CH 311

Old Ludwig’s Theological Reasoning

Miabel asked Ludwig, “Mr Ludwig, is there really a God?”

Soon after she got to school that day, she asked Ludwig this question. He looked at her with interest through his glasses.

“Hm? What is this, Your Majesty? Have you become interested in God all of a sudden?” he asked as he put some of the rare tea leaves he had found into a pot.

“On my way here, I saw someone selling something called a Jar of God, which gives you the knowledge of your ancestors. It was kind of expensive, but I thought if I used it, I might be able to borrow some of Grandmother Mia’s wisdom,” she said, looking up at him with wide, hopeful eyes.

He rubbed his chin and thought about what to say. He was worried about how trusting she was. The problem wasn’t coming up with an answer; that was easy. The empire was part of the religious sphere of the Central Orthodox Church. People who lived here had a simple and unquestioning faith that God existed. So, the most obvious thing to do was to just say yes. If she was able to get back to her position and power as princess, it would be better for her to believe that.

But he took his time because he was worried about something. This was the easy way out. The one that was given. It would be easy to give it to her, but it wouldn’t help her in the long run. He wanted her to be able to think for herself because he thought it was a valuable skill. So, he couldn’t just tell her everything she needed to know. He wanted to get her to think.

So, he answered in a series of logical steps.

“That’s a good question. I think that the being we call God is real.”

That wasn’t a very shocking statement, but he went on to explain why he thought that way.

“If that weren’t the case, there would be too many things in the world that we couldn’t explain.”

“What kinds of stuff?”

Miabel tilted her head in confusion. He showed her where to sit and then moved his glasses.

“Let me think… You and I are easy to use as an example.”

“Huh? Me and Mr. Ludwig?”

He gave her a sly smile as she blinked confusedly and took off his glasses, setting them down in front of her.

“Here are some glasses. They’re made very well, right? Has Your Highness ever thought about how they make things easier to see?”

Bel picked them up and took a few quick looks through the lenses before shaking her head.

“Glasses work in a certain way because they follow certain rules. I won’t get into the details right now, but let’s just say that they came about when smart people tried to figure out how the human eye worked a long time ago. They looked at how it was built and how it worked. Then they started making something that would fix the problems with the eye. They did this by putting their minds and wills to work towards a goal. In other words, glasses were made by smart people who wanted to make something like them. For example, say you took the glass and iron used to make these and put them on the ground outside. Would the rain make lenses out of the glass? Or let the wind make frames out of the iron? They don’t want to do anything. It would be impossible to do that.”

Ludwig put back on his glasses and kept going.

“Then what about us people? The people who make these glasses and use them? We are even more complicated and well thought out than the crafts and works of art we make. So, Your Highness, how do you think God made us? Do you think rain, wind, and soil shaped us?”

Miabel shook her head and said, “No, I don’t think so.”

Ludwig was sure that there was a god, or something with more power and intelligence than the people who made the world. He came to this conclusion after giving it a lot of thought. Even though he didn’t know how it worked, he believed it did. He thought that a being with a lot of intelligence and the will to make the world the way it was made people and the rest of the world.

If you didn’t believe this, you’d be left with a lot of things that didn’t make sense. Not just people, but also animals, plants, and even the smallest animals on Earth… Someone must have planned and made them that way with care. He thought that was the only way to explain it.

All of a sudden, the words of his old master came back to him.

“It is an insult to God, who made us humans to be able to think, to blindly attribute everything in the world to the divine or the devil. That goes against what we believe about how perfect and beautiful God’s work is. Yet, it’s also a sign of narrow-mindedness to think that good or bad things in the world have nothing to do with gods.”

Since he heard that piece of advice, he’s tried to look at things with as much balance as possible. He had promised himself to do it, and he wanted Miabel to learn to think critically in the same way.

“Then…does that mean that the jar is real?! Miabel’s eyes sparkled with excitement as she exclaimed, “It really can do miracles!”

“No! Wait!”

Ludwig quickly stopped her when he saw her look towards the door. He didn’t want her to run out and buy the damn thing.

“Please, Your Majesty, calm down. God may exist, but the question of whether or not there is a jar of miracles is a whole different one.”

“Huh?” She tilted her head again and asked, “Why is that, Mr. Ludwig?”

Ludwig wanted to ask, “What do you mean by ‘why?’ What doesn’t sound like a scam about it?”

After forcing himself to think of a good answer, he actually said, “Even though we don’t know for sure, let’s say for the sake of argument that God did make the world. That it was made with a complicated set of cosmic rules that control how it works. So, what is a miracle then? It would be something that goes against those rules, wouldn’t it?”

No one could talk to their ancestors who had died. That was how the world worked, and it was because of the laws of the universe. The miracle that the jar is said to be able to do would go against these ideas.

Bel thought for a moment about this line of thinking before straightening her neck and saying, “Yes, it would be!”

Her voice was a little too excited for him to believe that she actually got what he was saying. Still, he kept going, allowing himself only a brief grimace at the thought that what he was doing might be pointless.

“Why would God want to change the rules that govern this world after putting so much thought into them? If I were in charge, I wouldn’t want to change the rules I’d worked so hard to make.”

By definition, miracles were very rare. Ludwig thought that if there was a good time for them to happen, it would be when the world itself was in danger of falling apart.

If God had made the rules for the world too loose, then they might have been easy to break. But the more he learned about the laws of the universe, the more he was amazed by how perfect they were. With that kind of reasoning, though, and the way the world is right now, it’s possible that the time is right for a miracle…

The reckless violence of Rafina the Empress Prelate… The crises in Sunkland and Tearmoon… When so many people have died and history is falling apart right in front of our eyes, maybe it’s time for a miracle to give us the wisdom of the Great Sage.

He shook his head and tried to forget about the thought. Then he looked at Miabel directly.

“Miracles only happen when they have to. They are not something that can be gotten on the spot. Because of this, you should always be careful around people who talk about miracles that go against the rules of our world. There is never a shortage of people who use God’s name to trick others…”

Ludwig’s mind was on other things as he looked at Miabel sleeping peacefully in the middle of his lecture. He thought about what they had said.

“Proposition one: There is a theory that can explain every event. Two, God’s miracles don’t happen all the time. Considering… Hm…”

His eyes grew distant.

“Miracles are rare… I guess as rare as lands that God has blessed…”

He thought of Saint-Noel Island, where no poisonous plants could grow because God had blessed it. Also, it was protected by strict security measures that made it impossible for poisons to be brought in from the outside. The land on Saint-Noel Island was safe because God looked out for it.

Saint-Noel Island, where a mass poisoning at the academy caused a lot of damage. Many people died in that terrible event, which shook the continent and led to a lot of theories and guesses. Several well-known ideas were put forward, such as the possibility that the poison got in through a security hole or that a special substance that only worked as a poison in certain situations was used. To this day, though, none of them has become the answer that most people agree on.

Soon after, the whole continent fell into a constant state of chaos, and the event was soon forgotten. Most likely, the truth was gone for good.

It would probably be called the mystery of the century by historians in the future.

But “Assumptions” are scary things. That may be the real lesson of this terrible story. Ludwig Hewitt didn’t do it, because he already knew the most likely method used in the mass murder.

There was no way for someone to get in. No sophisticated poison that only works in certain situations.

It wasn’t like that at all. The answer was much less exciting. The people who did it just used a simple assumption to their advantage.

“No poisonous plants can grow in Saint-Noel because God’s blessing has made the water clean. That idea was wrong from the beginning…”

There was no particular story or myth that said Saint-Noel Island was blessed by God. It was said that God had blessed the Holy Principality of Belluga. So, even if Saint-Noel was lucky, it must have been because the island was a part of Belluga. Its supposed holiness could only come from the fact that it is part of a bigger whole. So, did the blessed Belluga not have any plants that could kill it?

Not at all.

The fact that there were fake Belluga mushrooms was proof enough. As their name implies, the poisonous fungi were found all over the principality.

In other words, even in a land that God has blessed, poisonous plants could grow without stopping. Then, it would be silly to say that only Saint-Noel Island didn’t have any poisonous plants.

“If you think about it, the claim that there are no poisonous plants in Saint-Noel has to be a lie.”

What kind of lie was it, though? An innocent old belief? A useless old story? Perhaps.

It was also possible, though, that the lie was told on purpose.

For it to have a point. With the Jar of God, the goal was to make it worth more so it could be sold. The case of Saint-Noel Island comes to mind.

“It seems most likely that guards could be made less alert.”

Even if no one could bring poisons in from the outside, it wouldn’t matter if there were already poisonous plants and animals on the island. Still, the people in charge of security didn’t pay any attention to the fact. They thought that all they had to do was tell people not to bring it in. They focused on what was outside of themselves and didn’t think about what was inside.

“What made them blind was their faith in the island’s blessing as a miracle.”

Ludwig decided to look into what had happened because the continent was in a mess. At the end, he had found something strange. The idea that Saint-Noel Island didn’t have any poisonous plants was pretty new. He didn’t know exactly when it started, but when the academy first opened, no one had talked about this belief. Even the first students were told that the plants on the island could be dangerous and that they should not eat them without taking precautions.

Then, at some point, a weird belief grew up.

What if the person who started the rumour was the person who found the terrible poison on the island? This person could have found a place where a powerful poison grew by a series of small accidents.

Then, to keep the authorities from finding out about this, the person made up a rumour about the dangers of imported poisons. A man named Santeri Bandler was in charge of security at the time of the incident. He had been doing this for 35 years.

If the rumour had been spread before he was hired, “Who could have done that?”

Ludwig had already done research on the subject and come up with a theory. It just so happened that a certain man’s daughter, who was born late in his life, was at the academy when the murders happened.

“Duke Yellowmoon is the oldest and weakest of the nobles. What on earth was he trying to do?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, as if trying to see through the fog of time, and then sighed.

“What’s the point? The man is gone. Even if I find out the truth, what am I to do with it? Will it make her feel better? No, she can’t be stopped now. What a terrible, terrible shame…”

Bel kept snoozing.

She never heard him quietly crying.