The Baroque Cycle

"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. ... 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. "Pray explain how it is that there may be such a thing as free will, and a spirit that may do as it pleases, unbound by the Mathematick laws of our Mechanical Philosophy."

"“When you smoke your pipe, you feel an initial rush of stimulation, followed by a calmness, a steadying of the nerves. This is but a trace, a shadow, of nicotine poisoning. If you were cut with this dagger, that relaxation of the nerves would advance to the point where you would simply forget to breathe, and drown in air … every time you smoke tobacco, you are prefiguring your own death.” “Horrid … it makes me want to smoke something just to calm down.” “Mr. Hooke experimented with an herb called bhang that would cure what ails you — alas, it is harder to get.”"

"During lulls they engaged in Solomon Kohan’s idea of small talk: ”This is an interesting place.” “I am pleased you find it interesting.” “It puts me in mind of an operation I used to have in Jerusalem a long time ago.” “Now that you mention it, the full name of the Templars was the Knights of the Temple of Solomon. So if you are that Solomon—” “Do not play word games with me. I refer, not to this hole in the ground, which is but an indifferent crypt for long-forgotten knights, but to what lies over.” “The Court of Technologickal Arts?” “If that is what you call it.” “What would you call it?” “A temple.”"

"Most men, standing knee-deep in gold, would talk about that."

"“Sergeant Shaftoe,” said the old man, “I do pity the Grim Reaper on the day that he shall finally come for you in earnest. I fear you’ll use him so roughly that he shall have to go on holiday for a fortnight.”"

"“Sir, my admiration for your work is mingled with wonder that a man of your age and dignity is out doing things like this.” Daniel turned to look him in the eye; and his creased face was grave and calm in the morning light. He looked nothing like the daft codger who had come to dinner yesterday evening and embarrassed the other English by dribbling wine down his shirt-front. “Listen to me. I did not wish to be summoned by your Princess. Summoned, I did not wish to come. But having been summoned, and having come, I mean to give a good account of myself. That’s how I was taught by my father, and the men of his age who slew Kings and swept away not merely Governments but whole Systems of Thought, like Khans of the Mind. I would have my son in Boston know of my doings, and be proud of them, and carry my ways forward to another generation on another continent. Any opponent who does not know this about me, stands at a grave disadvantage; a disadvantage I am not above profiting from.”"

"“Thank you, guv’nor,” the brewer said to the old man... “But I couldn’t possibly.” And he tossed the coin back… “If it was some other bloke in there, I’d take your money, guv. But this one’s on the house.” “You are a credit to your profession, sir.” Returned the old man, “as if it needed any.”"

"The sorts who found a market a congenial and rewarding place to be, were those who thought quickly on their feet, and adapted to unlooked-for happenings with facility; they were, in a word, mercurial."

"Space and Time! Two minor omissions that no one is likely to notice."

"“That’s why I was careful to say whenever some great prince sees fit to build it. If not the Tsar, then someone else who will come along after my death.” ”Or after mine, or my son’s or my grandson’s,” Johann says. “Human nature being what it is, I fear that this will only happen when the things that the Logic Mill is good at become important to a war.”"

"“Which means you have ways of knowing things that we erudite fellows don’t. We have to be satisfied with practicing our religion.” “You make it sound unsatisfactory. Change your mind about this. It is better to know why you know things than simply to have things revealed to you.”"

"Comstock permitted himself a dry chuckle. “You are a man of many words but few specifics. You’d do well in Parliament.” Shaftoe shrugged. “I’m old. Your hirelings, who broke me out of the Tower, they are young lads, and were moved greatly by each little happening. Ask them to relate the story to you, and you shall hear a yarn far longer and more diverting than any I would tell.” “And less strictly true, I suspect,” said Comstock."

"Condemn an Englishman to hell, and he'd plant a bed of petunias and roll out a nice bowling-green on the brimstone."

"There is nothing quite so civilized as to be recognized in public places as the author of books no one has read."

""Why does the tide rush out to the sea?" "The influence of the sun and the moon." "Yet you and I cannot see the sun or the moon. The water does not have senses to see, or a will to follow them. How then do the sun and moon, so far away, affect the water?" "Gravity", responded Colonel Barnes, lowering his voice like a priest intoning the name of God, and glancing about to see whether Sir Isaac Newton were in earshot. "That's what everyone says now. 'Twas not so when I was a lad. We used to parrot Aristotle and say it was in the nature of water to be drawn up by the moon. Now, thanks to our fellow-passenger, we say 'gravity'. It seems a great improvement. But is it really? Do you understand the tides, Colonel Barnes, simply because you know to say 'gravity'?"."

"“Because though I have not done violence I have seen rather a lot of it. Not all of the men who employ it are stupid, or evil. Only most of them. The rest use it reluctantly, as a way, when all else has failed, of seizing the main chance. Thus you tonight. Your mother will understand this and get her equilibrium back. But like a man who imbibes tobacco-smoke, you have died a little death tonight. I do not recommend that you become addicted to it.”"

"Sergeant Shaftoe was not the sort who would admit to being startled or impressed by anything, but at least he did not look bored or contemptuous — a signal achievement for Roger Comstock."

"I'm keen to know whether the next English King is going to be German or French."

"We are at a fork in the road just now. One way takes us to a wholly new way of managing human affairs. It is a system I have helped, in my small way, to develop: the Royal Society, the Bank of England, Recoinage, the Whigs, and the Hanoverian Succession are all elements of it. The other way leads us to Versailles, and the rather different scheme that the King of France has got going there."

"The mechanical world decays. Counterpoised against this tendency to decline must be some creative principle: the active seed--the Subtile Spirit."

"“I spied ‘em again this morning, Tomba! …I looked to the West and saw ‘em, all lit up by the red sun shining in off the sea. A line of hills, or mountains if you please. Laid out, waiting for us, like baked apples in a pan.”"

"“...why, you just tell him that it was done by the Red-Neck Ronin, and that we went that-away!” And he thrusts his wakizashi into the untamed West…. “Let’s head for the hills, boys.”"

"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. ... 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."

"Though this was not the most noble person who had ever set foot in the establishment (an honor that would have to go to Peter, or — who knows? — Solomon), he was unquestionable the best-dressed, and identifiable, from a thousand yards, as a courtier… “Frightfully sorry to intrude,” said the courtier, “but word has reached the Household that an important Man has come to London incognito. … From Muscovy, ‘tis said … The Lady of said Household is deathly ill. On her behalf, I have come to greet the said Gentleman, and to observe the requisite formalities.” Daniel nodded out the window toward the melee. “As we say in Boston: get in line.”"

"A quarter of a mile south of the dogleg in the road….the frontier of London could be discerned by the Wise in the Ways of Real Estate. The most infallible sign of which was that, here, the track leading to Black Mary’s Hole had been improved with a name, Coppice Row, devised to conjure forth, from the fevered brains of would-be buyers, phant’sies of a cozy and bucolic character, be they never so removed from Truth."

"“Charles White was asking me a lot of odd questions…. He is planning something—“ ”Oh, he planned it ages ago. Presently he is doing it. It is I who am planning something.” “A war?” “Much nastier: a Parliamentary inquiry.”"

"Why today? Because I do not believe God put me on this earth, and gave me either the best or second-best mind currently in existence, so that I could dig a large hole in the ground," the Doctor said. "I don't want my epitaph to be, 'He brought the price of silver down one-tenth of one percent.'"

"If we have a duty to be alert for the signs of the End Times, then let me go, Father. For if the signs are comets, then the first to know will be the astronomers. If the signs are plague, the first to know—" "—will be physicians. Yes, I understand. But are you suggesting that those who study natural philosophy can acquire some kind of occult knowledge—special insight into God's Creation, not available to the common Bible-reading man?" "Er ... I suppose that's quite clearly what I'm suggesting." Drake nodded. "That is what I thought. Well, God gave us brains for a reason—not to use those brains would be a sin."

"Is it a good yarn?" "It is not a narrative. It is a mathematical technique so advanced that only two people in the world understand it," the Doctor said. "When published, it will bring about enormous changes in not only mathematics, but all forms of natural philosophy and engineering. People will use it to build machines that fly through the air like birds, and that travel to other planets, and its very power and brilliance will sweep old, tottering, worn-out systems of thought into the dustbin.” "And you invented it, Doctor?" Eliza asked, as Jack was occupied making finger-twirling movements in the vicinity of his ear. "Yes—seven or eight years ago." "And still no one knows about it, besides—" "Me, and the other fellow." "Why haven't you told the world about it?" "Because it seems the other fellow invented it ten years before I did, and didn't tell anyone."

"On the principle that you never know when you'll find food again, he gestured for more, and they somewhat reluctantly handed him a second ladle, and uneasily watched him drink it…it had chunks of mushrooms or something on the bottom that might give some nourishment…People, frequently naked, danced around bonfires. A certain amount of fucking went on, as one would expect, but at least some of it seemed to be ceremonial fucking. Certain small animals might have died unnatural deaths. There was chanting and singing in a language that wasn't exactly German. Of course, presiding over the entire thing was Satan the Prince of Darkness, or so Jack assumed — as what else would you call a jet-black figure, horned and bearded, maybe a hundred feet high, dancing in the boiling, smoky, cloudy sky just above the summit?"

"Formerly a prosperous industry, upon which the fortunes of great families such as the Fuggers and Hacklhebers were founded, silver mining was laid low by the Thirty Years' War and the discovery, by the Spaniards, of very rich deposits at Potosi in Peru and Guanajuato in Mexico."

"But they had, perversely, been living among people who were peering into the wrong end of the telescope, or something, and who had convinced themselves that the opposite was true--that the world had once been a splendid, orderly place--that men had made a reasonably trouble-free move from the Garden of Eden to the Athens of Plato and Aristotle, stopping over in the Holy Land to encrypt the secrets of the Universe in the pages of the Bible, and that everything had been slowly, relentlessly falling apart ever since."

"The old stars-and-moons act was a good way to farm the unduly trusting. But the need to raise money in the first place seemed to call into question one's own ability to turn lead into gold."

"He's rich," Jack muttered to Eliza, "or connected with rich persons." "Yes—the clothes, the coins ..." "All fakeable." "How do you know him to be rich, then?" "In the wilderness, only the most terrible beasts of prey cavort and gambol. Deer and rabbits play no games."

"It turned out that if you did the mathematicks on a typical war, the cost of powder was more important than just about anything else — Herr Geidel insisted that the gunpowder in the arsenal of Venice, for example, was worth more than the annual revenue of the entire city. This explained a lot of oddness Jack had witnessed in various campaigns and forced him to reconsider (briefly) his opinion that all officers were mad."

"... but he knows that this ungainly moment will be edited from The Story that will one day live in the memories of the American Waterhouses. The Story is in excellent hands. Mrs. Goose has come along to watch and memorize, and she has a creepy knack for that kind of thing...."

"One of those moments had arrived: Jack had been presented with the opportunity to be stupid in some way that was much more interesting than being shrewd would've been. These moments seemed to come to Jack every few days. They almost never came to Bob…. Jack had been expecting such a moment to arrive today. He'd supposed, until moments ago, that it had already come: namely, when he decided to mount the horse and ride after the ostrich. But here was a rare opportunity for stupidity even more flagrant and glorious. … Bob was convinced that the Imp of the Perverse rode invisibly on Jack's shoulder whispering bad ideas into his ear, and that the only counterbalance was Bob himself… But Bob was in England."

"Waterhouse: "Now, if you--the ingenious Dr. Leibniz--contrive a machine that gives the impression of thinking--is that really thinking, or merely reflecting your genius?" Leibniz: "You could as well have asked: are we thinking? Or merely reflecting God's genius?" Waterhouse: "If we are mere mechanisms, obeying rules laid down by God, then all of our actions are predestined, and we are not really thinking." Leibniz: "This is one of the two great labryrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination. You were raised to believe in the latter. You have rejected it--which must have been a great spiritual struggle--and become a thinker. You have adopted a modern, mechanical philosophy. But that philosophy now seems to be leading you back towards predestination.""

"Daniel Waterhouse does not own slaves.... So little Godfrey sits on the lap, not of some Angolan negress, but of their neighbor: the daft but harmless Mrs. Goose, who comes into their home occasionally to do the one thing that she apparently can do: to entertain children by spouting all manner of nonsensical stories and doggerel that she has collected or invented.... Many words are said, but they make no more impact on Daniel than Mrs. Goose's incoherent narratives about cutlery leaping over cœlestial bodies and sluttish hags living in discarded footwear."

"So you see, Ben, journeying via Paris might have been roundabout, but it was infinitely safer. Besides, people in Paris had been pestering me, too, and they had more money than Mr. Clarke. So Mr. Clarke had to get in line, as they say in New York."

"He hadn't really known what to expect of America. But people here seem to do things—hangings included—with a blunt, blank efficiency that's admirable and disappointing at the same time. Like jumping fish, they go about difficult matters with bloodless ease. As if they were all born knowing things that other people must absorb, along with faery-tales and superstitions, from their families and villages. Maybe it is because most of them came over on ships."

"Burning books…is that not a favorite practice of the Spanish Inquisition?" "I have never been to Spain, Sir Richard, and so the only way I know that they burn books is because of the vast number of books that have been published on the subject."

""The responsibility now falls upon you to make it all happen." "My Lord? To make what happen?" But Wilkins was either dead or asleep."

"Where do we find God in the world? That is all I want to know. I have not found Him yet. But when I see anything that does not rot — the workings of the solar system, or a Euclidean proof, or the perfection of gold — I sense I am drawing nearer to the Divine."

"If Solomon knew all of this, why didn't he just come out and say, 'The sun is in the middle of the solar system and planets go round about it in ellipses?'" "I believe he did say so, in the design of his temple." "Yes, but why are God and Solomon alike so damned oblique in everything? Why not just come out and say it?" “… If you were to use me thus in a letter, I would conclude you were in the employ of the Beast, as some say you are." "What, merely for suggesting that the world does something other than rot?"

"What!? Jack Ketch's performance made no impression on you at all?" "Oh, that? I assume you arranged it that way in order to buttress your position as the King's token Puritan bootlick — whilst in fact stirring rebellious spirits in the hearts and minds of the rich and powerful. Forgive me for not tossing out a compliment. Twenty years ago I'd have admired it, but by my current standards it is only a modestly sophisticated ploy."

"She said a lot then, in five words of French." "She was pithy, for she credits me with wit. I am discursive, for I can extend you no such consideration."

""I do not think you see what we can make of England now if we only try. I was brought up to believe that an Apocalypse was coming. I have not believed that for many years. But the people who believe in that Apocalypse are my people, and their way of thinking is my way. … there is something to the idea of an Apocalypse—a sudden changing of all, an overthrow of old ways—and that Drake and the others merely got the particulars wrong, they fixed on a date certain, they, in a word, idolized. If idolatry is to mistake the symbol for the thing symbolized, then that is what they did with the symbols that are set down in the Book of Revelation.”"

"... those two belong to a common sect, or something—they knew and recognized each other. They dislike each other and work at cross-purposes but betrayal, corruption, any straying from whatever common path they have chosen, these are inconceivable. Is it the same sect as Gomer Bolstrood?" "No and yes. The Puritans are like Hindoos—impossibly various, and yet all of a type."

"I believe that binary arithemetickal engines will be of enormous significance"