II: The Companion Ghost

The Senior Common Room at St Anselm's possessed that curious evening atmosphere in which silence had ceased to be an absence of conversation and had instead become a form of furniture in its own right.

Rain had progressed from tapping politely at the windows to pursuing a more determined campaign.

Professor Quillibrace sat beside the fire with a book resting unopened on his lap.

Mr Blottisham entered carrying tea and an expression of triumph.

"I have solved it."

Quillibrace looked up.

"Oh dear."

"The substance matter."

"The substance matter."

"Yes. You said things perhaps weren't self-contained entities carrying properties around like luggage."

"I said something approximately adjacent to that."

Blottisham sat heavily.

"But there is an obvious answer."

"Splendid."

"Essence."

Quillibrace closed his eyes briefly.

Miss Elowen Stray looked up from her notebook.

"Essence?"

"Exactly."

Blottisham looked delighted.

"The tree remains the same tree because it possesses treeness."

Silence settled gently around the room.

Quillibrace looked into the fire.

Miss Stray lowered her pencil.

At length Quillibrace said:

"I see."

Blottisham nodded confidently.

"One can alter details without changing what something fundamentally is."

Quillibrace regarded him.

"And where precisely does treeness reside?"

Blottisham blinked.

"What do you mean?"

"Is it in the leaves?"

"No."

"The bark?"

"No."

"The roots?"

"No."

"The branches?"

"No."

Quillibrace folded his hands.

"I see."

Blottisham frowned.

"No, you're doing something."

"I assure you I am merely asking where the treeness is kept."

"The tree possesses it."

"Indeed."

Miss Stray smiled faintly.

"The problem itself is rather old," she said.

Blottisham looked suspicious.

"Is it?"

"Very."

She turned a page in her notebook.

"No two trees are identical. No two birds are identical. No two people are identical."

Blottisham nodded.

"Obviously."

"And yet we recognise them as belonging to kinds."

"Yes."

"So variation itself created a problem."

Blottisham frowned slightly.

"A problem?"

"If every instance differs," said Quillibrace quietly, "then what permits us to recognise continuity across difference?"

Blottisham stared into space.

"Hm."

"Something appeared necessary beneath variation," Miss Stray continued. "Some stable principle preserving identity while superficial characteristics shifted."

"And that became essence," said Quillibrace.

Blottisham looked relieved.

"There we are then."

Quillibrace sighed softly.

Miss Stray looked sympathetic.

Blottisham narrowed his eyes.

"You're both making that face again."

"What face?"

"The one suggesting I've accidentally walked into philosophy."

"Have you?"

Blottisham ignored this.

"What exactly is wrong with essence?"

Quillibrace leaned back.

"Nothing at all initially."

Blottisham looked startled.

"Really?"

"Certainly not. It solved a genuine problem."

"But?"

"There is almost always a but."

Quillibrace gestured lightly.

"Once one possesses essence, one begins using it everywhere."

He counted gently on his fingers.

"People possess true selves."

"Cultures possess defining characteristics."

"Species possess intrinsic natures."

"Concepts possess hidden meanings."

Miss Stray nodded.

"The solution stops being an answer to a particular question."

"It becomes a model for reality itself."

Blottisham stared thoughtfully.

"But things do seem to possess natures."

"Do they?" said Quillibrace.

He pointed vaguely into the room.

"Take language."

Blottisham looked uneasy.

"I'd rather not."

"What is its essence?"

Blottisham opened his mouth.

Paused.

Closed it.

"The communication part."

Quillibrace stared.

"The communication part?"

"Yes."

"What precisely is that?"

Blottisham frowned.

"No, wait."

Miss Stray looked down to conceal a smile.

Quillibrace continued gently.

"Languages change."

"They acquire words."

"They lose words."

"They alter grammatically."

"They divide and merge."

"And yet they remain recognisable."

Blottisham stared into the middle distance.

"Hm."

"And individuals alter across life," Miss Stray added.

"Societies change."

"Species evolve."

"The supposedly stable essence behaves in a rather unstable fashion."

Blottisham sat very still.

"So every time we attempt to locate the essence..."

"...it retreats," Quillibrace said.

Silence.

Rain moved across the windows.

Finally Blottisham spoke.

"So the tree is a tree because of its treeness..."

"Mm."

"...which means we are explaining trees using tree."

"Mm."

Blottisham looked pained.

"Oh, that's deeply irritating."

"Quite."

Miss Stray had resumed drawing circles and lines in her notebook.

"So perhaps recognisability never required hidden defining cores beneath variation."

Blottisham looked at her.

"Then what stabilises things?"

She considered.

"Patterns."

"Patterns?"

"Relations."

A pause.

"What appears stable may simply be relatively enduring organisation."

Blottisham stared into the fire for some time.

Then:

"Quillibrace?"

"Yes?"

"Last week we discovered a ghost in the furniture."

"Yes."

Blottisham looked around the room uneasily.

"And now we appear to have found another one standing beside it."

Quillibrace nodded gravely.

"Yes."

Silence again.

Then Quillibrace glanced around the common room.

"One hesitates to ask how many more are in here."

Blottisham put down his teacup.

Rather carefully.