chapter 34 - minkomala and color-blind danton

　If Louis was handsome to a certain extreme, almost as if Prince Paris, who had given the golden apples to Aphrodite, had stepped out of mythology, or as if the archangel who had blown the trumpet of the Last Judgment had descended from the clouds to the earth with flames and thunderbolts; then the next friend whom Amand introduced to Joseph was, in looks, almost another extreme.

　　It was a short, dry, thin man. He had a waxy face with two large eyes and a small one, and a large but flat nose, as if someone had slapped it so hard across the top that it had flattened it. While his forehead was also flat, his jaw was very thick and protruded outward. This made his mouth look extraordinarily large, and when looked at violently, it looked like a toad. Combined with the withered, but somewhat protruding knuckles of the fingers, and the extra dry, flaky, black and yellow skin that appeared extra dry because of the skin disease, this was like a monster that had slipped out of a nightmare.

　　"Joseph, this is my friend Mr. Mara."

　　"Pleased to meet you." Joseph nodded and extended his hand to him.

　　Mara reached out as well and shook Joseph's hand. He shook it shallowly, though, almost just lightly squeezing the tips of Joseph's fingers with the tips of his fingers. Joseph realized that Mara's hand was rather cold.

　　"Mr. Bonaparte, I've read your paper, and you believe that light is a wave?" Mara said slowly, his voice just as cold.

　　"It is not so much what I believe as it is the available evidence that makes me lean more towards that judgment. I myself have no preconceived notions about whether light is a particle or a wave." Joseph replied.

　　"Why are you afraid to explicitly support your opinion, and instead cover your position with such weak statements? Is this because you yourself have no confidence in your own judgment?" Mara, however, said this in a tone tinged with mockery.

　　Joseph couldn't help but frown, and a phrase bubbled up in his mind all at once: "Ugly people have a lot to say!"

　　Indeed, "Ugly people make a lot of trouble." Generally speaking, people with too low a face value were prone to all kinds of discrimination in society, and these discriminations, often filled their hearts with anger and made them become aggressive. In Joseph's opinion, Mara was a typical example of such a person.

　　But Joseph wasn't too keen on offending Mara at this point in time, because offending this guy was just too dangerous. Although Joseph didn't know the history of the Revolution very well, (after all, before crossing over, it was foreign history wasn't it? To be honest, to know Mara's name would have been a sign that he hadn't dozed off during his history and art classes), but he also knew that Mara was afraid to be responsible for a lot of the appalling atrocities in the Revolution. There would be no shortage of personal vendettas, and Joseph would not want to mess with such a rabid dog.

　　"This guy won't live long anyway, just let him be." Joseph suppressed his intention to sneer back and said this to himself.

　　"I indeed have no preconceived notions about whether light is a wave or a particle. As for my opinion, my opinion is that what it really is depends on experimental phenomena as well as mathematical explanations. If the phenomenon of interference can be explained mathematically, from the point of view of particles, then I would be happy. After all, the world is so diverse, and the only thing we can really trust is math." Joseph explained.

　　"Ah, Joseph, that's a very slightly Pythagorean view of yours." Danton on one side smiled, "Is everything counted?"

　　Pythagoras was a famous mathematician in ancient Greece. He and his disciples formed an important school of thought, the Pythagorean School. One of the basic ideas of this school was that "everything is number". They believed that mathematics was the only thing that could be used to describe the whole world and what it really was.

　　"I'm not as fanatical as they are." Joseph laughed slightly, "At least, I don't throw someone overboard just because they discovered irrational numbers. However, my friend, you might consider it this way. Is our vision reliable? That's not always the case; I've noticed, for example, that some people don't see colors quite the same as others. I think ..."

　　"Wait ... what did you just say? You said some people see colors differently than others? Are you sure there are such people?" Mara suddenly interrupted him.

　　"Yes, why?" Joseph asked.

　　"It may be a new, previously unnoticed disease." Mara said, "Can you tell us how you found out?"

　　"I had a friend when I was a kid who came up to me out of the blue one day and told me that he had noticed that the geraniums in my house took on a different color during the day and in the evening. The geraniums in the daytime showed a sky blue color, but in the evening they were bright red. But, to me, at all times, those geraniums look pink. When I told him this, he was still very surprised and even suspected that there was something wrong with my eyes. So we got a few more people to ask, and as a result, everyone except his brother agreed that geraniums should be pink. Later we found out that his uncle also thought those geraniums were blue during the day and bright red in the evening. But at the time I was envious of them because they could see geraniums in both colors."

　　"Can that friend of yours find them so I can see them?" Mara asked again.

　　"He's from Corsica, in Corsica, and he can't be found right now." Joseph spread his hands.

　　"Ah ...," Mara said with a mean grimace, "You know, Mr. Bonaparte, I have a friend who is so bouncy that he can jump right to the moon."

　　Joseph hurriedly said to himself several times in his mind "don't get on this guy's bad side", before he could suppress the urge to sneer directly back at him. But at this time, Danton spoke up:

　　"Could it be, could it be that the color of the geranium flower doesn't change during the day and in the evening? It's just that I'm looking at it wrong? Is there something wrong with my vision?"

　　Everyone then turned their gazes to Dandong together.

　　"What are you all staring at me so much for?" Dandong said.

　　"Dandong, in your eyes, geranium flowers change color during the day and in the evening?" Mara asked, staring at Dandong with the same eyes as if he was viewing a cherished animal.

　　"Yeah ... that's not what you see?" Danton asked rhetorically.

　　"You see what color this is?" Mara asked, suddenly pointing to Louis' hair.

　　"Flaxen, I think?" Danton was a little less sure.

　　"Well, yes, no problem yah ... Well, what color is Armand's hat?" Mara asked again.

　　"Green yah." Danton answered immediately.

　　"You see it again?" Mara said.

　　Danton opened his eyes wide and stared at Amand's hat for a moment, then said, "It's just green yah."

　　"Jeez! There really are people whose eyes see different colors than others! That hat of Armand's is obviously light red ah!" Mara clapped her hands, then he turned to Joseph, "Mr. Bonaparte, look how slow you are, don't you realize that this is a great medical discovery?"

　　"I am not a doctor after all." Joseph smiled, "I am almost completely illiterate when it comes to medicine."

　　"Aren't you going to do some serious research on the subject?" Mara asked.

　　"No, it's not an area I'm familiar with and interested in, there's a lot more math to be studied." Joseph replied, "Let's get back to what we started with. I believe that our vision is unreliable, as is our sense of hearing. Some people claim they can hear things that others can't ..."

　　"That's just a trick of the magi to fool people." Mara interjected.

　　"Ordinary people have moments like that too." Joseph said, "When we dream, for example, we hear a lot of sounds that aren't even there, and see a lot of things that aren't even there. Our sight can fool us, our hearing can fool us, and even our imagination can fool us, like 0.9999... equals one. But math doesn't. Well, I remember which priest said, 'When the heavens are turned upside down, the cross stands.' I won't comment on whether or not the 'cross' will stand, but I'm pretty sure that even if the entire solar system were to go to hell, I'm pretty sure that two points would still determine a straight line. So, when nothing else can be relied on, the only thing I can trust is math. Since the math's calculations show that light is likely to be a wave, I'll concede that possibility."

　　"And what if your math's calculations show that light also looks like particles a lot of the time?" Mara asked again.

　　"Then it could also be particles." Joseph replied.

　　"Incorrigible Pythagorean believer." Mara shook her head, "Mr. Bonaparte, truth is not only presented through mathematics alone, it has other, higher ways of being presented."

　　"What ways?" Joseph asked.

　　"From the intuition of the soul." Mara replied, "Have you read On the Soul of Man and Philosophical Essays on Man? I think some of the observations in there make a lot of sense. For example, different people's eyes see different colors, and that must be related to their souls ..."

　　"On the Soul of Man and Philosophical Essays on Man" are two things that Lavoisier did mention in casual conversation, in reference to Mara:

　　"That Mara, in his bullshit essay, quotes the same two bullshit essays, what with the bullshit ravings in 'On the Soul of Man' and 'Philosophical Essays on Man.' For that kind of confused and disorganized thinking, I'm pretty sure he wrote those two anonymously published contraptions himself."

　　Today, it seems that Lavoisier's guess would have been a pretty solid one.

　　"I really didn't expect to come across Minko even in this era." Joseph couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

　　However, his experience in later generations made him realize that don't try to convince a Minke, don't try to argue with a Minke, because he will force you down into the realm of low IQ and then use his rich SB experience to defeat you. The only sensible thing to do when you are confronted with a Minke is to agree with him, encourage him, and train him to be a big SB.