Being

In a child’s words. Some words, like good and true, belong first to God and then to us. We learn what they mean from the things around us, and follow the road back to him.

The Institute habit

A word used in two senses without saying so. The Executives told the new students there were no rules, then listed the rules. Analogy is the honest opposite: one word, related senses, and the relation said out loud.

The book

Nicholas’s hunt widens: telescopes, newspaper clippings, a manor and its library.

Week 1 · the kind of answer

“Good” said of a knife, a dog, a man and God. Sort twenty sentences into three piles: the same sense, unrelated senses (the Executives’ trick), and related senses (analogy).

Week 2 · into the gap

Being is the last gap on the map. The child writes into it in Reynie’s voice, answering the question from his first test, “Are you brave?”: what brave means said of a lion, a boy and a saint.

Week 3 · the case

Put God on the top rung of Unit 6’s ladder, above the angel, and the picture is wrong: God is not the biggest thing in the series but the cause of the whole series, and the road runs from things to him. Compare Mr. Curtain’s title for himself, Minister And Secretary of all The Earth’s Regions: a man trying to be the top rung.

The workshop · suggested

For a child taking the workshop strand, Project 4, the machine’s language. It goes on: branches, loops and pointers. Say carefully in what sense the machine “reads” or “remembers”: by analogy, and only by analogy.

The end first

Everything desires the good, and God is not the top rung but the end every rung is referred to. Run each unit’s gold line upward on the wall map: they leave the map. The essays draw the same shape. Text to Be Set is filed in no field and reaches ten, and there is room above the map for only one.

Fridays

Spot the Whisperer: one word in an advertisement that changes its meaning halfway through.