- Instructions For Meeting Mrs. Nolan
- The Problem Mind
- A Sympathetic Summary
- You’d Better Come Quietly
- The Blessed Sacrament Explained To Barbara
- Do Not Go To Bethlehem To Find The Obvious
- Dialogue With An Angel
- The Blessed Trinity Explained To Thomas Butler
- Two Who Should Be Friends
- Clean Literature
- How You Lost Your Faith
- The Menace Of Puns
- Notes On Names
Man: It is impossible to hold a conversation with you.
Angel: Why?
Man: Why? Because I must do both the talking and the answering. You never answer.
Angel: That is not true. I do answer.
Man: I never hear you.
Angel: Do you expect me to make sounds?
Man: A little sound wouldn’t hurt.
Angel: But I am a pure spirit. I have no dimensions, no body, no mouth, nor hands, nor any instrument of noise. Do you want me to stop being an angel?
Man: You might accommodate yourself to me as a man. I have a body. I have ears.
Angel: Why should I stay outside your ears when I can go straight to your intellect? What good to knock at a door which one can pass through?
Man: It might let the occupant know that you have arrived.
Angel: In which case the arrival would not be an angel.
Man: But something very much more satisfactory. Something one could see and feel and hear, not simply guess at, as I am now doing with you.
Angel: You will simply have it that I must stop being an angel if I am to continue to exist. Is that not it?
Man: No, that’s not it. But why not materialize, assume some shape, and appear to me? It would make this conversation less nonsensical . . .
Angel: And likewise very much less angelical. An angel with a shape is a nonsense. Would you prefer to know me as I am not, rather than to know me as I am?
Man: But do I know you at all?
Angel: You seem to know me well enough to abuse me. I think maybe you do not like angels.
Man: I must confess I find them very tiresome.
Angel: You mean you find your own brain very tiresome, with all its convolutions, its water and its pulp. I cannot be tiresome who am lighter even than your own thoughts.
Man: Excuse me if I yawn (He yawns.) I am no longer interested. I shall employ my poor soggy brain in thinking about things I can feel and see.
Angel: And will you find in them any real satisfaction?
Man: A certain satisfaction. That kind at least which you are unable to give me.
Angel: Would you like me to go?
Man: Nobody said, “Would you like me to go?” I have just fancied that you said it. I simply supply you with words I think you might say if I were sure you were here.
Angel: But you are not sure?
Man: No.
Angel: You are not sure of what God has revealed? Has He not promised to give me charge over you “lest you dash your foot against a stone”?
Man: I am quite unaware of any influences you have upon my feet.
Angel: Just at present I am trying to keep you from dashing your head against a rock.
Man: What do you mean?
Angel: Would you not prefer the impact of a rock upon your head to the soft fusion of your spirit with mine? You have said as much.
Man: I did not really mean to say you are not here. I meant I do not know whether or not I am talking to you. God did not say that every time I fancy myself talking to you I really am doing so.
Angel: I should be a rather poor Guardian Angel if I paid no attention to you precisely at the time when you are paying attention to me, should I not?
Man: Really, I cannot be bothered with this subject any longer. It’s all too stupid. If you’re here, stay here. If you know what I am saying to you, you are welcome to know it. But certainly I have no way of knowing that you know it.
Angel: Isn’t that rather silly talk?
Man: Now you can’t tell me that anybody said, “Isn’t that rather silly talk?” Nobody said it. I just made it up in my own mind, and in writing it down I am supposing myself to have supposed what you might possibly have said if you were aware of what I am thinking.
Angel: You have to become very involved in order to get rid of me, don’t you? You have to take refuge in a muddled, complex sentence. Angels detest complexity.
Man: What do they like, then?
Angel: Simplicity.
Man: Well then, very simply: Am I thinking about you?
Angel: If not, what are you thinking of?
Man: A possible angel who may or may not be present to me.
Angel: But God has said there is a real angel where you suppose the possible one to be.
Man: But not that the real angel knows that I am thinking about him.
Angel: What do you think that I think you are thinking about?
Man: I do not know.
Angel: Oh, I see. So we may put it this way: I, who am always thinking about you, do not know when you are thinking about me.
Man: No, I admit that you know that I am thinking about you.
Angel: But you did not say that before. Or rather, you said it, and then retracted it.
Man: Well, now I admit it. But this is what I do not admit. I do not admit that we are holding a conversation.
Angel: Because I make no sounds in your ears?
Man: Don’t you see what I mean? I grant you that being an angel, you are not supposed to make sounds. But a soundless conversation from my side is quite impossible.
Angel: And so you can never hold a conversation with an angel unless he becomes a man?
Man: We are certainly not holding a conversation!
Angel: What are we holding?
Man: We are holding a monologue.
Angel: How can two persons hold a monologue?
Man: How can one person hold a conversation?
Angel: How can WE be ONE person?
Man: But is there a you?
Angel: You have already admitted that.
Man: But I have not admitted . . .
Angel: What have you not admitted?
Man: I have not admitted . . . just a minute and I shall tell you what I have not admitted . . . I have not admitted that the you to whom I am attributing the thoughts I am thinking you are thinking, are really thinking the thoughts I am thinking you are thinking.
Angel: Involved, again, I see! Worse than before!
Man: That last sentence of mine may be a bit involved, but it is unanswerable.
Angel: Naturally, I cannot answer it if you are unwilling to admit that the answer you suppose I am answering is really the answer you suppose I am answering. Now, how do you like me in an involved sentence? Let me hear you answer that?
Man: Who is the one who is talking to me when I suppose you are talking to me?
Angel: Whom do you think?
Man: Nobody.
Angel: Can nobody talk to somebody?
Man: But somebody can talk to himself. That’s what I am doing, I am talking to myself.
Angel: It took you a long time to find that out.
Man: It wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t interfered.
Angel: I interfered? That’s splendid!
Man: I mean unless I were fool enough to imagine that you were interfering.
Angel: Isn’t it marvelous what trouble this imaginary angel is causing you?
Man: Yes, it is.
Angel: It’s hard to see how a real angel could be more bothersome, isn’t it?
Man: Of course, I’m causing myself all the bother.
Angel: Are you both angel and man, to say that you can fight yourself this way?
Man: No. But I am supplying you a part and trying to imagine what you would say if you were saying anything.
Angel: Are you sure I am saying nothing?
Man: Well, for goodness’ sake, this is a make-believe story! You certainly are not writing the script for your own part, are you?
Angel: Naturally, I cannot write.
Man: Nor are you thinking it.
Angel: No?
Man: You can’t be thinking what I am thinking.
Angel: You don’t say?
Man: Well, you certainly are not my intellect.
Angel: Are you thinking your own intellect?
Man: No, but I am thinking thoughts with my own intellect.
Angel: About me.
Man: But you are not those thoughts!
Angel: I am the object of them.
Man: But you don’t cause them!
Angel: Every object causes the thought of it in some way. But let’s not go into that. Can you think of nothing in a thought?
Man: I can have a sort of a thought about nothing.
Angel: And am I that nothing?
Man: In the way I am thinking about you, you are.
Angel: Then why are you so exasperated at me if I am nothing?
Man: I am exasperated at my own idea of the nothing I conceive you to be.
Angel: But conceived as nothing, I am not the angel God sent to guide you.
Man: No, the angel God sent to guide me is real, but the angel with whom I am holding this conversation is an imaginary angel to whom I am attributing thoughts of my own.
Angel: But you began this conversation by wanting an imaginary angel to materialize and make sounds. That’s even worse than wanting a real angel to do so.
Man: I admit there were certain inconsistencies on my part in the beginning of this conversation.
Angel: And the imaginary angel cleared them up for you?
Man: I cleared them up for myself.
Angel: Really, you seem to be a better angel, when you play the part of an angel, than I am.
Man: I think that’s true.
Angel: My dear man! My dear philosopher!
Man: Now I know that you are not a real angel . . .
Angel: My dear child!
Man: Now I know that you are!