Bishop Berkeley gave up philosophy to lecture on the healing properties of tar water, W. says. He gave it all up – he'd written his masterpieces by the age of 23, but he still had a long life to live, which he then spent advocating, in lectures and pamphlets, the entirely false thesis that tar water was the cure for all ills.
Of course in my case, W. says, the tar water came first, and there would be nothing but tar water. I began with an entirely false thesis, says W., from which I never departed or advanced. But then, W. says, it wasn't a particular argument that in my case was wrong. It wasn't a particular position that I reached through some process of induction or deduction. The very position from which I began – my very position was wrong from the first, and could only ever be wrong. What, henceforward, could I say that was not the equivalent of an endless, spurious advocacy of tar water?
Before God, we are always in the wrong – Kierkegaard said that, in the guise of a Jutland pastor. Does this mean that I, unlike W. – or to a greater, much greater extent – am close to God? Is the man of tar water closer to the holy fool?
Unending bilge, that's what W. hears when I open my mouth. Bilge, a great streaming forth of bilge water or tar water: that's my entire written oeuvre, such as it is – how can I bear it? I must not know, W. surmises. I must not have guessed, which is why he was put on this earth to remind me, to goad me. His entire life will have been the attempt to remind me and goad me.
Isn't it in this way that he, too, might be close to God? Isn't it in the indefiniteness of his task that he will always remain in the wrong?
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