MDDM Last Transit Ch. 74 (Mason's Melancholy)

[jbor]

Terrance wrote:

> We find Wicks and Co.
> discussing the  "missing Mason letters." Of course he can just
> fictionalize it, Maunchausen it. Is that the honorable thing to do? Or
> do we dishonor the possibility that the letters, if discovered would
> tell a different tale, provide another tale teller a different spin on
> things, if we speculate what Might have been in them, what Mason may
> have said, or may have thought or felt?

Wicks and Ives seem to have switched sides in the historiographical debate,
or else are attributing to one another extremist positions that they don't
actually hold to. The rhetorical tactics within the dialectic are
interesting to watch.

What's noteworthy is that Wicks here takes a different tack, inferring from
part of the content of Maskelyne's reply to Mason's letter what might or
must have been contained in the missing letter from Chas ("Suppose he'd
written ... " 721.2), the phrases "moral reflections" and "sublime
speculations" being the cue for Wicks's embellishment here. It leads on to
Wicks's own comments about empirical precision and the science of
mathematics being used to nail down the parameters of the universe, and a
scientifick "proof" of G-d. While Wicks is somewhat equivocal about this
endeavour (and I'm not sure that his appellation of Brook Taylor as
"Reverend Dr. Taylor" is entirely apt), what underlies his own critique is
an absolute faith in the existence of God. I don't think we can say much
more than that Wicks (and most of the characters in the novel) believe in
the Christian God, however.

best