Every Apprentice asks the same question in the first year, and asks it of the wrong person. The question is, "Does it work?" and it is put to the mentor. The mentor, if he or she has been well taught, answers, "What does your Record say?" and the Apprentice goes away dissatisfied. I want to say here why that answer is the right one, and why it is harder to act on than it looks.
Four ways to fool yourself
The elastic aim. A working "for prosperity" is followed by a small tax refund, and is counted a success. Had it been followed by a new friendship, that would have been counted too, since friendship is a kind of wealth. An aim that can be satisfied by anything has been satisfied by nothing.
The good memory. We remember the talisman that was followed by the offer of work. We do not remember the four that were followed by silence, because silence is not an event.
The thing that was coming anyway. A member works for the recovery of a friend from an illness from which nearly everyone recovers. The friend recovers.
The moved post. The working was for a particular house. The house was sold to someone else. A month later the member finds a better one, and concludes that the working knew best. Perhaps it did. But that is not what was written beforehand, if anything was written beforehand.
What the Guild does about it
The remedy is not cleverness. It is clerical. Before a working, the member writes three things in the Record: the purpose, in one sentence; the term, as a date; and what would count as its accomplishment. At the term, the member writes one of three words: accomplished, not accomplished, or cannot tell. No fourth word is permitted, and no entry may be amended.
The third word is the important one. A practitioner who never writes "cannot tell" is not being honest, and one who writes nothing else has not learned to frame an aim. Somewhere between lies a Record that can be read.
One member's count
A Journeyman of my own Chapterhouse, who has allowed me to quote her figures, scored sixty-one sigils over three years. Twenty-four she marked accomplished, fourteen not accomplished, and twenty-three cannot tell. She then did something that is not required and that I now recommend. She went back through the twenty-four and asked of each, "Would I have expected this to happen in any case?" She kept nine.
Nine in sixty-one is not nothing. It is also not what the books promise. But it is a number, and she can do something with a number. She can ask what the nine had in common. In her case they were small, they concerned her own conduct more than other people's, and they had been charged at the end of the Lamp and not at any other time. She has changed her practice accordingly, and is keeping a second count.
What the count leaves out
I do not want to suggest that the tally of outward results is the whole fruit of the Art. Most members who stay with the work stay for something else: a steadiness, a quality of attention, a sense of standing in a larger order than one's own concerns. These are real, and they do not fit in three columns.
But I notice that the members who speak of those things most credibly are the ones whose columns are honest. A person who will write "not accomplished" eleven times in a year can be believed when she says that the year changed her. That is why the Record comes first among the Charges. It does not prove that the Art works. It makes us into people whose report on the matter is worth having.