The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl Read online

  I have sometimes thought of writing a dialogue of the dead, in which Lucian, Erasmus, and Voltaire should mutually acknowledge the danger of exposing an old superstition to the contempt of the blind and fanatic multitude.

  Edward Gibbon: Memoirs of My Life and Writings

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘As I’ve said before,’ said Voltaire (né F. M. Arouet), ‘if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.’

  ‘Brilliant’, a psychoanalyst commented, ‘but pre-psychological. If God did exist, it would make not a scrap of difference. We have invented him anyway.’

  ‘That’, Voltaire replied with only a touch of tetchiness, ‘was what I meant.’

  ‘Then why on earth didn’t you say so?’

  ‘Because I was, when I said it, on earth – and wanted to remain there. You must remember that in my time Christians burned books and authors as piously, and very nearly as regularly, as they burned incense.’

  ‘Speaking as an historian,’ said an historian, ‘I am in a position to confirm the point. We historians often call the 18th century “the age of Voltaire”. We mean, however, that he was in advance of his age, not that he was typical of it. Many of his contemporaries retained the mental outlook of the ages of faith. So certain were they of God’s existence that they felt entitled in good conscience to torture or burn anyone who doubted it.’

  ‘So uncertain were they, you presumably mean,’ interpolated Edward Gibbon in a politely emending tone.

  ‘I mean no such thing’, the historian replied crossly. ‘It’s slips of that kind that have got you regarded, in the profession, as unsound. Speaking as a scholar, I mean precisely what I say. I am referring to the mental climate of ages of faith.’

  ‘So’, Gibbon said mildly, ‘am I. But I have noticed that people don’t bother to have faith in propositions they are actually convinced of, such as the proposition that 2 + 2 = 4.’

  ‘Merely mundane convictions,’ the historian said impatiently, ‘scarcely deserve the name of faith. All the same, it’s obvious that faith is conviction, but conviction on the most intense and exalted plane. Quite frankly, Gibbon, paradox is a form which you would do better to leave to your crony Voltaire.’

  ‘Yet I’, Voltaire said, ‘support Gibbon – whom I claim as a crony despite the ill-judged passage in his autobiography that refers to “Voltaire, whom I then rated above his real magnitude”.’

  ‘It is an error of opinion’, Gibbon said with a bow, ‘which I have passed eternity in correcting.’

  ‘I should have forgiven you in any case’, Voltaire replied, ‘because you are one of the few people to rate me at my true merits as an actor. Whatever you afterwards wrote of my performance, you did, at the time, take tickets.1 And your judgment is equally correct when you say that people who propound that 2 + 2 = 4 have no need to have faith in the proposition because they in fact believe it. Conversely, the proposition that 2 + 2 = 5 is received by the orthodox as a mere mistake, not a heresy. I doubt if, even among the Arabians, with their passion for arithmetic, anyone has ever been put to the rack for proposing that 2 + 2 = 5.’

  ‘Or even,’ Gibbon added, ‘extreme, provocative and disruptive of the commonwealth though that proposition would be, that they = 6.’

  ‘What fascinates me’, a theologian interrupted, ‘is that you two scoffers are in fact talking in theological terms. Do I detect elements of faith shewing through your scepticism?’

  ‘One might as rationally’, Gibbon growled, ‘detect elements of royalism and episcopalianism in chess players.’

  ‘And yet’, the psychoanalyst said in a speculative manner, ‘it would be quite rational to hypothesise that chess sublimates impulses which might otherwise issue in royalism and episcopalianism.’

  ‘Or that royalism and episcopalianism sublimate impulses that might have been frittered away at chess,’ the theologian said dismissively. ‘All psychoanalytic theories make equal sense upside down. That is, they make nonsense either way.’

  ‘Have you’, Voltaire asked the theologian, ‘read the works of Sigmund Freud?’

  ‘Of course,’ the theologian replied. ‘Or at least, I may not have actually read them, but naturally I know what they say. Or at least I know the general drift of what they say, without necessarily having gone into tiresome detail. Certainly; I know all that matters, namely that they’ve been proved wrong.’

  ‘Have you read them?’ the psychoanalyst asked Voltaire, in a tone of interest and surprise.

  ‘Did you think I’d been content to remain pre-psychological? Since I was freed from time, Freud’s writings have been my chief intellectual delight.’

  ‘You disappoint me,’ the theologian said to Voltaire. ‘Beneath your childish propensity to mock, I’d taken you for a man of sense. But a man of sense can scarcely delight in reading incestuous meanings into the babble of two-year-olds.’

  ‘Compared to the pains of hell, incest is a very pure and gentle subject.’

  ‘One doesn’t contemplate hell for fun,’ the theologian said reprovingly. ‘The aim of theology is to be true, not to give what you call delight. I daresay I should find theology a tedious study did I not believe my soul to be at stake.’

  ‘My constant fear was that theologians would put my body there,’ Voltaire said.

  ‘Your flippancy is an evasive tactic. You make startling remarks, such as that you delight in Freud, and then evade being called to account.’

  ‘As you haven’t read the works in question’, Voltaire said, ‘you’re in no position to be startled on hearing that I enjoy them. But I’ll tell you this: I am a good deal more free to delight in psychoanalysis than you are to delight in theology, because I have absolutely no faith in psychoanalysis.’

  ‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ the theologian said. ‘I was beginning to fear that, though we don’t officially age during eternity, you’d succumbed to a sort of ethereal senility.’

  ‘I have no faith in psychoanalysis’, Voltaire pursued, ‘because I have no need for faith in it. I am totally convinced by it.’

  Gibbon began to laugh.

  The historian said disappointedly: ‘O. You’ve come back to your crony’s pseudo-paradox.’

  ‘And you’ve beautifully’, the psychoanalyst said, ‘forestalled our theological friend’s next argument. It’s curious how the objection which religious people always bring against psychoanalysis is that it’s a religion.’

  ‘My own objection’, said the historian, ‘is historical.’

  ‘Is it’, the psychoanalyst enquired, ‘the one that says it may have been true of middle-class, middle-aged Viennese Jewish women in 1900 but it can’t possibly apply to you?’

  ‘The decay of classical learning’, Gibbon murmured, ‘has no doubt permitted many academic historians to persuade themselves that Oedipus was a Viennese Jewess.’

  ‘I’m disappointed’, the theologian said to Voltaire, ‘because I had thought you were, for a moment, being serious.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘How can a man of sense be serious about psychoanalysis?’

  ‘Only a hypothesis as comprehensive, cogent and imaginatively profound as psychoanalysis’, Voltaire said, ‘can be adequate to explain why I failed.’

  ‘I don’t know that you should think of yourself as a failure, quite,’ the historian said judiciously. ‘After all, there are those hundreds of books that call your age “the age of Voltaire”.’

  ‘Had I succeeded, all the ages after me would have been ages of Voltaire,’ Voltaire replied. ‘Psychoanalysis discloses that there is in human beings a strong and invincibly unconscious wish to believe absurdities. It’s the only credible explanation of why humans went on believing absurdities after I had pointed their absurdity out.’

  ‘Well, at least,’ the theologian said, ‘we need no longer take your psychoanalytical convictions seriously. They turn out to be no more deeply rooted than in your personal vanity.’

  ‘You underestimate the depth of my persona
l vanity,’ Voltaire said in a melancholy tone.

  ‘Do you’, the psychoanalyst asked him sympathetically, ‘feel that, in addressing yourself to the conscious and reasoning faculty, you were wasting your time, because you perforce ignored the unconscious and irrational factors?’

  ‘It is my constant posthumous reproach to myself,’ Voltaire replied sadly. ‘On the other hand’, he went on in a happier tone, ‘I am not sure that psychoanalysis in its turn isn’t open to reproach. It might be said that psychoanalysis errs by ignoring the conscious and reasoning faculty. After all, the same dark-forces propel us all, but some they ultimately propel into the light of what you call the reality principle. I am not sure that psychoanalysis has spent enough time exploring why, when one man remains a credulous, superstitious simpleton, another becomes a Voltaire – or, of course, a Gibbon or, indeed, a Freud. If you would like to make good the deficiency by examining a thoroughly conscious and reasoning mind, and if you can procure a couch, I am willing, in the interests of science, to submit myself here and now to your technique.’

  ‘Your technique’, the theologian said snubbingly to the psychoanalyst, ‘is merely a horizontal adaptation of the technique of the confessional. And your wish to be analysed’, he added to Voltaire, ‘is merely an excuse for talking about yourself. If we may now return to serious matters, I was about to remark that the distinction which you and Gibbon drew between conviction and faith is in fact drawn by dogmatic theology. For dogmatic theology maintains that a belief in God entertained on the strength merely of the credibility of the evidence falls short of that supernatural, God-given faith which it classifies as one of the “theological” virtues necessary to salvation.’

  ‘It is apparent’, Gibbon said, ‘that dogmatic theology has the utmost doubts of the existence of God.’

  ‘Absurd,’ said the theologian.

  ‘Another would-be paradox,’ said the historian.

  ‘If dogmatic theology really thought God existed’, Gibbon said, ‘it could no more make faith in his existence a virtue than I can hold myself virtuous for believing that 2 + 2 = 4.’

  ‘Indeed’, said Voltaire, ‘dogmatic theology feels sure of only one thing: that God, if he exists, cannot save me.’

  ‘A misinterpretation of the entire eschatological trend of Christian culture,’ the historian said.

  ‘Blasphemy,’ said the theologian.

  ‘If you have correctly reported its tenets,’2 Voltaire said to the theologian, ‘dogmatic theology holds that what I need, if I am to be saved, is that God should give me a faith in him which goes beyond the credibility of any evidence I may perceive of his existence. Now if God gave me such a faith, of which I find no traces in my natural self, I should regard his giving it me as the firmest possible evidence that he exists. But the moment I conceived that thought, my faith would cease to be the true “theological” virtue of faith and would become a mere belief in God based on the credibility of the evidence. Such mere natural and reasonable belief is not enough to procure my salvation. Plainly, therefore, dogmatic theology believes that God cannot save me.’

  A humble Christian who had been listening to the whole exchange said: ‘I am a humble Christian and, as such, bewildered by theological niceties. It seems to me that we can only hope. And hope is a virtue, too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Dogmatic theology’, the theologian said, ‘names hope, too, as a “theological” virtue.’

  ‘And in making hope a virtue’, Voltaire said, ‘dogmatic theology confesses that it’s in no position to be dogmatic.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ God put in, in a hesitant voice. ‘I was wandering past, looking for the Black Girl, when I was attracted to your conversation, which I’ve been listening to for some time. But I feel diffident about joining in. You’re all historical characters, whereas I’m a fictitious one. As such, I have of course my own validity, but there are certain anomalies peculiar to my situation which make me feel vulnerable.’

  However, they all, with the utmost affability, moved along the white marble bench they were sitting on and made room for God to join them – all except the humble Christian, who flung himself to his knees on the ground.

  ‘Please don’t feel obliged to do that,’ God said.

  The humble Christian did not, however, budge.

  ‘I’d much rather you didn’t,’ God added. ‘It fills me with a mixture of embarrassment and irritation, like the feeling of being in church.’

  But

  ‘I’m a humble Christian,’ the humble Christian insisted. ‘I insist.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘Certainly’, God said, ‘I’m not sorry to belong to the same order of being as Don Quixote, Ulrich von ——— and Mrs Yajñavalkya. Neither does it trouble me that my original creators are anonymous. So are the originators of Hercules and of Puck and of Sir Launcelot du Lake, and those personages are none the less vivid for it. Indeed, one forms a stronger and sharper impression of them than of most of the so-called real people one meets every day. The point that disquiets me and makes me unsure of myself is more bizarre: my creators, whoever they may be, have put it about that I created them.’

  ‘Theirs is a self-effacement rare among authors’, Voltaire agreed, ‘—who, as a profession, earn so little money that they seldom have anything to feed on except self-esteem. I am myself unusually modest for an author. But even I might become peevish if Candide were given the credit for me.’

  ‘And yet’, said God, ‘what comes to mind when one thinks of Voltaire would not be as it is without Candide. So there is a sense in which one can truly say “Candide made Voltaire”.’

  ‘Having demonstrated the importance of fictions’, Voltaire said graciously, ‘you must surely stop feeling apologetic about being one.’

  ‘I have of course’, the theologian said to God in a bristling voice, ‘recognised you as a devil making trial of my faith. However, accepting your own account of yourself, which I do purely for the sake of the argument, I must say I’m not a bit surprised that your fictitious status is a burden to you. To be swayed, to be positively and in detail caused, by the whim of an author must be servitude indeed. In fact, you are an allegory of the dreadful state mankind would fall into were it to deny the divine gift of free will and succumb to the drear and hopeless doctrine of determinism.’

  ‘Some people do feel depressed’, the psychoanalyst said, ‘when they consider that their personalities are caused. They hate psychoanalysts for tracing some of the causes. But for my part I should be much more upset if I thought that bits of my personality were not caused and were therefore liable to behave at random. I should no longer see any proper sense in which I could call it my personality. I should be afraid of becoming a mere impersonal force, like a poltergeist.’

  ‘The intervention of the grace of God is not random behaviour,’ the theologian said sternly.

  ‘It would be, from the point of view of the coherency of my ego,’ the psychoanalyst replied.

  ‘Indeed, if God were to act through me,’ Voltaire said, ‘the action would be grossly out of character.’

  ‘What Christians call intervention by the grace of God’, said Gibbon, ‘appears to be much like what the ancients called possession.’

  ‘If I believed in it, I’d be scared out of my wit,’ said Voltaire.

  ‘Taken seriously’, God said, ‘I am rather a scary notion – which is one reason why I ought not to be imposed on children. Not for nothing is a third of me called a ghost.’

  ‘I assume’, Gibbon said, ‘that what I mean by “I” has been given the form which I recognise as ‘I” by the natural causes that have shaped it. I don’t therefore see how my “I” can feel depressed by being caused or can yearn to be free of causation or can voluntarily let itself be possessed by an alien “I” without wishing for its own dissolution.’

  ‘You forget’, the theologian said, ‘that the chain of natural causes also exists by virtue of God’s grace.’

  ‘Then you are a determinist
too,’ Voltaire exclaimed. ‘Only you hold that God determines determinism.’

  ‘Now you forget’, the theologian said, ‘that he implants in you freedom to respond to his grace directly.’

  ‘By your acount of the matter,’ Voltaire replied, ‘God’s right arm encircles me and draws me onto the punch he is poised to deliver with his left. I am amazed that you can ascribe free will to me or grace to God.’

  ‘By my “grace”’, God said in a gloomy voice, ‘religious people in fact mean my whim, since they insist that I am uncaused and unaccountable. And in practice my whim amounts to my sheer irrational wanton destructiveness. What, after all, does English legal jargon mean by “acts of God”? Large-scale meteorological disasters, usually with loss of life. Whenever my worshippers begin emphasising that I am a mystery, I know they are about to hold me responsible for a disaster so painful that even they are shocked. Let there be a chain of cause and effect that begins with the first proton and issues in a flowerpot falling off a balcony onto an innocent toddler, and the grieving parents resign themselves not to the moral neutrality of the universe but to “the will of God”.’

  ‘Poor God,’ Gibbon said with a serious sigh of sympathy.

  ‘I am the most hateful character in fiction,’ God declared. ‘And my creators, having created me thus, removed their names from the work and disavowed the responsibility. Indeed, they actually held me responsible for inspiring them.’

  ‘I venture to hope you will be more at your ease’, Gibbon said, ‘in the company of unbelievers. For we at least, since we do not believe you are to blame for earthquake and flood, do not believe we have reason to hate you.’

  ‘Only among unbelievers’, God replied gratefully, ‘can I be accepted for what I am, namely a fictitious character. My misfortune is that I am written about almost exclusively by believers. Not only do they believe they have reason to hate me; they believe that, in entertaining that belief, they are doing their duty towards me. No wonder my reputation is damaged almost beyond repair. It’s the greatest pity that religious art is left to artists who happen to be religious or who are willing to pose as such. What the theologian said about my servitude in my status of fictitious character fell on my ears with some irony. It seems to me that I am in a state of servitude so long as the artists who treat of me refuse to treat me as a fictitious character. An artist who is a believer will never exercise his imagination on me, never develop my character, never ask himself what I am truly like. He is too convinced that my character is a mystery and that it would be presumptuous of him to claim to know it. Religious art is circumscribed by the artists’ dread of being irreverence. I wish I could persuade an irreligious artist to take up the subject.’