TWO-WAY SWITCH

"Literature can be a lot of things, but one thing it must be, in this day and age, is anti-natural and, thus, pro-artificial," the writer Gaston Healy was saying to no-one in particular but to everyone in general ... at the height of the literary discussion which had evolved, over a number of minutes, in the sitting room of art-dealer Reginald Rice's two-storied inner-city flat. "So-called realism is strictly passé," he continued, "being akin, when it intrudes overmuch, to a cancer that must be eradicated. People should be able to behave towards one another in literature as they wouldn't ordinarily behave in real life but, exceptions to the rule notwithstanding, as the writer feels they ought to behave and one day possibly will behave ..."

"Or, alternatively, as the writer feels they ought not to behave, though possibly did behave in the past," Judith Hagley interposed with roguish glee. She was Gaston's current girlfriend.

Healy didn't consider that worth a verbal endorsement, but smiled graciously all the same. Others laughed aloud or chuckled with intermediate commitment. "Literature can do lots of things, but one thing it must do, these days, is provide the reader with a psychological catharsis, in order that he may be relieved, if only temporarily, from the burden of social repression and thereby be enabled to acquire the simulacrum of freedom from social constraint. You may read things in literature that you would never dare say to anyone in public. You may encounter deeds in literature that you would never dare commit in person."

"You make it sound rather too much like the dark side of the moon," Reginald's baritone voice boomed in the heated atmosphere of the moment. "There's no reason why literature should be reduced to the status of a kind of psychological sewer through which the rats of one's mind may swim if they desire nourishment."

"Here, here!" a shy young man called Peter Hall affirmed in the wake of a brief burst of applause from those more actively engaged in the discussion. "Literature varies to a great extent with the writer, but is usually of a predominantly philosophical or a predominantly poetical cast, though a balance between the two biases is technically possible, if not often achieved these days."

"And what kind of a writer would you describe yourself as?" Reginald boomingly inquired of him.

"A philosophical one unfortunately," Hall admitted with disarming modesty, largely for the benefit of the ladies present. "And one, moreover, who regards himself as a classicist."

"Really?" the host and one of his guests responded simultaneously. The latter was Patricia Doherty, a friend of Judith's, who then ventured to ask Hall on what criterion this value-judgement was based?

"Oh, on a number of criteria actually," the latter corrected, becoming faintly embarrassed in finding himself the cynosure of sceptical curiosity. "But primarily on the fact that the superconscious prevails over the subconscious in such a way as to ensure a maximum order and logic to one's work, in fidelity to a higher approximation to perfection. With the romantic, however, it's usually the subconscious which is given free rein to disrupt previous patterns of classical convention and forge a new, if materialistic, path. But this path should eventually lead not to a romantic dead-end but ... to a higher classicism, the beginnings, in fact, of a superior pattern of classical convention in fidelity to a fresh concept of perfection."

There were a number of contradictory expenditures of breath at large on the air at this point - some expressing bewilderment, others admiration. It was apparent that not many people had thought about the distinction between romantic and classic in such a way, nor formed any clear concept of the changing criteria of perfection. Miss Doherty, tall and elegant spinster, was one of those people, and she accordingly inquired of the philosopher what he meant by perfection.

"In my case," Hall promptly replied, "it's a matter of orientating one's work towards a condition of ultimate spiritual freedom, as applying to the freeing of philosophy from traditional proton constraints and its consequent elevation to a post-atomic theoretical bias, as would seem to reflect a convergence to unity on the level of proletarian philosophy. My approach to perfection doesn't just derive from a desire to emulate 'the Creator', nor from a desire to create a dualistic balance in deference to atomic criteria, but is connected with an aspiration towards ultimate divinity, which demands, in my opinion, a post-atomic approach to the ideal in question."

Somewhat bemused, Reginald Rice now took over the reins of inquiry by asking whether, in that case, there were not three levels of perfection to be approximated in the history or unfolding of classical development - what he described as a pre-atomic, an atomic, and a post-atomic?

"In point of fact, there are four," Hall corrected, to the further bemusement of his host. "As regards Western civilization in particular, one may list classical progress in terms of class distinctions from the aristocracy to the grand bourgeoisie on the one hand, and from the petty bourgeoisie to the proletariat on the other. Aristocratic classicism had for its ideal of perfection the emulation of nature, and was thus somewhat pagan and/or Catholic in character. Grand-bourgeois classicism, however, was more given to conceiving of perfection in terms of a compromise between nature and civilization, since orientated towards Christ rather than the Father, and was accordingly Protestant in character. Petty-bourgeois classicism, although subject to a compromise concept of perfection, strove to emphasize the spirit above the body, and was accordingly closer to a transcendent attitude to perfection, while yet maintaining allegiance to naturalistic roots. It reflected a transition between the atomic and the post-atomic. Only, however, with proletarian classicism can an exclusive aspiration towards the Divine Omega be endorsed, as perfection is conceived in terms of a wholly post-atomic transcendentalism requiring the creation, through literary collectivization, of a fusion literature in fidelity to the Holy Spirit, which we may regard as the future culmination of evolution in ultimate spiritual unity. Collectivization approximates literature, whether philosophical or poetical, to that divine unity in a format transcending all separate genres. There is therefore no stemming from the Diabolic Alpha in separate genres, which reflect the influence of the solar roots of evolution in the Many, but solely an aspiration towards the Divine Omega in an approximation, through collectivization, to the future One."

As the philosopher paused at this juncture in his rather complex discourse, Judith interposed by asking: "Does this gradual evolution of classicism from one interpretation of perfection to another imply a corresponding shift from appearance to essence, as from beauty to truth?"

"Indeed it does," Hall replied, quite flushed by the exertion required to concentrate sufficient attention on his fellow-guest's question. "An approximation to perfection conceived in terms of emulating the natural works of 'the Creator' presupposes an emphasis on beauty, whereas the converse of this approach, in what I've termed proletarian classicism, requires that the emphasis be placed on truth, which is essential rather than apparent, and thus akin to the supernatural constitution of transcendent spirit. In between, during the bourgeois phases of classical evolution, the approach to perfection is atomic, and consequently balanced, in varying degrees, between beauty, on the one hand, and truth, on the other."

"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'," Gaston Healy quoted, referring the company to the bourgeois sentiments of atomistic Keats.

"So in swinging from one extreme to another, as from the Father to the Holy Spirit, the pendulum of classical evolution tends from emulation of the Diabolic Alpha to an aspiration towards the Divine Omega via a compromise realm of Christianity coming in-between?" Miss Doherty tremulously suggested.

"That's approximately correct," Hall admitted, "evolution being a journey, so to speak, from the stars to the ultimate globe of transcendent spirit."

"Which latter has presumably still to come about?" Judith conjectured in an ambivalent tone-of-voice.

"Correct again," he assured her. "Considered in any ultimate sense, God, as the ultimate Spiritual Globe, doesn't yet exist, since definitive spiritual unity can only be established at the culmination of evolution in the Universe, and we on earth are still at quite an evolutionary remove from transcendence, let alone the subsequent fusion of separate transcendences from whichever part of the Universe into one ultimate globe of ... God the Holy Spirit or, in Teilhard de Chardin's admirable terminology, the Omega Point. It is of course possible - and I incline to grant this hypothesis credence - that Spiritual Globes from more advanced planets than our own in the Universe may already be en route, as it were, to Ultimate Oneness in the heavenly Beyond. But their individual presences in space would no more constitute the Omega Point ... than the planets, at one evolutionary remove from the stars, constitute the Alpha Points, so to speak, of the billions of stellar globes flaming separately in space. What begins in the Many must culminate in the One, but not until that One is attained to ... will evolution be complete and the Universe achieve perfection in the ultimate context of the Omega Point."

"Fascinating!" exclaimed Reginald, who was unaccustomed to such a high level of philosophical discourse, whether in relation to Teilhard de Chardin or anyone else, and, for that reason, still slightly bemused. "Does all this speculation make you an atheist, then?"

"Yes," Hall replied, "because I equate God, conceived definitively, with the Omega Point, which, as I said, can only be in the process of formation, not an already-existent fact. Numerous Spiritual Globes may already be converging towards one another in the heavenly Beyond, but they would be at least at one evolutionary remove from omega unity and couldn't be substituted for it. Their essential constitution would doubtless correspond to a heavenly condition, but they would be more like fragments of Heaven, Omega Absolutes, than the actual definitive Heaven of the Omega Point. They'd be antithetically equivalent to the planets, which are material globes.

"As for the alpha absolutes ... of the stars," he continued, considerably warming to his thesis, "they would correspond to Hell, their proton-proton constitution embracing the most inferior doing, not the supreme being of the electron freedom of transcendent spirit. Of course, Hell and Heaven are theological postulates involving value judgements unique to religion. We don't consider the stars as Hell when we look up at the night sky, but simply as stars. Hell, together with such concepts as the Devil and the Creator, is loaded with subconscious associations peculiar to theology. But the actual constitution of the stars is, you'll find, the very converse of what transcendent spirit would be, involving, as I said, the most inferior doing in a context of diabolical soul. I'm not one to confound the Diabolic Alpha with the Divine Omega, or to specialize in worshipping the former. Let's simplify: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit - three stages of godhead from the alpha to the omega via a dualistic compromise. All very theological, but highly pertinent to an understanding of the atheistic position, insofar as a man is an atheist because he doesn't believe in the existence of God conceived in terms of, say, the Holy Spirit, but contends that it's destined to arise at the culmination of evolution as the Omega Point. And he is such an atheist because his psyche is more post-atomic than atomic in constitution, and consequently disinclines him to relate to the atomic level of God, which is Jesus Christ. Neither can he relate to the pre-atomic level of God in, for example, the Father, which is the proton level derived, in all probability, from both the sun and the core of the earth rather than, like Jehovah, from the governing star at the centre of the Galaxy, from which no 'Son of God' could logically have been extrapolated. His superconscious mind preponderates over his subconscious one in the ratio of at least 3:1, so it's quite impossible for him to relate to either pre-atomic or atomic levels of God. But he desires, instead, to assist in the development of a post-atomic level such as must correspond, in its ultimate manifestation, to definitive spiritual supremacy. He turns his back on the Lie and the half-lie/half-truth in favour of the Truth, which has yet to become manifest in the Universe."

"But truth about the Truth is certainly manifest in this room through what you're saying, Peter," Reginald Rice's baritone voice declared, as admiration at length got the better of bemusement in his mind. "Now I can understand why you're a superior classicist! You've got to the theoretical truth, and are accordingly obliged to treat your philosophical literature in a manner stressing being and truth rather than doing and beauty. Essence predominates over appearance in your work."

"Evidently to a quite considerable extent," Gaston Healy piped-in, stirring himself from the half-sleep in which he had wallowed during the greater part of the philosopher's rather mystical discourse. "The chief difference between us, Pete, isn't simply that you're a philosopher and I'm, by contrast, a poet, but that I'm a romantic and you're a classicist. Doing and beauty take precedence over being and truth in my works, which evidently correspond to a subconscious bias."

"It's just that you're a literary sinner and he's a literary saint!" Judith opined, allowing herself the luxury of a teasing smile.

"Yes, one could put it that way," Healy conceded.

* * *

Later that evening, when everyone but Patricia Doherty had left for home, the art dealer took to thinking about some of the things which had passed for conversation between his guests, particularly as bearing on Peter Hall's adventurous discourse, and wondered to himself whether he would ever hear the likes of such an elevated level of conversation again. Was it possible, he mused, that man was no more than a relatively insignificant link in a chain stretching from the alpha absolutes of diabolic soul to the omega absolutes of divine spirit? It seemed strange, and yet, if the philosopher's evolutionary theories were correct, there could be no denying the transitory nature of man, nor any possibility of refuting Nietzsche's dictum that 'Man was something that should be overcome'. Humanism could, under certain circumstances, become an obstacle to that overcoming, a reaction from the exigencies of evolutionary progress ... as effecting the transformation of man from one level, namely the atomic, to another level, namely the post-atomic, such as would become fully manifest in what Hall had termed the transcendental civilization. For above and beyond man, apparently, was the millennial Superman, and the Superman would be post-human to the extent of being a brain artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts - as much post-human, in fact, as apes swinging collectively in the branches of trees were and remain pre-human. And just as trees pre-dated apes in the chronology of evolutionary development on earth, so would the Superbeings of the second phase of millennial time post-date Supermen in that same evolutionary chronology, as new-brain collectivizations forming, on each artificial support/sustain system, not a gathering of independent beings but ... a completely new entity, antithetical in constitution to a tree! And from that link in the evolutionary chain, far more significant from a spiritual point-of-view than the preceding one, it would be just a matter of time before, accustomed to the utmost dynamic meditation, spirit became transcendent and broke free of new-brain atomicity to attain to a free-electron salvation in the context of Spiritual Globes - fragments, so to speak, of absolute mind converging towards and expanding into thousands of other such fragments in a process destined to culminate in the ultimate Spiritual Globe of ... the Omega Point. Oh my! What reasoning and what genius! How could any one man think like that with but a human mind!

Reginald Rice was at a loss to understand it and, noticing Miss Doherty staring at him with a degree of bemused curiosity on her attractive face, he said: "You know, that Peter Hall must be the Messiah. There's no other explanation of his knowledge."

"Yes, you're probably right," she agreed, nodding thoughtfully and with a degree of concern. "As Christ said that no-one would enter the 'Kingdom of Heaven' who didn't come unto Him, meaning of course His teachings, so this man, who would seem to correspond to a Second Coming in his messianic insights, says: 'Unless men adopt my teachings and set themselves on the millennial road to the post-human life forms, they will never attain to the heavenly Beyond. For spirit can only get to that transcendent goal via the superhuman and superbeingful phases of a post-human millennium. He is saying pretty much the same thing as Christ, only saying it on a higher, more evolved level."

Reginald smiled appreciatively and lowered his head in thought a moment. "But he doesn't say that to everyone," he remarked in due course. "He's not expecting dualists to become transcendentalists. For, to paraphrase Nietzsche, 'they're not the ears for his mouth'. He doesn't expect to have any effect on dualistic civilization, because it would be incapable, in his estimation, of transforming itself into the ultimate one. He's too clever to fall into the trap of imagining that he can have any influence on it, that it can be transformed simply through accepting his truth. It cannot accept his truth, for that presupposes a post-atomic will, and where there's no such thing ... there can only be an atomic stasis. He's an outsider in Britain, a man of the future. The transcendental civilization can only be brought about following the eclipse of dualistic civilization. He knows that!"

"Knows it too well," Miss Doherty admitted. "But believes that dualistic civilization cannot be eclipsed except from without, through the agency of external pressures from a country or countries more given to messianic leanings. The upholders of dualism needn't even fear his work, his philosophical truth, for it couldn't lead to a revolution because no such thing is possible here."

"It wouldn't be historically logical," Reginald opined, "since dualistic civilization will probably persist in its traditional tracks until it's toppled from without ... presumably through a combination of American and European pressures. The Roman civilization testified to the same fact, which is, after all, a law of history."

Miss Doherty shook her head in bewilderment and exclaimed: "To think he did all his great work in London! He was brought-up in England, you know. Has never lived anywhere else - except, of course, as a child. Is, I suppose, a sort of Englishman, though an exceptional one by any objective standards!"

"An interesting parallel with Moses in a way," Reginald murmured. "Born a Jew but brought up in Egypt, the father of pre-atomic Hebrew civilization. Our leader and teacher, the father, in all probability, of post-atomic global civilization, was born in Ireland but brought-up in England. Significant, don't you think?"

"Yes, I suppose so," Miss Doherty admitted, smiling briefly. "He acquired the benefit of an English education, relatively free from religious superstition or shackles, and became accustomed to living in a more civilized environment. That's the main reason, I should think, why he has climbed to such philosophical heights - his work owing much to the artificial influence of big-city life, which, acting on his native Irish intelligence, resulted in works of unprecedented truth."

"Quite remarkable, the way environment can condition intelligence!" Reginald declared. "Live long enough in an intensively artificial environment and you begin to think transcendentally. Live in a rural environment for any length of time and, by contrast, you think mundanely - in pseudo-pagan terms. That's the essence of class distinctions, you know! The gradual ascendancy of one class over another which corresponds to environmental differences, as reflecting evolutionary progress from nature towards the supernatural. It follows that the last class to arise must, as Marx taught, be the proletariat, who stem, in their cities, from an intensely artificial environment and thereby approximate more closely to the supernatural."

"Ironic that Peter should have been born into a middle-class family but gradually have become proletarianized through confinement in London for a number of years," Miss Doherty averred. "Proletarianized, I mean, to the extent that he began to think in a way reflecting that city's artificial influence and to endorse, in consequence, post-atomic theories of evolution. An ordinary, bona fide proletarian wouldn't have possessed the innate intelligence to get to Peter's high level of thought. But he had intellectual blood in him, so to speak, and only required to have his intelligence refined upon and radicalized by artificial conditioning, to seemingly achieve the impossible and thus become a new messiah.... Not that he enjoyed living in the city, as you can well imagine. It made him very depressed. For he was not only cut off, in his working-class environment, from congenial intellectual and social company, but cut off moreover from an adequate degree of sensuality necessary to safeguarding the psycho-physical integrity of his highly-strung constitution, him being so slender and nervous and all that. The city made him too spiritual for his own sensual good, his sleep becoming shallow and intermittent, and that was the main reason, paradoxically, for his brilliant work."

Reginald nodded knowingly while pouring himself a drop of sherry from the half-full decanter which had stood on a small coffee table to his immediate right. "And his brilliant work is just a little too truthful or progressive, in consequence, for the bourgeois publishing establishment to countenance, is that it?"

"I think he prefers not to admit that fact to himself these days," Miss Doherty responded, "though he's quite aware of the position. He knows what it means to be a Promethean equivalent, beyond the pale of ideological affinity with atomic criteria."

"And consequently what it means to be alone, eh?" Reginald speculated sympathetically. "Resigned to rejection by a society that prefers the half-truth to the whole truth in loyalty to its atomic integrity, and not only as regards religion! You can be sure that politics, science, and art must also reflect such an integrity. A bourgeois atomist won't admit to the possibility of post-atomic development. He sees everything through eyes conditioned to dualistic compromise, conditioned by a suburban if not largely rural or provincial environment. Only the other day I was reading one of Frederick Solomon's books, Critique of Modern Art I think it was, and what he contended was equivalent to what a bourgeois politician will contend about atomic democracy, which, of course, he regards as the only kind of democracy. Frederick Solomon defended the aesthetic side of bourgeois civilization by maintaining that art must entail an emotional commitment and is only art to the extent that it appeals to our feelings in one way or another, preferably, à la Tolstoy, in a positive way. He didn't say that art shouldn't have an intellectual side, which would have been a quite ridiculous assumption, but maintained that whatever didn't also appeal to the emotions wasn't art - art requiring some kind of compromise between emotion and intellect. Well, such a view reflects fidelity to an atomic integrity, to a psychic dualism between the soul and the spirit, which is to say, the subconscious mind and the superconscious mind, and is simply germane to a bourgeois stage of evolution. It reflects a dualistic concept of art and, to the extent that one may be a dualist, fine! What's not so fine, however, is the assumption stemming from it that whatever is purely intellectual isn't art, that paintings which minimize emotional commitment are necessarily poor art or even no art at all. This is simply to take bourgeois criteria for the definitive definition of art, and it's no less mistaken, in my opinion, than to take parliamentary democracy for the ultimate democracy, or Protestant Christianity for the ultimate religion, or the particle/wavicle theory of matter for the ultimate physics. Not altogether surprisingly, there was no reference to Mondrian in Professor Solomon's critique, since Mondrian's great art is quintessentially intellectual or spiritual, and tends to eschew emotional commitment. Yet it isn't for that reason bogus art but, on the contrary, a superior type of art than that which partly or predominantly appeals to the emotions. It's simply post-atomic, reflecting, in Mondrian's case, what I've come to regard as petty-bourgeois classicism - the converse of such petty-bourgeois romantic works as Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists were to create at around the same time."

Miss Doherty smiled widely. For she recalled standing in Reginald's art gallery, a few days ago, while he expatiated on the difference between Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock, likening the classical abstract of the former to a petty-bourgeois aesthetic approximation to Heaven and the romantic abstract of the latter to a petty-bourgeois aesthetic approximation to Hell - the one testifying to a fairly rigid application of the superconscious mind, the other, by contrast, betraying a degree of subconscious freedom scarcely paralleled in modern times. Mondrian's art was transcendental, Pollock's ... effectively pagan. With typical examples of these two masters hanging side-by-side in Reginald's small gallery, one's vision embraced both the spiritual and the soulful sides of petty-bourgeois civilization simultaneously. Taken for one work, they would have suggested a rather eccentric atomic painting, the Pollock appealing to the emotions and the Mondrian to the intellect. But they were really quite separate and, in a sense, as separate as such works could get on petty-bourgeois terms.... Though that fact probably wouldn't have occurred to one, had not Reginald's genius for distinguishing one type of modern art from another been put to one's service in such an eye-opening fashion!

It had even gone on, this genius of his, to point out that Pollock was one of those paradoxical artists whose work tended to intimate of proletarian romanticism while remaining fundamentally petty-bourgeois. Genuine proletarian romanticism applied, however, to light art in which, for example, neon tubing was arranged in an everywhichway fashion, reminiscent of Pollock's abstract expressionism, and a visually chaotic impression, suggestive of subconscious indulgence, generally prevailed. By contrast, proletarian classicism would demand a strictly logical ordering of neon tubing or fluorescent tubes or laser beams in fidelity to the superconscious, the ensuing pattern establishing a new order of perfection in an approximation to or intimation of a higher level of truth. Beauty would not be the aim of this classicism, which would approach truth from a positive, transcendental base. Neither would it be the raison d'être of proletarian romanticism, any more than it had been of the preceding level of romanticism ... in the petty-bourgeois paintings, for instance, of Jackson Pollock. If the transcendental bias of the classicist demanded a positive approach to truth, then the pagan bias of the romantic demanded, by contrast, a negative approach to beauty, such as could only result in an art of unprecedented ugliness - the romantic ideal of the modern age. Anti-beauty romanticism and pro-truth classicism were the two faces of contemporary art, both petty bourgeois and proletarian, as applying, in particular, to Western civilization. By directly turning against nature, the romanticist indirectly assisted man's progress towards the supernatural. By directly aspiring towards the supernatural, the classicist indirectly assisted man's progress away from nature. Such was the paradoxically dual tendency of modern art, and it reflected the relative, as opposed to absolute, nature of bourgeois/proletarian civilization. A wholly post-atomic civilization, however, would have no place for the romantic. The future proletarian civilization of transcendental man would be exclusively dedicated to the highest, most truth-oriented classicism. Ugliness in art, like beauty before it, was destined to be superseded by an exclusive concern with truth. The romantic was a dying breed, like, for that matter, the unliberated female.

Miss Doherty, however, was a liberated female and thus very much a factor of contemporary life. She was liberated now, as she sat opposite Reginald Rice and lent a sympathetic ear to his theories - an equal in a decidedly intellectual conversation. He, too, was liberated, though not wholly - unlike Peter Hall who, apparently, lived by himself and hadn't touched a woman in years. But poor Peter needed deliverance from his liberation, Patricia could tell that! His was of the pornographic variety and it was undoubtedly a contributory factor to his depression. Reginald's, to the extent that it existed, was gay, if rather more on a bisexual than a strictly homosexual basis. Thus part-liberated, he still clung to women out of petty-bourgeois prudery and a concession to tradition. But they had to be liberated ones, and Miss Doherty was just that - certainly as far as freedom from traditional marital constraints and obligations went! So her presence in his flat, long after the others had left, was by no means arbitrary, but conformed to plan, a plan conceived and destined to be fully executed by Reginald Rice himself! When the conversation had died down, as it seemed on the point of doing, and other concerns began to flare up, as they appeared to be doing. When anti-natural sentiments were supplanting pro-supernatural thoughts. Ah, it wouldn't be long now! Already Reg had lost interest in paintings, philosophy, Peter Hall, and was beginning to eye Patricia in that ironically lecherous way of his. She knew exactly what that meant!

* * *

Arrived home, Judith Hagley switched on the light and headed straight for the bed, which she threw herself down upon with provocative abandon, revealing, as she turned onto her back, the upper half of her dark-stockinged, high-booted legs and the lower half of a pink slip - revelations which weren't wasted on Gaston Healy, who, having gently closed the door, was now in a position to properly appreciate them. He smiled to himself and, climbing onto the bed, bent down to take a closer look at such physical revelations as Judith, in her languor, saw fit to immodestly display. His peeping caused her a degree of embarrassment, but she made no attempt to smooth her skirt down or to draw her legs closer together. He was, after all, her lover, and now they were in private and not in public, where sartorial etiquette was de rigueur. Let him peep, if that was what he most wanted to do! He would probably be appraising her seductive ploys, as he usually did before succumbing to them, like a mouse to a succulent piece of cheese. She was his cheese and he would be sure to eat or, at any rate, nibble her all up. She stiffened slightly as she felt his cold hand, which had scorned a glove, stretch itself flat against the smooth skin of her upper thigh. It was a favourite trick of his, to warm himself on her flesh. And he had written about it on more than one occasion, too!

She moved over in order to make extra room for him on the bed, and he obligingly crawled to a near-horizontal position by her side. Then he started laughing, though not at her, and she felt obliged to ask him what was so funny?

"I was just thinking about what you said to me on the way home concerning Peter Hall's having once been in love with you," he spluttered, after the main paroxysm of humorous excitement had reluctantly subsided.

"And you find that amusing?"

Gaston nodded his wiry-haired head while giving priority of importance to another ejaculation of sarcastic laughter. "Only because it seems so incredible to me that that prize prig should ever have been in love with anybody, not excepting so subtly ravishing a blonde as you!"

Judith blushed graciously and playfully slapped her lover on the hand. "Oh, he was in love with me alright!" she averred. "But he wasn't what he has since become, when I first knew him. He was but a humble student, an apprentice philosopher, ready and willing to study whatever he could lay his hands on. He didn't lay them on me though, because I didn't encourage him to."

"Didn't you like him?" Gaston asked, still partly amused.

"Oh, I liked him alright! Was even in love with him myself for awhile, in spite of already having a steady boyfriend at the time. He was just second at the post and thus a loser."

"He made ovations to you?"

"Oh yes. More than a few, too! But I had to turn him down. And that, believe it or not, is how he was put on the road to being where he is today, in the forefront of contemporary philosophy - if you can call what he thinks 'contemporary'."

Gaston looked touchingly puzzled to Judith as he said: "You mean that your rejections led him to adopt an ascetic existence, for want of anyone else to fall in love with?"

She nodded in tacit confirmation.

"But how can you be sure?"

"Because he told me."

"Told you?"

"Shortly after Patricia and I met him in the street the other week. We returned to his flat, which was nearby, and it was there he confessed to me that I had played a significant role in moulding his destiny. No hard feelings, mind! Just simple facts, such as one would expect from someone who had become a self-appointed spiritual leader after years of celibacy."

"So that's how he came to be invited to Reginald's place, is it?"

Judith nodded again and smiled self-indulgently. "I thought they would get on quite well together, and it seems they did. Regie was the one to ask most of the questions and, so far as I could tell, profit most from the philosopher's answers. I dare say he and Patricia are still engaged in fruitful conversation about him even now."

There ensued a brief pause in their conversation while Gaston adjusted his bodily position to one more advantageous to a potential ravisher of Judith's prostrate form.

"And does Patricia like him?" he asked.

"Who, Peter? Why, yes, very much so! She knew him at about the same time as me and, frankly, was grateful for the opportunity to renew their acquaintance, having read one or two of his books in the meantime."

"Which is more than I can claim to have done," Gaston admitted, sighing faintly. "Though being something of an enfant terrible myself, I suppose I ought to be capable of identifying with some of what he says, even if I am a romantic and therefore indisposed to pursue truth at the expense of more traditional values. He would call me a bourgeois romantic, I suppose, in that my work tends to respect beauty in diluted guise. Including human beauty, I should add." Which remark, directed specifically at Judith's feminine vanity, led Gaston to caress her nearest leg, preparatory to bringing his lips to bear on the smooth surface of her stocking top. She arched enticingly and he extended his caressing to a more sensitive erogenous zone conveniently close to-hand.

"I suppose, given Peter's distinction between emulating the natural works of the Creator and striving to create artificial works independently of such a source ... in anticipation of transcendent spirit, human beauty can only be relative, not absolute," he at length remarked, returning his mind to intellectual preoccupations, slightly to Judith's disappointment. "Absolute beauty would appear to exist only in the stars, of which our sun is but a more conspicuous example. If evolution culminates in the absolute truth ... of transcendent spirit, as Peter contends, then logic would indicate that it began in the absolute beauty of the stars, from which man's relative beauty signifies a fall.... Though women would apparently have fallen less far than men," he added, as an afterthought.

"Much less far as a rule," Judith declared, drawing her legs up closer to her lover and trapping his hand between them in the process, "which is one of the main reasons why men have traditionally worshipped or, at any rate, admired women, insofar as they stand closer to absolute beauty."

"Baudelaire conceived of Satan as the most perfect manly beauty," Gaston remarked, tensing his brow, "when, in point of fact, he might have been closer to the mark had he said the most perfect womanly beauty? Yet, to me, Satan is an anthropomorphic abstraction from the sun, while the Creator is an anthropomorphic abstraction from the governing star at the centre of the Galaxy, from which, we have reason to believe, the majority of lesser stars originally 'fell' ... with what scientists now posit as a Big Bang. Where Peter seems to differ from the scientists, however, is that he posits a Big Bang diaspora of lesser stars for each galaxy, not just one Big Bang for the Universe as a whole, which, when you bother to reflect more deeply, appears an absurd theory. After all, there are billions of galaxies, most of them incredibly vast, and by no stretch of the imagination can one attribute their individual formation to just one Big Bang. The Universe couldn't have begun in unity when it's destined, according to Peter's theories, to culminate in unity. Besides, the individual galaxies, of which we know relatively little, don't tend away from one another, as from a central origin-point, least of all in their billions, but diverge relatively, which is to say according to their positions in the Universe - those in this part of it diverging separately from those in more distant parts and creating, in the process, an uneasy equilibrium of tensions between the various inter-divergent galaxies."

Judith placed a forbidding forefinger to Gaston's lips in an attempt to terminate what she was beginning to find too technical and even wildly speculative for her liking. She knew he had a penchant for adventurous macrocosmic speculation and was afraid that he would get completely wrapped-up in it at her expense. Nevertheless, intellectual curiosity still pervaded her mind as she recalled something Peter Hall had said, earlier that evening, and now inquired of Gaston whether the distinction he had just drawn between Satan, as the Devil, and the Creator, as God, didn't contradict Peter's theory that, considered theologically, evolution proceeds from a Diabolic Alpha to a Divine Omega via a humanistic compromise in the person of Christ. "After all," she added, "if one begins with the Devil, where does God fit in?"

Gaston frowned in momentary bewilderment as he attempted to recollect the gist of Peter's argument, then replied: "Ah, you've quite misunderstood him! It wasn't Satan that was primarily being equated with the Diabolic Alpha but the Creator. For the Diabolic Alpha was considered, by him, in terms of the governing star at the centre of the Galaxy, not our little solar star which stands to the larger one as Satan to the Creator. Peter was in effect saying that, vis-à-vis Satan, the Creator corresponded to an archdevil lording it over a petty one, and that, from an evolutionary or alpha-to-omega point of view, only the archdevil counts. Thus the Creator and Satan are but two aspects of fundamentally the same diabolical roots of the Universe, the former simply being bigger and more powerful than the latter. Satan did indeed 'fall' from the Almighty ... with the origin of the Galaxy in the Big Bang. Our sun exploded out of the central one. Theology stands to science as the figurative to the literal."

Now it was Judith's turn to look puzzled. "Would you therefore deny that the Creator actually exists out there in space?" she asked.

"Yes, I would," he replied. "For the Creator can only be traced back to a figurative abstraction from a certain component of cosmic reality, as I've already suggested."

"So, strictly speaking, it was the stars, or one particular star, from which subsequent components of cosmic reality stemmed, not the theological abstraction?" Judith conjectured.

"Yes, the Creator, or God the Father, didn't literally have a hand in anything," Gaston confirmed, "since pertaining to the figurative ... as an anthropomorphic extrapolation from cosmic reality."

Judith was beginning to see the light at this point and smiled her realization of it with spontaneous relish. "So the Creator exists solely as an idea, as a psychic content of the subconscious mind, and whether or not one believes in that psychic content ... will depend on the constitution of one's psyche, whether or not the subconscious figures prominently in it ...?"

"Yes, that must be so," Gaston rejoined, nodding. "The Creator is a fiction, the reverse side of cosmic fact. But to the extent that our planet was created, in a manner of speaking, out of an exploding star, then that star was the literal creative source and doubtless still exists. Thus the First Cause exists, because one is not dealing with a theological abstraction there but with something that actually gave rise to other stars and, when planets were formed, the particular galaxy of which our solar system is but a tiny component. The First Cause pertains to the literal explanation of creation, the Creator, or Father, to its figurative explanation. The one is objective fact, the other objective fiction. I no longer believe in the Creator, even though I'm a romantic, but I do believe in the First Cause. For something did, after all, give rise to this planet, which in turn gave rise to plants, and so on. We didn't have a hand in creating nature, any more than we created the animals or, for that matter, ourselves. A baby is more the creation of nature than of its parents, since they cannot fashion natural limbs the way a sculptor fashions artificial ones. Man creates artificially, by contrast to nature."

"While woman, who stands closer to nature in her bodily capacities, creates naturally, by producing babies," Judith averred. "That, at any rate, was the traditional norm and, to some extent, it still obtains today, in an age of so-called Women's Lib." She smiled in ironic deference to this fact, and then asked whether or not the First Cause could be identified with nature?

"It depends how you define nature," Gaston replied, as he endeavoured to extricate his by-now warm hand from Judith's possessive grip. "The First Cause, conceived in terms of the central star in the Galaxy from which the millions of lesser stars 'fell', is at the root of nature. What happens, it seems to me, is that a more intensive nature begets a less intensive nature, which in turn begets a less intensive nature, and so on, so that nature ascends, in lessening degrees of fiery emotionality, towards spirit with the inception of autonomous life. The stars begat planets, the planets begat plants, the plants begat animals, and the animals begat man. There is still nature in man, human nature in more than one sense, but it's diluted in proportion to the degree of spirit to which he attains. At one point in evolutionary time he's more soul than spirit, at another point soul and spirit tend to balance each other, and at a still higher point, such as he is now entering, spirit outbalances soul. He becomes more truth than beauty. The stars, remember, are absolute beauty; transcendent spirit, by contrast, will be absolute truth. The former are apparent, the latter essential."

"Thus the degree of beauty inherent in a phenomenon will be proportionate to the intensity of soul there?" Judith philosophically suggested.

"That must be so," Gaston affirmed, as he took full possession of his free hand. "If a phenomenon lacks soul, it must lack beauty. An automobile is for that reason not beautiful but, rather, streamlined or flash. The great Welsh philosopher John Cowper Powys contended, in The Meaning of Culture, that beauty is connected or associated with the poetic, which was his way of saying soul. No car has a soul, so a car can never be described as beautiful."

Judith was disposed to agree with that, but wondered whether the same could be said of a painting which strove to emulate natural beauty. "I mean, many great naturalist paintings seem beautiful," she averred.

"Yet, in reality, they're not," he countered. "For they lack a soul, the quality of beauty. They merely give the appearance of beauty, so can never hope to surpass nature. Man cannot surpass the beauty of nature in his artificial creations. Art only begins to surpass nature when it becomes supernatural, reflecting an aspiration towards truth in some degree of transcendentalism. For centuries man was a meek imitator of natural beauty, obliged, through the impossibility of directly investing his work with soul, to play second-fiddle to nature. Only when he turned his back on nature and aspired towards the supernatural ... did he create works of a higher order, thus freeing himself from creative inferiority. For a work indirectly invested with spirit is superior to one directly invested with soul, i.e. a natural work, insofar as it is not a poor imitation of the latter but appertains to a superior realm of creative endeavour. It becomes a subjective illusion, mirroring the spirit, whereas the naturalist painting is an objective fiction."

Judith was clearly puzzled by Gaston's distinction between illusion and fiction, and wondered how he had arrived at it. Why, for instance, had he said 'fiction' instead of 'illusion' when referring to the Creator?

"Ah! a basic philosophical distinction, my dear, between inner and outer, or essence and appearance," he assured her. "Fact and fiction apply to appearance, truth and illusion to essence. The stars, being apparent, pertain to cosmic fact, whereas theological or figurative abstractions from that fact constitute fictional psychic contents which, because they exist in the apparent, or subconscious, half of the psyche are accordingly treated as if they were external, approximating to pseudo-facts. Conversely transcendent spirit, being essential, pertains to cosmic truth, as, to a lesser extent, does the superconscious mind, whereas the scientific postulates derived from this truth, or from the lesser truth of the superconscious, constitute illusory postulates which, because they're treated on essential terms, approximate to pseudo-truths. Appearance has therefore evolved from the objective fact of the stars to the objective fictions of the subconscious, whilst essence has evolved or, rather, is in the process of evolving from the subjective illusions of modern science to the subjective truth of the superconscious ... en route, as it were, to the absolute truth of transcendent spirit. The Creator is literally a fiction when considered objectively, in relation to the subconscious, but becomes, in the practice of theological expedience, a pseudo-fact to the extent that He is projected out into space by the objective nature of the subconscious mind. Conversely, the particle/wavicle concept of matter, for example, is an illusion when considered objectively ... in relation to the solid appearance of matter, but becomes, in the practice of modern quantum physics, a pseudo-truth to the extent that it partly derives from the subjectivity of the superconscious mind in deference to spiritual truth, and accordingly reflects essential conditioning."

Judith felt puzzled now no less than previously, not so much by what Gaston had said ... as by the fact that he was saying it at all. "I didn't realize you were also a philosopher," she sceptically confessed.

He smiled understandingly. "I'm not, only I once was, before I became a romantic artist," he confessed. "A classical philosopher, in fact."

"And you never told me?"

"I didn't think you'd be interested. Besides, I was never a particularly good philosopher, unlike Peter Hall. He would probably find fault with some of my logic, possessing, as he does, deeper insight into metaphysics than me."

"He would certainly be surprised to learn that you were once a philosopher," Judith averred. "No doubt, you'll be no less surprised to learn that he was once a romantic artist before becoming, thanks in part to myself, a classical philosopher."

"Well I never! One would hardly have suspected that from his discourse earlier this evening. I had taken him for a philosopher to the core." Gaston sniffed ironically, smiled, and then said: "Perhaps what he needs now is Patricia, to transform him into a classical artist."

"And what do you need?" Judith teasingly asked, edging closer to the writer's body.

"Not a change of profession," he replied. "Simply, my dear, a change of communication, in order to bring me back into line with my basic romanticism."

"You've got it!" Judith assured him, and she straightaway proceeded to cover his spiritual tongue with her sensual lips.