need is a criminal act.

SHERLOCK

Don't be a damned fool. I know Moriarty; don't listen to him.

MORIARTY

Why not try the parson since Sherlock is prejudiced against me?

PRIEST

No—not God or Devil at present.

P.A

Theology perhaps? It might provide breathing space before action.

315MORIARTY

(mocking) Shall we go and see the little dears have fun? Or perhaps we could listen from here.

P. A

Real fun requires a prelude of years of discipline as well as theories or dogma in art, science or religion.

ROLAND

Oh, shut up! This is what discipline has brought us to!

P.A

Discipline, plus or minus: Lack of it and too much.

ROBIN

How can it be two opposites at once?

P.A

In classical logic perhaps not. In reality—well, look at Leonardo's notebooks. Intuitionist mathematics may show the way.

ROLAND

By that time someone will have died a violent death

PRIEST

Many millions already have. The barrier between these warring forces will be the first to be destroyed.

P.A

And what next to the first?

PRIEST

Not the warring forces. They will be refreshed and renewed for further destruction.

ROBIN

'Methinks I see a mighty and puissant nation . . .'

PRIEST

Not of human animals I think.

MORIARTY

Microbes perhaps or—what did Berkeley call it?— ghosts of departed quantities, Newton's nascent increments.

P.A

Berkeley made fun of these objects whichever way they were growing less or more; even the object that did not exist, the object so small that it was the ghost of a departed increment, or what I describe as the increment of a 'ghost' coming into being according to the laws of change whether crescent or decay. All this is easier to formulate if it is talk about the decay or growth of a corporeal object, or a use of the language appropriate to corporeal objects for a purpose for which it was not intended—incorporeal objects, thoughts, minds, personalities.

ROLAND

Has this talk got anything to do with our present state or is it a substitute for it, just to take up time?

P.A

It may be 'nothing' out of which something comes; the increment of a 'ghost of a departed increment', or the disappearing, declining something which is destined to disappear—or both.

SHERLOCK

It can't be both—that's absurd.

ROBIN

What about you and Moriarty? Are you figments of the imagination, ephemera which will entertain a child and then be 316forgotten? Or can you be ghosts of departed increments which are now ideas that are increasing by increments, destined to develop, like a grain of mustard seed in a famous story, and overtop the trees?

PRIEST

What about the author of that story?

ROBIN

As far as I'm concerned, 'it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing'.

P.A

What about the author of that story? How long before, in the words of the motion for debate of a certain dining club, 'The works of Shakespeare be not read'?

ROLAND

That was a joke.

P.A

Suppose what was spoken in jest may have included some truth?

ROLAND

Like Man's holster; it depends on whether it contained a gun or a chocolate bar.

P.A

It also depends on whether the contents of the holster are displayed to a starving or armed congregation. Man may once have been the witness and victim of a blockade. What mental seed was sown by that 'fact'?

ROBIN

Anyone can see now that that was not a victory. 'We have scotched the snake, not killed it.'

P.A

Perhaps. But can anyone see what the victory was—its past, present and future? Rosemary is now the mistress of this house; Alice is her maid. Tomorrow—

ROLAND

You take it very coolly. I don't.

P.A

I don't suppose you spent time thinking what you and Alice were teaching your maid. Now you both have a chance of seeing what she learned and you did not. I gather you feel that you would still be unlikely to learn anything from 'this talk', as you call it.

ROLAND

I mean to murder that bitch and her boy friend.

P.A

You'll be wise to think, even if not talk, about how you mean to do it—before acting.

PRIEST

I hope you are not inciting him to do this thing.

ROLAND

I ha ve heard you and your like make patriotic speeches.

PRIEST

That is different.

ROLAND

A man I was talking to had his brains blown out while 317he was speaking. Some person had taught him that that was meritorious and not murder

P.A

Perhaps this is an instance where quantity of an action affects quality. Murder + increment becomes WAR; the ghost of departed increments becomes cowardice; 'quantities of discretion' do not become the 'better part of valour' but the worse part of cowardice.

ROBIN

If you could tell me what were the smallest units of thought, the electrons or elemental particles—

P.A

—the genes of sexual activity?—

ROBIN

—I could find a mathematics to match it.

ROLAND

Sooner or later you'd have to do what bi-sexual animals do.

P.A

How soon? How late?

ROLAND

Somehow I feel I've heard all this before.

MORIARTY

Oh no! I've never heard people like you debate the ways and means of a 'crime passionelle'. You've progressed.

P.A

In what direction?

MORIARTY

Don't ask me—ask the parson.

PRIEST

When I was padre to Agamemnon I used to conform to the dictates of my religion. I couldn't conform to the dictates of Zeus because he had a sort of Olympian democracy, and all the gods used to fight like humans. Indeed, they often took part in human activities. Nowadays God rarely takes an unambiguous stand.

P.A

So?

PRIEST

It becomes essential to have a priesthood to supply correct interpretations of God's apparently ambiguous statements. The ambiguity is not in God; it is in the formulation in which the priesthood represents the formulation which, in turn, represents the thing-in-itself.

P.A

I can see for myself that the priesthood consists of a lot of ordinary human beings. In my experience these ordinary human beings take ordinary good fathers and ordinary bad fathers; and from 'facts' of that kind derive pictures which are then put forward in the form of idols, poems, mystical formulations, as true, factually real gods and devils, Virgin Marys and furies.

318PRIEST

Sometimes these approximations are approximated to by God.

P.A

That is to say, God finds an ordinary human being like Jesus, and uses this ordinary—

PRIEST

Not ordinary.

P.A

Well, extra-ordinary human being for purposes of incarnation, 'becoming flesh'. Is that right?

PRIEST

That is not a bad summary of what a true priest might say if he wished to achieve a 'formulation' of Jesus. But no formulation can ever be anything but a substitute for Realization.

P.A

But this is all we try to show. We are not saying anything about God, or even God incarnate, when we say that a particular individual whom we are analysing is treating a father figure, which is already at a remove from an actual human father, as if this verbal image or idol is god.

PRIEST

But that is precisely what you seem to say. 'Look, this God you worship is only some wildly distorted childhood view of your Dad. Therefore—God can't exist.'

P.A

Perhaps we do. But any analyst who talked like that would be mis-representing psycho-analysis—whatever he might be doing to the Ultimate Reality. A more nearly correct formulation would be, 'Your description of the god you worship may, at best, be a good model of your Dad—especially allowing for the fact that you were probably not much more than a baby when you first got that idea—but, however good or bad that model might be if you were trying to convey an idea of your father, it is quite unsuitable for providing me with an idea or a god which I can worship without insulting my intelligence.' This interpretation would not say anything about God, assuming He exists, but would represent psychoanalysis in such a way that the analysand could believe in it without having to outrage his intelligence. This is different from saying something ridiculous like, 'You believe that that magnificent ballplayer is God, therefore God does not exist'. That is not even logic, let alone psycho-analysis.

PRIEST

My complaint is that psycho-analysts themselves are worshipping an idea as if it were a god worthy of worship. That 'parody' seems to me to be indistinguishable from most psychoanalysis I have heard of or experienced.

319P.A

You may have been unlucky. Perhaps these 'psycho-analysed' people you have met have also been unlucky—in their parson. Debased religion attracts debased psycho-analysis and makes both more debased.

ROBIN

How is Man's chocolate bar doing?

ROLAND

How is Man's gun furthering his love-making?

ALICE

Both doing very well. That 'pearl of great price' is artificial.

ROLAND

There's nothing wrong with the swine—they are real enough.

MORIARTY

Swine usually are.

SHERLOCK

How unlike, how very unlike the term 'love'.

WATSON

Holmes, what you say sounds like our parson friend.

ROBIN

'Friend'? 'Comrade'? Haven't I heard those words before?

ROLAND

I have heard the phrase 'pearl of great price' used by many—and (looking at Alice) of the pearl being artificial.

P.A

There is nothing new about artificiality. The term derives from uses in which man occupies some place in the chain. The pearls are artificial. In spite of Roland's observation it cannot be assumed that the swine are genuine—or the price paid for the pearls. The artificiality of the pearls, the swine and the price are all surprisingly well-matched sometimes.

PRIEST

What do you think of the price of psycho-analysis?

P.A

My fees are dictated by what I need.

PRIEST

Who decides what you need?

P.A

I do—who else?

PRIEST

Then the fee is dictated by your greed, great or small?

P.A

Yes. What do you charge for your services?

PRIEST

Nothing.

P.A

Someone has paid for your food or you would not have survived. Have you always been supported by the Establishment? Who paid for the ceremonial at Ur? It seems that many paid with their lives.

PRIEST

The king paid with his life for the bigotry of the doctor.

P.A

Was it his bigotry or his religion?

PRIEST

He believed in his medicine; it was almost his god. He 320worshipped his king and queen—this side of what you would call idolatry. They told me he thought the king was dying—

P.A

—and you and your like told people he would survive, and if they went into the pit with his body and were buried they would go to Heaven.

PRIEST

Heaven? Nonsense! That idea has only grown up during the last few thousand years.

(Rosemary fades in)

ROSEMARY

(luxuriously, admiring her well-shod foot) This is my idea of Heaven. I would hardly have dared to believe that I would live to call my mistress and hear her say 'Ma'am' to me when I gave her orders.

P.A

And does it come up to expectations?

ROSEMARY

Yes, although there are one or two improvements which I mean to carry out.

P.A

What about Alice? What about Man?

ROSEMARY

Man? I don't expect any trouble from him. But why Alice? I've got her where I want her and what happens to her from now on matters not the least—she can go and seek a psychoanalyst. You perhaps—if she can find enough artificial fees!

PRIEST

What of God in His Heaven?

ROSEMARY

He ought to be all right. It's His heaven. If he wants to be inscrutable that's his affair. I'm not interfering like a psychoanalyst—or even a priest. Let him get on with it, I say. I didn't interfere with Chalcas or Juno or Jehovah, and I'm not starting now. This suits me and if it doesn't suit Alice or you or this psychoanalyst, that's your affair. I enjoy being smartly dressed and I like feeling that you all have good reason to fear me.

P.A

'The glass, the cruel looking-glass.'

ROSEMARY

What's that?

P.A

A poem I remember. I was not thinking of you and your appearance so much as of how you reflect the England I lived in and how it then looked to you. Not a flattering portrait, but true as far as appearances go.

ROSEMARY

They go a very long way.

P.A

We—particularly I—have wanted in psycho-analysis to nourish an instrument, analogous to a mirror of the physical 321world, which would make it possible for each of us human individuals to see himself.

ROLAND

So far it only seems true to analogy in that you see what you want to see.

P.A

I fear so.

PRIEST

God made man in his own image. Man was not only quick to return the compliment, but it does not appear to be a flattering reflection.

P.A

I thought that as a priest you would consider the human world reflected an unflattering image of God because of the defects of the mirror; it would not have occurred to me that a priest might think the reflection unpleasing because of its truth.

PRIEST

I do think it is due to the defects of the mirror; but I can see that the judgment of the mirror image is unwelcome—both for what it shows and for showing it. Who is to say God is correctly judged by his creatures?

ROBIN

(to Roland) I give up. I vote you and I go into committee of ways and means.

ROSEMARY

I shall give you both my photograph. You can all meet here next week. Now, good-night.

{They dismiss)