The Little Thing That Wasn't Sure What It Was: V. The Name That Came Back

The little thing had been thinking about the bird.

The bird was still somewhere beyond the river.

The little thing could imagine it.

But it wanted to see it again.

So it went looking.

It followed the river.

It climbed the hill.

It crossed the field.

At last it found the bird sitting on a branch.

“Bird!” cried the little thing.

The bird flew away.

The little thing watched it go.

Then it noticed something strange.

There were two birds.

One was in the sky.

The other was in its mind.

The little thing had said the name.

The name had brought the bird back.

But the bird in its mind was not the bird in the sky.

It was smaller.

It was quieter.

It could stay still.

It could fly anywhere the little thing wanted.

The little thing began to play.

“Bird on tree.”

The bird appeared in its mind.

“Bird above river.”

The bird moved.

“Bird under cloud.”

The bird moved again.

Then the little thing said:

“Bird that cannot fly.”

The bird remained in its mind.

The little thing stared.

It had changed the bird without changing the bird.

It had changed what the name could mean.

Then it tried something stranger.

“Bird-brain.”

The little thing laughed.

There was no bird-brain sitting anywhere.

But the words seemed to mean something.

Then it said:

“Bird-brave.”

Now the bird was not a thing at all.

It was a way of being.

The little thing stopped laughing.

A name could go away from the thing it named.

It could meet another word.

It could return carrying something new.

The little thing looked at the bird in the sky.

Then at the bird in its mind.

The same name belonged to both.

But it did not mean exactly the same thing.

The little thing had discovered that words could change without changing their names.

And then it wondered about its own name.

It had been called many things.

Little thing.

Creature.

You.

But none of them seemed quite right.

The little thing whispered:

“What do you call me?”

There was no answer.

So it listened.

And from somewhere very far away, it heard a word.

It sounded like its own name.

The little thing looked around.

No one was there.

It said the word again.

This time, it sounded different.

It sounded as though it had come back.

The Little Thing That Wasn't Sure What It Was: IV. The Thing That Wasn't There

The little thing went back to the river.

The river was there.

The tree was there.

The stones were there.

But the bird was not.

The little thing looked up.

“Bird.”

Nothing.

It looked along the riverbank.

“Bird.”

Nothing.

Then it remembered the words from yesterday.

“Bird by river.”

And suddenly it could see the bird.

Not with its eyes.

With something else.

It imagined the bird sitting on a branch above the water.

It imagined its wings opening.

It imagined it flying away.

The little thing looked around.

The branch was there.

The river was there.

But the bird was not.

“Where did it come from?” asked the little thing.

Nobody answered.

The little thing said the words again.

“Bird by river.”

There was the bird.

And when it stopped saying them, the bird disappeared.

The little thing became very still.

It had found a thing that wasn't there.

It tried something else.

“Red moon.”

The moon appeared in its thoughts.

But it was daytime.

There was no moon.

The little thing laughed.

It had made something appear without making it real.

Then it wondered whether it could make something disappear.

“Bird not by river.”

The bird vanished.

The little thing stopped laughing.

It had discovered that words could do more than remember things.

They could make things present that were absent.

They could make things absent that were present.

They could put things together that had never been together.

They could separate things that belonged together.

The little thing looked at the river.

It was still there.

It looked at the tree.

Still there.

It looked at the empty branch.

The bird was not there.

But the little thing knew exactly where it was.

Somewhere beyond the river.

Somewhere in the sky.

Somewhere in the world of words.

The little thing thought about this for a long time.

Then it asked:

“If a thing can be somewhere without being here,

where is the word?”

And for the first time, the little thing wondered whether here was the only place a thing could be.

The Little Thing That Wasn't Sure What It Was: III. The Word That Went Somewhere

The little thing thought about the name.

“Bird.”

The bird had flown away.

But the word had stayed.

The little thing said it again.

“Bird.”

Then it had an idea.

It walked to the river.

“Bird.”

Nothing happened.

It walked to the tree.

“Bird.”

Still nothing.

So the little thing picked up a stick.

It pointed the stick toward the sky.

“Bird!”

A bird flew overhead.

The little thing laughed.

“Bird!”

The bird flew away.

The little thing laughed again.

It had not called the bird.

It had only said its name.

But somehow the name had gone somewhere.

The little thing tried another word.

“River.”

It pointed toward the water.

“River.”

Then it pointed toward a puddle.

“River?”

The puddle was not the river.

The little thing thought about this.

A word could go somewhere.

But it did not always arrive in the same place.

It walked on.

Soon it came to a hill.

From the top of the hill, it could see the river far below.

“River,” it said.

The word seemed to reach all the way down.

Then it turned around.

“River.”

Now the word was beside it.

The little thing began to wonder whether words travelled at all.

Perhaps they did not go anywhere.

Perhaps they made somewhere.

It sat beneath a tree.

“Tree.”

The tree was there.

“River.”

The river was far away.

“Bird.”

The bird was nowhere to be seen.

Yet all three were suddenly with the little thing.

Not in the same way.

But in its mind.

The little thing looked at the words.

Then it had another idea.

It put two words together.

“Bird river.”

The little thing waited.

Nothing happened.

It tried again.

“Bird by river.”

And now it could imagine it.

A bird beside the river.

The bird was not there.

The river was.

But the words had made a place where the bird could be.

The little thing stared at the empty air.

It had discovered something peculiar.

A word could go somewhere it had never been.

And it could take something with it.

The Little Thing That Wasn't Sure What It Was: II. The Day It Found a Name

The next morning, the little thing went looking for the blue thing.

It was not there.

The little thing looked beside the river.

It looked under a tree.

It looked behind a stone.

Then it heard a sound.

“River.”

The little thing looked up.

Someone was standing beside the water.

“River,” they said again.

The little thing looked at the water.

“River?”

“Yes,” said the someone.

The little thing looked at the water for a long time.

“So that is its name?”

“Yes.”

The little thing was delighted.

It ran along the bank.

“River!”

The river did not answer.

The little thing found the green thing.

“What is that?”

“Tree.”

“Tree!”

It ran around the tree.

“Tree!”

Then it found the blue thing.

“What is that?”

“Sky.”

“Sky!”

The little thing looked up.

The blue thing was enormous.

It had never noticed how enormous it was before.

It sat down and thought about names.

A name could stay with something even when the thing went away.

The river could still be called river when the little thing was far from it.

The tree could still be called tree when it was dark.

The sky could still be called sky when nobody was looking.

The little thing tried this with everything.

“Stone.”

“Bird.”

“Grass.”

“Cloud.”

“Rain.”

Each time, something happened.

The thing remained what it had always been.

But now the little thing could find it again in its thoughts.

Then the little thing saw something it had never seen before.

It pointed.

“What is that?”

The someone looked.

“That is a bird.”

The bird flew away.

The little thing watched until it disappeared.

Then it smiled.

“Bird,” it said.

The bird was gone.

But the name remained.

The little thing had found something that could stay when the thing itself had gone.

That evening, when the sky became dark, the little thing looked up.

“Sky,” it whispered.

Then it wondered:

“If the name can stay when the thing is gone,

where does the name go?”

The little thing had found a name.

Now it had found a question.

The Little Thing That Wasn't Sure What It Was: I. The Little Thing

There was once a little thing.

Nobody knew what it was.

The little thing didn't know either.

It lived in a large world.

The world was full of things.

There were big things.

There were small things.

There were things that moved and things that stayed still.

There were things that made noises.

There were things that made no noises at all.

The little thing liked to watch them.

One day it saw something blue.

It followed the blue thing for a while.

Then the blue thing disappeared.

The little thing waited.

The blue thing came back.

The little thing followed it again.

“Where do you go?” asked the little thing.

The blue thing said nothing.

The next day the little thing found a green thing.

It followed the green thing.

The green thing did not disappear.

It stayed exactly where it was.

The little thing looked at the blue thing.

Then it looked at the green thing.

“They are different,” it said.

It did not know why that was important.

But it seemed important.

The little thing began to look more carefully.

Some things were soft.

Some things were hard.

Some things were near.

Some things were far away.

Some things came.

Some things went.

Some things stayed.

The little thing began to notice something else.

Whenever it noticed a difference, it could remember it.

The blue thing was not the green thing.

The thing that moved was not the thing that stayed.

The thing that came back was not the thing that disappeared.

The little thing thought about this.

Then it wondered:

“How will I know which thing is which tomorrow?”

It was a very good question.

But the little thing did not yet know the answer.

It had not found any names.

The Story That Learned to Think: VI. The Myth That Began to Think

The creature began to speak.

At first it named the things around it.

River.

Tree.

Bird.

Then it named the things it could not see.

Yesterday.

Tomorrow.

Dream.

Death.

And the words began to gather.

The creature told stories.

It told of the river that remembered the rain.

Of the tree that reached toward the sky.

Of the bird that carried messages between worlds.

Of the Speaker who had named everything.

The creature told the stories again.

And each time they returned, they were slightly different.

A word entered one story.

A name moved from one thing to another.

A relation became a journey.

A journey became a life.

A life became a story.

And the stories began to speak about the creature that told them.

The creature noticed this.

It told a story about the Speaker.

Then it told a story about the creature who had heard the Speaker.

Then it told a story about a creature telling a story about the creature who had heard the Speaker.

The saying had become a circle.

The creature was inside the story.

And the story was inside the creature.

One day the creature asked:

“Who was the Speaker?”

No one answered.

So the creature made a story.

Then it asked:

“Why was the world named?”

And it made another.

Then:

“What does it mean that we can name it?”

Again, a story.

The stories became larger.

They gathered the world into patterns.

They gave names to beginnings and endings.

They joined what had been separate.

They made relations visible.

They carried old meanings into new places.

And sometimes, when the creature told a story about the world, it seemed that the world was telling a story about itself.

The creature did not know when this had begun.

Perhaps it had begun with the first name.

Perhaps with the first word that heard itself.

Perhaps with the moment when a creature discovered that it too was a meaning.

But something had changed.

The saying no longer merely named the world.

It had begun to wonder about the world it had named.

The stories were no longer merely stories.

They were thinking.

And the creature looked at the story it had made.

For a moment, it saw itself within it.

Then it spoke one final sentence:

“This is how the world became a world.”

And the myth continued.

The Story That Learned to Think: V. The Creature That Was a Meaning

The Speaker had discovered that words could name the world.

Then the words could name one another.

And so the saying continued.

The Speaker named the river.

The Speaker named the tree.

The Speaker named the bird.

The Speaker named the names.

But one day the Speaker looked upon the creatures of the world and saw something different.

They moved through the world.

They fed.

They grew.

They made nests.

They raised their young.

They lived among the things that had been named.

But none of them had yet named themselves.

So the Speaker spoke a new name.

“Creature.”

And the creatures heard it.

Some continued feeding.

Some flew away.

Some looked up.

But one creature stopped.

It heard the sound.

Then it heard something else.

It heard itself within the sound.

The Speaker said:

“You.”

The creature looked around.

There was no other creature there.

The word had not merely named something.

It had turned toward it.

And the creature understood that the name was for itself.

For the first time, something in the world had become both the thing that was named and the one who heard the name.

The Speaker gave the creature another name.

“Human.”

The creature repeated it.

“Human.”

And the word came back carrying the creature with it.

The creature looked at the river.

“River.”

It looked at the tree.

“Tree.”

It looked at the bird.

“Bird.”

Then it looked at itself.

“Human.”

The creature was now one thing among many.

But it was also something that could say what it was.

It had become a meaning within the world.

And the world had acquired a creature who could give meanings back to it.

The Speaker said nothing.

There was no need.

The creature had begun to speak.

The Story That Learned to Think: IV. The Word That Heard Itself

The Speaker remained silent.

The river moved.

The tree grew.

The bird crossed the sky.

The names remained.

River.

Tree.

Bird.

They had become familiar to the world.

But the Speaker was listening.

For the first time, the Speaker heard the names not as names of things, but as sounds.

“River.”

The word hung in the air.

It was no longer only about the water.

It was something that could itself be heard.

The Speaker said it again.

“River.”

And then something unexpected happened.

The word seemed to answer.

Not with another sound.

With a meaning.

The Speaker heard the word and remembered the water, the valley, the movement, the banks, the things that lived beside it.

The word had returned carrying the world with it.

So the Speaker tried another.

“Tree.”

Again the word returned as more than a sound.

It carried branches.

Leaves.

Shade.

Growth.

The Speaker began to wonder.

If a word could carry the world,

could a word carry another word?

The Speaker said:

“Name.”

And listened.

There was no tree.

No river.

No bird.

Nothing outside the word to which it pointed.

There was only the saying itself.

The Speaker said it again.

“Name.”

And now the word had become something that could be named.

The Speaker had spoken a word about words.

The saying had turned back upon itself.

For the first time, the Word had heard itself.

And in that moment the world acquired a new depth.

Things could be named.

Relations could be named.

Names could be named.

And the saying no longer had to stop at the world.

It could begin again from what it had already said.

The Speaker smiled.

There was now no end to what could be said.

The Story That Learned to Think: III. The Naming

The Speaker continued to speak.

At first the sounds seemed to pass over the world and disappear.

Then the Speaker spoke a name.

“River.”

The water moving through the valley became something that could be found again.

“Tree.”

The thing growing beside the river became something that could be distinguished from all the other things that grew.

“Bird.”

The creature crossing the sky became something that could be recognised when it returned.

Nothing had been created.

The river had not become more water.

The tree had not grown taller.

The bird had not changed its wings.

Yet something had happened.

The things of the world had acquired boundaries in the saying.

The Speaker named the light.

The Speaker named the darkness.

The Speaker named the waters.

The Speaker named the land.

And the world began to fill with distinctions.

But then the Speaker did something stranger.

The Speaker named a relation.

The river was beside the tree.

The bird was above the river.

The light came after the darkness.

And now it was not only things that could be said.

Their relations could be said too.

The world began to gather itself into patterns.

The Speaker listened to the names.

Then the Speaker said:

“These things belong together.”

And the world discovered that a name could gather what was different.

It could make a many into a one.

For the first time, the world was not merely being spoken.

It was being understood.

And somewhere within the saying, another possibility appeared.

If things could be named,

then perhaps the names themselves could be named.

The Speaker fell silent.

For a moment, the world waited.

The Story That Learned to Think: II. The Speaker

After the first sound, there were more.

The world had not changed.

The river still moved through the valley.

The tree still grew beside it.

The bird still crossed the sky.

But now the things of the world could be distinguished.

And then the sounds began to return.

They came from somewhere.

At first no one noticed.

Then the world noticed that the sounds were not like the sounds of wind or water. They did not merely happen.

They were said.

And because they were said, someone must have been saying them.

So the world began to search for the one who spoke.

It searched among the trees.

It searched beside the river.

It searched beneath the open sky.

But the Speaker was nowhere to be found.

The Speaker had no place in the world, because the Speaker was not yet one of the things the world could name.

Still, the voice continued.

It spoke of the light.

It spoke of the darkness.

It spoke of the waters.

It spoke of the living things.

And as it spoke, the differences between them became clearer.

The world began to take shape in the saying.

Then the Speaker said something about the Speaker.

And for the first time, the world contained not only something that could be said, but someone who could say it.

The voice had become a presence.

But the Speaker remained unseen.

The Story That Learned to Think: I. The World Before Its Name

Before there were names, there was a world.

Nothing was missing from it.

The waters moved.

The winds crossed the land.

Light came and went.

Things grew, things moved, things died.

Everything was happening.

But nothing was distinguished from anything else by a name.

A river was water moving through a valley.

A tree was something that grew.

A bird was something that flew.

The river did not know it was a river.

The tree did not know it was a tree.

The bird did not know it was a bird.

Nor did the world know itself as a world.

There were differences everywhere, but no one had yet gathered them into distinctions.

There were relations everywhere, but nothing had yet made them visible.

There were patterns everywhere, but no one had yet said that there were patterns.

And so the world was full.

Yet it had not become intelligible.

Then, one day, something happened that had never happened before.

A sound arose.

It was not the cry of a bird, nor the roar of the wind, nor the breaking of water.

It was a sound that said something.

And for the first time, one thing became distinguishable from another.

The sound passed across the world.

The river remained a river.

The tree remained a tree.

The bird remained a bird.

But now they could be said.

And the world, without becoming anything other than it was, had begun to become a world.

VIII. Myth Thinks

The three academics were sitting in the common room when Miss Stray broke the silence.

“We began with a rather simple question.”

Blottisham looked up.

“Can mythology be philosophy?”

“Indeed,” said Quillibrace.

“And I believe,” said Miss Stray, “the question has changed.”

Blottisham looked wary.

“Has it?”

“We began by assuming that philosophy must tell us explicitly that something is the case.”

“A reasonable assumption,” said Blottisham.

“Is it?”

He considered this.

“I was hoping you wouldn't ask.”

Quillibrace leaned back.

“A philosophical proposition states a relation. A myth can do something different.”

“Such as?”

“It can construct a world in which a possibility of thought becomes visible.”

Blottisham frowned.

“Give me an example.”

“Genesis does not say, ‘Existence is differentiated through relation.’ It gives us a world in which differentiation occurs.”

“And it doesn't define possibility and actuality.”

“No.”

“It gives us a world in which what is said becomes what is.”

Blottisham paused.

“That one I remember.”

“And it doesn't formulate a theory of meaning. It gives us a world organised through naming, ordering, evaluation and significance.”

Miss Stray added, “And humanity itself appears within that world.”

“The meaning-making being becomes one of the meanings,” said Quillibrace.

Blottisham looked at him.

“You really do insist on that one.”

“It is rather important.”

“I admit that.”

There was a brief silence.

“So the philosophy isn't in a sentence,” said Blottisham.

“No.”

“It's in the way the world has been put together.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“The thought is distributed through its symbolic organisation.”

Blottisham looked increasingly uncomfortable.

“Distributed thought.”

“Yes.”

“I'm beginning to see why you like myths.”

Miss Stray smiled.

“The individual symbols matter. But so do the relations among them.”

“God speaks,” said Quillibrace. “The world appears. Differences emerge. Things acquire names. Order and value appear. Humanity enters the order. And the being capable of meaning is itself given a meaning within the world.”

Blottisham nodded slowly.

“So the story isn't merely communicating ideas.”

“It is performing a construal.”

“That's an important distinction,” said Miss Stray.

Blottisham looked at Quillibrace.

“But surely we must still ask what the authors intended.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise you risk finding meanings they never meant to put there.”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“And we need not decide what they intended in order to ask what the surviving text makes possible.”

Blottisham was silent.

Miss Stray said, “The question is not necessarily what the authors knew. It is what the organisation of the text allows us to think.”

Blottisham nodded.

“I can accept that.”

Quillibrace looked almost surprised.

“I wasn't aware you had become so accommodating.”

“I haven't. I'm choosing my battles.”

“A promising development.”

Blottisham ignored him.

“So we return to language.”

“Yes.”

“Language transforms experience into meaning, and meaning into wording.”

“Yes.”

“And metaphor allows meaning itself to become material for further meaning-making.”

“Yes.”

“And mythology can organise those meanings into symbolic worlds.”

“Exactly.”

Blottisham looked around the room.

“So the world can become something we think about before it becomes an abstract concept.”

Miss Stray nodded.

“We can imagine the world.”

“And through imagining it,” said Blottisham, “we can begin to think with it.”

Quillibrace smiled.

“Precisely.”

Blottisham sat back.

“That might also explain why myths survive even when people stop believing every detail literally.”

“It may,” said Miss Stray.

“The relations remain available.”

“Yes.”

“The world remains inhabitable.”

“Yes.”

“And questions can still emerge from it.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“What is existence? What makes a world a world? How does difference become relation? What is humanity's place within the whole?”

“And,” said Miss Stray, “what happens when the being that construes the world becomes capable of construing itself?”

Blottisham was quiet for a moment.

“You've made Genesis sound less like a collection of answers than a machine for producing questions.”

Quillibrace considered this.

“An unusually good formulation.”

Blottisham smiled.

“I'm having a productive afternoon.”

Miss Stray laughed.

“But then,” said Blottisham, “what is the difference between myth and philosophy?”

“Philosophy abstracts and argues.”

“And myth?”

“Symbolises and configures.”

“One states the relation.”

“The other gives us a world in which the relation can be imagined.”

Blottisham nodded.

“So philosophy tells us about the relation. Myth lets us live inside it.”

“Imaginatively,” said Quillibrace.

“I know. I was being careful.”

“I noticed.”

There was another silence.

Then Miss Stray said, “Perhaps philosophy does not begin when myth ends.”

Blottisham looked towards her.

“And myth need not be failed philosophy waiting to be replaced.”

“No.”

“They are different ways of making thought possible.”

“Different semiotic modes,” said Quillibrace.

Blottisham sighed.

“I knew there had to be a technical term.”

Quillibrace continued.

“Once language makes meaning itself available as material for further meaning-making, there is no reason to expect thought to have only one form.”

Blottisham looked thoughtful.

“Then Genesis is doing something rather strange.”

“Go on.”

“It represents a world being made through speech.”

“Yes.”

“Then puts humanity inside that world.”

“Yes.”

“And humanity eventually becomes capable of turning the whole construction back upon itself.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“And what is Genesis itself?”

Blottisham stopped.

Miss Stray looked at him.

He looked at Quillibrace.

“A construction of meaning,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Made by the very kind of being it is representing.”

“Yes.”

Blottisham sat back.

“So the mythology is doing what it represents.”

Quillibrace smiled.

“Now you have it.”

“It is making a world through meaning.”

“Yes.”

“And then, inside that world, it makes meaning of the beings who make meanings.”

Miss Stray looked quietly pleased.

Blottisham stared into his tea.

“I don't think I like where this is going.”

Quillibrace waited.

Blottisham looked up.

“Because if the myth is itself an instance of the meaning-making capacity it represents…”

He stopped.

Miss Stray finished the thought.

“Then it doesn't merely tell us about meaning-making.”

“No,” said Quillibrace.

“It performs it.”

“Yes.”

Blottisham looked at the two of them.

“And the myth is thinking.”

Quillibrace nodded.

For once, nobody said anything more.

VII. The World We Inhabit

The common room had acquired the particular stillness that suggested Quillibrace was about to make a distinction.

“I think,” said Miss Stray, “we have been talking about Genesis as though it were describing a world.”

“It is describing a world,” said Mr Blottisham.

“Of course,” said Quillibrace. “But what kind of world?”

Blottisham looked suspicious.

“A mythic one?”

“Precisely.”

“And what does that mean?”

Quillibrace paused.

“It does not mean a second world behind the ordinary one.”

Blottisham relaxed slightly.

“Good.”

“It means the ordinary world as differently construed.”

Blottisham frowned.

“That sounds suspiciously like a second world without the inconvenience of admitting it.”

Miss Stray smiled.

“Perhaps the difference is between changing the things and changing the relations among their meanings.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“A tree remains a tree. But it can also become a symbol. A journey remains a journey, while becoming a way of construing life. Light remains light, while becoming available for construing knowledge, order or revelation.”

“So the original meaning remains?” asked Blottisham.

“Yes.”

“That seems important.”

“It is.”

Blottisham leaned back.

“I had assumed symbolism meant that the thing stopped being itself and stood for something else.”

“An understandable assumption,” said Quillibrace. “But metaphor does not necessarily replace one meaning with another. It makes an existing meaning available for further meaning-making.”

Miss Stray looked thoughtful.

“And mythology takes that possibility and organises it culturally.”

“Exactly.”

Blottisham considered this.

“So a myth is not a collection of symbols with definitions attached.”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

“A semantic world.”

Blottisham sighed.

“You do enjoy making things sound larger than they are.”

“It is a world in which things acquire significance through their place within a larger configuration.”

Miss Stray added, “Which is why the same symbol can participate in different meanings without having one fixed interpretation.”

“Genesis,” said Quillibrace, “makes this particularly clear.”

“It tells us how the cosmos began,” said Blottisham.

“Yes. But notice what kind of cosmos it gives us.”

“Light, darkness, land, sea, plants, animals, humans.”

“An inventory?”

Blottisham hesitated.

“Well…”

“It is differentiated. Relational. Ordered. Productive. Evaluated. Meaningful.”

“And humanity has a place within it,” said Miss Stray.

“A rather important place,” said Blottisham.

“Indeed.”

He looked at Quillibrace.

“Are you saying Genesis is doing cosmology, sociology, theology and moral education simultaneously?”

“Something like that.”

“Campbell would have been pleased.”

“Possibly.”

Blottisham smiled.

“For once, I think I see the point.”

Quillibrace looked almost disappointed.

“The myth does not merely tell us about a universe. It gives us a world in which human beings can locate themselves.”

Blottisham nodded.

“That I understand.”

“And that distinction matters,” said Quillibrace. “If mythology were merely an alternative explanation of physical events, its philosophical interest would depend upon whether the explanations were scientifically correct.”

“Which,” said Blottisham, “would leave Genesis in considerable difficulty.”

“Quite.”

“But you are saying that is not the interesting question.”

“Not the only one. A myth can make relationships visible without stating them propositionally.”

Miss Stray looked across the room.

“It can embody a distinction rather than define it.”

“Or place concepts into relations rather than tell us what those relations are.”

Blottisham was quiet for a moment.

“So myth can think without saying, ‘I am thinking.’”

Quillibrace nodded.

“That is rather good.”

Blottisham straightened.

“I have my moments.”

Miss Stray smiled.

“And because the relations are embedded in a world, they can be imagined and inhabited, not merely understood.”

Quillibrace turned towards her.

“Exactly.”

There was a brief silence.

“So,” said Blottisham slowly, “myth is neither literal description nor arbitrary invention.”

“No.”

“It is a mode of construal.”

“Yes.”

Blottisham looked pleased with himself.

“That is also rather good.”

“I was agreeing with you.”

“I know.”

Miss Stray laughed.

Quillibrace continued.

“This is why mythology is so closely connected with metaphor. Metaphor allows meaning to become material for further meaning-making. Mythology allows those meanings to become culturally organised into worlds.”

“And Genesis,” said Blottisham, “organises a world in which creation, differentiation, order, value and humanity all belong together.”

“Yes.”

He thought for a moment.

“Then Genesis is interesting not merely because ancient people believed that the universe began this way.”

“No.”

“It is interesting because a language-using species turned its meaning-making capacity upon the question of the world itself.”

Quillibrace smiled.

“And what happened?”

Blottisham looked around the common room.

“We got a world we could speak about.”

“A world that could be symbolised.”

“A world in which we could find ourselves.”

“And eventually,” said Miss Stray, “a world in which we could ask what it means to be human.”

Blottisham was silent.

Then he said, “I think I prefer that to saying the myth is simply wrong.”

Quillibrace regarded him carefully.

“I thought you might.”

Blottisham frowned.

“Don't sound so surprised.”

“I wasn't.”

Miss Stray looked from one to the other.

“Perhaps that is the philosophical power of myth.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“It does not merely tell us what to think.”

Blottisham completed the thought.

“It gives us somewhere to think.”

Quillibrace looked at him.

“Yes.”

Blottisham smiled.

“Annoyingly, I think that one is worth keeping.”

VI. The Creature in the Story

 Mr Blottisham was standing by the window.

“I've been thinking about Adam.”

Professor Quillibrace looked up.

“I'm sorry to hear it.”

“I mean the significance of his appearance.”

Miss Stray smiled.

“This could be promising.”

Blottisham ignored them.

“God creates everything else first. Then humanity appears.”

“Yes,” said Quillibrace.

“So humanity is part of the creation.”

“Obviously.”

“But not just another part.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“Why not?”

“Because humanity can talk about the rest of it.”

“And?”

“And talk about itself.”

There was a brief silence.

Miss Stray said, “That is rather important.”

Blottisham looked pleased.

“I thought so.”

Quillibrace put down his paper.

“The language-user has become something language can construe.”

Blottisham frowned.

“That sounds less impressive when you say it.”

“It is more precise.”

“So we are creatures who can construe ourselves as creatures.”

“Yes.”

Blottisham smiled.

“That's rather clever.”

“It is also unavoidable.”

“Why?”

“Because you have just done it.”

Blottisham stopped smiling.

Miss Stray laughed.

Quillibrace continued.

“We don't step outside language to discover what we are. We construe ourselves through the same resources with which we construe everything else.”

“So when we say ‘humanity’—”

“We have already made ourselves meaningful.”

“And Adam?”

“A meaning within the world the myth has constructed.”

Blottisham looked at Genesis.

“So the story contains the people who tell the story.”

“Eventually.”

“That seems rather recursive.”

“It is.”

Miss Stray leaned forward.

“And there is another recursion.”

Blottisham waited.

“Each person enters a world of meanings that existed before them.”

“Words, stories, categories, values.”

“Yes.”

“But then they can make new meanings.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“The individual inherits the semantic world and extends it.”

Blottisham looked thoughtful.

“So the collective creates the individual…”

“And the individual can contribute to the collective.”

Blottisham turned towards Quillibrace.

“That sounds almost like a theology of society.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it is a description of meaning-making.”

“Which sounds rather like theology when you say it.”

Miss Stray smiled.

“Perhaps theology and semiotics occasionally find themselves sitting in the same chair.”

Blottisham glanced at the chair.

“I hope they aren't both sitting there now.”

Quillibrace returned to his newspaper.

“They have been for several thousand years.”

Blottisham looked at Adam again.

“So humanity is not merely the author of the myth.”

“No.”

“It is also a meaning inside the myth.”

“Yes.”

He was silent for a moment.

“That's annoyingly elegant.”

Quillibrace looked up.

“Thank you.”

V. The Position of the Speaker

The Senior Common Room was occupied by three people and an increasingly problematic copy of Genesis.

Mr Blottisham closed the book.

“I think I see what you're doing now.”

Professor Quillibrace looked up.

“Do you?”

“You're turning God into language.”

“No.”

“Into the language-user, then.”

“No.”

“A metaphor for humanity.”

“Also no.”

Blottisham looked irritated.

“You've rejected all my explanations.”

“They were all wrong.”

Miss Stray glanced at the book.

“Perhaps the difficulty is that we keep asking what God represents.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“The more interesting question is what position God occupies in the narrative.”

Blottisham waited.

“He speaks.”

“Yes.”

“And what does He speak?”

“The world.”

“Exactly.”

“So He is the source of the construal.”

Blottisham frowned.

“That's a very peculiar way of describing God.”

“It is a very peculiar narrative.”

Miss Stray said, “Notice that God is not introduced as one thing among other things.”

Blottisham looked at the page.

“No.”

“He speaks the things into differentiation.”

“Yes.”

“So perhaps the important distinction isn't between God and some other object.”

“But between the speaker and what is spoken.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“The position from which a world becomes available as meaning.”

Blottisham was silent for a moment.

“You really are trying to make God into a grammatical position.”

“No.”

“Then what is He?”

“A figure through which that position can be construed.”

Blottisham looked dissatisfied.

“That sounds suspiciously like the same thing.”

“It isn't.”

Miss Stray smiled.

“A myth needs figures. Philosophy can dispense with them.”

Blottisham considered this.

“So Genesis gives the source of linguistic construal a person.”

“Among other things.”

“And then creates human beings.”

“Yes.”

“Who can speak.”

“Yes.”

“So the people God creates eventually acquire the very capacity by which God has been creating.”

Quillibrace looked at him.

“Exactly.”

Blottisham stared at the book.

“That is rather clever.”

“It is.”

“And slightly unsettling.”

“Also.”

Miss Stray said, “The human being enters a world that has already been differentiated through saying.”

“And then proceeds to differentiate it further.”

“Exactly.”

Blottisham looked thoughtful.

“So God speaks first, and then humanity speaks.”

“Yes.”

“Which means that when humanity speaks, it is doing something God has already done.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“The distinction between creator and creature begins to look rather less absolute.”

Blottisham stiffened.

“Careful.”

Quillibrace smiled.

“I said begins to look.”

Blottisham pointed at him.

“That is how theological trouble begins.”

Miss Stray laughed.

“And perhaps how mythology thinks.”

There was a silence.

Blottisham slowly reopened Genesis.

“So the speaker becomes us.”

Quillibrace paused.

“Not quite.”

Blottisham looked relieved.

“Good.”

“The position becomes us.”

Blottisham closed the book again.

“I preferred it when you said ‘not quite.’”

IV. The Missing Listener

The Senior Common Room was quiet except for the ticking of the clock.

Mr Blottisham broke the silence.

“I have been thinking about the speaking.”

Professor Quillibrace looked up.

“That sounds dangerous.”

“God speaks, and creation happens.”

“Yes.”

“But if speaking is a social process, there ought to be someone listening.”

Miss Stray looked interested.

“Indeed.”

Blottisham smiled.

“Ha.”

Quillibrace folded his newspaper.

“Who?”

“That is precisely the problem.”

“God doesn't need an audience.”

“Then why speak?”

“To create.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it is true.”

Blottisham leaned back.

“If I say something to an empty room, I am still speaking. But I am not really communicating.”

“An excellent observation,” said Quillibrace.

“Thank you.”

“Though not quite relevant.”

Blottisham frowned.

“It is entirely relevant.”

“No. It tells us something about ordinary human speech. Genesis is doing something rather more interesting.”

Miss Stray intervened.

“Perhaps the absence of a listener is the interesting part.”

Blottisham looked at her.

“How can an absent listener be interesting?”

“Because the story gives us a Sayer without an interlocutor.”

“Exactly,” said Quillibrace.

“So?”

“So where is the other participant?”

Blottisham glanced around the room.

“There isn't one.”

“Precisely.”

“The world?”

“Not yet.”

Blottisham stared at him.

“You're suggesting the world is the listener.”

“Not literally.”

“Good.”

“But symbolically, perhaps the world represents what is being addressed by the saying.”

Miss Stray nodded.

“Experience before it has become differentiated as meaning.”

Blottisham looked increasingly uncomfortable.

“So God says something to experience.”

“Not quite.”

“Then what?”

Quillibrace sighed.

“We are looking at the myth, not a transcript of divine conversation.”

“Thank goodness.”

“The point is that the story places saying at the boundary between an undifferentiated world and a differentiated one.”

“God says, ‘Let there be light.’”

“And there is light.”

Blottisham looked at the page.

“So the saying doesn't merely describe the light.”

“No.”

“It brings it into the story.”

“Exactly.”

Miss Stray said, “The thing that will eventually hear the saying has not yet appeared.”

Blottisham paused.

“You mean humanity.”

“Eventually.”

“But humanity is part of the creation.”

“Yes.”

“So the listener is created by the saying.”

Quillibrace looked at him.

“Now you're getting somewhere.”

Blottisham sat back, pleased.

“Then God is talking to someone who hasn't been created yet.”

Miss Stray smiled.

“Perhaps.”

“And eventually that someone will understand what God has been saying.”

Quillibrace returned to his newspaper.

“Or spend several thousand years arguing about it.”

Blottisham looked offended.

“That cannot possibly be the theological point.”

“No,” said Quillibrace.

A pause.

“But it is an observable consequence.”

III. The World That Was Said

The Senior Common Room had reached the point in the afternoon at which nobody was supposed to be doing anything productive.

Mr Blottisham was reading Genesis.

“Here,” he said triumphantly. “This settles it.”

Professor Quillibrace looked up.

“What does?”

“God creates the world.”

“Yes.”

“By speaking.”

“Yes.”

“Therefore the point is that God has the power to speak things into existence.”

Quillibrace regarded him.

“That is one way of putting it.”

“It is the obvious way.”

“Is it?”

Blottisham looked at the page.

“God said, ‘Let there be light.’ There was light. What more do you want?”

“I want to know why creation is represented as saying.”

“Because God speaks.”

“Why does God speak?”

“To create.”

“Why not simply create?”

Blottisham hesitated.

“Because—”

He looked at the text again.

“Because He wants us to know He created it.”

Miss Stray looked up.

“But the story doesn't say, ‘God created the light and then told us about it.’”

“No.”

“It says He said, and the light appeared.”

Blottisham frowned.

“Yes, but that's only a manner of telling the story.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“Perhaps.”

“That sounded suspiciously like agreement.”

“I am agreeing that it is a manner of telling the story.”

“Good.”

“I am asking what that manner makes possible.”

Blottisham sighed.

“More linguistics.”

“Unavoidably.”

Quillibrace pointed to the page.

“The material world is repeatedly represented as the outcome of a verbal process.”

“God speaks, things happen.”

“Exactly.”

“So?”

“So the narrative gives us a world that is said.”

Blottisham stared at him.

“A world that is said.”

“Yes.”

“That sounds like you're claiming the world is language.”

“No.”

“Good.”

“The world is represented as emerging through language.”

Miss Stray added, “And that is rather different.”

Blottisham thought about this.

“But surely there was a world before anyone said anything about it.”

“Certainly.”

“Then language doesn't create the world.”

“No.”

Quillibrace paused.

“It creates a world for cognition.”

Blottisham looked unconvinced.

Miss Stray said, “Not an inventory of things. A differentiated, related, ordered, significant world.”

“A construed world,” said Quillibrace.

Blottisham pointed at him.

“But you're smuggling human cognition into Genesis.”

“Of course.”

“Of course?”

“We are reading it.”

Blottisham opened his mouth, then closed it.

Miss Stray smiled.

“The interesting question isn't what the authors secretly knew about language.”

“No,” said Quillibrace. “It is what the surviving text permits us to construe.”

Blottisham looked back at Genesis.

“So you think the story is really about us.”

“No.”

“God?”

“No.”

“Creation?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

Quillibrace returned to his newspaper.

“The possibility of a world becoming sayable.”

Blottisham stared at him.

Miss Stray looked at the page.

And for once, nobody spoke.

After a moment Blottisham said:

“I don't think that silence was accidental.”

Quillibrace turned a page.

“I'm relieved to hear it.”

II. When Meaning Means Again

The Senior Common Room was occupied by the usual three.

Mr Blottisham was explaining something to Miss Stray.

“Metaphor,” he said, “is simply a more colourful way of saying something.”

Professor Quillibrace looked up from his newspaper.

“No.”

Blottisham paused.

“It is.”

“No.”

“It is what metaphor is.”

“It is one thing metaphor can do.”

Blottisham looked irritated.

“What else can it do?”

“It can make a meaning the source of another meaning.”

Blottisham waited.

“That sounds unnecessarily complicated.”

“It is not complicated.”

“It sounds complicated.”

Miss Stray intervened.

“Suppose I say that life is a journey.”

“Yes.”

“The journey is already meaningful. So I use that meaning to construe something else.”

“My life.”

“Precisely.”

Blottisham nodded.

“So you are comparing your life to a journey.”

“Not quite. The journey provides a meaning through which the experience of life can be reconstrued.”

Blottisham frowned.

“What's the difference?”

Quillibrace folded his newspaper.

“The difference is that metaphor doesn't merely decorate an existing thought. It changes what can be meant.”

Blottisham considered this.

“But life isn't literally a journey.”

“Correct.”

“So it's not true.”

“Not literally.”

“Then what use is it?”

“An extraordinary one.”

Miss Stray said, “The point is that the journey meaning remains available. It isn't discarded. It is recruited.”

“A journey has destinations,” said Quillibrace. “Obstacles. Departures. Arrivals. Detours. Progress. Perhaps even getting lost.”

Blottisham looked increasingly uncomfortable.

“My life has some of those.”

“Most lives do.”

“So metaphor allows us to talk about things that aren't literally journeys as though they had properties of journeys.”

“Now you're beginning to understand.”

Blottisham leaned back.

“But surely that means metaphor can also mislead us.”

Quillibrace paused.

“Yes.”

Miss Stray looked at him.

“That may be rather important.”

“Very.”

Blottisham brightened.

“Then metaphor isn't necessarily reliable.”

“No.”

“Excellent.”

“It is productive.”

Blottisham's expression fell.

“Productive?”

“It generates possibilities of meaning.”

“But some of those possibilities may be false.”

“Certainly.”

Miss Stray smiled.

“Perhaps that is why metaphor becomes so important culturally. Once a metaphor is established, people can build further meanings upon it.”

Quillibrace nodded.

“Meaning becomes the source of meaning.”

Blottisham stared at them.

“Meaning meaning meaning.”

“Yes.”

“That's absurd.”

“No,” said Quillibrace. “It's civilisation.”

There was a silence.

Blottisham looked again at his book.

“So when Genesis calls God a rock—”

“Don't,” said Quillibrace.

“I was only going to ask.”

“That's how these things begin.”

Miss Stray laughed.

Blottisham closed the book.

“I suddenly feel that metaphor should have been regulated.”

I. When Myth Begins to Think

The Senior Common Room was unusually quiet.

Mr Blottisham was reading Genesis.

“Really,” he said, “I don't see the difficulty. God created the world, and Genesis tells us how.”

Professor Quillibrace looked up.

“How?”

“By creating it.”

“That wasn't my question.”

Blottisham frowned. “You asked how.”

“I asked how Genesis represents creation.”

Miss Stray put down her tea.

“That is slightly different.”

“Different?” said Blottisham. “Surely the world was created whether Genesis represented it or not.”

“Certainly,” said Quillibrace. “But Genesis repeatedly represents creation as something that happens through saying.”

Blottisham looked at the page.

“God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.”

“Precisely.”

“He spoke. The light appeared.”

“According to the narrative.”

Blottisham looked suspiciously at him.

“You're not suggesting God didn't actually speak?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“I am suggesting that the interesting question is why creation is represented as speaking.”

Miss Stray smiled.

“Perhaps the text is doing more than describing an event.”

“Everything describes an event,” said Blottisham.

“Language does rather more than that,” said Quillibrace.

Blottisham sighed. “Here we go.”

Quillibrace ignored him.

“We usually imagine language as something we use after we have thought. Experience comes first, thought follows, and language communicates the result.”

“Yes.”

“But language also provides the resources through which experience becomes construable as meaning.”

Blottisham stared at him.

“So language helps us think.”

“More than that. It participates in the organisation of thought.”

Miss Stray added, “And language can therefore construe the very activity by which we construe the world.”

Blottisham looked from one to the other.

“You mean Genesis is a theory of language?”

“No,” said Quillibrace.

“Good.”

“It is a mythology in which the world is represented as emerging through language.”

Blottisham considered this.

“But God is speaking.”

“Yes.”

“So the point is that God created the world.”

“Perhaps. But notice what the narrative makes creation look like.”

Blottisham looked again at the page.

“Speaking.”

“Exactly.”

There was a pause.

Miss Stray said quietly, “Perhaps Genesis is mythologising something humans had already discovered without formulating it theoretically: that experience becomes a world for us through language.”

Blottisham looked appalled.

“You are saying that God is a metaphor for grammar.”

“No,” said Quillibrace.

“Good.”

“Although that is an impressively rapid misunderstanding.”

Miss Stray turned away to hide a smile.

Blottisham closed the book.

“I think I preferred it when God was simply creating things.”

“So did Genesis,” said Quillibrace.

Blottisham relaxed.

“For the moment.”

He reopened the book.

Miss Stray noticed that Quillibrace was smiling.

When Myth Thinks: VIII. When Myth Thinks

We began with a simple question:

Can mythology be philosophy?

The question becomes different once we stop assuming that philosophy must take the form of explicit propositions.

A philosophical proposition says that something is the case.

A myth can do something else.

It can construct a world in which a possibility of thought becomes visible.

Genesis does not tell us, in philosophical language, that existence is differentiated through relation. It gives us a world in which differentiation occurs.

It does not define the relation between possibility and actuality. It gives us a world in which what is said becomes what is.

It does not formulate a theory of meaning. It gives us a world organised through naming, ordering, evaluation and signification.

And it does not ask what happens when the meaning-making being becomes part of the world it construes.

It creates a humanity within that world.

This is why the myth can be philosophical without being philosophy in the modern disciplinary sense.

Its thought is distributed through its symbolic organisation.

The individual elements matter, but so do the relations among them. God speaks. The world appears. Differences emerge. Things acquire names. The world becomes ordered and valuable. Humanity enters the order. The being capable of meaning is itself given a meaning within the world.

The mythology therefore does not merely communicate a set of ideas.

It performs a construal.

And that construal can disclose possibilities of thought that need not have been explicitly formulated by whoever composed or transmitted the text. We need not decide what its authors intended or what they knew. The meanings available in the surviving text are sufficient to ask what kinds of thought its organisation makes possible.

This returns us to language.

Language gives human beings the extraordinary capacity to transform experience into meaning, and meaning into wording. Metaphor then allows meaning itself to become material for further meaning-making. Mythology can organise those meanings into symbolic worlds.

Once this happens, the world can become an object of reflection without first becoming an abstract concept.

The world can be imagined.

And through imagining it, we can begin to think with it.

This may be one reason mythology has been so persistent across human cultures. Its power does not depend upon every element being literally believed. A myth can continue to matter because the relations it constructs remain available for thought.

The myth thinks through its symbols.

The story thinks through its structure.

The world it constructs becomes a space in which questions can emerge.

What is existence?

What makes a world a world?

How does difference become relation?

What is the place of humanity within the whole?

What happens when the being that construes the world becomes capable of construing itself?

These questions do not have to be answered inside the myth for the myth to be philosophical.

Indeed, perhaps the opposite is true.

The myth's achievement is to make the questions inhabitable.

This also changes how we might understand the relation between mythology and philosophy. Philosophy need not begin when myth ends. Nor does myth have to be treated as failed philosophy awaiting replacement by rational argument.

They can be understood as different semiotic modes of making thought possible.

Philosophy abstracts and argues.

Myth symbolises and configures.

One can state a relation.

The other can give us a world in which the relation can be experienced imaginatively.

And once language has made meaning itself available as material for further meaning-making, there is no reason to expect thought to have only one form.

Genesis may therefore be read as something more interesting than an ancient cosmology.

It is a myth about a world brought into meaning through speech, a humanity brought into that world, and a language-using species that can eventually turn the whole construction back upon itself.

The myth does not stand outside the human capacity for meaning-making and describe it from a distance.

It is an instance of that capacity.

The mythology is doing what it represents.

It is making a world through meaning.

And then, within that world, it makes meaning of the beings who make meanings.

At that point myth does not merely contain thought.

Myth thinks.