Experience Seamless Full Ebook Downloads for Every Genre at textbookfull.

com

Aquinas and Modern Science A New Synthesis of

Faith and Reason Gerard Verschuuren

https://textbookfull.com/product/aquinas-and-modern-science-
a-new-synthesis-of-faith-and-reason-gerard-verschuuren/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWNLOAD NOW

Explore and download more ebook at https://textbookfull.com

 Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.

Faith, Reason, and Culture: An Essay in Fundamental

Theology George Karuvelil

https://textbookfull.com/product/faith-reason-and-culture-an-essay-in-
fundamental-theology-george-karuvelil/

textboxfull.com

Faith Reason Earth History Leonard Brand Arthur Chadwick

https://textbookfull.com/product/faith-reason-earth-history-leonard-
brand-arthur-chadwick/

textboxfull.com

Faith Reason Earth History A Paradigm of Earth and

Biological Origins by Intelligent Design 3rd Edition
Leonard Brand
https://textbookfull.com/product/faith-reason-earth-history-a-
paradigm-of-earth-and-biological-origins-by-intelligent-design-3rd-
edition-leonard-brand/
textboxfull.com

Reason and Faith: Themes from Richard Swinburne Michael

Bergmann And Jeffrey E Brower (Eds.)

https://textbookfull.com/product/reason-and-faith-themes-from-richard-
swinburne-michael-bergmann-and-jeffrey-e-brower-eds/

textboxfull.com
Foucault s analysis of modern governmentality a critique
of political reason Butler

https://textbookfull.com/product/foucault-s-analysis-of-modern-
governmentality-a-critique-of-political-reason-butler/

textboxfull.com

Faith and Heritage A Christian Nationalist Anthology Faith

And Heritage

https://textbookfull.com/product/faith-and-heritage-a-christian-
nationalist-anthology-faith-and-heritage/

textboxfull.com

Modern Synthesis Processes and Reactivity of Fluorinated

Compounds Groult Henri. (Ed.)

https://textbookfull.com/product/modern-synthesis-processes-and-
reactivity-of-fluorinated-compounds-groult-henri-ed/

textboxfull.com

The Christic Theory of Everything: Unlocking The

Universe's Secrets at The Intersection of Faith and
Reason. 1st Edition Alvin Ebreo.
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-christic-theory-of-everything-
unlocking-the-universes-secrets-at-the-intersection-of-faith-and-
reason-1st-edition-alvin-ebreo/
textboxfull.com

Psychological Science and Christian Faith Insights and

Enrichments from Constructive Dialogue Malcolm A. Jeeves

https://textbookfull.com/product/psychological-science-and-christian-
faith-insights-and-enrichments-from-constructive-dialogue-malcolm-a-
jeeves/
textboxfull.com
 Aquinas & Modern Science
A New Synthesis of Faith and Reason
GERARD M. VERSCHUUREN

Aquinas and
Modern Science

A New Synthesis of
Faith and Reason

Foreword by
Joseph W. Koterski, S.J.
 First published in the USA and UK
by Angelico Press
© Gerard M. Verschuuren 2016

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any

means, without permission

For information, address:

Angelico Press
4709 Briar Knoll Dr.
Kettering, OH 45429
angelicopress.com

ISBN 978-1-62138-228-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-62138-229-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-62138-230-0 (ebook)

Cover Image: Jacopo del Casentino,

St. Thomas Aquinas, between circa 1325 and circa 1375,
tempera and gold on poplar wood
Cover Design: Michael Schrauzer
 CONTENTS

Foreword
Preface

1. Aquinas and His Time

2. Aquinas and Metaphysics
The Need for Metaphysics
Faith and Reason

3. Aquinas and Nature’s Principles

Esse, Essence, Existence, and Substance
Matter and Form
Fivefold Causality
Primary and Secondary Cause

4. Aquinas and Epistemology

Epistemology in Crisis
Epistemology Restored
A Foundation for Science

5. Aquinas and the Sciences

Aquinas the Scientist?
The Power of Reason

6. Aquinas and Cosmology

A Beginning of the Universe?
Before the Big Bang?
A Universe Without “Gaps”
7. Aquinas and Physics
Classical Physics
Quantum Physics

8. Aquinas and Genetics

DNA’s Causa Materialis
DNA’s Causa Efficiens
DNA’s Causa Formalis
DNA’s Causa Finalis
DNA’s Causa Exemplaris

9. Aquinas and Evolutionary Biology

The Causality of Evolution
Causa Efficiens of Evolution
Causa Materialis of Evolution
Causa Finalis of Evolution
Causa Formalis of Evolution
Causa Exemplaris of Evolution
Intelligent Design?
The Path of Evolution

10. Aquinas and Neuroscience

The Mental Is Not the Neural
What Then Is the Mental If Not the Neural?
Can the Soul Exist Without the Body?

11. Aquinas and Social Sciences

Sociology
Economics
Political Sciences

12. Conclusion
 Foreword

THE ETYMOLOGICAL ROOT of “school” is schole—Greek for leisure.

Now, in many respects the time of one’s formal schooling—especially
at the level of college or university—is not likely to be a place of
leisure. Even if one doesn’t have to work to pay for one’s schooling,
the experience is likely to be busy enough—tests, papers,
presentations, and academic activities of all sorts. What makes the
situation worse yet is that there is little unity to most experiences of
higher education. Unless one is at that rare sort of place where the
coursework has been carefully fitted together, the experience is likely
to seem busy in yet another sense—busy with many ideas from
diverse disciplines competing for one’s attention, and often one has
neither the time nor the venue for sorting it all out. It can prove
hard enough to keep one’s head above water.
The present volume by Gerard Verschuuren just might help.
Aquinas and Modern Science: A New Synthesis of Faith and Reason
is designed especially for helping to unify an undergraduate
education. It cannot claim to solve the problem of having to work to
pay for one’s education or the challenge presented by tests, papers,
presentations, and other academic activities. But what it could help
to provide is the leisure of mind that comes from taking a step back,
to see how things fit together. The discipline of philosophy, especially
in its classical thinkers, has a penchant for seeing the unity amid
diversity, for formulating the principles that are operative in the
practice of other disciplines, and for making explicit what often goes
unnoticed.
Yet it is not just any philosophy that Verschuuren uses for this
project. He takes up the thought of Thomas Aquinas, who undertook
the projection of the philosophical unification of the most fruitful
forms of knowing in his own day and who embodied in his own
thinking the trait that is most distinctive of a wise man: giving order
to things. The need for intellectual order remains acute in our day. If
anything, the task is more urgent, for the ramifications of academic
specialization have proceeded at a furious pace, and it is ever harder
to see how things fit together and how to formulate the principles
that are operative in the practices of the contemporary academy.
Using his detailed acquaintance with a considerable range of
today’s sciences, Verschuuren here provides a thoughtful account of
how the philosophical vision of Aquinas can help us to better see the
unity of reality and to appreciate the wide range of scientific
disciplines that study widely diverse aspects of reality. The book
includes well-informed discussions of such technical issues as the
indeterminacy problem in microphysics and the concept of
randomness in evolutionary biology. For each issue, Verschuuren
brings to bear the resources of the Thomistic philosophical method,
clearly explained. To reach such a book, the poor beleaguered
student will still have to find time away from working and from the
other forms of academic busyness. But what it promises is a leisure
worthy of a real education, the leisure of contemplation and of
appreciation of the unity deep within the diversity of things that
would otherwise seem too busy, too scattered, too diverse to be
understood.
JOSEPH W. KOTERSKI, SJ,
Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Fordham University, New York.
 Preface

WE LIVE IN a paradoxical time. Science enables us to know more

and more, but it seems to be about less and less. This leads to some
peculiar contradictions. Science allows us to reach into the outer
space, but we seem to understand less about our inner space.
Science enables us to create intricate machineries to direct our lives,
but we cannot control ourselves. Science shows us more and more
trees, but no longer do we seem to see the forest.
Is there a remedy for these contrasts? Yes, philosophy.
Unfortunately, Albert Einstein hit the nail right on the head when he
said, “The man of science is a poor philosopher.” Scientists tend to
stare at that square inch, nanometer, or micron that they are
working on and feel comfortable with, while forgetting that there is
so much more beyond their restricted scope. As the Nobel laureate
and biophysicist Francis Crick put it, “They work so hard that they
have hardly any time left for serious thinking.”
Why philosophy? Philosophy has the power to bring clarity
where confusion sets in. Philosophy has the capacity to create
coherence where fragmentation looms. Philosophy can open vistas
that no telescope or microscope can ever reach.
Why the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas? Because his philosophy
has survived more than seven centuries. Its impact has gone up and
down, but it always came out stronger than ever. It has been
classified under various names—Thomism, Scholasticism, neo-
Thomism—and has given rise to several schools, but its core has
always stayed the same. It has been a beacon of safety in times of
uncertainty, confusion, and tribulation. This should not create the
impression, though, that vigorous debate does not exist among
Thomists, but in this book I want to stay away from those
discussions.
What made Aquinas’s philosophy so successful? Probably the
best answer is its timelessness. He took the best from another
timeless philosopher, Aristotle. He did this so well that the world
would soon take on his ideas, concepts, and distinctions—albeit with
some, but not much, reluctance. Although he did not consider
himself a purebred philosopher, but rather a theologian, much of his
work bears upon philosophical topics, and in this sense it may be
characterized as philosophical. His philosophy gained much ground
in the Catholic Church in particular. In 1567, Aquinas was proclaimed
a Doctor of the Church. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII decreed that all
Catholic seminaries and universities must teach Thomistic
philosophy. In 1998, John Paul II issued an encyclical called Fides et
Ratio that reaffirmed the importance of Aquinas and his teachings.
But the Church’s preference for his philosophy is not exclusive but
rather exemplary, making his philosophy serve as a guiding model.
Also, this Catholic stance does not take away from the enormous
influence Aquinas has had on scholars outside the Catholic Church,
notably among Calvinists.
What could Aquinas ever contribute to our time, some seven
and a half centuries later? One of the main reasons is that there are
many similarities between his time and our time, between his world
and our world. His thirteenth-century world was as turbulent as ours
is. His world was confronted with an influx of new ideas coming from
the Muslim world; our world is constantly being inundated with new
ideas, coming particularly from scientists and atheists. His world saw
the sudden rise of universities; our world sees an explosion of
sciences and their sub-disciplines. His time was marked by dubious
philosophies; our time has been infiltrated by skepticism, secularism,
and relativism. His era was a time of tremendous change; ours is
also in permanent instability. His world had lost faith in reason; ours
has too. Aquinas understood both the fascination of his
contemporaries with new discoveries and new ideas and the very
mixed feelings that come with all of that. So he most likely
understands our time too.
 It is no wonder, then, that his philosophy has been lauded by
modern scientists and philosophers alike: scientists such as Albert
Einstein, David Bohm, Werner Heisenberg, and Walter Freeman, and
philosophers such as Elizabeth Anscombe (a student of Ludwig
Wittgenstein and a prominent figure in analytical Thomism), John
Searle, and Alasdair MacIntyre—to name just a few.
When I was teaching philosophy of biology at Boston College,
the chairman of my department at the time, Joseph Flanagan, S.J.,
instilled in me that biology can only fare well with the right
philosophy. I am sure he would have said something similar about
any other science. That is why philosophy—and especially the sound,
perennial philosophy of Thomas Aquinas—can be such a great asset
to modern science. Aquinas addresses questions most secular
institutions aren’t even asking, much less answering.
For all these reasons, I would like to invite you on a tour
through the richness of Aquinas’s philosophy in an encounter with
the sciences as we know them today. Let Aquinas be your teacher;
let him give you a clearer and more coherent view of what modern
science tells us. Aquinas’s principles continue to serve as an anchor
of intelligibility in a sea of confusing claims.
This book is meant to be a readable and wide-ranging
introduction to the thought of Aquinas. I want it to be an
introductory book for aspiring as well as accomplished scientists who
are new to philosophy. It would even qualify as a textbook. Thus, I
decided not to use citations or notes with references to my sources.
For the same reason, the book is not exhaustive, let alone complete.
Because its purpose is to open the mind of the reader to further
study of Aquinas, I added some rather substantial bibliographies at
the end of each chapter. They provide what the book leaves out. The
selection is obviously limited and inevitably also one-sided.
I would like to extend a special thank-you to William E. Carroll,
who expressed certain insights better than I ever could on my own.
I am greatly indebted to his writings. I also wish to express my
gratitude to those who inspired me during the writing of this book.
In particular, I want to mention the physicist Stephen M. Barr, the
philosopher Edward Feser, the Thomist John Knasas, the physicist
Anthony Rizzi, and the biologist Francisco Ayala—to name just a few.
Some of the sentences/phrases in this book are taken verbatim from
suggestions or comments made by these individuals, but obviously,
they are not responsible for the final outcome; if I erred, it is entirely
my doing. They and many others make me realize that originality
consists only in the ability to forget about your sources. If I was able
to see a bit further at times, it was, in the words of Isaac Newton,
“by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
 1
Aquinas and His Time
IT IS NO exaggeration to say that Thomas Aquinas was the greatest
philosopher of the Christian Middle Ages, and perhaps even beyond.
He put Aristotle’s teachings in a Christian framework—he baptized
Aristotle, so to speak—and changed Aristotelianism into what later
became known as Thomism. Aristotle’s writings were focused on the
nature of knowledge, the natural sciences, metaphysics, the soul,
and ethics, and they were packed with seemingly valid and
convincing information and insights. Overall, it was a complete vision
of the world developed without and before Christ—based on pure
reason.
Aquinas’s move of embracing Aristotle was very controversial at
the time. At first glance, Platonism seemed more proper for a
Christian approach, but Aquinas deemed it too otherworldly. History
proved him right. Medieval theologians liked to say that the wine of
Christian faith was at risk of being turned into the water of Plato,
rather than the water of Plato into the wine of faith. Something
similar could be said when it comes to science. Platonism would not
have fit well in a worldview that would be increasingly influenced by
scientific developments. But why Aristotle?
At the beginning of the thirteenth century, a wave of great
historical change was coming over Western Europe as the works of
the ancient Greek natural philosophers and mathematicians became
available in the Latin language for the first time. This development
caused great excitement among the Latin-speaking scholars in the
then-new universities of Europe. They avidly pursued research in
many of the natural sciences and essentially founded the historical
tradition of experimental science that continues today. One of these
geniuses was Aquinas. He wrestled with how Christian religion would
be effected by the most advanced science of his day—the works of
Aristotle and his Muslim commentators. Following in the tradition of
Avicenna, Averroës, and Maimonides, Aquinas developed a
philosophical system that remains one of the enduring
accomplishments of Western culture.
Nearly two thousand years after Aristotle died, only a few of his
works on logic had survived in Western Europe. But Jewish and
Muslim scholars had preserved much of his writing. Starting in the
twelfth century, these scholars brought Arabic and Hebrew
translations of Greek texts into the West, and it was their
subsequent translation into Latin that introduced Christian scholars
to the works of Aristotle and others, making them available in the
new universities that were forming. Learning had shifted from
monasteries and cathedral schools to the newly established
universities. Along with these translations came extensive
commentaries on Aristotle. Since Aquinas—and most other scholars
at the time—knew very little or no Greek, Aquinas asked his friend
Willem van Moerbeke to translate Aristotle’s Greek into Latin.
Why was the rediscovery and adoption of Aristotle’s works so
controversial? The Aristotelian explanation of the world based on
natural law and reason initially seemed to challenge the teachings of
Christianity. At first, the Roman Catholic Church tried to avoid his
works. But some Church scholars, such as Albert the Great at the
University of Paris, thought it was possible to combine human reason
and Christian faith (see chapter 5). Soon Thomas Aquinas, his
student, would devote his entire life to this task. Aquinas had
ingenious insight regarding the potential that Aristotle’s pagan
philosophy had for Christianity and for an age of cultural and
scientific innovations.
In Aquinas’s day, the Christian world faced the greatest threat
that it had seen in centuries. The threat to Christianity in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries was primarily the rising tide of Islamic
religion and philosophy. The greatest philosophical thinkers of the
Islamic world had combined Islamic religion with Aristotelian
philosophy to produce a system that they called “integral
Aristotelianism.” The product of this thought became widespread
during this time, and it greatly affected Christians. The key idea of
this approach was called by its Islamic philosophers “double truth.”
The concept of double truth meant that a notion could be true in
theology or religion and, at the same time, false in philosophy or
science. A person was expected to go through life holding both
truths—which were, in fact, contradictory. Aquinas could not accept
such contradiction.
Aquinas addressed the problem by distinguishing between
nature—known by everyone through general revelation—and grace—
known by some through special revelation. He distinguished
between those things that could be learned through the study of
nature and those things that could be learned through the study of
what comes to us by grace. He made a distinction between the two,
but did not separate them—somewhere he said that grace perfects
but does not destroy nature. In other words, we have in the Bible
one source of information, about reality, and in nature another
source of information, about reality. The Bible may provide
information that is not obtainable from nature, and, vice versa,
nature may reveal data that we do not know from the Bible. But
those two sources of information, according to Aquinas, can never
be in conflict with each other—as long as we understand them
correctly. This distinction has also become known as distinguishing
between the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. Its origin can
be found in these words of Augustine: “It is the divine page that you
must listen to; it is the book of the universe that you must observe.”

Aquinas lived from 1225 to 1274. He was described by G. K.

Chesterton as “a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet,
very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable.” His fellow
Dominican friars referred to him as “the dumb ox,” to which his
teacher Albert the Great responded that “the dumb ox will bellow so
loud that his bellowing will fill the world.” Those words were
prophetic. Although a man of profound humility and prayerful
contemplation, Aquinas was also a pioneering genius whose writings
constitute the apotheosis of medieval thought and the embryonic
beginnings of a huge innovation.
Aquinas was born at Roccasecca, a hilltop castle from which the
great Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino is almost visible, midway
between Rome and Naples. At the age of five, he began his studies
at Monte Cassino. When the monastery became a battle site,
Thomas was transferred by his family to the University of Naples. It
was here that he came into contact with the “new” Aristotle and with
the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, a recently founded
mendicant order. He became a Dominican despite the protests of his
family and eventually went north to study, perhaps first briefly at
Paris, then at Cologne with Albert the Great. It was Albert’s interest
in Aristotle that would strengthen Thomas’s own fascination with
Aristotelian thought.
Having returned to Paris, he completed his studies, and for three
years he occupied one of the Dominican chairs in the Faculty of
Theology. The next ten years were spent in various places in Italy, at
several Dominican houses and eventually in Rome. From there he
was called back to Paris to confront the controversy known as Latin
Averroism and as Integral or Heterodox Aristotelianism. After this
second three-year period, he was assigned to Naples. In 1274, on
his way to the Council of Lyon, he fell ill and died on March 7 in the
Cistercian abbey at Fossanova, some twelve miles from Roccasecca.
In the meantime, Aquinas had produced an enormous collection
of writings, all in Latin. The title of Aquinas’s most important work is
given as both Summa Theologiae and Summa Theologica. This
difference is probably in accordance with the spelling in the medieval
manuscripts of this work. Most present-day Aquinas scholars talk
about the Summa Theologiae. The other title is considered to be old-
fashioned, but it is not clear why. It does not seem that Aquinas
himself gave the title to the work. In any event, this book is probably
one of the most cited works in the history of Western thought. The
title suggests that it is about theology, not philosophy, but that might
be misleading. Although Aquinas develops all of his philosophy in
relation to God, his approach is mainly philosophical. In this book,
we will focus on Aquinas as a philosopher, which may distort his
fundamental theological reason for doing philosophy, but so be it.
In his books, Aquinas often uses a particular structure, rather
common at the time. He starts with a specific question (quaestio),
usually divided into separate articles. Each article contains
arguments for and against a certain position. In the response
(responsio), Aquinas explains his own position. Counterarguments
are then given and, in turn, argued against. With this format,
Aquinas models a core pedagogical technique used at the
universities of his time—so-called “questions debated” (quaestiones
disputatae). For this technique, students would take up sides of an
issue, articulated as a question, and offer arguments for each side.
The teacher would then evaluate the arguments and adjudicate. The
fact that Aquinas structures many of his texts around this technique
—especially his magnum opus, the Summa Theologiae—indicates
that he wants students reading his texts to acquire not only the
content of the view he himself supports but also the proper method
for thinking an issue through and then arriving at a conclusion. A
drawback when reading Aquinas is that we must consider whether
certain statements are from him or from adversaries. This may have
caused some confusion over the years as to what Aquinas really
says.
As a philosopher, Thomas is emphatically Aristotelian. His
interest in and perceptive understanding of Aristotle are present
from his earliest years; they did not first appear toward the end of
his life when he wrote some textual commentaries on Aristotle.
When referring to Aristotle as “the Philosopher,” Aquinas was not
merely speaking metaphorically. He adopted Aristotle’s analysis of
physical objects; his view of place, time, and motion; his proof of the
prime mover; and his cosmology (see chapter 3). He used Aristotle’s
account of sense perception and intellectual knowledge, but then
made his own version (see chapter 4). His moral philosophy is
largely based on what he learned from Aristotle (see chapter 11),
and in his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, he provides a
cogent and coherent account of what is going on in those difficult
pages.

Aquinas fitted Aristotle to the procrustean bed of Christian

doctrine—but not without controversy. Aquinas’s teaching came
under attack, largely by Franciscans, immediately after his death.
Dominicans responded. This had the effect of making Dominicans
Thomists and Franciscans non-Thomists—Bonaventurians, Scotists,
Ockhamists. The Jesuits were founded after the Reformation, and
they tended to be Thomists, though often with a Suarezian twist.
But the impact of Aquinas would hold out in the long run. When in
1879 Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Aeterni Patris—which called
for a revival of Scholastic and Thomistic thought, at a time when its
influence had begun to wane—the pontiff was not directing his
readers to one school as opposed to others. Rather, Aquinas was put
forward as the paladin of philosophy in its true sense, as one who
both transcends and opposes the vagaries of modern thought since
Descartes.
The response to Pope Leo’s call was global and sustained. New
journals and learned societies were founded, curricula were
reshaped to benefit from the thought of Aquinas—and this not only
in seminaries and pontifical universities, but in colleges and
universities throughout the world. More recent giants such as
Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson in France and Ralph McInerny at
Notre Dame University may be seen as symbolizing the best of this
Thomistic revival. Pope Pius X pointed out in 1907 that the defense
of truth against false ideas is to be made through the use of
Scholastic philosophy, rooted in Thomism. But when the Second
Vatican Council came to a close, it was widely held that the council
had dethroned Aquinas in favor of a smorgasbord of contemporary
philosophical systems. But Pope Paul VI, who was the pontiff during
most of the sessions of Vatican II, was very much influenced by the
Thomist Jacques Maritain. Then in 1998, Pope John Paul II issued an
encyclical entitled Fides et Ratio. In its reaffirmation of the
importance of Thomas Aquinas, it may be regarded as the charter
for the Thomism of the third millennium.
Because of all this, Aquinas holds a special place of honor in
Roman Catholicism, and his influence has continued into the
present. It is no surprise that among the writers mentioned in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Aquinas is quoted more than any
other writer with the exception of Augustine—some sixty-one times.
To be sure, one can be an orthodox Catholic or Christian without
following Aquinas’s philosophy—indeed, his influence is minimal in
Eastern Rite Catholic Churches and Orthodox Churches. And in the
Western Church, not everyone follows Aquinas. Franciscans, for
instance, generally prefer Bonaventure. Moreover, even those who
consider themselves Thomists have various disagreements with one
another and even with Aquinas himself.
Still, Aquinas’s influence in the Western Church is hard to
overestimate. Catholics refer to him as the Angelic Doctor. In many
ways, Aquinas is the high-water mark of what has come to be called
Scholasticism, or also classical theism. In fact, if you survey the
writings on the doctrine of God, even those by Protestant Scholastic
theologians after the Reformation, you will find that many depend
almost entirely on the method Aquinas had laid out more than three
centuries earlier. Today, many traditional Catholics, tired of the
deviant innovations that occurred in the wake of—but not necessarily
as a result of—Vatican II, look to Aquinas to provide a way forward.
It is a safe, coherent system that trumps the incoherent amalgam of
philosophies that we know nowadays.
However, a number of obstacles must be overcome if we are to
appreciate Aquinas today. In Protestant cultures, he remains
associated with an era that many believe to have been mired in
barbarism and superstition—despite the magnificence of the
medieval legacy, from the great cathedrals of Europe to the rise of
the universities. Moreover, the influence of modern “scientific”
atheism has led to the widespread belief that one must choose
between faith and reason, and that faith is fundamentally irrational
and opposed to science. This is an idea that Aquinas dedicated his
life to resisting (see chapter 2).
If we can set aside our prejudices and approach Aquinas afresh,
we may be surprised at how relevant his philosophy still is. The fact
remains that he was a man who changed the world. So what can
this person who lived more than seven centuries ago teach us that
we have forgotten? Let us find out.

To open the mind for further study:

Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian. Holy Teaching: Introducing

the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. Grand Rapids, MI:
Brazos Press, 2005.
Chesterton, G.K. Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Dumb Ox. Dover
Publications, 2009.
Copleston, Frederick. Aquinas: An Introduction to the Life and
Work of the Great Medieval Thinker. Penguin Books, 1991.
McInerny, Ralph. Aquinas. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2004.
 2
Aquinas and Metaphysics
“METAPHYSICS” has become a highly ambiguous term. It has many,
and very diverse, meanings. Some associate it with New Age
philosophy. Some, at the other end of the spectrum, equate it with
philosophy of science. And there are many other versions in
between. Aquinas himself would say that metaphysics is the study of
“being as being”—the relationship between the essence of
something (“ what it is”) and its existence (“ that it is”). Whereas the
modern sciences study things as changing, Aquinas would say that
metaphysics studies things as being.
These differences in opinion regarding the object of metaphysics
have a long history. Unfortunately, the general outcome of this
debate is that the word “metaphysics” has become a “dirty” word in
the minds of many. It is believed to relate to what cannot be seen or
felt or heard or in any way sensed. So this raises the question, What
could metaphysics study that is not studied by physics, mathematics,
or logic? The answer to this question is usually “nothing.” Nowadays,
most scientists, and even some philosophers, tend to stigmatize all
those who hold an opinion different from theirs as “metaphysicians.”
It has not always been that way, and we need to find out why it
need not be.

The Need for Metaphysics

It is very common to ask ourselves questions like these: Scientists
produce knowledge, but what is knowledge? Scientists construct
laws, but what are laws? Scientists study things—atoms, molecules,
cells, genes, neurons, money—but what are these things? When
scientists draw conclusions, they assume certain presuppositions
without asking any further questions. Philosophers and
metaphysicians, on the other hand, begin to question those
assumptions. At those very moments when scientists are satisfied,
philosophers and metaphysicians would begin to inquire further and
search more thoroughly.
It could easily be claimed that there is no physics without
metaphysics, or more generally, that there is no science without
metascience. The sciences cannot be studied by the sciences
themselves. In order to study the sciences, we need to stand back
and adopt a bird’s-eye view, so to speak—a so-called metalevel—
which is in essence the level of metaphysics. Its goal is to observe
the observer, to investigate the investigations, and to study the
studies. This endeavor is a science in itself—a science of science, if
you wish. Aquinas would most likely call this metaphysics.
The physicist Richard Feynman is often quoted as saying that
philosophy—more specifically the philosophy of science—“is about as
useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” His statement might be
taken as a final verdict on the usefulness of what we are trying to do
in this book. But Feynman’s comparison falls short and should not be
taken too seriously, considering that the worthlessness of
ornithology for birds cannot be blamed on the inadequacy of
ornithology but rather on the incapacity of birds to grasp ornithology.
I don’t think that is something Feynman intended to say about the
ability of scientists to learn from philosophy, even metaphysics.
Arguably, science can learn something from philosophy, for the
simple reason that there is no such thing as a strictly scientific level
of disagreement, as distinct from a philosophical one. They are
intricately intertwined. Perhaps Albert Einstein was right after all
when he stated, “It has often been said, and certainly not without
justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.”
Yet, some scientists may even consider the above kind of
reasoning a despicable form of metaphysics. Do they have a point?
No matter what their opinion about metaphysics is, the fact is that
no one can live without metaphysics. Those who reject metaphysics
are in fact committing their own version of metaphysics. Rejecting
metaphysics can only be done on metaphysical grounds, for any
rejection of metaphysics is based on a metaphysical viewpoint
regarding what the world “really” is like. Metaphysics may be a “dirty
word” to some, but all of us are surrounded and affected by it.
Opposition to all philosophy is itself an implicit philosophy. Those
who reject philosophy and metaphysics are actually using some form
of them.
What is the relationship, then, between science and
metaphysics? Is physics the basis of our metaphysics, or is our
metaphysics the basis of physics? Even a philosopher such as
Bertrand Russell saw very clearly that physics cannot be the basis of
metaphysics when he wrote, “It is not always realized how
exceedingly abstract is the information that theoretical physics has
to give. It lays down certain fundamental equations which enable it
to deal with the logical structure of events, while leaving it
completely unknown what is the intrinsic character of the events
that have the structure. . . . All that physics gives us is certain
equations giving abstract properties of their changes. But as to what
it is that changes, and what it changes from and to—as to this,
physics is silent.”
Now if physics gives us only the mathematical structure of
material reality, then not only does it not tell us everything there is
to know about material reality, but it implies that there must be
more to material reality than what physics tells us. First of all, this is
a truth one cannot deny without somewhat affirming it, for denials
don’t have material qualifications such as being heavy or large, but
instead immaterial qualifications of being true or false. Second,
physics is about the material world, but in addition it needs
immaterial entities such as logic and mathematics. Third, there can
be no such thing as structure by itself; there must be something
which has the structure. So, physics—and any other kind of science
—is by its very nature incomplete. It requires interpretation within a
larger metaphysical framework, and absolutely every appeal to
“what physics tells us” presupposes such a metaphysical framework,
implicitly if not explicitly. In other words, science does not determine
whether metaphysics is right, but instead metaphysics ultimately
determines what we can know and do know in science.

Nevertheless, there is a strong, persistent conviction among

scientists that there is nothing more to material reality than what
physics tells us. They believe that there is no worldview and no
metaphysics in what they claim—at best, their metaphysics can be
“reduced” to physics. They proclaim themselves “free” of any
worldview, any viewpoints, any philosophy, any values. The technical
term for this is scientism.
Scientism certainly was not a problem in Aquinas’s time—it just
did not exist yet. It is a rather recent invention—the indirect
outcome of new philosophical developments since Francis Bacon,
David Hume, and Immanuel Kant (see chapter 4). Supporters of
scientism claim that science provides the only valid way of finding
truth. They pretend that all our questions have a scientific answer
phrased in terms of particles, quantities, and equations. Their claim
is that there is no point of view other than the “scientific” point of
view. They believe there is no corner of the universe, no dimension
of reality, no feature of human existence beyond the reach of
science. In other words, they have a dogmatic, unshakable belief in
the omnicompetence of science. They portray scientists as a bunch
of white-coated people—emotion-free and assumption-free—who
battle collectively to wrest secrets from the stubborn universe.
A first reason for questioning the viewpoint of scientism is a very
simple objection: those who defend scientism seem to be unaware
of the fact that scientism itself does not follow its own rule—it is a
nonscientific claim. How could science ever prove, all by itself, that
science is the only way of finding truth? There is no experiment that
could do the trick. Science cannot pull itself up by its bootstraps—
any more than an electric generator can run on its own power. So
the truth of the statement “no statements are true unless they can
be proved scientifically” cannot itself be proved scientifically. It is not
a scientific discovery but at best a philosophical or metaphysical
stance or dogma. There is metaphysics again! There should be no
space for dogmas in science, although they often do occur in the
scientific community. This makes scientism a totalitarian ideology, for
it allows no room for anything but itself.
A second reason for rejecting scientism is that a successful
method like the one science provides does not automatically
disqualify all other methods. The philosopher Edward Feser
expresses this quite clearly: “But this no more shows that the
questions that fall through science’s methodological net are not
worthy of attention than the fact that you’ve only taken courses you
knew you would excel in shows that the other classes aren’t worth
taking.” Scientism poses a claim that can only be made from outside
the scientific realm, thus grossly overstepping the boundaries of
science. If it is true, it becomes false. It steps outside science to
claim that there is nothing outside science and that there is no other
point of view—which does not seem to be a very scientific move.
Paul Feyerabend, the late philosopher of science at the University of
California, Berkeley, came to the opposite conclusion when he said
that “science should be taught as one view among many and not as
the one and only road to truth and reality.” The late British analytical
philosopher Gilbert Ryle phrased this idea in his own terminology:
“The nuclear physicist, the theologian, the historian, the lyric poet
and the man in the street produce very different, yet compatible and
even complementary pictures of one and the same ‘world.’”
A third reason for questioning scientism is the following.
Scientific knowledge does not even qualify as a superior form of
knowledge; it may be more easily testable than other kinds, but it is
also very restricted and therefore requires additional forms of
knowledge. Mathematical knowledge, for instance, is the most
secure form of knowledge, but it is basically about nothing. Consider
this analogy: a metal detector is a perfect tool for locating metals,
but there is more to this world than metals. An instrument can
detect only what it is designed to detect. That is exactly where
scientism goes wrong: instead of letting reality determine which
techniques are appropriate for which parts of reality, scientism lets
its favorite technique dictate what is considered “real” in life—and it
is thus in denial of the fact that science has purchased success at
the cost of limiting its ambition. To best characterize this attitude, we
might borrow an image from the late psychologist Abraham Maslow:
If you have only a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail.
So we should be careful not to idolize our scientific hammer, because
not everything is a nail. Even if we were to agree that the scientific
method gives us better testable results than other sources of
knowledge, this would not entitle us to claim that only the scientific
method gives us genuine knowledge of the world around us.
A fourth argument is that science is about material things but
requires immaterial things such as logic and mathematics. If logic is
just a movement in the brain of a bewildered ape, good logic should
be as misleading as bad logic. Logic and mathematics are not
physical and therefore not testable by naturalistic science—and yet
they cannot be denied by science. In fact, science relies on logic and
mathematics to interpret the data that scientific observation and
experimentation provides. Logic and reason are perfect examples of
the immaterial phenomena that we all know exist but that
naturalistic science cannot measure. These immaterial things are real
and demonstrable, yet they are outside of scientific observation.
A fifth argument against scientism is that no science, not even
physics, is able to claim a superior form of knowledge. Some
scientists may argue, for example, that physics always has the last
word in observation, for the observers themselves are physical. But
why not say then that psychology always has the last word, because
these observers are interesting psychological objects as well. Neither
statement makes sense; observers are neither physical nor
psychological, but they can indeed be studied from a physical,
biological, psychological, or statistical viewpoint, which is an entirely
different matter. The findings of science are always fragmentary.
Limiting oneself to a particular viewpoint is in itself at best a
metaphysical decision. However, to quote Shakespeare, “There is
more between Heaven and Earth than dreamt of in your philosophy.”
 A sixth argument against scientism is that the very pioneers of
science in England were very much aware of the fact that there is
more to life than science. When the Royal Society of London was
founded in 1660, its members explicitly demarcated their area of
investigation and fully understood that they were going to leave
many other domains untouched. In its charter, King Charles II
assigned to the fellows of the Royal Society “the privilege of enjoying
intelligence and knowledge,” but with the following important
stipulation “provided in matters of things philosophical,
mathematical, and mechanical.” That’s how the domains of
knowledge were separated; it was this “partition” that led to a
division of labor between the sciences and other fields of human
interest. By accepting this separation, science bought its own
territory, but certainly at the expense of all-inclusiveness; the rest of
the “estate” was reserved for others to manage. On the one hand,
this separation gave to scientists all that could “methodically” be
solved by dissecting, counting, and measuring. On the other hand,
these scientists agreed to keep their hands off of all other domains—
education, legislation, justice, ethics, philosophy, religion, etc.
If the aforementioned arguments are valid, it is hard to believe,
let alone defend, that physics is the basis of metaphysics. It seems
more warranted to take the reversed position, namely, that
metaphysics is at the basis of physics, and of all the other sciences.
Only metaphysics can help us understand where science stands by
taking a metalevel view. Albert Einstein was right when he said, “The
more I study physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.” Science
cannot operate without metaphysics—that is, without certain
convictions or principles regarding what nature is like. Scientists
assume, for instance, that this universe is intelligible for us, and that
it is a universe of “law and order.” In addition, they all hold
metaphysical positions that determine what the basic elements in
this universe are supposed to be. Because of all this, even science is
a metaphysics-based enterprise. It is only in trusting that nature is
law-abiding and intelligible that scientists have reason to trust their
own scientific reasoning.
 Faith and Reason
Those who think there isn’t any space left for philosophy outside the
domain of science most likely also believe that science does not
leave any room for religion. Fortunately, metaphysics is able to
clarify not only the relationship between science and philosophy, but
also the relationship between science and religion. What does
Aquinas have to say about this?
Much of what is currently discussed under the science-and-
religion heading Aquinas would have seen as part of a larger
problem—that of the relationship between faith and reason. As we
saw earlier, in Aquinas’s time, there were advocates of the so-called
“double truth theory,” which held that the “truths” of philosophy and
science were in one category and the “truths” of faith and religion in
another. With this interpretation, one can hold mutually exclusive
positions as long as one believes that the opposing views were in
separate departments of the mind. Aquinas considered this view
untenable. He saw with utter clarity that since all truth comes from
God, there can never be, ultimately, any conflict between the
outcome of reason and the beliefs of faith, or between the data of
the sciences and the facts of revelation, or between philosophical
truths and theological truths.
Aquinas’s conception is quite radical. What we know through
reason can never be in conflict with what we know through faith,
and what we know through faith can never be in violation of what
we know through reasoning. Nevertheless, some people think that
when we begin to use reason, we have no choice but to abandon
faith; conversely, some think that if we have faith, we must leave
reason behind. Aquinas argues the opposite. We should be faithful in
our reasoning and reasonable in our faith—even when, or specifically
when, it comes to God. We cannot live by faith alone or by reason
alone, but only by a harmonious combination of faith and reason.
Sometimes we need understanding before we can believe; at other
times we need faith before we can understand. Aquinas
demonstrated that a natural harmony exists between faith and
reason. Hence, what seems to be reason that is incompatible with
faith is not reason, and what seems to be faith is not faith insofar as
it is opposed to true rationality. Thus, Aquinas created a new
synthesis, which would shape culture throughout the following
centuries. It could be called the “Grand And”—a match made in
heaven.
Aquinas sees reason and faith as two ways of knowing.
“Reason” covers what we can know by experience and logic alone.
From reason, he would say, we can know that there is a God; this
truth about God is accessible to anyone by experience and logic
alone, apart from any special revelation from God (see chapter 3).
“Faith,” on the other hand, covers what we can know thanks to God’s
special revelation to us—which comes through the Bible and Judeo-
Christian tradition. By faith, we can know, for instance, that God
came into the world through Jesus Christ and that God is triune
(Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). These truths about God cannot be
known by reason alone. Yet, faith builds on reason and must be
compatible with reason. Since faith and reason are two different
ways of arriving at truth—and since all truths are harmonious with
one another—faith is consistent with reason. If we understand faith
and reason correctly, according to Aquinas, there will be no conflict
between what faith tells us and what reason tells us.
Aquinas is very definite in defending the idea that faith cannot
be against reason. When something is against reason, God cannot
create it. Aquinas is so adamant on this issue because God is reason,
so He cannot act against His own nature by doing what is
contradictory. God is absolutely free, but His freedom is not arbitrary,
so He cannot go against what is true and right. We know this,
because our own power of reason is rooted in creation and thus
participates in God’s power of reason. As a consequence, God’s
omnipotence does not mean that God is able to do what is logically
contradictory. Aquinas gives many examples: God cannot create
square circles; God cannot make someone blind and not blind at the
same time; God cannot declare true what is false; God cannot undo
something that happened in the past; and the list goes on and on.
To use a silly example: God does not even have the power to make a
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
because my landlord’s called on me and he’s perfectly awful when he
starts.”
“What a beast!” rather hazy, nevertheless, as to what it was the
landlord started. Possibly the poor kid was behind-hand with the
rent, and he was trying to cart away her furniture. “I say, is Deb
here?”
“No, but I daresay if she told you to meet her here, she’ll turn up
presently, so you might as well wait. I’ve often wondered what you
were like ...” with a serious intimate scrutiny from under drawn
brows, which she always found “went” well with under seventeen
and over sixty. “Come into the sitting-room. You’ll excuse these
clothes, but I was just dressing for to-night when he came”—with a
nod towards the room—“and you won’t believe me, but I’ve had to
be perfectly horrid to him ...to counteract the effect of my hair
down, you know. I suppose he has the kind of wife who keeps hers
always in iron curlers—shouldn’t you think he has? So, poor man,
one would expect a little agitation. But there are limits, aren’t there?
I mean from one’s landlord. So you really are a godsend ...a sort of
guardian angel. Isn’t it curious, but I’ve always, even when I was a
kiddie, wanted to see my Guardian Angel in the flesh—at least in his
clothes—you know what I mean? Because I was always quite sure
he was a man—it didn’t seem right that he shouldn’t be, somehow.”
“Bet you could have made a man of him, anyway,” said Richard in
blind admiration. And he was right; Zoe could be relied on to rouse
the sex element from any substance in her vicinity, even a guardian
angel.
Delighted with his tribute, and still gabbling, she preceded him
into the sitting-room, and prettily introduced him to the landlord, a
very low man, but genial, and obviously with no evil intentions on
the furniture. The difficult point at issue seemed to be that he
desired to pay for the new carpet; and Zoe, wriggling coyly on the
edge of temptation, would yet not quite yield to it. “Though if
spitting on a carpet makes it yours, I’m sure I’ve no more claims at
all, Mr Wright!” with a look of coquetry that mellowed her
unexpectedly frank rebuke.
Richard was enjoying it—enjoying her immensely. There was no
real cause for alarm about Deb; only the family were fussing. And he
was flattered by Zoe’s skill in making him feel essential to her being,
while dimly recognizing that the flattery was somewhat impaired by
its too even distribution between himself and the landlord. Zoe was
not in the least Richard’s ideal. But Zoe was—well, rather a rag! And
she bespoke applause by the zest and candour with which she
demanded it, retailed it, invented it ...her existence might present a
surface appearance of muddle, but perhaps more than other girls
she could hail herself as a success. Zoe knew how to unwind
unlimited quantities of what makes you happy, and how to be made
happy by a material of which unlimited quantities exist for the
unwinding.
“I’m going to be taken out this evening by a Cavalry giant who
clanks and jangles the whole way up the stairs, and calls me ‘You
dear little thing! fancy livin’ all alone with no one to look after you—
it’s a shame!’—and brings me presents. He’s about forty and thinks
I’m not quite seventeen; and when I perch winsomely on his knee
and turn his pockets inside-out to find what he’s got for me, he’s just
as pleased as a little child. Really he is! And then I spread out all my
presents on the table to make them look more, and dance round
them and skip and clap my hands with glee. Oh, he loves it when I
clap my hands with glee. You shall both see me do it if you wait long
enough. Isn’t it funny what things please some men? Sometimes I
say ‘What have you brought me?’ and he says ‘nothing at all’ to
tease me, and I pout—like this—look—look, Mr Marcus!—and he
can’t bear to see me so disappointed and pulls an enormous painted
chocolate-box from behind his back! That sort of treatment is
wonderfully rejuvenating, you wouldn’t believe it; tons better than
massage. There he is, and I’m not dressed yet!” She scuttled into
her room as a door banged down on the street level; then popped
her head in again to say: “You’ll keep him entertained, won’t you, till
I’m ready? He’s quite easy!”
 “Would he rather have me or Mr Wright to perch on his knee?”
laughed Richard.
“Ef it’s fur turnin’ aht ’is pawkits, it’ull be me!” the landlord
remarked with a facetious wink.
As the footsteps were heard, though without any of the
perceptible clank and jangle foretold, Zoe again appeared, with
comb tugging at her curls.
“I wonder if the sight of you two would upset him.... I’ve told him
that I had no friends in the world except him and one old lady who’s
kind to the lonely little girl”—she eyed the landlord dubiously—“Oh,
you could pretend to be the broker,” with a quick spurt of inspiration.
“Will you, Mr Wright? It might make him feel generous, mightn’t it?
And you”—even in the extremity of haste and peril she checked
herself from a tactless decision that maybe Richard was too young to
matter much—“You—behind the curtain. No—your boots will show.
Get into the cupboard—Quick!” She banged the door on him, and
banged her bedroom door, just as the front-door of the flat, left
open at Richard’s entrance, banged shakily behind the entering
newcomer.
“Like a bally old farce,” Richard reflected; he did not know that
people ever really hid in cupboards. Though in Zoe’s flat such
behaviour seemed not only free from eccentricity, but rhythmically
correct.
He knew the flat quite well.... Richard’s imagination was not the
choked-up affair of a year ago. This was the flat where comic
misunderstandings took place, and false identities, where an
incriminating glove was left in the corner, and where screens fell
down at the wrong moment; it was the flat for runaway wives; the
flat where the husband is made to look a fool. It was jolly, now,
actually to be in such a flat, actually to be the Man in the Cupboard;
Richard chuckled silently ... then grew impatient, till, after seemingly
endless waiting in muffled darkness the fourth wall against which he
pressed his weight gave way, and he stumbled forward into a room
full of people.... “Fancy, I forgot you for the moment,” laughed Zoe,
who had released him. “Why didn’t you bang or shout? Here’s
Antonia come to find Deb. I’m sure I don’t know why all London is
running here this evening to enquire after that sister of yours. Isn’t it
funny—she and Monsieur le Caporal met on the stairs, and he
thought she was Petite Sœur, didn’t you?—just like I took Mr Marcus
for Seul au Monde!”
A young man in uniform, with round red cheeks and a tassel
dangling from his cap, stood adoring Zoe with an embarrassed smile,
obviously not understanding a word of her harangue. There are two
types of Belgian soldier—the stolid peasant who is shy, and the
dapper townsman who is bold. Zoe unfortunately had hooked one of
the former species. Undaunted, she turned her welcome into French
with morsels of pidgin English inserted for the benefit of Mr Sam
Wright, that he might not feel left out of the conversation; Richard
over by the window, was explaining to Antonia about Deb.
It was Mr Wright who discovered that the Belgian had had nothing
to eat for fourteen hours. “’Old on, Missy—the young chap’s guts is
fair yawning for a bit o’ something solid. This is my treat—see—and
you go an’ cook a steak for ’im. Veev la Belgium!” and the Corporal,
understanding, stood at attention—and then bowed gratefully to Mr
Wright, to Antonia, and Richard, and Zoe, in turn, while the tassel
from his cap bobbed absurdly....
Zoe, interrupted in a rapid résumé of her own intimate history,
calculated to set the intruder at his ease, took up the threads again
while she ran in and out of the kitchen, laying the table and grilling
the steak.
“Isn’t it a good thing I’ve still got some wine in the house—this is
the last bottle, but I expect more to-morrow—it’s a present. Oh, not
from Captain Braithwaite—I wonder why he’s so late, by the way?—
but there’s an Italian wine-and-macaroni shop just round the corner,
and the owner is simply crazy about me ... an atrocious old man
with black teeth, but he does stock good wines, and so cheap.... His
wife caught him out ogling me over the counter one day, and now
she won’t leave the shop, so the old demon comes round here, and
brings me Chianti on the sly, hoping to melt me. There’s not the
slightest chance that I shall be melted, but you don’t think it’s wrong
of me to accept the wine, do you? I mean he takes the risk of losing
all and gaining nothing, doesn’t he?... Of course I daren’t let him
into the flat, besides, I wouldn’t do such a thing! No, I wouldn’t,
because I don’t honestly think it’s right, if his wife feels like that
about me, do you, Mr Wright? So I half open the door and tell him
to leave the bottles outside and go away quietly for both our sakes!
He supposes I’ve got a jealous husband—the Italian bandit kind,
with ribbons and daggers all the way up their legs.... And just fancy,
once he had the cheek to come round without any wine at all, and
said—well, I didn’t know men were like that, did you, Antonia? But I
sent him home to fetch some pretty quick. Wouldn’t you have?”
appealing to the Caporal, who murmured “Mais oui, certainement!”
and sat down to his steak as to a serious business. He shovelled up
the food strangely, and thought how beautiful was Zoe, in her white
frilly dressing-jacket, clouded with yellow curls....
“Why not go round to La llorraine?—Deb might be there,” Antonia
suggested. And reluctantly Richard stood up. Deb was a nuisance—
of course she was all right. He disliked La llorraine and Manon; but
Zoe and her doors and her landlord and her Belgian and her spaniel
and her lovers and her stories, had a unique flavour of attraction.
Any further developments, comic or ridiculous, might occur at any
moment, in this atmosphere.... Sure enough, a door banged four
flights of stairs away ... scuffle of many feet approaching—and:
“Why, it’s Captain Braithwaite,” cried Zoe, in a clear, childish treble
of astonishment. “And did you find little Becky and Mark and Joey on
the stairs? What’s the matter, Becky? broken your scooter? ... never
mind, let me give you a ginger-snap—two ginger-snaps are better
than one scooter, aren’t they? What a pretty drawing of a
thermometer, Joey? Is it for me? Now that is sweet of you.”
“Mother thayth I’m to athk you to ’ave a look at me thore throat,
Mith!” The children of the Second Jewish Tailor, whom the good-
natured Cavalry officer had gathered and brought in from the
landing, were grouping themselves round Zoe’s Barrie-like
representation of the lonely little mother to whom all the children
bring their troubles, as spontaneously and efficiently as though they
had been rehearsed for weeks. Zoe really had been very good to
them in different ways at different times, and their present adhesion
round her knees, in full view of a beaming Captain Braithwaite, was
her reward.
Antonia, in an aside to Richard, anxiously questioned her own
grotesque fancy that yet another set of doors had just banged, and
yet more footsteps were scuffling and clattering up the stairs: “This
flat is haunted by a delusion of banging doors—listen!”
“Listen!” echoed Zoe, smashed into sudden silence—“It’s Pinto!”
she whispered, all her gay resourcefulness paralysed.
“She hears it too,” Antonia sighed with relief; “I don’t mind so
much if we’re all raving together!” And indeed it was obviously
incredible that the corpulent whiskered person who was projected
squealing into the sitting-room, by an image of bony yellow ferocity,
could be otherwise than chimera. The wine-bottles which the
pursued swung in impotent arabesques from either hand, erased the
last touch of credibility.
“Face—like—an—orang-outang—temper—Patagonian savage ...”
were the only words distinguishable from the yapping, snapping
medley of limbs and bottles and vituperation.
There was a crash of splintered glass, and ruddy liquid poured into
pools on the carpet, and Zoe cried out to Captain Braithwaite, who
flung his big form on top of the belligerents and wrenched them
apart. The ensuing sequence of events was rather too nimble for
disentanglement. The Italian wine-and-macaroni merchant from
round the corner collapsed panting—then rallied his faculties and
bolted for the door. Zoe darted in his wake, and returned
triumphant, a few seconds afterwards, carrying the second and
undamaged flask of Chianti. Meanwhile Pinto had vented his spleen
upon the Cavalry officer, the landlord, the round-eyed Belgian, and
Richard, on whom each in turn he fastened his saga of “face like an
orang-outang—tempaire of a P-P-Patagonian savage!”... The return
of Zoe he greeted by a violent and uncomprehensible outbreak of
what was certainly bad language and probably Portuguese; informed
her that he knew all about it, and was done with her for ever ...
caught up a chair and wrenched it into fragments ... glared viciously
at the innocent amazement of Monsieur le Caporal; jabbed an
accusing finger at him—“You—yes, it is you—you may have her—she
is worth nothing, I tell you—stop eating and take her—take her—
take her!” lifting the remains of the steak from the plate and flinging
it across to the window, where it narrowly missed Antonia—“Here—
just you stop that!” Richard ejaculated, doubling his fists truculently.
“Leave ’im alone, Sonny—’e dunno wot ’e’s doing!”
The finger travelled instantly round to the pacifist—“Whose is this
house, you——?”
“Mine!” the landlord retorted, putting up his boots on the sofa as a
sign of ownership. “Nah shut up, do—ladies present!”
“It is then you with the face and the temper?”
“Face and temper yourself!” from Mr Sam Wright, which retort,
though merely made in the way of casual repartee, was, had the
assembled company only known it, the full explanation of the scene
so astounding them.
But Pinto’s suspicions made a last leap at Captain Raymond
Braithwaite. “Take her”—flourishing with both arms in Zoe’s
direction. “She is ungrateful, unloyal. True affection is not to be
found in her nature. She lies and thieves; she is untidy in her
clothing; she has betrayed me and will betray you. Take her—
perhaps your temper like a Patagonian savage will keep her in order.
Take her and beat her if you please. Who am I to have a claim?...”
He recapitulated the entire list of Zoe’s crimes, linked to the benefits
his easy-going generosity had showered upon her; shed tears at the
recollection of his own innocent confiding trust and little tender
ways; surpassed himself in an ebullition of Portuguese and English
blended into one final expanding monstrous, wall-cracking, hair-
stiffening execration, anathema, and blight——
Antonia stepped forward, and laid her hand on his arm.
“You’re not behaving at all nicely, and we’re tired of you,” she said
gently but distinctly.
Pinto, checked in his onrush of epithet, rolled round at her a pair
of livid, yellow eyeballs; spluttered; made a few inarticulate sounds
in his throat—and departed.
No one could deny that his visit, though short, had been full of
lively colour.
“Ma foi!” said the Belgian poilu, still gaping stupidly after his steak.
Richard burst into a shout of laughter, and went on laughing
boyishly, irresistibly. It was infectious ... presently Sam Wright joined
in, and Captain Braithwaite, and Antonia, and even the Belgian. Zoe,
on the verge of tears, was the last to succumb.... “At least, we’ve
got some wine now,” she gurgled, divided between sobs and
hysterical mirth. “And we’d better drink it—it’s g-good wine and so
cheap! I’m glad I remembered just in time to nip it.” She darted
away for glasses—“But honestly, I haven’t the faintest idea what
Pinto was so cross and unkind about, have any of you?”
“He did seem a bit annoyed: what?” guffawed Captain Braithwaite.
“Here’s to his good recovery!” They all drank Pinto’s health in
excellent Chianti.... A bell tinkled from below.
“Oh dear! he must have jammed the downstairs front door in
going out, and now people can’t push it open. I do think he ought to
control himself a little bit better than that, don’t you? I mean, it’s so
horrid when one has visitors.” The bell tinkled again impatiently.
“Will one of you go down?”

IV
 Deb dawdled along the street, painfully carrying a suit-case. La
llorraine had insisted on keeping her to supper, but the Countess
was occupying the only vacant room in the house ... anyway, you
could always rely on a bed at Zoe’s whenever you turned up—time
enough to-morrow to think things over....
Somebody was already on the doorstep pealing at the bell: “The
door usually stands open, but it must have got jammed.... Do you
want tailor Moses, tailor Jacob, or tailor Isaac?”
“I don’t want a tailor at all, thanks. Not to-night, anyhow. I want
Zoe Dene-Cresswell? I wonder if she’s in.”
Again Gillian tugged at the bell. “You look as if you ought to be
Deb Marcus.”
“I am.”
“I’m Gillian Sherwood. Put down your suit-case and shake hands.
I’ll carry it up for you, if ever they admit us.”
Gillian at last! Deb was first conscious of triumph—followed by a
quick pang of guilt. She had not sought out this meeting; it was
purely accidental—but what would Antonia say?
Antonia opened the door to them.
PART III
 CHAPTER I
I

Deb was living with La llorraine. She indignantly refused to return

home on the understanding that she was to be partially forgiven for
an offence she had never committed; on the other hand, her
affection for Ferdie caused her a pang of acute misery when she saw
how the belief in her sins had stripped him of a certain chubby
contentment which even the war and its complications had hitherto
left unimpaired. For of course her swift dramatic rupture with her
family toppled to an anti-climax. Richard took home the tidings of
her whereabouts; and a day after her flight, Aunt Stella appeared at
Zoe’s for a parley. The tolerance of the period did not permit an
erring daughter to be blasted with a parent’s curse and left to
suicide—or worse—in the dark cold streets of London. The tolerance
of the period sanctioned some natural anxiety over the said
daughter’s material welfare, tentative negotiations, and a return
home to a great deal of nagging and an atmosphere of reproachful
discomfort. Perhaps Deb foresaw the final inevitable item; perhaps
also, her passionate self-persuasion that she could not bear
continual witnessing of Ferdie’s sighs and worried forehead, was the
outcome of a guilty suspicion that it was more by haphazard than by
virtue that she was able to mount her pedestal and stand aggrieved
upon it.
“It’s the fault of my very lax upbringing,” she argued with the
guilty suspicion.
“Yes, but——”
“It’s lucky that I have a certain fundamental standpoint of moral
decency,” with crushing pomposity.
“Yes, but——”
The yes-buts had it.
 “I can’t live at home with Aunt Stella hating me like this,” weakly.
And here she was right. Even Ferdie recognized that his sister and
his daughter were henceforth not likely to dwell together in a state
of affectionate harmony. Stella had been queer about Deb ever since
discovery that Deb was—initiated. What was to be done? And then
La llorraine appeared at Montagu House, an emissary from Deb.
“My dee-urr—leave it to me.”
La llorraine was magnificent, she was Miladi, she was Josephine
Beauhamais, and Madame de Maintenon and Louise de Querouaille,
Duchess of Portsmouth, and every other intriguante of foreign
history, entrusted with dispatches and a cardinal’s secret, a go-
between from one royal court to another. She wore filmy black, and
a huge black hat cast a mysterious shadow over her eyes; she wore
all her sables, and Parma violets; and fingered them meaningly with
her long thin white hands as though they were a symbol of a lost
cause. She flattered, cajoled and hinted, and laid down her cards
and picked them up again; and her speech was worldly and witty
and wise, and her smile was maternal, or suggestive, or discreet,
and she overwhelmed Ferdie Marcus with dupery and diplomacy, and
left him quite dazed, but convinced that the arrangement made was
the only one possible in view of the subtleties involved; and that
moreover it had emanated straight from him.
“So, my dee-urr, you join us in our humble little appartement, and
your father will put you in possession of your own income. Have I
done well?”
“—Turned out of home plus a cheque-book?—that’s what I call an
éviction de luxe,” laughed Antonia, when Deb told her of the new
arrangement, while re-packing her suit-case to quit Zoe’s flat five
days after her weary arrival. Zoe was out at rehearsal.
“What are you going to pay La llorraine per week for board and
lodging?”
“My-dee-urr,” Deb imitated the grand manner and the large
gesture by which her future landlady had dismissed the question
—“Zat—between us? it shall arrange itself——”
Antonia looked enigmatic, and warned Deb that the first time she
arrived at the appartement, and found her breakfasting at eleven
o’clock in a dirty wrapper and curl-papers, in the Venetian drawing-
room, on stale mayonnaise, with La llorraine practising scales, and
Manon being demure with the fishmonger because the canaille
wanted to be paid, she would immediately haul her off to an
environment less pictorial but more hygienic.
“Fishmonger, indeed!” Deb turned Quelle Vie out of the suit-case,
“when we want fish, La llorraine, pale and haughty, kisses Manon on
the brow and goes out to pawn the Crown Jewels; then she brings
home the fish and chips in a piece of newspaper, and we sit down to
enjoy it while she tells us sniggering anecdotes of fifth-rate music
halls.”
“Look here,” demanded Cliffe, striding into the room, “I’ve been
interviewing your brother, Deb, and he says that little bit of mange
who calls himself Otto Redbury is responsible for our good name
dragged in the mud. He says that verminous Dutchman called on
your father full of a ‘brivate peesiness’ just before the row. What I
want to know is, who told him? And a rumour has got about that
you committed suicide last Friday night. That’s not exactly funny, is
it? We’ve got to track those scandals to their sources. You don’t
seem to realize how serious it is. Our honour is at stake!”
“It’s so good of you to include mine,” Deb said meekly. “Sit down,
Cliffe, and don’t rave. I suppose I started them myself!” And she
related her dramatic confession to Samson Phillips. And Cliffe
listened, frowning.
“But this is all hypothesis. You mentioned no names to Phillips.
You didn’t actually specify that night at Seaview. I’m not reproaching
you for the lie itself, Deb—that was merely silly; feminine boasting.
But Otto must have got his definite facts from someone else, and
I’ve written him an imperative letter on the subject. It begins: ‘Sir’”
 “That’s not highly striking or original in itself, Cliffe. Why not
‘Honey?’”
Antonia laughed. “Tell us Otto’s answer when you get it, Cliffe. I
respect you for taking a strong line!” But Cliffe did not show them
the reply he received from Otto; he studied it in solitude and
bewildered indignation. What could the man mean by reminding him
of a certain conversation in the Tube? He recalled, with an effort,
having once travelled in Otto’s company, and having talked a great
deal of fantastic rubbish for Otto’s benefit, but he was quite sure
that not the veriest scavenger could have picked Deb’s name from
among the rubbish-heap—“I’ve always been very careful over
names....”

II

Deb, taking her present emancipation as a vantage-point for a

survey of her past, as a whole and in segments and phases, arrived
at a conclusion that the general inadequacy on the amorous side
was due to foolish compromise. She made up her mind, therefore, to
reform, and be bad—thoroughly bad. In the episode with Samson
she had proved to herself that she was no longer fit for the
conventional extreme of respectful love and sheltered marriage. Her
dilatory sense of daring must therefore be flogged to that other far
extreme—“I hate betwixts and betweens!”
A little balm of self-deception had to be applied. Hitherto she had
been more or less under home supervision; not stringent supervison,
certainly; but a background of loving trust was a hindrance in itself.
Now the trust had been withdrawn—and the background. Now she
was on her own—free—disillusioned—slightly embittered—(Deb
prodded the embitterment anxiously—yes, it was still there....) Now
she was twenty-five and at the cross-roads——
Deb did not realize the truism that even as every woman’s life
holds material for one novel, so that generic novel may generically
and with perfect application bear the title: “Cross-roads.”
 She had been on the look out for the hero to her heroine, and he
had failed in the appointment. Now she was in search for the villain
to her adventuress, and it seemed at first as though he would prove
equally elusive. A series of minor experiments left her seriously
convinced that in choice of a villain, a young girl cannot be too
careful.... “He must make it worth while——” Perhaps after all she
was still on the same old quest translated into different terms.
Meanwhile, the winter passed; and early spring woke her slightly
bilious soul to fretfulness. Her habits had slackened to harmony with
her environment of cosmopolitan bohemianism; but whereas a bed
erected in the Venetian drawing-room and covered by day with a
priceless piece of embroidery, seemed to La llorraine all that was
necessary in the way of a tiring-room—“My dee-urr, you can use
Manon’s mirror as your own—it goes without saying——” yet Deb
was not quite happy at the general sloppiness of tea-gowns and
mysterious foreigners and rich meals at all hours—or at no hours—
Carmen for breakfast, Tosca for supper, and out-of-season dishes in
between—music-hall managers strolling in to slap “my good
llorraine” familiarly between the shoulders, and look avariciously at
Manon, who, however, a child of mummers and motley, was
interrogated with a strictness which Deb, daughter of strictest Israel,
would never for a moment have suffered. But La llorraine knew more
of her world and was wiser in education than Ferdinand Marcus; La
llorraine, who sometimes put on enormous horn spectacles and sat
knitting by the fire; and sometimes rose up like a prophetess and
tossed a pair of desperate arms to Heaven, in denunciation of that
war which prevented return to a beloved continent which knew
something of good music; La llorraine was equally genuine and
lovable in either mood; and Deb grew to be sincerely fond of her.
But Manon was another matter; Manon, at eighteen, held to her
pose of exiled princess, a slender figure in the vast loneliness of the
drawing-room—a lonely little heart mysteriously unsoiled by contact
with aforesaid mummers and motley. She listened charmingly when
Deb scattered ethics of rebellion; she appeared slightly shocked
when decorum demanded that she should be shocked—and yet—
and yet—for all the demureness of reproving eyelash and “Oh, but,
Deb——” in the pretty lisping accent, Deb could not be rid of an
impression that when it came to it, Manon would go further and fare
a great deal better than herself. Manon had hitched her wagon to a
fixed star, whereas it looked as though Deb had hitched hers to a
travelling circus.
“We’ve had enough of this,” exclaimed Antonia, an unexpected
visitor after a tour in the car which had lasted the whole of February
—“Not dressed yet? and it’s nearly twelve o’clock; sluggish appetite?
—no wonder, if you smoke scented cigarettes with your coffee and
eggs. Even as I prophesied!”
“Don’t be hard on me,” Deb pleaded; “I’m not entirely dead to
better things—really, Antonia. I feel the call of Spring urging me out
and out.... Let’s go to a cinema, shall we?”
“On the contrary, we shall gird up our loins and do war-work, my
child,” grimly. “We shall speak to our mothers and ask them what
particular niche is vacant for one willing but ignorant daughter of
pleasure, and we shall send word of the result by this evening latest.
And meanwhile, we will withdraw our plaits that writhe like blue-
black serpents among the exquisite but macabre foliage of last
year’s tablecloth, and put away the dregs of green chartreuse, and
sit up and comb ourselves out, and try to be a credit to a nation at
war.”
Deb laughed and said she was quite willing to do war-work, and
had meant to enrol herself since some time, but had thought it too
late....
“Oh, I think the war may be trusted to last another month or two.”
“I meant,” in fractious explanation, “that it always seems to me
too late to do something afterwards which one hasn’t done before.”
“Lazy little Oriental.... You will visit my mother at 6 p.m. precisely
this evening and receive your instructions,” with which Antonia
departed.
 “Blair Stevenson is said to be coming back to the Foreign Office”
was the sub-conscious wriggle of motive underlying her sincere
belief that Deb would be the better for a more strenuous existence.
For Blair Stevenson, in the Diplomatic Service, was Gillian’s friend;
Antonia liked him, appreciating to the full his supple wit and
undeniably perfect breeding; his pursuit of her was ardent enough
for her to enjoy keenly the sensation of flying ... he never drew near,
and presently the pursuit slackened; he was sent abroad—British
Resident of some West African province; and when he returned, fell
easily into place as one of her group—an excellent occasional.
Antonia was aware that he was still on good terms with Gillian ...
and that if accidentally he met Deb there—“What does it matter?”
But the fierce desire persisted to keep the child ... pure.
The eventful climax of the meeting between Gillian and Deb on
Zoe’s doorstep, Antonia accepted quietly and almost with relief. It
had happened, and there was no more to be done—by her at least.
A week afterwards she was forced to leave London—her Major-
General was perpetually touring and inspecting and dashing hither
and thither. Deb in her letters had spoken no further word of Gillian
(Deb was afraid, as a matter of fact, knowing Antonia’s probable
state of mind), but Gillian, in divine unconsciousness, dashed off a
hasty postcard on which “dear Deb,” struck out, was replaced by
“dear Antonia.” It was probably the only card Gillian could find
amongst the frenzied litter on a desk which Winifred ought to have
kept tidy ... but it told Antonia all she wanted to know—all that she
did not want to know: Deb and Gillian were getting on nicely....
And now Blair was returning. For all her liking of Blair’s society,
she infinitely preferred him in Greece, where he was at least safe
from the result of Cliffe’s parties or Gillian’s introductions.... Antonia
could not be for ever vigilant ... the Major-General was beckoning
once more——
And then came that sunny letter from Cliffe Kennedy informing her
of a marvellous studio party he had arranged. “I borrowed your
studio as usual, and you can have Seaview in the summer whenever
you want it. These are little eddies of communal brotherhood that
one day will unite to a surging river that will sweep away, etc.——”
Antonia skipped a page or two till the names she sought, dreading
to find, sure to find, sprang at her from the page—“Blair Stevenson
—Deb....”
... “I had a sort of presentiment that something was bound to
happen if I brought those two together.... And again, Antonia, my
experimental nerve had twitched to some purpose. Bet you a copy of
the Omar Khayyam (I’ve got seventy-two) that this fusion of
personalities will have Results—dramatic or beautiful or horrid.... Do
come home and join the audience—I’m so excited.”

III

Deb, entirely absorbed in her canteen work, had given up

scanning the horizon for the villain of the piece; so that it was with a
shock that she looked up and found him standing quite close to her,
waiting for his cue.... Almost she hoped that he would prove not
worth while.... Those nights under the gaunt station roof, watching
the restless watchers for the leave train, watching the grimy
burdened soldiers tumble with dazed eyes out of their compartments
on to the platform ... till roused to the necessity for rapid mechanical
dole of coffee and sandwiches—wash up—start afresh—hour after
hour.... These nights had become more real than the arrangement
and re-arrangement of her own temperament.
But Blair was so definitely worth while that Deb dared not refuse
him as a prospective—what? The old dream was dead, of course ...
dream of the big thing—husband who knew of all her past idiocies,
and called her a goose and laughed at her, and understood; small
sturdy boy in a dark blue jersey and rumpled hair several shades too
light for such a brown skin.... “You are being not only sentimental,
but also futile!” she informed herself. “Next there will be pretty
fancies all about a dream-garden”—and straightway there was the
garden, at the magical hour of after-tea when the grass looks as
though it had been freshly painted, and the canterbury bells are
adrip from recent watering....
Sternly Deb removed husband, child and garden by the dream-
scruff of their dream-necks,—she sought for some delicate means to
enlighten Blair Stevenson of her willingness to—to——
Self-communion slurred over the verbal expression of good—or
bad—intent. For it refused to present itself with more elegance than
“to go the whole hog”—and such blatant slang did not associate
itself readily with Blair’s personality.
“To fulfil my womanhood,”—but that sounded priggish. “To tread
the primrose path” was affectation. “To take a lover” was the final
selection—but still imperfect. She chose it for the sake of the word
“lover” which still hummed to her on that deep sonorous note of
wind along the wires ... “lover.”
Meanwhile, her watchfulness lay in ambush for that splendid flare
of passion which was to be her impetus and justification. She had a
passionate temperament.... How could it be otherwise, with those
eyelids and that mouth? Men and women alike had accused her of
hot Eastern blood; insisted upon it; warned her, laughing or in envy,
of the penalties. She accepted this established version of herself in
an unquestioning spirit.
“Child, you’d lead a man to hell!” a victim had once foretold. Now
she waited for a man to lead her to hell. She could at least be
assured that Blair Stevenson would instinctively and unostentatiously
choose quite the least travelled and the most refined and expensive
route thither. He was that kind of man; with a reputation, but not a
vulgar one, for success with women. Deb, seeking to express crudely
the sense he aroused of having dipped to her class from that elusive
class which lies midway between the upper middle-class and the
aristocracy, told herself in confidence that he made her feel not
unlike a housemaid being took notice of by one of the quality.
Hitherto, most of the men with whom she had come in contact,
could be tabulated as solid business or professional—like Samson or
her own father; or else urged by the prevalent rebellion to type, into
the artist or vagabond pose—like Cliffe Kennedy.
Blair Stevenson was of such excellent family that he never
mentioned his family; probably most of it was extinct, and the rest
knew better than to encircle him save at a distance. He had travelled
extensively both in cities and in the wilds, so that he combined
cosmopolitan ease with the British knack of being able to cope with
emergencies. Although he was not much more than thirty-five, the
Foreign Office had already recognized his perfect tact and suavity,
combined with knowledge of languages, to be extremely useful to
them; so that he was accounted one of those mysterious beings “in
the know”; “behind the scenes”; one of the men who “pulled
strings.”... He had been entrusted with a rather tricky mission to the
Balkans, prior to his present leave. His natural appendages and
equipments one would assume to be a faithful valet in his town
chambers, a faithful maître d’hotel in every capital, and a faithful
mistress no one knows where; because Stevenson, though ardent,
was discreet where women were concerned; but certainly the
carriage of her head proclaimed her exquisite breeding, and she cost
him a great deal of money....
And all this about him, speculative and positive, did not quite
convey why Deb was not always sure (metaphorically) how to use
her knives and forks in his presence. Easy to make mistakes—tiny,
silly mistakes of conduct or subtlety—and read in his eyes a dawning
recognition that she was not quite “it” after all, or his amusement
perhaps at her quaint lapses from sophistication: “Am I an amateur
compared with what he’s accustomed to?” Then angrily: “Oh, he
swanks, and I’m a snob!” which was inaccurate. He took “form” for
granted, and she was shaky about it. Blair Stevenson could be relied
on for good manners; not so much the surface good manners
connected with the graceful opening of doors for the lady’s exit, but
the more fundamental good manners which broke a heart as a heart
would most wish to be broken.

IV
 “I’ve waited long enough,” said Deb.
It suddenly frightened her that again she was hesitating too long;
that decision was wearing thin and threadbare with the days....
Perhaps Blair had not realized ... it must be puzzling for a man
nowadays to differentiate between the merely good; the frankly bad;
the good trying to be bad; and the bad resolved to be good.
“I suppose he needs what Aunt Trudchen used to call ‘a little
encouragement,’” Deb reflected.
Then by what sign could she convey to him that her intentions
were dishonourable? They had, of course, dispassionately talked of
sex, which is the weather-subject of to-day’s men and girls.... Deb
was afraid, standing on tiptoe to the clubman and the cosmopolitan,
that she might have given an excessive impression of sophistication;
and that he was inwardly astonished, now, that she delayed to pass
him some customary code-word or countersign necessary to his
advancement. She had not the faintest idea what was expected of
her, so she essayed a semi-confidence in La llorraine.
That royal veteran of a more clear-headed period, when
courtesans were expected to know their alphabet, could not fail to
be good-humouredly contemptuous at the spectacle of these
children playing their variations of an old game with such quaint and
ponderous seriousness; and getting so very little out of it in the way
of genuine passion, genuine fun, and ermine cloaks.
Out of the question, certainly, that Manon should join these
games. But Deb was six years older and had “made a muff from her
chances,” as Manon would never be permitted to do. Moreover, Deb
was not La llorraine’s own daughter.... So La llorraine shrugged her
shoulders, and gave her the necessary tip.

Deb was on her way to call upon Blair Stevenson unexpectedly at

his rooms in Jermyn Street. It was a quarter past ten in the evening,
and because she had just been relieved from duty at Victoria
Station, she was wearing a long disguising cloak over silk garments
that slip on the skin with a suggestion of suave fingers. Blair was at
home—she had telephoned during the day, and, preserving an
incognito, had asked the valet what would be the best time to
telephone again? The valet said: “I believe that ten o’clock to-night
will be most likely to find Mr Stevenson.”... Blair would realize the
significance of her visit; and—and once lifted to response, her fatal
temperament could be relied upon to do the rest.
“I’ve waited long enough. Oh, suppose I waited till nobody wanted
me any more, and then I wanted it more than anything else....”
She leant against the door for a pause of short, quick breathing.
The neighbourhood, the steps and passages, the windows, were all
discreet good form, world of the clubman, the cosmopolitan, the
man who knows ... utterly alien world to the forlorn little virgin, who
stands, suddenly erect and stiff and pearly-white; thumb pressed
firmly on the bell-button of No. 141b.

“It’s now....”
Queer—never before had she realized the present so vividly; “it
has been a minute ago,” “it will be the day after to-morrow” ... but
“It’s now,” as Blair, with a smile and a subtle look, threw away his
half-smoked cigar, took the half-finished cup of coffee from her
hands.
“Now—now——”
She was one pulse that beat for initiation. Her cheap artist fancy
had always decorated the temple of initiation so heavily with incense
and tiger-skins and divans and rose-leaves, all the crude stock and
properties of rapture, that the reality of this ordinary room, big
leather arm-chairs and a few prints on the plain dark walls, and a
bookcase, and several ash-trays scattered about, this so essentially a
man-room, left her disappointed. Had she relied too much upon the
trappings? ... but—Blair had taken her in his arms, now....
And still no response from that—that most damnably sluggish
temperament.
Very precisely and dispassionately she noticed for the first time
that one of his lids lay over the eye with a heavier slouch than the
other. She was pleased with the behaviour of his face under stress of
emotion ... it did not grow hot nor red nor damp; the veins did not
bulge; his breath was under control. She had been right in her
selection of Blair Stevenson—but—but——
The ungrateful temperament, which she had provided with the
best advantages, was failing her utterly....
She kissed his exacting lips with as much of faked ecstasy as she
could coax to her aid, and then wondered, supposing she laughed,—
the word ecstasy always made her want to laugh—if that indecorum
could be passed off as further ecstasy?
And all this time she did Stevenson the injustice of believing him
imperceptive.
“Deb ... my dear....”
He had from the beginning philosophically summed her up as
incapable of extremes. But it was not as though he were
dependent.... He did not love Deb; he was a little bit in love with
her; and she was elfish, delicate, captivating, freshly surprising at
each encounter, like in June the first strawberry whose
unremembered flavour one has taken for granted through the winter
months. Yes, she was charming. And he was wrong in his estimate
of her. After all, she had come to him——
One tiny gesture of his—and Deb’s histrionics lay shattered like a
wave into foam....
“No ... no ... no—not now.... Oh, please!”
 A moment later, and Blair said, from the other end of the room:
“There was no need for that ‘please,’ dear. The first ‘no’ would have
been enough.”
She lay angrily sobbing, hair not even disordered, her drapings of
pale ninon shamefully untumbled. The desperate encounter had
yielded her one scrap of self-knowledge—nothing else: That she was
not in the least passionate by nature, and that only love could raise
her nature to passion; that she had been misled all her life by a
mere illusion deduced by herself and others from her face and her
way of moving, and her recklessness of speech and her Jewish
pliability.... To her mother who was a Gentile, was due this slight
chilliness, blown like a hoar-frost over what might otherwise have
been an exotic blossoming.
And the man by the window murmured: “‘To play at half a love
with half a lover,’ ... is that what you wanted, child, and couldn’t
express? I didn’t understand. Well——”
He crossed again to the couch and stood looking down upon her,
hands clasped behind his back, mouth bent to a whimsical smile
—“Well—It’s not too late, is it?”
For that explanation both solved the enigma of her visit, and
coincided with his former conception of her. The surprise had been
her acquiescence, not her rebuff.
She looked up at him pitifully, and shook her head.... His mouth
grew hard: if not mistress, nor demi-maid, then what did she expect
he would make of her? Surely she could not be hoping.... Blair
Stevenson’s wife, if ever materialized from wraithdom, would not be
the sort of girl who came to his rooms alone at 10.15 p.m. Nor
would his mistress—she not at all a wraith—plead to leave them
again after a futile half-hour of compromise. No, Deb (and he still
thought her charming) was qualified not for chastity nor for fierce
desire.... What did she want of him?
Her intuition leapt to what was passing in his mind; and in stinging
agony that he should behold in her a huntress for a likely husband,
she said quickly—“I did—I did want to play—only to play. But—you
frightened me....”
“Forget that. I’m getting old and dense. And all men try ... once,
you know. But it’s all right, Deb....”
It was all right—now; at the demi-price of her demi-virtue, she
had saved at least that tattered beggar-maid she still called her
pride. “I believe you thought I had come with a matrimonial lasso
coiled up in my hand,” she taunted him.
And Blair was deceived, for all his penetration. How was he to
know, indeed, that daringly as she had repudiated his suspicion, in a
little backwater of thought trembled still an eddy from old times and
old traditions: “It—would—have—been—rather nice ... to marry
him....” But you have just proved you are not in love with him. “Oh—
that kind of thing—wouldn’t matter. I believe it would grow of itself
... if he were looking after me.” Her set smile curved into real
merriment as it struck her how Samson would approve of these
sentiments. Perhaps she and Samson were kindred souls, after all!
But Samson would most certainly not have approved of her
present abandonment to a demi-lover. She lay with an apathetic
hand straying over his hair and eyebrows, wondering a little at the
hard cheek pressed close to hers, wondering a little ... how soon she
could say it was time to go, whether there were any letters waiting
for her at home, if that pale young lance-corporal who had fainted
as she put the coffee-cup into his hands, had recovered yet;
wondering a little, as Blair shifted their positions, and drew her head
down to where his shirt opened on to his heart—Did Blair really
enjoy this? ought she not to say she was uncomfortable and had a
crick in her neck? Whether she were now what is called a sinner?—
pêcheresse in French ... or was it pécheuse? one of them meant the
“fisherman’s wife”—she remembered that from school—yes,
pêcheuse, surely—they were taught to tell the difference by the
resemblance of the circumflex to the roof of the fisherman’s hut. The
other has an accent aigü—but Deb had never been quite able to
disentangle a vague notion that a fisherman’s wife was also a sinner.
Pêcheuse—pécheresse....
She wondered anew if that monstrosity on the wall opposite were
a Hogarth? if her watch would be mended by to-morrow, as the man
at the shop had faithfully promised?...
“Are you happy, you small white Deb?”
She sighed “Yes....”
“You must come to me often now we understand each other....”
And again: “Yes ... often....”
 CHAPTER II
I

Antonia stood in the empty room in Bayswater, reading a scrawl of

explanation which Gillian had left behind for her on the dusty
mantelpiece. The floor was littered with bits of straw and string, a
broken teacup, some torn-up MSS., an old stocking and a tin of
Bluebell polish ... her foot struck against the latter, and it rolled
towards the tin fender and stopped with a forlorn clank....
“My dear—I’ve decided to go and live with Theo—why not? You’ll
find me here if you come this afternoon, 54 Middle Inn Gardens. I’m
leaving behind a bottle of Elliman’s Embrocation, because I haven’t
room for it. Bring it along, and anything else you see lying about.
Yours, Jill.”
“So she’s done it at last.” Slowly Antonia left the house, came back
for the Embrocation, could not find it, and went on to Middle Inn
Square with the Bluebell polish as a substitute. With an air more
than ever slim and defiant and passion-free, she swung into Gillian’s
presence——
“Jill!”
“It was—this—or sharing him with fifty others,” the culprit
explained coolly. She did not look in the least like the famous
bacteriologist, as she sat astride a wooden packing-case, tugging
with giant pincers at a refractory nail; hair rakish from the frequent
tumbling of her fingers; eyes two greenish slits of roguery; cigarette
tilted well upwards from the corner of her mouth. She did not look
like a heroine of passion either.... Her blouse was open and her
sleeves rolled up, and her short navy-blue skirt was smeared with
white where she had leant against some wet paint.
“You can help me unpack while you disapprove. That lazy little cat
Winnie has gone off to spend the day with Camellia.”
 “Winnie? She’s still with you?”
“My dear, what was I to do with her? I couldn’t send her home
again just because of a whim of mine. It wouldn’t be fair. She isn’t
happy at home——”
Antonia sat down helplessly. “A year ago Deb gets turned out of
home, plus an income. Now you elope, plus Winifred Potter. You’re a
pair to make any friend of yours hysterical....”
“A little more, and I’d have despatched Winifred labelled right-
side-up as a farewell present to you,” Gillian retorted grimly. “But
she’ll do for Theo to flirt with in his lighter moments.”
“Theo’s are mostly lighter moments, aren’t they? Jill, I wouldn’t
have minded the sacrifice; I wouldn’t have said a single word ... if
he’d been worthy.” She was ice-white with the conviction of his
unworthiness.
Gillian said nothing for a minute or two. She still sat bent over the
packing-case, one leg on either side of it, wrenching at the wood.
Then: “Much need for sacrifice with a man who’s worthy!”
“Then you admit he isn’t?” Antonia sprang up. “Oh, Gillian, if you
must try a theory——”
“Theory? Good Lord! Nothing of that sort. It’s just that Theo isn’t
big enough or good enough, if you like, to remain faithful and
decent and honourable to a woman who’s only his spiritual love.
Why pretend?—we all know what Theo is!” she shrugged her thin
shoulders and flashed a wide smile up at her friend—“He’s clever—
with a sort of malicious destructive cleverness. Otherwise just an
amorous gutter-snipe, who can’t resist anything of the other sex—a
Zoe in male. His reputation is a joke—I’ve heard scores of people
chuckling over the latest Theo Pandos story.”
“You know this—and still——”
“I know it—and because. He won’t do without the others—but he
can’t do without me. Look here, you blooming Artemis, I justify
myself to you just this once and never again. Understand this. That
little rotter is my ... completion, if you like; the answer to my special
quantity of X. It’s a pity, I’m sure, that it didn’t happen to be
someone grand and distinguished and austere, who’d spend all day
long renouncing me, and all night long being nobly glad that he did
so. Can you see Theo being glad he’s renounced anyone, ever?”
again the swift joyous grin.... Antonia could not help returning it.
“Theo’s got a wife, I believe?”
“Oh, curse her, yes. A Spanish Catholic who won’t divorce him. A
dark flashing thing who looks all passion and Carmen and castanets.
She’s no earthly use to him.”
“Gillian, you’re a thoroughly immoral creature!”
“I’m not going to be one of a crowd. ’Tisn’t good for the self-
respect. And it isn’t good for Theo—Oh, I’ve no illusions about my
young man.... It amounts to this—I’m fed up with the type of
woman who can’t sling sex out of her mind. The mind isn’t the
proper place for sex. I want my mind for my work. Enforced virginity,
not chosen, mind you, but enforced, is unbalancing; it hangs about
and takes up more room than it ought to.... My work has got to
come to fruition sooner or later ... and all this has got to be cleared
out of the way, somehow, first. Theo is thoroughly unsuitable, he’s
younger than I am, he’s married, he’s fast and horrid ... granted!—
but Theo is a factor that can’t be slung out. So he’s got to stay—with
as little fuss as possible. I thought about it all hard, and when last
night I’d decided, I packed, and I came. Poor old Theo ...” and she
chuckled softly as at some memory of the preceding evening—but
her brows were contracted with pain.
“Wasn’t he terrifically glad, at least?”
“Oh—glad enough. But just last night ... it was—awkward. I ought
to have ’phoned him beforehand—See? Antonia, you’re shrinking like
bad material in the wash!”
“Bad material perhaps—but not in the wash ... at the present
moment!”
 “Cue for a wince from the fallen woman! Frankly, are my affairs as
unsavoury as all that?”
“Not you, Jill. Never you, but Theo. He’s your demon.”
“Not much demon about him when he hung from the left foot on
to the right at his front door last night, and I sat demurely on my
trunk outside.... If the Bacteriological Society could have seen me—
I’m lecturing there next week! I’m what Theo had been waiting and
longing for since three and a half years, and coming just then—for
once even he wasn’t able to carry it off. Zoe would have chucked the
incubus through a door, or into a cupboard, or under the bed, and
turned up smiling—Theo just stood staring at me with the tears
streaming down his face.... My beloved little cad!... So I went home
again, and returned this morning—Antonia, you’re not to look like
that!” in a spasm of fury. “Didn’t I know he’d get rid of her not ten
minutes after I left....”
“Oh, I suppose he said he had,” scornfully.
Gillian raged more. “You’d have sheered off and never looked at
him again. ‘For better, for worse’ ... Without the marriage service
read over me, I can keep to it as well as any of you. It’s Theo as he
is—not Theo transformed by Maskelyne and Devant into a young
bride’s dream. We shall live together quite openly; of course, without
any blaze of trumpets—but concealment means a flurry again, and a
furtive askew-over-your-shoulder look that I don’t approve of. Thank
goodness, my private life, as I choose to hack it out, can’t interfere
with my especial career. If I’d been a doctor, as I intended——”
“Then you would have had to give up Theo.”
“I’ve just spent twenty minutes patiently explaining—I s’pose you
weren’t listening—that if I gave up Theo, he’d take up far too much
of my time and thought and vitality and saneness. To live with him is
the only way of getting rid of him—mentally.”
“It’s such a twisted, new-fashioned way of arguing.”
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

textbookfull.com