Daniel now stepped over and gave her a hand up. “I do not concern myself so much,” said Caroline, turning toward Leibniz and Newton, “with bankers, merchants, clock-makers, or Longitude-finders, and their roles in the creation of this System. Or even with Astronomers and Alchemists. But I am terribly concerned with my Philosophers, for if they get it wrong, then the System is flawed, and shall burn, in the end. Stop your bickering and get to work.”

“As it pleases your highness,” said Sir Isaac. “What would you have us work on?”

“Baron von Leibniz may be on to something,” said Caroline, “which is that, though you, and most other Fellows of the Royal Society, are true Christians, and believers in Free Will, the very doctrines and methods that the Royal Society has promulgated have caused many to question the existence of God, the divinity of Christ, the authority of the Church, the premise that we have souls endowed with Free Will. Why, Dr. Waterhouse himself has lately given me the lamentable news that he has quite abandoned all such doctrines.”

This earned Daniel perturbed and puzzled looks from Newton and Leibniz. All he could do, in the face of such disapproval from such minds, was make a frail smile and shrug. Caroline continued, “As so much of civilization is rooted in those beliefs, this strikes me as one way in which our System of the World might be set up wrongly and thus self-doomed. Neither you, Sir Isaac, nor you, Baron von Leibniz, sees the slightest contradiction between your Faith and the true and fearless pursuit of Natural Philosophy. But you differ radically in how you reconcile the one with the other. If you two cannot manage it, no one can; and so I would like for you to work on that, if you please.”

“Your royal highness’s discourse concerning the System of the World, and the threat of its running awry at some future time, puts me in mind of a thing I do not understand in the philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton,” Leibniz began. “Sir Isaac describes that System by which the heavenly bodies are kept in their gyres, and made to orbit round and round forever. Fine. But he seems to say that God, who created this system and set it in motion, must from time to time reach in and tinker with it, as a horologist adjusts the workings of his clock. As if God lacked the foresight, or the power, to make it a perpetual motion.”

“You are over-reacting to a passage from my Opticks that is really not all that important,” Isaac began.

“On the contrary, sir, it is very important indeed, if it is wrong, and puts wrong ideas in people’s heads!”

“Then as you are at such pains to correct my errors, Herr Leibniz, let me return the favor in kind. This similitude, likening the universe to a clock, and God to a horologist, is faulty. A horologist is presented with certain laws or facts of nature, viz. that weights descend towards the center of the earth and springs push back when deflected. Taking these as givens, he hacks away at his bench to produce some mechanism that exploits these properties in a more or less ingenious way. Ones who are more ingenious, make clocks that require adjustment less often, and one who was perfect would, I suppose, make one that would never need it at all. But God does not merely compose the objects and forces that were given to Him, but is Himself the Author of those objects and forces. Author, and preserver. Nothing happens in this world without His government and His inspection. Think of Him not as a watch-maker but as a King. Suppose there were a Kingdom where all things ran forever in an orderly and regular way without the King ever having to attend, make judgments, or exercise his powers. If it were, in sum, so ordered that the King could be removed from it without any diminution, then he would be a King only in name, and not deserving of the respect and loyalty of his subjects.”

“Like the God of Spinoza,” said Caroline, “if I am following your similitude correctly.”

“Indeed, highness. And so if Baron von Leibniz is of the view that the world can go on forever without the continual inspection and governance of God, why, then, I say that it is his philosophy that shall incline men towards Atheism.”

“That is not my view, as I think you know,” said Leibniz equably. “I believe that God takes part in the world’s workings at every moment-but not in the sense of mending it when it has gone awry. To say otherwise is to say God makes mistakes, and changes His mind. Instead of which I believe in a pre-established harmony, reflecting that God has foreseen all, and provided for it.”

To which Sir Isaac was about to make some rejoinder when he was interrupted by Daniel. “This, I believe, is the least interesting topic that the two of you could debate. It is really an argument about the signification of certain words, and the applicability of certain metaphors: the clock-maker, the King, et cetera.”

Both Leibniz and Newton were pressing their lips together to keep all of their objections and rejoinders from bursting forth in a Pandoran onslaught. Rather than see the rest of the day devoted to the aftermath, Daniel turned to Princess Caroline and continued, without letup: “Or to put it another way: your royal highness, are you willing to stipulate that Sir Isaac and Baron von Leibniz both believe in a God who is aware of and active in the Universe? And that this God, in framing the Universe, was not chargeable of any errors?”

“Indeed, Dr. Waterhouse, it is plain to see that both of them believe as much-though I wish you would believe it, too.”

“I am not really a participant, highness, so let us leave my views out of the reckoning.”

“On the contrary, Dr. Waterhouse,” said the Princess, “every philosophical dialogue I have ever read, requires one interlocutor who is of a Skeptickal habit of mind-”

“Or of a Stupid,” Daniel put in.

“Be he Skeptickal, Stupid, or both, the others try to win him over to their view of things.” Caroline had suddenly gone all flushed and girlish, and looked to Newton and Leibniz for their support in the venture. Phant’sying she saw what she wanted, she turned back to the bemused Daniel, who was saying: “Am I to understand that the purpose of the discussion is now to subject me to a religious conversion?”

“You are the one who complained, a moment ago, of feeling Stupid,” said Caroline, a bit miffed. “So listen, and be enlightened.”

“I am yours to command, highness, and ready for Enlightenment. But I’d have you know that my Stupidity and my Skepticism are two sides of the same coin, and are of a very particular kind, which is carefully thought out. John Locke was of the same mind, and set it down in words better than I ever could. To go into it here would be half an hour’s digression; suffice it to say, that as a result of being near men like Newton and Leibniz, men like Locke and I are all too keenly aware of the limits of our own intellects, and the dullness of our own senses. And not only of ours but of most other people’s, too. And as a result of studying Natural Philosophy we have got glimmerings of the immensity and complexity of the Universe that were not available to anyone until of late, and are known only to a few now. The imbalance between the grand mysteries of the Universe as opposed to our own feeble faculties, leads us to set very modest expectations as to what we shall and shan’t be able to understand-and makes us passing suspicious of anyone who propounds dogma or seems to phant’sy he has got it all figured out. Having said which I must concede that if anyone can figure it all out, it would be these two; and so I’ll listen, provided they confine their discussion to topics that are interesting.”

“And what would you denominate interesting, Doctor Waterhouse?” asked the Princess.

“The two labyrinths.”

Caroline and Leibniz both smiled; Newton looked stormy. “I do not know what this is meant to signify.”