The Confusion

The train crossed the Elbe on a nearby ferry and pounded down the road for some hours until they reached Brandenburg, then stopped for the night at an inn on the Mei?en-Berlin road. The next day they got a late start. Some fifty miles separated them from the Palace of Charlottenburg and the hospitality of its namesake, the Electress Sophie Charlotte. “Pray consider me at your disposal, your highness,” said Leibniz. “The road is long, and I shall deem it a high honor to be of whatever assistance I may in making it seem shorter. We may pursue your mathematicks-lessons, which have been neglected during the illness of your late mother. We may discourse of theology, which is something you should tend to; for in the Court of Brandenburg-Prussia you’ll encounter not only Lutherans but Calvinists, Jesuits, Jansenists, even Orthodox, and you’ll need to keep your wits about you lest some silver-tongued zealot lead you astray. I have a blockflote, and could attempt to give you a music-lesson. Or-”

“I would hear more of the work that Dr. Waterhouse purposes to undertake in Mas-sa-chu-setts,” said the Princess carefully. She had got wind of this from remarks overheard yesterday.

“A fitting topic, but in the end a very broad one,” said Leibniz. “Dr. Waterhouse?”

“The Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technologickal Arts,” began Daniel, “has been founded, and will sooner or later be endowed, by the Marquis of Ravenscar, who looks after his majesty’s money, and who is a great Whig. That means he belongs to a faction whose bank and whose money are founded on Commerce. They are ever opposed to the Tories, whose bank and money are founded on Land.”

“Land seems much the better choice, being fixed and stable.”

“Stability is not always a good thing. Think of lead and quicksilver. Lead makes good ballast, rooves, and pipes, but is sluggish, while quicksilver has marvelous properties of speed, flexibility, fluidity…”

“Are you an Alchemist?” Caroline demanded.

Daniel colored. “No, your highness. But I will go so far as to say that Alchemists think in metaphors that are sometimes instructive.” He shared a private look with Leibniz, and smiled. “Or perhaps we are all born with such habits of thought ingrained in our minds, and the Alchemists have simply fallen into the trap of making too much of them.”

“Mr. Locke would disagree,” said Caroline. “He says we start out a tabula rasa…”

“It might surprise you to learn that I know Mr. Locke well,” Daniel said, “and that he and I have argued about it.”

“What has he been up to lately?” Leibniz asked, unable to hold himself back. “I’ve been working on a reply to his Essay Concerning Human Understanding…”

“Mr. Locke has spent much time in London of late, debating Recoinage; for while Newton would devalue the pound sterling, Locke is a staunch believer that the standard laid down by Sir Thomas Gresham must never be tampered with.”

“Why do England’s greatest savants spend so much time arguing about coins?” Caroline asked.

Daniel considered it. “In the old world, the Tory world, when coin was nothing more than an expedient for moving rents from the country to London, they would never have paid it so much notice. But Antwerp suggested, and Amsterdam confirmed, and London has now proved, that there is in Commerce at least as much wealth as in Land; and still no one knows what to make of it. But money makes it all work somehow, or, when it is managed wrong, makes it collapse. And so coins are as worthy of the attention of savants as cells, conic sections, and comets.”

Leibniz cleared his throat. “The way to Berlin is long,” he said, “but not that long.”

Daniel said, “The Doctor complains of our digression. I was speaking of the new Institute in Boston.”

“Yes. What is to be the nature of its work?”

Here Daniel was stumped; which was odd, and embarrassing. He did not quite know where to begin. But the Doctor, who knew Caroline much better, said, “If I may,” and gratefully Daniel gave the floor to him.

Leibniz said, “Persons such as your highness, who woolgather, and ponder things, are apt to be drawn into certain labyrinths of the mind-riddles about the nature of things, which one may puzzle over for a lifetime. Perhaps you have already visited them. One is the question of free will versus predestination. The other is the composition of the continuum.”

“The what of the what?”

“Simply that if you begin with observable things around you, such as yonder church-tower, and begin dividing them into their component parts, viz. bricks and mortar, and the parts into parts, where does it lead you in the end?”

“To atoms?”