The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust #2)

by Philip Pullman

At the end of the novel, as the hero looked out from the mountains at a sunrise, which in the hands of another writer might have represented the dawn of a new age of enlightenment, free of superstition and darkness, the narrator turned away from commonplace symbolism of that kind with scorn. The final sentence read, “It was nothing more than what it was.”

I can understand why this is so attractive and dangerous a philosophy.

“Yes, the secret commonwealth…You don’t hear much talk about that these days. When I was young, there wasn’t a single bush, not a single flower nor a stone, that didn’t have its own proper spirit. You had to have a mind to your manners around them, to ask for pardon, or for permission, or give thanks….Just to acknowledge that they were there, them spirits, and they had their proper rights to recognition and courtesy.”

The other side’s got an energy that our side en’t got. Comes from their certainty about being right.

The way to think about the secret commonwealth is with stories. Only stories’ll do.”

The question was, she thought, was the universe alive or dead?

I shall be busy now.”

In Prague, maybe the veil between the worlds is thinner than in other places—I don’t know.”

True to my experience.

from a single congregation they had fractured into several hundred anxious individuals.

The secret commonwealth is there. We can’t see it with rationality any more than we can weigh something with a microscope: it’s the wrong sort of instrument. We need to imagine as well as measure….

but her eyes were clear and wide and blazing with righteousness.

This word used to be a positive one. Now it’s terrifying.

“Ah, a price is a number on which we must both agree.”