Birthright

this board, and I find them very disquieting.”

“I thought you said you found the students to be singularly brilliant,” said Hillyar. “I do,” said Belore. “The same cannot be said for their theses.” “I found them exceptionally well-reasoned,” said Brannot. “So did I,” agreed Belore. “Those I bothered to read.” “Then I fail to see your objection.”

“I thought you might,” said Belore. “I looked at some fifteen doctoral dissertations. Seven of them concerned the ethics of our conduct toward alien races. Three more examined Man's relationship to his technology. The other five dealt, to some degree, with justifying some of the political, military, and economic excesses of the Monarchy.”

“You mean the Commonwealth,” said Hillyar gently. “I know what I mean,'’ said Belore. “And, similarly, I know what I don't like about those papers. Gentlemen, whether purposely or not, the subject of philosophy seems in grave danger of being turned into a branch of the political sciences.” “Nonsense,” scoffed Brannot. “How can an intellectual of your stature draw such a conclusion based on a handful of treatises?”

“If this particular handful differs appreciably in content from last year's, or the year before that, I'll change my opinion,” said Belore. “But I suspect that it doesn't. And that is what disturbs me. That, and your attitudes.

“For instance, I mentioned Aquinas, and you spouted off a mathematical rebuttal to an esoteric theory beside which the whole of mathematics dwindles into insignificance.Is there a relationship between cause and effect in the universe? If so, is there a first and original cause of all Creation? Don't bother me with negative integers, or some astronomical theory of contracting and expanding universes. I want to know: Is there or is there not some intellect or life force which, purposefully or otherwise, set the entire process in motion? Aquinas proposed this argument, rightly or wrongly, from a combination of intellect, faith, and empiricism, and you answer it with mathematics and astronomy. I say to you that your answers don't amount to a hill of beans.

“Plato proposed a Utopian Republic, with its own set of idealized ethical imperatives. And because one small group of disillusioned radicals failed to put it into practice, you consider Plato to be archaic and discredited. Rather I should say that a philosophy department that negates the works of Plato because of what happened to the Bonite Colony has discredited itself without doing the last bit of damage to Plato. “As for Braxtok, he—or, rather, it—came up with perhaps the most complex ethical argument ever devised for the assumption of divinity. Admittedly it wasn't a divinity that would appeal to any Man, but that hardly makes the argument any the less valid. “What I'm getting at is this: It seems to me that philosophy has forgotten not only its roots but also its purpose. No one is asking questions about the nature of Man, or his place in the universe, or the existence or need for a deity. Just because Descartes concluded that no one could doubt his own