The Seed of Evil

For this I am indebted to my father, who before he died assiduously taught me to read and instructed me to study carefully the books in the list he drew up. I have not, it is true, finished the list. Contrary to what might be imagined, I am not a voracious reader. Debilitated by an unnatural life, I am very easily fatigued; altogether I am a weak individual, both physically and mentally. I sleep a good deal—fifteen to twenty hours a day and during the rest of the time reading is a painful effort for me. My progress is further impeded by the difficulty of obtaining the requisite books: I have to rely on chance to place most of the volumes in my hands, and have waited years, for instance, to acquire a copy of the Timaeus. This, as with several other volumes, I shall probably never see.

Many would imagine that my father, a Vedantist, would have directed me to a study of the Vedas, particularly of the Upanishads, on the grounds that in the doctrine that the world is maya, merely illusion, might be found an anodyne to mitigate my plight. Nothing could have been further from his intention. Admittedly, it has fleetingly occurred to me that that other world, the world that rolls beneath me scudded with cloud, is only an insubstantial extrapolation, an epiphenomenon, and that the only substantive things in the universe are airliners, airports, and transient passengers who flick in and out of existence on embarkation and debarkation. But that thought cannot be taken seriously. All my father’s efforts strove not to obfuscate with recondite metaphysics but to exacerbate realities and make the apprehension of my condition all the sharper. He believed in science, a product of the West; all the books he specified are by Western writers, and I take their point of view: that the world exists in reality (in so far as it is perceived between conception and death), that everything happening in it has really happened, that I really am trapped in this airliner, the only man in history never to be allowed to descend to earth.

No, my father’s feeling for me did not lead him to compromise the facts. His educational programme was a work of genius—genius born, I tender, of intense emotional pain. I am convinced that his aim was to lead me by my own efforts towards a truth which he had wrested from the world but which otherwise is known to few, if any: the secret nature of that explosive, perdurable, many-headed hydra: the Christian religion.

How much is implied—how much is masked—by the phrase “Christian civilisation”! To penetrate to the arcane core of what its existence on Earth means was the achievement of my father’s booklist.

The list is extensive, but its greater part is introductory only, being designed to facilitate the process of intussusception by means of adroit acquaintanceship with vocabulary and ideas. At the centre of the system, like a centre of gravity, lie two major works around which all else revolves:

1. The Socratic Dialogues.

2. The Gospel according to St Matthew, St Mark, St Luke and St John.

From the comparison of these two, the objective historical perspective of the world is obtained.

A brief word concerning their acquisition. My tiny pocket copy of the New Testament, Authorised Version, was given to me by a kindly English lady on her way to perform missionary work in India, and has been with me for many years. The more bulky Socratic Dialogues present a greater problem and therefore I lack a complete collection. They are, however, a lesser counterpoint to the Christian theme, so the gaps do not matter so much.

One volume that I do have is worth comment: a collection of some of the dialogues, including the Apology of Socrates, it was given to me rather offhandedly by a brash, untidily dressed young man of about eighteen who I remember for his piercing blue eyes. The book is entitled Plato’s Divine Dialogues and is a very old one, being published in 1841 by Cornish & Co, 126 Newgate Street, London. Its pages are yellow and brittle, held together by sticky tape.

The edition is remarkable for its spiritual chauvinism. By means of a wordy introduction and copious footnotes the editor strives to impress on the reader the superiority of the Christian world and of how unlikely it is that anything worthwhile could ever have taken place outside its confines. He puts forward a tenuous and wandering argument to show that Plato owed such wisdom as he did possess to Moses, “from whom he has borrowed that which is most rational and substantial in his works”. Noting that during his trial Socrates could have saved himself by withholding the truth but declined to do so, he exclaims passionately: “What a noble example is this in a pagan!”