Speaker Sjeng,

I thank you for your considered response, and for taking the time to address my words directly. I suspect, however, that we have arrived at a point where our disagreement becomes rather more precise.

You ask who gets to decide what constitutes sufficient evidence of conviction, and by what authority anyone is required to provide it.

No one.

I never intended to appoint an arbiter of Eleusian conviction, nor do I believe an Eleusian is obliged to satisfy some external measure before being permitted to call themselves devoted to Nature. If you say you are convinced, I have no particular need to dispute the sincerity of that conviction.

My concern was never whether you are convinced.

It was whether conviction, endurance, or hardship should persuade those who do not share your conviction that they ought therefore to accept its conclusion.

Your answer appears to be that Nature need not prove itself at all. The tree grows. The seed returns. The wild persists. Should that ever cease, you will concede that your claim was mistaken.

That is a perfectly coherent position.

But notice what it establishes.

You have given us a condition under which you would admit that Nature's persistence has failed. You have not given us a reason that Nature's persistence ought to be accepted as evidence that its way is preferable to any other.

A weed endures. A forest endures. So too can a tyrant, an empire, or an ideology endure for generations before something finally displaces it. Persistence demonstrates persistence. It does not, by itself, establish the worth of what persists.

Nor was my original argument that Nature lacks conviction because it does not constantly tear down walls or march upon cities. I said precisely the opposite: Nature's conviction is plainly visible in its willingness to endure.

Evil's conviction is plainly visible in its willingness to embrace cruelty.

The servant of the Light is asked to demonstrate something different.

Not that he can endure the longest.

Not that he inflict cruelty.

But that when the cost must fall somewhere, he is willing to place himself beneath it before placing another there.

That is not a test I invented for Eleusis. It is the standard by which Targossas understands its own service.

And perhaps that is where your question has its answer.

I have no authority to determine whether an Eleusian is sufficiently convinced of Nature. I have no desire to.

The Lord and Lady do not require me to measure the sincerity of every belief that stands beyond the Hearth. Targossas need only know what it serves, what it protects, and what it is willing to bear in that service.

You are certain that Nature will endure.

I do not doubt that you are certain.

The question that remains between us is not whose conviction is stronger.

It is what that conviction asks of the one who holds it.

And on that question, I suspect we will continue to disagree.


Forever in service to Them,
Ambassador Kaldrin, Arbiter of the Pact

Penned by my hand on the 15th of Glacian, in the year 1011 AF.