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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’re 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