In Praise Of Common Grace

Paloman Marne was a polemicist with a specific agenda, to promote the rights of ordinary people both against the aristocracy and against arcane practitioners. In his book, he skilfully wove together a number of apparently unconnected threads, showing that there was a deep underlying link between them and drawing attention to the perceived failings of governments, tyrants and magicians around the world. Yet the book was no mere list of criticisms. In making a case for those aspects of nature which he called the "Common Grace", Paloman Marne offered a hopeful perspective on history and an agenda for changing the world.

The book opens with a philosophical chapter entitled "Concerning the Natural and Unnatural". Here the author considers the differences between patterns that can be predicted by observation and induction and tested by experiment and those which arise from the forces of will, thought of as arcane or magical. He comes to a conclusion not very different from the one set out in Dr. Cygnus Quinn's discussion of Magic and Technology, although without the greater perspective and comparative breadth available to a Stability Council observer capable of studying the wider Discontinuum. Nevertheless it is a remarkably inciteful discussion. Paloman Marne then goes on to classify the natural order as an important example of what he calls Common Grace. It does not require secretive knowledge of hidden lore, arcane training and magical skills, but rather the ordinary application of universal human thought and effort.   In the following two chapters, the author expounds on the theme of the bounties of the Common Grace and their application in farming, sailing and all manner of crafts and building.   Chapter four begins an analysis of the Unnatural which by contrast is depicted as elitist and dangerous. Having many examples to choose from the ongoing Time of Terrors, when it was written, the book points out how magic in the hands of powerful mages has led to much recent suffering and conflict. Common men and women have frequently been exploited by their arcane rulers and have gained little or nothing from serving them. The theme continues for another two chapters until chapter seven which switches focus to the history of Arginbury.   The political practices of the Popular Ascendancy at Arginbury are explored in some detail and with evident approval by the author who praises the democratic processes they brought to the city and later to world government from the Tree of New Greening.   In the final chapters democracy itself is presented as another Common Grace, aligned with nature. The argument here is somewhat strained but clearly the author wishes to link the themes. He advocates for an end to the tyranny of magicians and for a return to the lost values of the First Popular Ascendancy.

The book was written deep into the age known as the Time of Terrors when Magicians' End had grown weary of a seemingly endless series of magical abuses, brought about by the widespread use of Synaptic Unbinding Potion, which greatly empowered mages but also was known to addict them and send them mad. It arose from a strata of society that had no interest in the conflicts between the competing mages and their sinister societies, such as the Sisters of Vabatan and the Unbound, wanting only to live in peace again. Even Arginbury itself, traditionally a backwater of little interest to power hungry rulers, had suffered from some of the effects of the Silent Thunder in 3376 APC when the self proclaimed Wardens of the Central Plains used the traumatic spell in a failed attempt to capture the city.   There was a longing for the safety of an age that none now remembered, when the Moderators' Council had been able to keep rogue mages in check via their feared Final Examiners.   But the book "In Praise of Common Grace" went further, casting back deeper into the history of Arginbury for a model of government that didn't even think arcane rulers in any form were necessary, no matter how benign.

Neglected during the author's lifetime, a copy of the book came into the hands of a young builder's merchant from Jebbin City named Lodirol McEnnim and radicalised him. At this time the Nexorin Pathogen was beginning to spread and people were losing their fear of mages. In 3634 APC, McEnnim founded the Defenders of the Common Grace, a society dedicated to the rights of ordinary people working within the normal Laws of Form of Magicians' End, anti-magical in sentiment and advocating for democratic rights against autocratic governments everywhere.     Even today, more than three thousand years later, the Defenders of the Common Grace continue to play an important role in the life and politics of Magicians' End, representing a philosophical idea which has always found expression in some form ever since.

Whilst everyone in the modern world has heard of the Defenders of the Common Grace even if they do not agree with them or are not themselves members, considerably fewer have actually read "In Praise Of Common Grace" which, as historically important as it was, is not generally considered to be particularly well written or profound these days. The book has been largely superseded by the work of later and more sophisticated authors.

We can trace a line of related and evolving thought all the way from the First Popular Ascendancy, through to "In Praise of Common Grace", then to the Defenders of the Common Grace, on to the Second Popular Ascendancy which was declared in 3642 APC, the Cities Under Grace in the Age of Shadows, the Third Popular Ascendancy in 5266 APC and finally all the way to the Congress of Concerned Citizens we have today. It is a philosophical movement which waxes and wanes but has never completely died out in the hearts and minds of the ordinary people of Magicians' End.