Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

There's someone at my shoulder. Mountfort. Bastard.

'I've seen you before somewhere, haven't I? Weren't you with those Oriental chappies who came to Guisnes?'

A week or so after our talk about Roger Bacon – we were perhaps into April by then, for I remember it was raining sweetly, gently, but enough to keep us indoors – our conversation moved on to the second of Brother Peter's great Inglysshemen. In his upper room with his cased books around us and comfortable chairs to sit in, he began with an apologetic-attack on Avicenna whose version of Aristotle was based on the neo-Platonist Porphyry's interpretation of the Stagyrite. Following William of Occam, and referring to his writings and occasionally to Aristotle's Organon, he demonstrated how Aristotle's speculations regarding entities, essences or Universals had been corrupted by the neo-Platonists. For the latter, essences existed in the mind of God, and were presented corporeally, materially, on earth, in a corrupted, degraded way. Thus the idea of 'cat', for instance, and here my friend fondled the tabby beauty called Winnie, who often slept and purred on his lap, existed in the mind of God as a perfection of cats before cats were created, and no cat that had ever existed was a perfect cat, since corporeality always falls short of the perfection of the idea.

'But this,' he went on, fondling Winnie's throat and forehead, which was marked with a W, 'is to deny what is so markedly the most important feature of Winnie, her haecceity, the fact that she is individual, uniquely herself, unlike every other cat who has ever lived. And she has her own perfection – whether or not she is perfect cat is not for me to say, but certainly she is perfect Winnie.'

'Oh, come,' I replied, 'all cats have many features in common. Quite apart from their appearance and their anatomy, they follow patterns of behaviour which are identical. All wash in the same-way. All eat and drink alike. They all use the same techniques when hunting. I could go on and on, but you know what I mean. You cannot deny there exists an idea we can call 'catness' which includes all these qualities.'

A silence lengthened between us. Then: 'You have never been owned by a cat, have you?'

There was a coolness in his voice that irritated me almost as much as the stupid way in which he had framed the question. I was, perhaps, at that time more than usually easily annoyed – as convalescents often are.

'No,' I replied. 'I like them, be sure of that, but they do not travel well, and I have never remained in the same place for more than six months since I was eight years old. Apart from when I was in the Mountain where I learnt what wisdom I have.'

'Then allow me to speak with more certainty of being right concerning the nature of cats.'

'There you are,' I cried, and leant forward to tap his knee, at which Winnie leapt down to the floor and went to mew at the door. 'You speak of the nature of cats. By that you surely mean the essence, the idea that informs them all.'

'No. I simply mean the characteristics we light upon to distinguish them from other animals of a similar size and familiarity. But what I am asking you to consider is this. It is in the nature of cats to be different from each other. Believe me. And not through the corruption of matter by the fall of man or any other such cant but because that is the way cats are.'

It was clear that if a falling-out was to be avoided, we should remove the conversation to a higher plane.

'And you would apply this to everything, every phenomenon in the perceivable world?'

'I, Aristotle, and William of Occam, yes, we agree.'

A sunbeam pierced the rainclouds and fell briefly on the table-between us.

'Even to two motes of dust?'

'Observe,' said Brother Peter, 'no two motes of dust occupy the same space at the same time. In that at the very least they are different. And I believe if we could grind lenses sufficiently fine and line them up to study even the most PIKpo of particles we would find differences between them – PiKpo is the Greek word for very small.'

'I know very well what PiKpo means. What I am trying to say is we use words to define types. The word "cat" is meaningful. Do not such words indicate ideas, essences?'

'Types, yes. Essences, no. Though I would prefer to use the words "species" for "types" and "universals" for "essences".'

'I am still confused. You are simply swapping terms, but you prove nothing.'

'That is because you give too great a power to words. Words arc tools. Useful, but in themselves they do not contain truth. It is useful to say that beer is beer, by which we indicate a certain species of drink. It is useful because I can say, 'Would you like some beer?' and you will know thereby the sort of experience you are being offered. But this is not to say that there is an essence of beer, a perfect beer in the mind of God. Indeed not. Looked at another way, the word implies quite the opposite, for it allows us to say that this beer is different from that beer, this beer is better than that beer. Do you like this beer?'

We both drank. I allowed myself beer at the priory because Peter said it was weak and because the water was river water, there being no well on the islet.

'Yes,' I said. 'And it is different. You are right.'

'That is because this beer is made with hops of a particular species. Some of our Hussite brothers from Pils in Bohemia sent us a sack. But we must return now to William of Occam. Let me sum up what he had to say about words. There are terms of first intention, which is what we call words that are the names of individual things and which, in Inglysshe anyway, we qualify with an article: the cat at the door. This cat at that door. There is a cat at the door. And there are words used as terms of second intention, as universals, genera, or species. Cats like fish. Cats wash behind their ears when there-is rain about. A universal is thus a sign of many things, in this case the many things that make up a cat. Universals do not exist. The only existence they have is as qualities of individual cats.' 'Hum,' said I.

'Words used thus are merely tools,' he repeated, 'which we resort to for convenience' sake: they do not describe something that has a reality of its own. Only individual things have that reality. That is what Aristotle, properly understood, thought. That is what Occam meant when he said: "Essentia non sunt multiplicandai praeter necessitatem." A sharp dictum that slices through a lot of cant. Essences, universals should not be multiplied except out of necessity, and ultimately the only Necessary Universal is God, the Prime Mover. And.' here he lowered his voice for what he was about to utter was a burning matter, 'and he, or it, goes back a long, long way. Maybe all it was was a bang, a big bang like the bang of the Brazen Head, but with the motto "Time is. Time will be. Time might just as well go on for ever".'

He had gone beyond me now, as sometimes he did when a sort of divine afflatus, an ability to prophesy, fell on him. I tried to bring him back to earth. 'Is it not the case that your Friar Bacon was kept mute in the cells of the Franciscan order in Paris for many years, that Occam was imprisoned as a heretic, that even John Wycliffe might have been burnt but escaped?'

'But. my dear Ali… one moment while I let Winnie out. See? Like many cats once disturbed she will not resume her former comfort, but not all cats reach with their front paws to rattle the latch to signify they want to go out. There. They were… gunpowder. They threatened to blow apart the whole structure of our society. They undermined the very foundations on which the authority of Church and king can be said to stand for they privileged, as inevitable consequences of their thought, individual observation, individual judgement; they revealed ways to the truth that did not depend on the authority of Mother Church nor the divine right of kings, but on knowledge obtained by practical everyday experience, as it was said those doctors of antiquity who relied on experience and observation did. the ones known as empirici. What gives a pope or emperor the right to rule? Why, if you take away frail and unsuited authority, custom, the opinion of the unlearned crowd, the display of apparent wisdom, if you take away the idea that a pope or king embodies, albeit corporeally and with earthly corruption, the essence or entity of priesthood and royalty as conceived in the mind of God, you are left with two things, two justifications for investing certain individuals and institutions with authority over the rest of us.' 'And they are?'