“Well, I don’t know what my family would think of my being involved in such things, Roger.”

“Poh! Look at what they have been up to! Now that the Apocalypse has failed to occur, Daniel, you must find something to do with your several talents.”

“I suppose the least I could to is keep you from blowing yourself to pieces.”

“I can hide nothing from you, Daniel. Yes. You have divined it. That evening in the laboratory, I was making powder for theatrickal squibs. When you grind it finer, you see, it burns faster-more flash, more bang.”

“I noticed,” Daniel said. Which made Roger laugh; which made Daniel feel happy. And so into a sort of spiral they went. “I’ve an appointment to meet Dr. Leibniz at a coffee-house in the theatre district later… so why don’t we walk in that direction now?” Daniel said.

“PERHAPS YOU MIGHT HAVE STUMBLEDacross my recent monograph, On the Incarnation of God…”

“Oldenburg mentioned it,” Daniel said, “but I must confess that I have never attempted to read it.”

“During our last conversation, we spoke of the difficulty of reconciling a mechanical philosophy with free will. This problem has any number of resonances with the theological question of incarnation.”

“In that both have to do with spiritual essences being infused into bodies that are in essence mechanical,” Daniel said agreeably. All around them, fops and theatre-goers were edging away towards other tables, leaving Leibniz and Waterhouse with a pleasant clear space in the midst of what was otherwise a crowded coffee-house.

“The problem of the Trinity is the mysterious union of the divine and human natures of Christ. Likewise, when we debate whether a mechanism-such as a fly drawn to the smell of meat, or a trap, or an arithmetickal engine-is thinking by itself, or merely displaying the ingenuity of its creator, we are asking whether or not those engines have, in some sense, been imbued with an incorporeal principle or, vulgarly, spirit that, like God or an angel, possesses free will.”

“Again, I hear an echo of the Scholastics in your words-”

“But Mr. Waterhouse, you are making the common mistake of thinking that we must have Aristotle or Descartes-that the two philosophies are irreconcilable. On the contrary! We may accept modern, mechanistic explanations in physics, while retaining Aristotle’s concept of self-sufficiency.”

“Forgive me for being skeptical of that-”

“It is your responsibility to be skeptical, Mr. Waterhouse, no forgiveness is needed. The details of how these two concepts may be reconciled are somewhat lengthy-suffice it to say that I have found a way to do it, by assuming that every body contains an incorporeal principle, which I identify with cogitatio.”

“Thought.”

“Yes!”

“Where is this principle to be found? The Cartesians think it’s in the pineal gland-”

“It is not spread out through space in any such vulgar way-but the organization that it causes is distributed throughout the body-it informs the body-and we may know that it exists, by observing that information. What is the difference between a man who has just died, and one who is going to die in a few ticks of Mr. Hooke’s watch?”

“The Christian answer is that one has a soul, and the other does not.”

“And it is a fine answer-it needs only to be translated into a new Philosophical Language, as it were.”

“You would translate it, Doctor, by stating that the living body is informed by this organizing principle-which is the outward and visible sign that the mechanical body is, for the time being anyway, unified with an incorporeal principle called Thought.”

“That is correct. Do you recall our discussion of symbols? You admitted that your mind cannot manipulate a spoon directly-instead it must manipulate a symbol of the spoon, inside the mind. God could manipulate the spoon directly, and we would name it a miracle. But created minds cannot-they need a passive element through which to act.”

“The body.”

“Yes.”

“But you say that Cogitatio and Computation are the same, Doctor-in the Philosophical Language, a single word would suffice for both.”

“I have concluded that they are one and the same.”

“But your Engine does computation. And so I am compelled to ask, at what point does it become imbued with the incorporeal principle of Thought? You say that Cogitatio informs the body, and somehow organizes it into a mechanical system that is capable of acting. I will accept that for now. But with the Arithmetickal Engine, you are working backwards-constructing a mechanical system in the hopes that it will become impregnated from above-as the Holy Virgin. When does the Annunciation occur-at the moment you put the last gear into place? When you turn the crank?”

“You are too literal-minded,” Leibniz said.

“But you have told me that you see no conflict between the notion that the mind is a mechanickal device, and a belief in free will. If that is the case, then there must be some point at which your Arithmetickal Engine will cease to be a collection of gears, and become the body into which some angelic mind has become incarnated.”

“It is a false dichotomy!” Leibniz protested. “An incorporeal principle alone would not give us free will. If we accept-as we must-that God is omniscient, and has foreknowledge of all events that will occur in the future, then He knows what we will do before we do it, and so-even if we be angels-we cannot be said to have free will.”

“That’s what I was always taught in church. So the prospects for your philosophy seem dismal, Doctor-free will seems untenable both on grounds of theology and of Natural Philosophy.”

“So you say, Mr. Waterhouse-and yet you agree with Hooke that there is a mysterious consonance between the behavior of Nature, and the workings of the human mind. Why should that be?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, Doctor. Unless, as the Alchemists have it, all matter-Nature and our brains together-are suffused by the same Philosophick Mercury.”

“A hypothesis neither one of us loves.”

“What is your hypothesis, Doctor?”

“Like two arms of a snowflake, Mind and Matter grew out of a common center-and even though they grew independently and without communicating-each developing according to its own internal rules-nevertheless they grew in perfect harmony, and share the same shape and structure.”

“It is rather Metaphysickal,” was all Daniel could come back with. “What’s the common center? God?”

“God arranged things from the beginning so that Mind could understand Nature. But He did not do this by continual meddling in the development of Mind, and the unfolding of the Universe… rather He fashioned the nature of both Mind and Nature to be harmonious from the beginning.”

“So, I have complete freedom of action… but God knows in advance what I will do, because it is my nature to act in harmony with the world, and God partakes of that harmony.”

“Yes.”

“It is odd that we should be having this conversation, Doctor, because during the last few days, for the first time in my life, I have felt as if certain possibilities have been set before me, which I may reach out and grasp if I so choose.”

“You sound like a man who has found a patron.”

The notion of Roger Comstock as patron made Daniel’s gorge rise a bit. But he could not deny Leibniz’s insight. “Perhaps.”

“I am pleased, for your sake. The death of my patron has left me with very few choices.”

“There must be some nobleman in Paris who appreciates you, Doctor.”

“I was thinking rather of going to Leiden to stay with Spinoza.”

“But Holland is soon to be overrun… you could not pick a worse place to be.”

“The Dutch Republic has enough shipping to carry two hundred thousand persons out of Europe, and around the Cape of Good Hope to the furthermost islands of Asia, far out of reach of France.”