Sherlock Holmes and the Misguided Philosopher

As I recall and record the cases and successes of my old friend Sherlock Holmes, of all the many problems we encountered together, none is more curious than the Adventure of the Misguided Philosopher.

Inside our lodgings of 221B Baker Street one evening, Holmes was reposing on the chaise longue, strumming a light air on the violin, whilst I struggled with the crossword puzzle in the London Times.

“Dash it all!” I said, throwing my pen to the floor in frustration.

“Something is amiss?” he asked.

“Yes, seven across. A canal, along which food passes during the act of digestion.”

“Alimentary, my dear Watson. Alimentary," said Holmes

“Of course!” I shouted triumphantly, retrieving my trusty stylograph. “Eighteen down. A perennial plant bearing a pungent fruit.”

“A Lemon Tree, my dear Watson. A lemon tree.”

“Brilliant!” said I.

“Simplicity,” said he.

Holmes laid down his violin and made his way over to the window. After some minutes, he beckoned to me.

“Come here, Watson. What do you make of this?”

In the street below, an elderly gentleman was attired in a coat and tails, complete with a top hat. He seemed to be in a quandary about whether to enter our building or not.

“Clearly, some old duffer who can’t make up his mind what to do,” I propounded.

“Can you see anything else?”

“Nothing of any import,” I said. “Should I?”

“If you were to observe closely, you would see a man who lives in South Kensington on the southern side of the street with his unmarried sister Beryl, along with a cat named Bucephalus and is head of the Philosophy Department at the Institute for Humanities in Belsize Park.”

“Good grief, Holmes! How on earth -?”

“You know my methods, Watson.”

I looked down into the street again at the fellow who was pacing backwards and forwards.

“Is it something to do with his ragged coat sleeve?” I asked. “Or maybe the thickness of his hat band?”

“It’s possible, I suppose,” he said, shrugging. “But I was thinking more of this.” He dipped a hand into his dressing gown pocket and withdrew a folded note. He waved it airily in my direction. “He sent me a letter yesterday explaining who he is.”

Presently, there was a soft knock at the door, and I opened it to reveal the gentleman in question.

“Professor Theodore Hardy, I take it?” said Holmes from behind me. “Please, come in, sit down and tell me how I can be of assistance.”

I took the professor’s hat and coat as I introduced myself. He made himself comfortable in front of the fire.

“Well, where to begin?” he said, wringing his hands. “It’s a missing person’s case, Mister Holmes.”

“And who exactly is missing?”

“He goes by many names; Yahweh, Jehovah, Adonai, but I suspect He will be more familiar to you as God.”

“I see,” said Holmes. “And how long has He been missing?”

“Since the Age of Enlightenment, nearly two hundred years.”

“Pity you didn’t consult me sooner, Professor Hardy, the trail may very well be cold by now.”

“I blame myself, Mister Holmes, but I was led astray somewhat by the Aquinian Rejection of the Ontological Argument.”

“Have you notified Scotland Yard?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, Doctor Watson, the Metropolitan Police closed the case in 1882 when Frederich Nietzsche declared God to be dead.”

“Could we be looking at kidnapping?” I threw the question out for general discussion.

“Excellent point, Watson!” said Holmes, as he turned to our guest. “Has there been any form of ransom request?”

The professor shook his head, sorrowfully.

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “The closest thing to one was Immanuel Kant’s Paradigm Shift, but anything post-Kantian has to be discounted because of Transcendental Idealism.”

Holmes placed his hands together, steepled his fingers and said with a furrowed brow.

“All of which, of course, rules out our old enemy Arthur Schopenhauer.”

The professor rose to leave.

“You must both excuse me; I have a lecture to attend.”

“Don’t worry, professor,” I said, returning his coat and hat whilst showing him to the door. “If God is to be found, then Sherlock Holmes will find Him.”

After our guest had departed, Holmes reached for the slipper that contained his tobacco and announced:

“Watson, this is going to be a three-pipe problem.”

“Presumably, one for the Father, one for the Son and one for the Holy Ghost.”

“Exactly.”

****

Early next morning, we took a Hansom cab over to Lambeth. The Most Reverend Robert Morton–Smythe, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sipped his tea whilst he ruminated on the problem posited to him.

“I think the word ‘missing’ is too harsh, Mister Holmes,” he said, chewing on a Bath Oliver biscuit,” I prefer to think of the whole business as if He popped out to grab a bite to eat and is still waiting to be served.”

“You mean God is on an extended lunch break?” I attempted to clarify.

“Yes, probably in a Lyons’ Tea Room. They can be terribly busy, you know.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” said Holmes, “but it doesn’t quite explain the two hundred-year wait.”

The archbishop swallowed the last morsel of biscuit before declaring.

“They tell me it’s very difficult to get decent staff in the hospitality industry.”

“Nevertheless…”

“The problem, Mister Holmes and Doctor Watson," said the archbishop, wiping biscuit crumbs from his cassock, "is that three hundred and fifty years ago, when the church in England broke away from the Church of Rome, the essence of God was inadvertently split between us. For some unexplained reason, we, the Protestants, gave the flamboyant, all-forgiving deity who can be interceded with by saints and holy relics to the Catholics, taking instead for ourselves the rather stern, monosyllabic being that unfortunately makes us work extremely hard for our money and yet still never quite seems to be satisfied.”

Holmes rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“So, you don’t accept the Apostolic Succession, Your Grace?” he said.

“Unfortunately, I have to accept the Apostolic Succession, Mister Holmes!” thundered the archbishop. “How else can one explain the descent of the Bishop of Lichfield from Judas Iscariot?”

****

Our encounter with England’s foremost Primate had left us in somewhat of a dilemma. Some questions had, undoubtedly, been answered. However, this had only given rise to a multitude of others in its wake. Holmes sat brooding moodily in the Hanson cab as we made our way over to St. John’s Wood in North London.

Abraham Cohen, the Chief Rabbi of England, welcomed us into his office. After introductions and pleasantries, Holmes asked him if he had seen God lately.

“Seen him?” said the Rabbi, incredulously. “Are you serious? I’m not even allowed to say His name!”

I asked him who the last person to see Him would have been.

“The problem is, Doctor Watson,” he said, pulling a large tome from a bookcase and laying it open on his desk, “He doesn’t generally reveal Himself at all. The odd time that He has appeared, it is usually in the guise of an angel. Although, on one notable occasion, for reasons which are totally beyond anyone’s comprehension, it was in the form of a Burning Bush.”

He stabbed his finger in the middle of a page. Holmes and I leaned over to read the relevant passage.

“And have you ever encountered this piece of flammable shrubbery?” Holmes enquired.

Abraham Cohen gave a sharp, but bitter laugh.

“The Burning Bush?” he snorted. “I should be so lucky! It’s a miracle if I get to see my own grandchildren nowadays!”

“And what of the Christian deity?” asked Holmes. “I’m led to believe that you have no way of accommodating it?”

Rabbi Cohen shook his head.

“Alas, no, Mister Holmes. The scriptures are very clear on this. However, it’s not all doom and gloom. After all, let’s not forget Jesus was Jewish. Which makes a lot of sense when you think about it, because he really loved his mother.”

“And Judaism as a whole remains particularly rigid on this stance?”

“That rather depends on whether one is an Orthodox, a Conservative or a Reform Jew,” said the Chief Rabbi.

“What is the difference?” I asked.

“Well, Doctor Watson, I suppose it can be best summed up thus: At an Orthodox wedding, the bride's mother is pregnant. At a Conservative wedding, the bride is pregnant. At a Reform wedding, the rabbi is pregnant.”

Our encounter had left me somewhat more bewildered than when we started. Holmes’ mood, however, had definitely improved to the point that he was positively jovial. We made our way from St John’s Wood over to Waterloo station, where we caught a train to Southampton. We reached the dock just in time to board the steamer bound for Italy.

****

We were shown into the Vatican apartments by an old, decrepit cardinal in reverent silence and presently, God’s representative on earth came in to greet us. Holmes wasted no time in getting down to the matter in hand.

Where, he demanded to know of the pontiff, was he hiding the Almighty?

“It’s true,” sighed the Pope. “We did have Him up until very recently, but what with the state of the catholic clergy at the moment, He disappeared again.”

“There’s an issue with the catholic clergy?” I asked.

“I’m afraid so, Doctor Watson. I blame it on all the confessing that goes on. I mean to say, listening to other people living it up and having a damn good time day after day is bound to have a negative effect on a chap by showing him just what he is missing.”

“You should have contacted me the moment it happened,” said Holmes.

“Come, come, Mister Holmes! Your view on the ethical aesthetics of Kierkegaard is common knowledge! If you don’t mind me saying, you should have stuck with Descartes.”

“But as you well know, Your Holiness, Descartes’ mind-body dualism comes from the perspective of phenomenological scepticism and existential critique!”

“Yes, Mister Holmes, but you are forgetting the rejection of a priori, which, by validating the unmoved mover and the first cause contingency degree, gives rise to the teleological!”

I fear I was slightly out of my depth, but in all conscience, I could not stand idly by, so I leapt to Holmes’ defence and said, “Well, Your Holiness, that’s easy for you to say.”

Holmes, however, was staring into space as if hit by a thunderbolt.

“Of course,” he said, clapping his hand to his forehead. “St. Thomas Aquinas! How could I be so stupid?” Then recovering himself, he shouted, “Come, Watson! There’s not a moment to spare. The game is afoot.”

We hastily took our leave of His Holiness the Pope, made our way over to the dock, and caught the last steamer of the day back to England.

****

The Institute of Humanities in Belsize Park was a large, imposing building. We made our way to the Philosophy department and found Professor Theodore Hardy at his desk, engrossed in some mind-boggling tome.

He looked up and smiled at us as we stood before him.

“Mister Holmes and Doctor Watson! What an unexpected pleasure. I really didn’t expect to see you so soon.”

“Did you not, Professor?” Holmes said, stonily. “We are wise to your evil machinations.”

Professor Hardy laughed. “Are you feeling quite well, Mister Holmes?”

“Perfectly well, thank you,” he said. “I have established that you are the culprit.”

“And how on earth have you reached that conclusion?” He laughed again.

“It was simplicity itself,” said Holmes. “It was your fascination with the Aquinian rejection of the Ontological Argument that led me to you. You thought that Aquinas was right about the efficient cause not being contingent on the standard of perfection of an intelligent designer. But then you realised that the Hegelian dialectic of a thesis or contradictory antithesis resolving itself into a comprehensive synthesis would result in the sublation of absolute realism. However, you had overlooked that the conception of a universal objective relies upon the categorical imperative acting morally upon the sublime. As I said, simplicity itself.”

“And so, according to your diabolical plan, God had to go,” I said.

“Exactly, Doctor Watson! Although I prefer the term ‘surplus to requirements’.” Theodore Hardy gave another laugh, slightly more maniacal this time. “We have been duped for years into believing that God is the answer to everything in life. But it’s simply not the case. He is no longer fit for purpose!”

“You’re mad!” I gasped.

“On the contrary, Doctor Watson. I’ve never been saner. The Age of Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omnibenevolent Beings is over!”

“Where is God now?” demanded Holmes.

“Who knows?” said Professor Hardy with an enigmatic smile. “Such is the way with these metaphysical concepts.”

“What happened?” I asked.

He shrugged nonchalantly. “I simply confronted Him with the rational incoherence of attributes, stimulating the concept of an unnecessary being, which cogently substantiates the empirical and evidentiary argument against theism. Presented with such an assertion, God said, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly disappeared in a puff of logical positivism.”

“And yet, you engaged me to find Him.”

“Of course, Mister Holmes,” said Theodore Hardy. “I needed to administer the coup de grace with my variation on the mind-body parallelism of Baruch Spinoza.”

There was little more to be gained from continuing any form of discourse with this lunatic. At a prearranged signal from Holmes, Inspector Lestrade from Scotland Yard, accompanied by a commensurate number of men, entered the room and arrested the professor.

****

Back in Baker Street, Holmes was reclining on the chaise longue, plucking another intricate air on the violin, and I was once again struggling with the unfinished London Times crossword puzzle.

Noticing my consternation, he asked, “Can I be of assistance, Watson?”

“Twenty-two across,” I said. “A word that is the synonym of simple, uncomplicated, or easy.”

He furrowed his brow, eventually shrugging his shoulders.

“I’m afraid I have to concede defeat on that one,” said Sherlock Holmes.