Gently in Trees (25 page)

Gently hitched up a folding stool and also sat. ‘What do you call reality?’ he said.

‘Aha,’ Keynes said. ‘The stubborn question. It has baffled philosophers since before the Flood. The Buddhists describe reality as Essence of Thought, and the physicists as patterns of energy. The metaphysicians have come up with noumenon, an excessively unsatisfactory concept.’

‘But you?’ Gently said.

Keynes stroked his chin. ‘Yes, I do have a theory,’ he said. ‘After staring at a wall for thirty years, like a latter-day Bodhidharma.’

‘Which wall was that?’

‘It was Descartes’s proposition, which involves a fallacy of unexpected proportions. It supposes we are split into simultaneous selves, and that one self is conscious of the acts of the other. Which of course is nonsense. The proposition should run: I
thought
, therefore I
was
. And that’s what I stared at for thirty years, without seeing what lay on the other side of it.

‘Go on,’ Gently said.

Keynes grinned fiendishly. ‘The other day I bought a pad of coarse manuscript paper. I wanted to see if it would take pen-and-ink, so I scribbled down my criticism of Descartes. The pen flowed nicely, and I went on writing, letting the criticism casually expand. Then, a few lines later, there it was – the country on the other side of the wall.’

‘Well?’ Gently said.

Keynes pulled out a notebook. ‘Here’s the definitive statement,’ he said. ‘Of course, I should bury it in reams of turgid prose, but it seems a pity to inter anything so simple.’ He read from the notebook:

Time, space and being are not independent essences of reality, but merely arbitrary concepts which we have imposed upon it for practical purposes. The essence of reality, to which they refer, is motion; motion is reality, and reality consists in motion. All duration, extension and phenomena arise from motion alone. Furthermore, motion is single, and indivisible into categories of mental and physical.

He closed the notebook. ‘That’s it in a nutshell. Motion and reality are interchangeable terms. At this point the Void of the Buddhists and the physicist’s energy-patterns coincide, while the door is slammed on metaphysics, which have had their clothes stolen.’

Gently stirred the gravel with his foot. ‘And in this motional reality you see a direction?’

‘Yes, of course – a moral direction: a direction from hate to love.’

‘In which a false image of self is retrogressive?’

‘Yes, the egoistic disease. By pursuing the false image we are running contra to reality.’

‘So what cure do you propose?’

Keynes smiled. ‘I shall have to stare at my wall again. And in the meantime refer you to the dharmas, with which the theory brings you into accord.’ He rose from the step. ‘Shall I make some tea?’

‘If it doesn’t run contra,’ Gently said.

Keynes chuckled. He pointed to the van. ‘There’s something that never will,’ he said. ‘If motion is the style of reality, travelling is the style of man. And thanks to Adrian, I have the instrument. I don’t think the poor fellow will haunt me.’

The police dog that died was called Nero, and the Belt was re-named in his memory. But still the Forestry failed to get permission to thin the great pines. When the Trail pamphlet was reprinted all mention of the badgers was deleted; and at night they continued, in their habit of centuries, to cross the small dell and enter the trees.

Rigby House, Norwich

December 1972–June 1973