The manuscript has remained on the central table for several weeks.
No one has returned it.
No one has asked whether it belongs to anyone.
Blottisham: Well.
That's the last chapter.
Quillibrace: Is it?
Blottisham: Unless someone has hidden an appendix.
Quillibrace: They usually do.
(A brief silence.)
Stray: It's rather an odd ending.
The manuscript never really resolves its argument.
Blottisham: Exactly.
I kept expecting a grand conclusion.
Quillibrace: And instead?
Blottisham: It simply stops.
Quillibrace: Does it?
Or does the author merely cease writing?
(A pause.)
Stray: Those aren't quite the same thing.
Quillibrace: No.
An argument occasionally continues after its author has become silent.
(They sit quietly for a moment.)
Blottisham: I've been wondering...
does the manuscript ever actually define certainty?
Stray: I don't think it does.
Blottisham: Isn't that rather careless?
Quillibrace: On the contrary.
Definitions are useful when one wishes to stabilise a concept.
This manuscript seems more interested in observing what certainty does than in deciding what it is.
Blottisham: Anthropology rather than metaphysics.
Quillibrace: Just so.
(Blottisham nods slowly.)
Stray: I think that's why the chapters feel different from ordinary arguments.
Each one observes another part of civilisation.
Universities.
Expertise.
Morality.
Planning.
Tradition.
The author keeps asking the same question in different places.
Quillibrace: Yes.
Not,
"What is certainty?"
But,
"What sort of creature behaves like this?"
(A thoughtful silence.)
Blottisham: Human beings, apparently.
Quillibrace: Apparently.
(They smile.)
Stray: Then perhaps the title is slightly misleading.
Quillibrace: How so?
Stray: It isn't really an anthropology of certainty.
It's an anthropology of ourselves.
Certainty merely happens to be the trail we followed through the forest.
(Quillibrace closes the manuscript very gently.)
Quillibrace: Miss Stray...
I believe you've just written the preface.
(A longer silence follows.)
Blottisham: Do you know what surprised me most?
Quillibrace: No.
Blottisham: The manuscript seems rather fond of civilisation.
I expected satire.
Instead I found...
affection.
Quillibrace: Good satire generally possesses precisely that quality.
Otherwise it becomes complaint.
Stray: It laughs because people are extraordinary.
Not because they're ridiculous.
Quillibrace: Quite.
Ridiculousness is simply one of the ways in which extraordinariness becomes visible.
(They laugh.)
Blottisham: Then what have we learned?
(Quillibrace does not answer immediately.)
Quillibrace: That may be the wrong question.
Blottisham: Really?
Quillibrace: I think the manuscript would prefer another.
Stray: Which one?
Quillibrace: What conversations has it made possible that were previously unavailable?
(Silence.)
Stray: Including this one.
Quillibrace: Especially this one.
(The room becomes very still.)
Blottisham: I suppose...
that's what books are really for.
Quillibrace: The better ones, certainly.
They do not merely provide thoughts.
They alter the thoughts people become capable of having together.
(No one speaks for a while.)
Stray: Shall we return the manuscript to the Library?
Quillibrace: Certainly not.
Someone else may wish to begin arguing with it.
The manuscript remained on the table.
By the end of term it had accumulated seventeen pencilled annotations, three pressed leaves, two contradictory bookmarks, an unexplained coffee stain, and what appeared to be the beginning of an entirely different conversation.
No catalogue entry was ever created.
Nevertheless, it became part of the College.
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