The Good Apprentice

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘You love cooking,’ said Midge. ‘Oh dear, the cheese soufflé will be spoiling. Stuart will have to miss his drink.’

  ‘Drink? He doesn’t drink,’ said Harry. ‘He’s like a camel as far as serious liquid refreshment is concerned.’

  ‘I must go,’ said Willy.

  The door bell rang. Midge went.

  Willy turned to Thomas. He was red in the face, as if near to tears. Ursula came to him and took his arm. Willy said to Thomas, ‘How absolutely lovely Midge looks tonight.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomas, ‘she is so warm, a life-giver.’ Thomas sounded insincere, almost ironical, but one never knew with Thomas.

  Ursula led Willy to the door and out of the room. She returned. ‘I don’t know whether it was Midge or the whisky or the camel!’

  Stuart Cuno walked in.

  Stuart was as tall as Edward but more robustly made. He had a large pale face and pretty lips and blond hair, golden like his father’s used to be, but cut shorter. His eyes were a light amber brown, almost yellow, like the eyes of an animal. Someone had once likened Stuart to a plump white grub with a big head emerging from an apple, but the image was unjust. Stuart was physically abrupt, ungainly, not at home in space, but not unimpressive. Meredith followed him in.

  Stuart, ignoring his hosts, was saying to Meredith, ‘Yes, we’ll fix a day, now I’m settled in we can go running again.’ Stuart and Meredith had been fellow joggers for more than a year. Meredith nodded his head slowly and emphatically several times.

  Midge called them in to dinner.

  ‘So you think only religion will save us from the wrath to come?’ said Ursula to Stuart.

  Dinner was far advanced. Meredith had retired to bed. They were eating cheese. Edward, to whom everyone kept turning with kind bright attention, was mainly silent, but had been forced to make a few simple remarks.

  ‘It isn’t religion he’s got,’ said Harry. ‘You can’t have religion without God.’

  ‘But he said that nothing was more important than the future of religion on this planet.’

  ‘I think he should have a uniform,’ said Midge.

  ‘I suggest a sheet,’ said Harry.

  Stuart smiled.

  ‘You can tuck into the cheese,’ said Midge to Stuart. ‘I’m terribly sorry I forgot to make you a proper vegetarian dish.’

  ‘I’ve eaten plenty,’ said Stuart. It was true. He was always hungry. ‘The cabbage was marvellous,’ he added.

  ‘Edward, do have some cheese,’ said Midge, ‘it’s the kind you like.’

  ‘But what exactly is it you’re so afraid of?’ said Ursula. ‘Of course there’s nuclear warfare and atomic waste and all that, but you seem to be simply afraid of science.’

  ‘Doesn’t science prove free will nowadays?’ said Midge.

  ‘I think you hate science,’ said Ursula, ‘and that upsets me.’

  ‘But of course I’ve had no education,’ said Midge, ‘and I can’t understand these things.’

  ‘Don’t show off!’ said Harry.

  ‘You hate mathematics because that’s the future,’ said Ursula. ‘Actually the human race will be finished off by molecular biology, but we keep that dark.’

  ‘I’m tired of this century,’ said Harry. ‘I want to start living in the next one.’

  ‘Isn’t it true that science proves free will?’ said Midge to Thomas. ‘They used to think that everything was like a machine, and now they think it’s all random.’

  ‘I don’t think either of those ideas has anything to do with free will,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Personally I find the idea of the nuclear bomb attractive,’ said Harry. ‘Get rid of all that messy accumulated past, all those old ideas and things, shake up the collective psyche. Don’t you think, Thomas?’

  ‘I want to know what Stuart’s after,’ said Ursula. ‘You’re scared, there’s something you hate, and which is making you act in this funny way.’

  ‘Stuart thinks the world is the work of Satan,’ said Harry.

  ‘Help him, Thomas,’ said Midge. ‘Don’t just sit mum, you’re as bad as Edward.’

  Thomas said, ‘The devil made everything except one thing which he continually looks for but cannot find.’

  ‘Helpful old Jewish saying,’ said Ursula. ‘Well, the Greeks said God was always doing geometry, modern physicists say he’s playing roulette, everything depends on the observer, the universe is a totality of observations, it’s a work of art created by us — ’

  ‘Quantum physics is the language of nature,’ said Midge.

  ‘Who says so?’ said Thomas.

  ‘I do. I heard it on TV. And the subatomic world needs us to rescue it from chaos. It all sounds perfectly mad. No wonder there are terrorists. No wonder we need religion.’

  ‘If Newton hadn’t believed in God he would have discovered relativity,’ said Ursula.

  ‘There you are!’ said Harry.

  ‘A machine can be cleverer than a man now,’ said Midge.

  ‘And wiser and better,’ said Harry. ‘It stands to reason. The computer age is just beginning. Even now a machine can see infinitely more than we can, see it faster, discern more details, make more connections, correct itself, teach itself, learn new skills which we can’t even conceive of. A machine is objective It’s a matter of flesh and blood, it’s a matter of nerve cells, we are puny, we are imperfect, these things are gods. A computer could run a state better than a human being — ’

  ‘Aren’t we already run by computers,’ said Midge. ‘Isn’t there one at Downing Street which does the budget?’

  ‘They could help us to redesign ourselves, and we certainly need redesigning! They offer us a vision of the human mind, glorified, clarified and fortified, we can learn about ourselves by watching them, improve ourselves by imitating them — ’

  ‘Come on, Stuart,’ said Thomas.

  ‘A machine doesn’t think — ’ said Stuart. ‘A machine can’t even simulate the human mind.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Harry.

  ‘You mean it’s syntactical not semantical?’ said Ursula. ‘Isn’t that what they say now? Or that it has mind but not consciousness?’

  ‘Because we are always involved in distinguishing between good and evil.’

  ‘Surely not always,’ said Ursula, ‘not even often.’

  ‘Who is to judge the wisdom of a machine, another machine? Human minds are possessed by individual persons, they are soaked in values, even perception is evaluation.’

  ‘But isn’t serious thinking supposed to be neutral?’ said Ursula. ‘We get away from all that personal stuff.’

  ‘Serious thinking depends on the justice and truthfulness of the thinker, it depends on the continuous pressure of his mind upon — ’

  ‘That’s a different point,’ said Ursula, ‘the chap’s got to be OK, and of course discoveries can be used rightly or wrongly, but the thinking itself can be pure, without values, like genuine science, like maths, like — at any rate that’s the ideal and — ’

  ‘You can’t just switch it on,’ said Stuart, ‘as you say it’s an ideal, science is an ideal, and partly an illusion. Our trust in science as reason is something frail. Wittgenstein thought that the idea of a man on the moon was not only unreasonable, but forbidden by our whole system of physics!’

  ‘Stuart just despises empiricism,’ said Harry, ‘he’s opting for the life of the emotions.’

  ‘You mean there are wicked scientists?’ said Midge. ‘Or computers could go mad?’

  ‘Not just that,’ said Stuart. ‘It’s not just on the outside, about using discoveries, or as if a man just had to be serious and could then switch to being neutral. Being objective is being truthful, making right judgments is a moral activity, all thinking is a function of morality, it’s done by humans, it’s touched by values right into its centre, empirical science is no exception — ’

  ‘All right then,’ said Ursula, ‘but there is an exception and it’s mathematics, and that’s why you’r
e giving it up! It’s the only thing which whoever made your world didn’t make and is always looking for to destroy it, and I’m against him! You’d like to destroy it — ’

  ‘So it’s all relative?’ said Midge. ‘I’m getting muddled.’

  ‘No, he is,’ said Harry.

  ‘Well, maths is an oddity,’ said Stuart, ‘though it’s just our thinking too, and more confused than outsiders imagine. It’s impressive, it looks as if it’s all there and can’t be wrong, we call it a language — But it can’t be a model for the mind, it’s not a super-mind, computer logic can’t be a model for the mind, there’s no ideal model and there can’t be because minds are persons, they’re moral and spiritual all the way through, the idea of a machine isn’t in place, artificial intelligence is a misnomer — ’

  ‘Now he slips in “spiritual”!’ said Harry. ‘You want to make everything moral, that’s your version of religion, you want to push what’s really objective and factual into a corner. But the lesson of our age is the opposite, modern science has abolished the difference between good and evil, there isn’t anything deep, that’s the message of the modern world, science is what’s deep, Ursula’s right, mathematics is the pure case, and that’s the point, because mathematics is everywhere, it’s swept the board, biology is maths now, isn’t that so, Ursula, the language of the planet is mathematics — ’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ said Ursula.

  ‘What are you afraid of,’ said Thomas to Stuart. ‘Can you give it a name?’

  ‘Oh — all that, what we’ve been talking about.’

  ‘But we’ve been talking nonsense,’ said Ursula, ‘dinner-time conversation.’

  ‘I’m afraid that we could lose our language, and so lose our souls, our sense of truth, and ordinary reality, our sense of direction, our knowledge of right and wrong …’

  ‘It’s certainly the end of an era,’ said Harry, ‘the energy which we got from the Greeks and the Renaissance is all used up. New technology is the life force now.’

  ‘How do you mean, lose our language?’ said Thomas.

  ‘Lose our value language, lose our central human language which is spoken by individuals and refers to the real world.’

  ‘But there’s always this world,’ said Midge, tapping her wedding ring on the table. ‘Isn’t there, Edward?’

  ‘We could lose our ordinary sense of an order of the world as ultimate, our self-being, our responsible consciousness — ’

  ‘We’ve never had these things,’ said Harry. ‘It was an illusion, we’re waking from a dream, our precious individual being is something superficial, it’s just a matter of style, le style c’est l‘homme même. Good and evil are relative concepts. After the simplest generalities people start talking nonsense about morals.’

  ‘But surely there’s such a thing as human nature,’ said Ursula, ‘and it stays the same. We women know that, don’t we, Midge?’

  ‘Women are always a touchstone,’ said Harry, ‘like litmus paper or dogs before an earthquake, look at them now running round in manic excitement, they’re destroying the old order you’re so fond of, men are terrified, no wonder Islam is the most popular religion in the world!’

  ‘Spirit without absolute,’ said Thomas to Stuart, ‘that’s what you’re afraid of.’

  ‘Yes. Lost bad spirit.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Thomas, ‘the real live language will be reserved for the creative few who have all the power, they will be the only individuals left, and the ordinary mob will simply be codified manifestations of a generalised technological consciousness.’

  ‘My dear Thomas, that’s how it is now!’ said Harry.

  ‘You cynical elitist!’ said Midge.

  ‘He’s trying to annoy us,’ said Ursula.

  ‘There you are,’ said Harry, ‘women have to make everything personal.’

  ‘So religion is the answer,’ said Ursula to Stuart, ‘that’s where we started.’

  ‘Yes, something that keeps love of goodness in people’s lives, that shows goodness as the most important thing, some sort of spiritual ideal and discipline, like — it’s so hard to see it — it’s got to be religion without God, without supernatural dogmas, and we may not have time to change what we have into something we can believe in — that’s what I think anyway — but I’m just a beginner — ’

  They laughed.

  ‘Spiritual discipline!’ said Ursula. ‘I think evangelical Christianity is your fate, I can see it all, you’ll be a general in the Salvation Army — or else a Jesuit — ’

  ‘I can’t think why you’re so gloomy,’ said Midge, ‘you seem so prejudiced, all sorts of wonderful things are happening and will happen, we can fly in space, we’ve cured TB, we shall cure cancer and feed the hungry, and isn’t television a good thing — ’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Stuart.

  ‘Well, what about the animal programmes — ’

  ‘Even the poor animals are spoilt by that horrible medium, it destroys our perception, our sense of the visual world, and it’s full of pornographic muck — ’

  ‘Talking of that,’ said Midge, who was getting tired of abstract conversation, ‘we came back the other night earlier than we said and discovered Meredith watching some absolutely awful pornographic video cassettes which he’d borrowed from his little chums! Children watch absolute filth these days.’

  Stuart put down his knife with a clatter. He flushed red. ‘You don’t mean real pornography, that Meredith’s been watching real pornography — ?’

  ‘Well, real, yes, what they call “hard porn” — it was horrid what I saw, absolutely nightmarish, there were these two men and a girl, and a boy with a knife — ’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Stuart, ‘what did you do?’

  ‘What do you expect, we told him to stop and to take the stuff back where it came from, which he did the next day.’

  ‘You mean that child was looking at — but you explained — you told him how wrong it was — you made him see — ’

  ‘We expressed our displeasure. Ought we to have beaten him? He said all the children watch these things. And it’s not easy to explain to a child, how does one explain these days? Our ancestors would have been shocked at children knowing anything about sex, now we’re told to tell them all about it as soon as they can talk! You can’t have it every way. Sex is everywhere. As you said, Stuart, ordinary television is full of what you call muck. Anyway, children aren’t innocent, psychoanalysis proves that, you can’t protect them — ’

  ‘They are innocent,’ said Stuart, ‘and you can protect them. There’s such a thing as being pure in heart — ’

  ‘You can’t protect them, and I don’t really see why you should,’ said Midge. ‘Of course we told Meredith not to look at that stuff, but I expect he will, and maybe it’s a good thing, how much does a child understand anyway. Better to see it now and get bored than come across it later and get hooked. And he’s bound to come across it later. Don’t you agree, Thomas? It’s like being vaccinated. Have the shock early on and then get it over permanently.’

  ‘I couldn’t disagree more,’ said Stuart. ‘I don’t see why he’s bound to come across it later. Pornography isn’t compulsory, people can recognise what’s bad and keep away from it. Why should it be assumed that young people are unavoidably obsessed with every aspect of sex? And why do you take it for granted that Meredith will deceive you? What children get used to and regard as permissible at an early age can weaken all their moral defences, it’s an early training in cynicism, and as deep and as lasting as any other training. It’s not a bit like vaccination, it’s more like acquiring an incurable virus, something that degrades and corrupts, and the corruption of children is an abomination.’

  ‘You just don’t understand children,’ said Midge, ‘if you did you wouldn’t get so cross and red in the face!’

  ‘I agree with Midge,’ said Harry, ‘one must be more tolerant these days, absolute judgments are a thing of the past, you’ve got to c
ome to terms with yourself somehow, and the earlier the better. We aren’t saints and can’t be. We must learn to accept so-called evil as something natural. Scientists have always been gnostics, and if they say there’s a basic indeterminacy in human consciousness, then I say that’s exactly how I feel! As for corrupting the young, that’s what Socrates was accused of! We all have smutty thoughts. Pornography is part of the modern scene, it’s something we all really like, and it’s perfectly harmless.’

  ‘I don’t think Stuart likes it,’ said Ursula. ‘I wonder if Edward does? What do you think, Edward, you’re the youngest person present?’

  Edward rose abruptly, overturning his chair onto the floor. He picked the chair up and said to Midge, ‘I’m terribly sorry, I’m not feeling very well, I think I’d better go home. Please don’t anybody come. I’ll just go back — ’

  ‘Oh, I’ll come,’ said Harry rather crossly. ‘Come on, Stuart. Our lot for home. We’ll have an early night. Don’t see us out, we’ll quietly steal away.’

  ‘I must go too,’ said Ursula, ‘I must help Willy pack, he’ll have done nothing. Midge will help me find my coat, I think it’s upstairs.’

  They left the room, leaving Thomas alone with the wine.

  After the door had shut upon the Cuno contingent Ursula, closeted upstairs with Midge, said, ‘I wanted to see you alone. I’m so worried about Edward, Thomas doesn’t seem to be doing anything for him.’

  They were sitting on the great ornate ancestral double bed in which, as Thomas liked to announce, many a McCaskerville had been born and died. Midge had shaken off her shoes and pulled up her skirt to reveal the pink stockings. She had undone the invisible buttons which supported the collar of her dress.

  ‘I think Thomas has some plan,’ said Midge, ‘he usually has.’

  ‘Well, he’d better hurry up with it. Anything could happen to that boy. He needs stronger drugs than the ones I’m giving him. He ought to be inside with some experts.’