- ~ - THE LEWIS LEGACY - ~ -

NEWSLETTER OF THE C. S. LEWIS FOUNDATION FOR TRUTH IN PUBLISHING

Seventieth Issue, Autumn 1996

THE LEWIS LEGACY is published by Lindentree Press,

Editor Kathryn Lindskoog, 1344 E. Mayfair Avenue, Orange, California 92667.

Telephone and Fax: 714-532 53764 Compuserve 73441,2507

Internet 73441.2507@compuserve.com

Listed in Newsletters in Print from Gale Research Inc. ISSN 084-2586

$10 annual donation toward cost suggested.

THE LEWIS LEGACY has been placed on this web page by Kenneth R. Morefield, 1025 Crane Drive #201, DeKalb, IL 60115 with permission from Kathryn Lindskoog. EMAIL to Mr. Morefield can be sent to kmorefie@niu.edu

C. S. LEWIS ON DREAMS

Like many children, C. S. Lewis suffered from nightmares; his were often about giant insects. Like many creative writers, Lewis continued to have an active dream life and took an interest in it. He likened the pruning and polishing of creative ideas from his unconscious to waking evaluation of dreams. Some elements from his dreams found their way into his fiction; for example, he had a series of dreams about lions Just before he wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

In 1939 he stated in The Personal Heresy that everything that is real is a real something, although it may not be what it pretends to be. "What pretends to be a crocodile may be a (real) dream; what pretends at the breakfast table to be a dream may be a (real) lie"

Like many authors, Lewis set some of his fiction in dreams. He did so in The Pilgrim's Regress, told as a dream about John. There Lewis described a dream within a dream. In The Great Divorce, readers aren't told until the end that the story was just a dream. Lewis also placed dreams in his fiction. Dreams of various characters played important parts in his science-fiction trilogy, his Narnian Chronicles, and Till We Have Faces.

Lewis sometimes described his dreams in his diary. For example, on 1 February 1923 he had a nightmare that turned out to be precognitive about the event that would trigge r The Most Substantial People. He took an interest in dreams of friends and relatives, and he used to tell them his in letters. Some of the accounts are memorable, such the one about Lewis's dream that he was on the moon.

Lewis was well aware of Freudian dream interpretation, but after a strong initial interest in Freud in early adulthood, he discounted much of Freud's theorizing.

He never lost his interest in dreams. In the last book he ever wrote, Letters to Malcolm, he reflected, "A dream ceases to be an illusion as soon as we wake. It is a real dream, and it may also be instructive."

WALTER HOOPER'S C. S. LEWIS:

COMPANION & GUIDE, $40

This 940-page volume from Harper-San Francisco is the first by Hooper that does not lead off with his fictitious secretaryship and/or deep friendship with Lewis. Instead, the book flaps identify Hooper as an eminent Lewis scholar, a trustee of his estate, and editor of Letters of C. S. Lewis (the collection originally edited by Warren Lewis). In CSL James Como says that if Hooper were British, this book "would merit him a knighthood."

ln his enthusiastic section on The Dark Tower (pp. 215-219), Hooper identifies the shoddy story as "an ingenious fragment." He quotes some key passages including the attack on "modern" women. He does not quote at all from Chapter 7, which tests out as the only part of the story written by Lewis.

[Caption: Secretary wanted: Inquire within]

C S LEWIS ON DANTE

In addition to referring to Dante occasionally in his scholarly books, Lewis published three essays specifically about Dante: "Dante's Similes,""'Imagery in the Last Eleven Cantos of Dante's Comedy," and "Dante's Statius" (available in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature,).

Readers unacquainted with The Divine Comedy can't realize how much it influenced Lewis. Those well acquainted with it are apt to notice its echoes in some of Lewis's fiction (such as the emergence from a cave to see the stars at the end of The Silver Chair). But who has tallied all the references to Dante in Lewis's fiction and letters? No one.

Shortly before he began to believe in Christianity, on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day of 1929-1930 C .S. Lewis read part of Paradiso and said it had "really opened a new world for me.... Unfortunately, the impression is one so unlike anything else that I can hardly describe it... like a slow dance, or like flying. It is like the stars..."

The poem "God in his mercy made..." in Pilgrim's Regress (1933) comes from words of Beatrice in Canto 2 of the Inferno, and the verses over the gate to hell in Canto 3.

On 28 March 1953 Lewis wrote to William Kinter, an American, "...there is a science-fiction element in the Commedia e.g. Inferno XXXIV 85-114." On 30 July 1954 he wrote to Kinter that the bus driver in The Great Divorce is modeled on the angel in the Inferno, Canto IX. (So much for the idea that the bus driver is Christ or the Holy Spirit. As Lewis told his father, that's the trouble with facts. They ruin so many good theories. )

Lewis's series titled "Five Sonnets" in Poems is about bereavement and seems to have been written after Joy's death. "Read Dante," Lewis says there, because before Dante was comforted he had to pass down to the frozen center and up the mountain of pain. Lewis ended A Grief Observed with Dante's words: Por si torno all' eterna fontana.

FROM THE MAILBAG

I was amazed to see on page 7 of the latest Legacy the name "Cleaver Keenan." Cleaver looked after Mary when Rod was born in Swadlincote. He was our family doctor and a very important part of our church when I was in the ministry there. I knew he had gone to Canada. He was like a whirlwind, of tremendous energy. Somewhere we have a photo of his wife. I remember their telling about experiences in Sierra Leone.

--Ian Macmurdo, Leicester, England

Just finished your book Fakes, Frauds, and Other Malarkey. Thoroughly enjoyed it! The first few chapters were so humorous that my wife said I could not read it in bed as my laughing kept her awake! I am a member of the Toastmasters Club and if you don't object would like to use some of the stories when giving humorous talks at out local club.

--Darvin Weakley, Beaver, AR

When I bought Light in the Shadowlands last week I did not know it was an update of Hoax. At first I was a little disappointed because I already have Hoax, which gave me all the proof I need. However, as I read those things which have happened since Hoax, I was amazed that there is still a controversy. Your case is so thorough and strong. Money or power seems to be at the heart of the deception. Personally, I will never buy a book with Hooper as the editor or author. I will never, never read The Dark Tower. Lewis speaks to me as no other Christian writer ever has. A Grief Observed ministered to me in a difficult time. I cannot believe it was made up. And A Severe Mercy is among my favorite books. You have a mission, Mrs. Lindskoog. History will be your witness. Don't give up.

--Nancy Carter McGough, Calgary, BC

A few weeks ago I was reading Thomas Harris's I'm OK, You're OK, an extension of the Transactional Analysis framework first described in Eric Berne's Games People Play, and was pleased to read "It has been said that love is not gazing at each other, but looking outward together in the same direction'..." I am sure it comes from The Four Loves. Yes?

--Jonathan Brewer, Cornwall, England

I may be completely off-base here, but the reason the Home Office wanted to send Joy Gresham back to America may not have been as politically motivated as Doug Gresham and Robert Sellers suspect. I am an American who lived in England and was made to understand that, like many countries, the government is very wary of anyone from another country who might arrive on its shores and become a burden to the State. I had to prove to them that I had the financial resources to live and work there for a year without going on the dole. It was up to the discretion of the Home Office to decide whether or not I could stay on past that year. (My wife and I returned to America before the issue arose.) Perhaps it was different in the 50's, but it seems to me that the Home Office was probably concerned about Joy who was a single Mom with two children who had no obvious means of income. The decision not to renew her visa and to force her to leave was probably a practical one and had little to do with her political affiliations. Of course, I may be wrong. One can never be sure with governments in any situation. A side-note: when Dietrich Bonhoeffer studied in the United States from 1930-31, he and fellow-student Jean Lasserre took a trip to Mexico from New York. They very nearly weren't allowed back into the United States by the Immigration Officials at the border for fear that they were sneaking in to rob Americans of work. It required the intervention of the German Ambassador in Mexico and a telegram from Paul Lehman at Union Seminary to assure the powers-that-be that Dietrich and Jean indeed had tickets to return to their respective countries and wouldn't be a burden to the depressed labor market in America. Again, it wasn't politics, it was mere practicality.

--Paul McCusker, Colorado Springs, CO

One correction I could make to an item in the summer Legacy. There was much talk about casting Tom Hanks in the lead role in "Primary Colors," but when he was offered the role, he turned it down.

--Wendell Wagner, Greenbelt, MD

Timur is a student I met over a year ago in the English Library that I was working in. We got to know each other but not closely until around Christmas last year when he started to visit me at my house more often. Most of the foreign English teachers in this country have avoided the largest university, his university, for the political problems there. A few years ago the students protested against the government and the police became involved, killing at least 20. Since then all the missionaries have avoided the school (which has over 30,000 students). Timur helped me start an English Club on that campus.

Through this work we became better friends and he began to ask many questions about Christ and Christianity. Gradually he met students in my group from our church and for the first time he was confronted with people who had left Islam to follow Christ. Timur, named after the famed Amir Timur, or Tamerlane, is now a solid Christian believer in a Muslim country.

I introduced him to some Lewis books that have been translated to Russian, among those Mere Christianity. When he saw the name "Clive Staples Lewis," as it is written in Russian, he said, "I've read some other books by this man." After some discussion I discovered that he had the entire Russian Narnia Chronicles at home and that his family had read them, including his cousins!

All of this has taken place this year in Central Asia, more specifically Tashkent which to my knowledge is the namesake of Tash in The Last Battle. One of the most anti-Christian lands on earth became a theme for C.S. Lewis to use in his Chronicles of Narnia, and now the Chronicles are read there.

-- Name Withheld, as from Tashkent

I have just sent the Narnia video series to a Roman Catholic nun I correspond with in Calcutta, a Lewis fan. She like me is also a Scott Peck fan.

-- Cleaver Keenan, Espana, Ontario

A friend of mine is looking for the source of a C. S. Lewis quotation: "Prayer does not

prepare us for the great work: prayer is the great work."

--Vickie Danielsen, Englewood, CO

NEWS AND VIEWS

Sheldon Vanauken, author ofA Severe Mercy, was diagnosed with cancer at the end of summer and died 28 October. He was a friend of Lewis's and will be sorely missed by many friends and Lewis enthusiasts.

MYTHCON 1997 at Pepperdine University, Maliibu CA., 8-11 August: "J.R.R. Tolkien, the Achievement of His Literary Life."

MYTHCON 1998 at the Wade Center in Wheaton IL, 8-13 August: "C. S. LEWIS: A CENTENARY CELEBRATION." This promises to be a memorable event.

Over forty books about Lewis and his writing are reportedly scheduled for release by the end of his centennial in 1998.

C. S. Lewis: Writer, Dreamer and Mentor by Lionel Adey (professor emeritus, University of Victoria) is in preparation at Eerdmans.

Testimonials sought by Dr. Phillip G. Rykan of Wheaton College about the role C. S. Lewis played in your conversion or pilgrimage, for a book he is writing -

Leland.Ryken@wheaton.edu

Narnia on the Undernet: IRC chats Mondays and Wednesdays from 3 to 5 p.m. and 9 to 12 p.m. EST. If you don't know how to use IRC or Undernet, contact your system administrator or go to http:www.undernet.org

In the Steps of C. S. Lewis tour, 3-12 June 1997, $3000. Meet George Sayer, Douglas Gresham, Walter Hooper; see the Bodleian, the Kilns, Magdalen College, the Bird and Baby, Holy Trinity, etc. For information contact Will Vaus, 17 Gidding Court, Irmo, SC 29063. Phone or Fax 803-749-3688.

C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian (Harold Shaw, 1987) has been out of print for several years, and Cornerstone Press Chicago intends to release a new, updated edition in 1997.

Hooper's Hooch is the name of a popular new alcoholic beverage in Britain. It comes in cans and is one of the new "alcopops" aimed at the youth market.

STOP AND SHOP

The Politics of Revelation and Reason: Religion and Civic Life in the New Nation by John West (University Press of Kansas, 1996) is an especially handsome and timely volume that sheds light on the controversial subject of church/state relations, for readers who want scholarship rather than polemic. Heavily documented, but highly readable. West examines Christian political activism from 1800 to 1835, focusing on evangelical challenges to such questionable practices as Cherokee removal, the delivery of Sunday mail, and dueling. West is an assistant professor of political science at Seattle Pacific University and a senior fellow of the Discovery Insitute, where he directs the Program on Religion, Liberty, and Civic Life. In that capacity he is starting a C.S. Lewis Web Page.

Body, Soul, and Bioethics by Gilbert Meilaender (Notre Dame Press, $21.95). Moral discourse about the metaphyical and religious aspects of bioethics.

Creative Writing for People Who Can't Not Write by Kathryn Lindskoog is in its fifth printing by Zondervan. Chapter 10 is titled "C.S. Lewis's Free Advice to Hopeful Writers." Available through bookstores or from Lindskoog directly. $18.95.

NOTES AND QUOTES

I was glad to have Warren Hamilton Lewis as a friend during the last nine years of his life, visiting with him frequently when I was in England and carrying on correspondence with him. I found him a man of the "old school," a gentleman in a sense almost unkown in our time. He, like his famous brother C. S. Lewis, was a lover of the best in music, in literature and in art and architecture. This love was direct and intimate, a necessity to right living rather than an added-on "culture." Like his brother, he had a never-failing sense of right conduct, a sense that remained intact in spite of his well-known problem with alcohol. Warren had a Christian experience not unlike his brother's. And again like his brother he was basically a kind-hearted man.

-Clyde S. Kilby, 1975 letter to Lindskoog

Granted, the contemplation of the sick and ugly side of life is disconcerting and unpleasant. Our task is to recognize what is there, however, and then bring the healing beam of God's presence into it. What we refuse to see can never be healed by the light we have been given. -Morton T. Kelsey

Integrity is not integrity unless it forces you at times to stand up against what everybody else is saying. If you always end up, just by coincidence, doing the popular thing, that's a pretty clear sign that you lack integrity. Integrity requires you to risk something. You have to have something at stake, something you can lose. You can't live a life of integrity unless you are sometimes willing to stand up and say "I know all of my friends believe this," or, "My society believes this. But I believe something entirely different, and here it is. take your best shot." It's so much easier to sit back. It's exhausting to stand up when people criticize you and when you are viewed as odd. but that's precisely when integrity is tested." -Stephen Carter, author of Integrity, as interviewed by Michael Cromartie in Books & Culture, May/June 1996

Books may preach when the Author cannot, when the Author may not, when the Author dares not. Yea, what is much more, when the Author is not. -Thomas Brooks, 1654

FOOTSTEPS OF SOKAL

In a special spring 1996 issue of the leading North American journal of cultural studies, Social Text (a publication of Duke University Press), a New York University physicist named Alan Sokal published a scholarly article titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." Like other articles in this esoteric branch of academia, the article was heavily documented and written in impenetrable prose. It was a call "to demystify and democratize the production of scientific knowledge."

Sokal's article argued against the idea that there is an external and knowable world. Even physics, he assured readers, was simply another field of cultural criticism. "In quantum gravity, as we shall see, the space-time manifold ceases to exist as an objective physical reality; geometry becomes relational and contextual; and the foundational conceptual categories of prior science - among them existence itself - become problemaized and relativized. This conceptual revolution, I will argue, has profound implications for the content of a future post-modern and liberatory science."

Sokal referred to "the crisis of late-capitalist production relations." His article was eagerly accepted by a powerful little group of political academics who currently present themselves as the true theorists of the "academic left." (Sokal's real political sympathies happen to be left of center.)

Once his article was published, Sokal announced in Lingua Franca that it was all a parody of the nonsensical gibberish and jargon that pass for "progressive" thought in Social Text. The spoof ended up on the first page of the New York Times.

After the humiliating expose, Stanley Fish, a prominent English professor and executive director of Duke University Press, charged that Alan Sokal is a threat to "intellectual standards." (Thanks to R. O. Evans.)

FOOTSTEPS OF MOLESWORTH

Who's Who in Library Service, 4th ed., 1966, included an entry for Nigel Molesworth, born in Devon on 1 April 1932 to Zeal Monachorum and Ermintrude Entwhistle Molesworth. He majored in Latin at St. Custard's (1951-1954), and went on to a master's degree in Library Science in Chicago (1961). In short order he won St Custard's Distinguished Alumni Award in 1961; worked for the CIA in Washington, D.C.; became permanent Librarian and Archivist of the Molesworth Institute in New Brunswick, NJ; served the UN on the trust territory of the Pacific Islands and was Advisor to Her Majesty Queen Salote on the Royal Library of Tonga in 1964. His languages included Latin, Greek, French, Russian, Spanish, and Treen.

The perpetrator of this hoax, Norman Stevens, had a lifelong hobby of collecting and publishing (and, obviously, creating) library humor. At the time of this hoax, he was acting director of the library at Rutgers; and the location he gave for the Molesworth Institute was the location of his office at Rutgers. In addition to creating the totally fictitious character of Nigel Molesworth, Stevens also slipped into his own sketch a statement that he was, among other things, director of the Molesworth Institute. Having committed the perfect reference crime, he had to call attention to it by a letter in Library Journal, complaining about an alleged minor error in the Molesworth sketch as an example of sloppy editing. (Thanks to Lawrence Crumb.)

DOUSING A MANUSCRIPT BONFIRE?

In the late 1940s Henry Roth (author of the 1934 novel Call It Sleep) reportedly built a bonfire on his Maine farm and burned all his writing. This past spring Roth's literary executor announced that at Roth's home in Albuquerque he has found 75 file-folders, approximately 3500 pages of Roth's writing.

FOOTSTEPS BEHIND THE DARK TOWER?

Wendell Wagner reports that he has been thinking about two films that could have been a conscious or unconscious influence on The Dark Tower if it was really written in the 1960s as now suspected. (Wagner probably was not aware that Walter Hooper is an enthusiastic patron of popular films, a fact that fits well in this scenario.)

The 1953 thriller "Invaders from Mars" used to trigger nightmares in boys Wagner's age, who watched it repeatedly. It has scenes in which a giant brain controls people by planting something in their necks. This could have inspired the Big Brain in The Dark Tower and the Sting thrust into people's spines to turn them into robots. (Hooper was 21 years old when "Invaders from Mars" created a sensation in 1953.)

In the 1963 French film "La Jetee" travel in outer space has become impossible after a nuclear war, and experimenters investigate time travel as an alternative. A man is forced to undergo mental time travel while a group of four or five experimenters observe him. This bears an uncanny resemblance to the four or five experimenters observing time travel in Dark Tower and to Hooper's explanation for that in the preface. (S/F buff Wagner considers both explanations silly, but he likes "La Jetee" and dislikes Dark Tower. )

If Dark Tower was written in the 1960s as suspected, "La Jetee" certainly could have inspired it. Wagner speculates that a 1963 viewer of "La Jetee" could have connected its excuse for time travel with the last sentence of Out of the Silent Planet and combined it with part of the plot of "Invaders from Mars." Only alert viewers of those films with an interest in The Dark Tower would notice the connection.

Wagner says "Invaders from Mars" is easy to find on videotape. "La Jetee" can now be ordered from Facets Video (1-800-331-6197) for about $20. He hopes others interested in The Dark Tower will view "Invaders from Mars" and "La Jetee" and comment upon their possible connection to Dark Tower .

Anything May Exist

by Kathryn Lindskoog

The following little-known descriptions of Christianity are from the writings of C. S. Lewis and Karl Marx:

1. Union with Christ imparts an inner elevation, comfort in affliction, tranquil reliance, and a heart which opens itself to everything noble and great not for the sake of ambition or desire for fame, but for the sake of Christ. Union with Christ produces a joy which the Epicurean seeks in vain in his shallow philosophy, which the deeper thinker vainly pursues in the most hidden depths of knowledge. It is a joy known only to the simple and childlike heart, united with Christ and through Him with God, a joy which elevates life and makes it more beautiful.1

2. You know, I think, that I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name, are merely man's invention-Christ as much as Loki. Primitive man found himself surrounded by all sorts of terrible things he didn't understand-thunder, pestilence, snakes, etc: what more natural then to suppose that these were animated by evil spirits trying to torture him. These he kept off by cringing to them, singing songs and making sacrifices etc. Gradually from being mere nature-spirits these supposed beings were elevated into more elaborate ideas, such as the old gods: and when man became more refined he pretended that these spirits were good as well as powerful.

Thus religion, that is to say mythology grew up. Often too, great men were regarded as gods after their death-such as Heracles or Odin: thus after the death of a Hebrew philosopher Yeshua (whose name we have corrupted into Jesus) he became regarded as a god, a cult sprang up, which was afterwards connected with the ancient Hebrew Jahweh-worship, and so Christianity came into being-one mythology among manyÉ

Of course, mind you, I am not laying down as a certainty that there is nothing outside the material world; considering the discoveries that are always being made, this would be foolish. Anything MAY exist.2

In fact, these two statements were made when Lewis and Marx were still boys and not really so settled in their beliefs as they sound. The first one was by Karl Marx, and the second was by C.S. Lewis.

1Young Marx's praise of Christianity (sometime circa 1830) was published in "Karl Marx as a schoolboy" in the German volume Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels Gesamtausgabe. The passage was quoted in "The Baptism of Karl Marx" by Eugene Kamenka (lecturer in philosophy, University of Malaya) in The Hibbert Journal, vol. 56, no. 3 (April 1958), pp. 345-46.

2Young Lewis's condemnation of Christianity is found in a letter he wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves on October 12, 1916 (as published in They Stand Together, p.135).

APRIL 1996 PHOTOS BY PERRY BRAMLETT

The kilns and an antique gas lamp-post near Magdalen College

The houses of famous writers have always inspired curiosity and comment. From the parsonage on the bleak windswept moors of North Yorkshire that informed the sensibilities and piqued the imaginations of the Bronte sisters, to the coalminers' rowhouses that were D.H. Lawrence's early homes, from the grand but crumbling rooms of Lord Byron's Newstead Abbey, to Dylan Thomas's "seashaked" house in South Wales, the homes described here reveal unexpected facts about the tastes, habits, and eccentricities of the writers who lived in them. In many of these places a visitor can still today walk into landscapes that have scarcely changed since the writer occupied them.

WRITERS AND THEIR HOUSES, edited by Kate Marsh and Hamish Hamilton

TOM KEY, circa 1986 (Orange, CA) with Kathryn Lindskoog

and

TOM KEY, 1996

Saturday, June 22

7:30 p.m.

Atlanta actor/director Tom Key, performs his highly-acclaimed one man show, C.S. Lewis on Stage, a celebration of the wit and wisdom of the popular British author and professor

Annotated Chronological Listing of C S. Lewis's Books,

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"What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with their Christianity latent." "Christian Apologetics" in God in the Dock

1. Spirits in Bondage (London: Heinemann, 1919; San Diego: Harcourt, 1984). A collection of early poems published under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton.

2. Dymer (London: Dent, 1926; New York: Dutton, New York: Macmillan). One long narrative poem published under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton. It is out of print as a single volume, but was included in the 1969 collection Narrative Poems.

3. The Pilgrim's Regress (London: Dent, 1933; London: Sheed and Ward; London: Bles; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). Semi-autobiographical fantasy tracing Lewis's return to Christianity. It is his book in prose, first foray into Christian apologetics and the seedbed of most of his later writing.

4. The Allegory of Love (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936; London: Oxford University Press). Outstanding study of medieval literature and the tradition of courtly love.

5. Out of the Silent Planet (Oxford: John Lane, 1938; New York: Macmillan; London: Pan Books). First volume of Lewis's

[Numbers 6-13 are omitted in original newsletter]

14. The Abolition of Man (London: Oxford University Press, 1943; London: Bles, Macmillan, New York). An attack on false world views and affirmation of true values.

15. Beyond Personality (London: Bles, 1944; New York: Macmillan). The third part of Lewis's wartime radio series.

16. That Hideous Strength (London: John Lane, 1945; New York: Macmillan). Third of LewisÕs science-fiction trilogy. Published in an abridged version as The Tortured Planet, by Avon Books in 1946.

17. The Great Divorce (London: Bles, 1945; New York: Macmillan). A fantasy visit to hell and heaven. This was one of Lewis's favorites of his own books.

18. Miracles: A Preliminary Study (London: Bles, 1947; New York: Macmillan; London: Fontana). An explanation and defense of miracles. The Fontana edition includes Lewis's expansion of chapter 3.

19. Transposition and Other Addresses (London: Bles, 1949; New York: Macmillan; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). Published in the U.S. as The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. Originally three sermons and two Christian addresses. Contents: "Transposition," "The Weight of Glory," "Membership," "Learning in War Time," "The Inner Ring." The 1980 edition adds four more essays ("Why I Am Not a Pacifist," "Is Theology Poetry," "On Forgiveness," and "A Slip of the Tongue") and a partially misleading introduction by Walter Hooper.

20. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (London: Bles, 1950; London: Penguin; New York: Macmillan; London: Collins; New York: HarperCollins). The first of the seven-volume Narnian series for children.

21. Prince Caspian (London: Bles, 1951; London: Penguin; New York: Macmillan; London: Collins; New York: HarperCollins). Second of the seven-volume Narnian series for children.

22. Mere Christianity (London: Bles, 1952; London: Fontana; New York: Macmillan). A volume combining The Case for Christianity, Christian Behavior and Beyond Personality with a new introduction.

23. The Voyage of "The Dawn Treader" (London: Bles, 1952; London: Penguin; New York: Macmillan; London: Collins; New York: HarperCollins). Third of the seven-volume Narnian series for children.

24. The Silver Chair (London: Bles, 1953; London: Penguin; New York: Macmillan; London: Collins; New York: HarperCollins). Fourth of the seven-volume Narnian series for children.

25 .The Horse and His Boy (London: Bles, 1954; London: Penguin; New York: Macmillan; London: Collins; New York: HarperCollins). Fifth of the seven-volume Narnian series for children.

26. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1954). Volume 3 of The Oxford History of English Literature series.

27. The Magician's Nephew (London: The Bodley Head, 1954; London: Penguin; New York: Macmillan; London: Collins; New York: HarperCollins). Sixth of the seven-volume Narnian series for children.

28. Surprised by Joy (London: Bles, 1955; London: Fontana; New York: Harcourt). Lewis's spiritual autobiography takes the reader to the point of his conversion.

29. The Last Battle (London: The Bodley Head, 1954; London: Penguin; New York: Macmillan; London: Collins; New York: HarperCollins). Seventh of the seven-volume Narnian series for children.

30. Till We Have Faces (London: Bles, 1956; New York: Harcourt). A difficult but rewarding novel; according to Owen Barfield, Lewis considered it his best work in the sphere of imaginative literature. The Time Reading Plan edition (1966) included a perceptive introduction by T. S. Matthews.

31. Reflections on the Psalms (London: Bles, 1958; London: Fontana; New York; Harcourt). Comments on the book of Psalms.

32. The Four Loves (London: Bles, 1960; London: Fontana; New York: Harcourt). Analysis of the four human loves and divine Love.

33. Studies in Words (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). A scholarly study of seven words: nature, sad, wit, free, sense, simple, and conscience.

34. The World's Last Night and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt, 1960). A collection of seven essays about Christianity and values. Contents: "The Efficacy of Prayer," "On Obstinacy in Belief," "Lilies That Fester," "Screwtape Proposes a Toast," "Good Work and Good Works," "Religion and Rocketry," "The World's Last Night."

35. A Grief Observed (London: Faber and Faber, 1961; Greenwich, Connecticut: Seabury; New York: Bantam; New York: Harper & Row). An account of Lewis's bereavement originally published under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk. The Bantam edition includes an informative afterword by Chad Walsh, and the Harper & Row gift edition includes a warm foreword by Madeleine L'Engle.

36. An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961). An exploration into the subject of literary criticism and good reading.

37. They Asked for a Paper (London: Bles, 1962). A dozen literary and Christian addresses that Lewis gave over a twenty-year period. Contents: "De Descriptione Temporum," "The Literary Impact of the Authorized Version," "Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?" "Kipling's World," "Sir Walter Scott," "Lilies That Fester," "Psycho Analysis and Literary Criticism," "The Inner Ring," "Is Theology Poetry?" "Transposition," "On Obstinacy in Belief," "The Weight of Glory."

38. Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (London: Bles, 1964; London: Fontana; New York: Harcourt). Letters about prayer and the Christian life written to a fictitious friend. The first of Lewis's books to be published after his death.

39. The Discarded Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964). An introduction to medieval and renaissance literature.

40. Poems (London: Bles, 1964; New York: Harcourt). Over a hundred poems written throughout Lewis's life, edited by Walter Hooper. Many of those that Lewis published during his lifetime were inexplicably altered (for the worse) for this posthumous collection.

41. Screwtape Proposes A Toast and Other Pieces (London: Fontana, 1965). Eight sermons and lectures, all on religious themes. Contents: "Screwtape Proposes a Toast," "The Inner Ring," "Is Theology Poetry?" "On Obstinacy in Belief," "Transposition," "The Weight of Glory," "Good Work and Good Works," "A Slip of the Tongue."

42. Of Other Worlds (London: Bles, 1966; New York: Harcourt). Stories and essays about Story--fiction and fantasy--edited by Walter Hooper. Essays: "On Stories," "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said," "On Juvenile Tastes," "It All Began With a Picture...," "On Criticism," "On Science Fiction," "A Reply to Professor Haldane," "Unreal Estates"; Stories: "The Shoddy Lands," "Ministering Angels," "Forms of Things Unknown," "After Ten Years." (Evidence has surfaced that "Forms of Things Unknown" is not by Lewis after all.)

43. Letters of C. S. Lewis (London: Bles, 1966; New York: Harcourt; London: Fount Paperbacks). Private letters from 1915 to 1963, collected and edited by W. H. Lewis. A memoir and pictures included. Knowledgable readers discount the attack upon Warren Lewis in Walter Hooper's introduction to the 1988 Fount edition.

44. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966). Seven previously unpublished studies and seven more that were hard to obtain, edited by Walter Hooper. Contents: "De Audiendis Poetis," "The Genesis of a Medieval Book," "Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages," "Dante's Similes," "Imagery in the Last Eleven Cantos of Dante's Comedy," "Dante's Statius," "The Morte D' Arthur," "Tasso," "Edmund Spenser, 1552-99," "On Reading The Faine Queene," "Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser, " "Spenser's Cruel Cupid," "Genius and Genius, " "A Note on Comus."

45. Christian Reflections (London: Bles, 1967; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). A collection of fourteen papers about or relating to Christianity from the last twenty years of Lewis's life, edited by Walter Hooper. Contents: "Christianity and Culture," "Christianity and Literature," "Religion: Reality or Substitute?" "On Ethics," "De Futilitate," "The Poison of Subjectivism," "The Funeral of a Great Myth," "On Church Music," "Historicism," "The Psalms," "The Language of Religion," "Petitionary Prayer: A Problem Without an Answer," "Modern Theology and Biblical Critidsm," "The Seeing Eye."

46. Spenser's Images of Life (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1969). Lewis meant to turn his notes from a course he taught on Spenser into a book, but he died before he had the chance. Dr. Alastair Fowler constructed this book from the notes.

47. Letters to an American Lady (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967; New York: Pyramid; London: Hodder and Stoughton). A collection of personal letters Lewis wrote to a troubled widow in the southern United States, edited by Clyde Kilby.

48. A Mind Awake (London: Bles, 1968; New York: Harcourt). Clyde Kilby's anthology of brief quotations from the whole spectrum of Lewis's writing.

49. Selected Literary Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). A collection of twenty-two literary essays, edited and with an introduction by Walter Hooper. Contents: "De Descriptione Temporum," "The Alliterative Metre," "What Chaucer Really Did to Il Filostrato," "The Fifteenth-Century Heroic Line," "Hero and Leander," "Variation in Shakespeare and Others," "Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?" "Donne and Love Poetry in the Seventeenth Century," "The Literary Impact of the Authorized Version," "The Vision of John Bunyan," "Addison," "Four-Letter Words," "A Note on Jane Austen," "Shelley, Dryden, and Mr. Eliot," "Sir Walter Scott," "William Morris," "Kipling's World," "Bluspels and Flalanspheres: A Semantic Nightmare," "High and Low Brows," "Metre," "Psycho-Analysis and Literary Critidsm," "The Anthropological Approach."

50. Narrative Poems (London: Bles, 1969; New York: Harcourt). Four long story poems edited by Walter Hooper. Contents: "Dymer," "Launcelot," "The Nameless Isle," "The Queen of Drum."

51. God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970; London: Bles). Published in England as Undeceptions. Forty-eight essays and a dozen published letters on theology and ethics not before available to most readers, collected and edited, with an introduction, by Walter Hooper. Contents: "Evil and God," "Miracles," "Dogma and the Universe," "Answers to Questions on Christianity," "Myth Became Fact," "Horrid Red Things," "Religion and Science," "The Laws of Nature," "The Grand Miracle," "Christian Apologetics," "Work and Prayer," "Man or Rabbit?" "On the Transmission of Christianity," "Miserable Offenders," "The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club," "Religion Without Dogma?" "Some Thoughts," "The Trouble with 'X'..., " "What Are We To Make of Jesus Christ?" "The Pains of Animals," "Is Theism Important?" "Rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger," "Must Our Image of God Go?" "Dangers of National Repentance," "Two Ways with the Self," "Meditation on the Third Commandment," "On the Reading of Old Books," "Two Lectures," "Meditation in a Toolshed," "Scraps," "The Decline of Religion," "Vivisection," "Modern Translations of the Bible," "Priestesses in the Church?" "God in the Dock," "Behind the Scenes," "Revival or Decay?" "Before We Can Communicate," "Cross-Examination," "Bulverism," "First and Second Things," "The Sermon and the Lunch," "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," "Xmas and Christmas," "What Christmas Means to Me," "Delinquents in the Snow," "Is Progress Possible?" "We Have No 'Right to Happiness.'"

52. Fern-Seed and Elephants (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1975). Eight essays on Christianity edited by Walter Hooper, including one never published before about forgiveness. Contents: "Membership," "Leaming in War-Time," "On Forgiveness," "Historicism," "The World's Last Night," "Religion and Rocketry," 'The Efficacy of Prayer," "Fern-seed and Elephants."

53. The Dark Tower (London: Collins, 1977; New York: Harcourt). Four stories and two fragments of novels, edited by Walter Hooper. One of the stories and the title fragment were not previously available. Contents: "The Dark Tower," "The Man Born Blind," "The Shoddy Lands," "Ministering Angels," "Forms of Things Unknown," "After Ten Years." Three of these six items have turned out not to be by Lewis after all: "The Dark Tower," "The Man Born Blind," and "Forms of Things Unknown."

54. The Joyful Christian (New York: Macmillan, 1977). Readings from the work of C. S. Lewis selected and produced by Macmillan editor Henry William Griffin.

55. They Stand Together (London: Collins, 1979; New York: Macmillan). Over three hundred letters, mostly from C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, edited by Walter Hooper. The letters span Lewis's life from 1914 to 1963. Knowledgeable readers dismiss the attack upon Warren Lewis's character that comprises most of the ten-page preface.

56. The Visionary Christian (New York: Macmillan, 1981). Readings from the works of C. S. Lewis edited by Chad Walsh.

57. On Stories, and Other Essays on Literature (New York: Harcourt, 1982). Twenty essays, not all available before. "On Stories," "The Novels of Charles Williams," "A Tribute to E. R. Eddison," "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's To Be Said," "On Juvenile Tastes," "It All Began with a Picture," "On Science Fiction," "A Reply to Professor Haldane," "The Hobbit," "Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings," "A Panegyric for Dorothy L. Sayers," "The Mythopoeic Gift of Rider Haggard," "George Orwell," "The Death of Words," "The Parthenon and the Optative," "Period Criticism," "Different Tastes in Literature," "On Criticism," "Unreal Estates."

58. The Grand Miracle, and Other Selected Essays on Theology and Ethics (New York: Ballantine, 1982). Twenty-six items from God in the Dock. "Miracles," "Dogma and the Universe," "Answers to Questions on Christianity," "Myth Became Fact," "Horrid Red Things," "Religion and Science," "The Laws of Nature," "The Grand Mirade," "Christian Apologetics," "Work and Prayer," "Man or Rabbit?" "Religion without Dogma," "Some Thoughts," " The Trouble with X," "What Are We To Make of Jesus Christ?" "The Dangers of National Repentance," "Two Ways with the Self," On the Reading of Old Books," "Scraps," "The Decline of Religion," "Vivesection," "Modern Translations of the Bible," "God in the Dock," "Cross Examination," "The Sermon and the Lunch," "What Christmas Means to Me."

59. The Business of Heaven (London: Collins, 1984; San Diego: Harcourt). Daily readings edited by Walter Hooper.

60. Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C. S. Lewis (London: Collins, 1985; San Diego: Harcourt). Bona fide Lewis juvenilia, burdened by questionable additions. (Illustrations for "The King's Ring" were by an adult, not by five-year-old Lewis, whose one authentic illustration for the play was omitted. "History of Animal Land" has faulty provenance, and the adult essay "Encyclopedia BoxonianaÓ is evidently not by Lewis.)

61. Letters to Children (New York: Macmillan, 1985; London: Collins). All of C. S. Lewis's available surviving letters to children, edited by Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead.

62. Present Concerns (London: Collins Fount,1986; San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). Nineteen essays, one never before published, edited by Walter Hooper. "The Necessity of Chivalry," "Equality," "Three Kinds of Men," "My First School," "Is English Doomed?" "Democratic Education," "A Dream," "Blimpophobia," "Private Bates," "Hedonics," "After Priggery--What?" "Modern Man and His Categories of Thought," "Talking about Bicycles," "On Living in the Atomic Age," "The Empty Universe," "Prudery and Philology," "Interim Report," "Is History Bunk?" "Sex in Literature." (Parts of "Modern Man and His Categories of Thought" have been questioned.)

63. First and Second Things: Essays on Theology and Ethics (London: Collins Fount, 1985). Seventeen previously published essays on a variety of topics, edited by Walter Hooper. :Bulverism," "First and Second Things," "On the Reading of Old Books," "Horrid Red Things," "Work and Prayer," "Two Lectures," "Meditation in a Toolshed," "The Sermon and the Lunch," "On the Transmission of Christianity," "The Decline of Religion," "Vivisection," "Modern Translations of the Bible," "Some Thoughts," "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," "Xmas and Christmas," "Revival or Decay?" "Before We Can Communicate."

64. Timeless at Heart: Essays on Theology (London: Collins Fount, 1987). Ten previously published selections, edited by Walter Hooper. "Christian Apologetics," "Answers to Questions on Christianity," "Why I Am Not a Pacifist," "The Pains of Animals," "The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club," "Religion Without Dogma?" "Is Theism Important?" "Rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger," "Willing Slaves of the Welfare State," "Letters."

65. Letters, C. S. Lewis, Don Giovanni Calabria: A Study in Friendship (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Books, 1988). A brief correspondence in Latin between Don Calabria and C. S. Lewis (1947-54), and subsequent Lewis letters to Don Luigi Pedrollo (1954-61), translated into English and edited by Martin Moynihan. This is Lewis's ongoing response to a form letter from a Roman Catholic priest in Italy who had read Screwtape in Italian. It is not in Lewis's usual style because of constraints of language and culture. The letters appeared later as Una Gioia Insolita Lettere tra un prete cattolico e un laico anglicano [A Rare Joy: Letters between a Catholic priest and an Anglican layman] by G. Calabria and C. S. Lewis (Milan: Editoriale Jaca, 1995). Introduction and notes by Luciano Squizzato; translation from Latin into Italian by Patrizia Morelli; preface by Walter Hooper.

66. The Essential C. S. Lewis (New York: Macmillan, 1988). This 536-page collection of Lewis's previously published writing, edited by Lyle Dorsett, includes three complete books and a comprehensive sampling of briefer items.

67. The Quotable Lewis, (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1989). An encyclopedic selection of brief quotations from the published works of C. S. Lewis, chosen by editors Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root .

68.Christian Reunion and Other Essays (London: Collins Fount, 1990). A new essay followed by eleven previously published essays, edited by Walter Hooper. "Christian Reunion," "Lilies that Fester," "Evil and Good," "Dangers of National Repentance," "Two Ways with the Self," "Meditation on the Third Commandment," "Scraps," "Miserable Offenders," "Cross-Examination," "Behind the Scenes," "What Christmas Means to Me," "Delinquents in the Snow." Unfortunately, the title essay has faulty provenance and the central forty percent has been judged an editorial interpolation.

69. All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C.S. Lewis 1922-1927 (London: Collins, 1991; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). Lewis's off-and-on pre-Christian diary jottings, with a foreword by Owen Barfield; edited by Walter Hooper.

70. Lewis: Readings for Meditation and Reflection (London: Collins Fount, 1992; HarperSanFrancisco). First published in England as Daily Readings with C. S. Lewis.. Eighty-two brief previously-published passages, edited by Walter Hooper.

71. The Collected Poems of C.S. Lewis (London: Collins Fount, 1994). A compilation of Spirits in Bondage and Poems , with seventeen additional poems, edited by Walter Hooper. Although the introduction states that this single volume includes all Lewis's short poems, a few have been left out. The faulty revisions that first appeared in Poems (1964) are not corrected. Most of the penultimate poem, which is one of the longest, is not by Lewis. The belligerant new "Introductory Letter of 1963 by C.S. Lewis" lacks provenance.

[caption=The Time of London: Hooper's Co-Hoaxer Tony Marchington

Scotsoman to fly once more

A volunteer at work (above) on the legendary Flying Scotsman, which is being restored to its original condition (left) under the supervision of a new owner, businessman Dr Tony Marchington. The project--carried out by volunteer entusiasts--will take another two years to complete, but the locomotive--designed by Sir Nigel Gresley and built in 1923--should be back on the rails in 1998. Photograph: Alison McDougall]

C.S. Lewis: The Natural Law in Literature and Life

Kathryn Lindskoog and Gracia Fay Ellwood

Earlier versions of this essay were published in The Christian Century and The Taste of the Pineapple.

THE HUMAN RACE is haunted by the idea of doing what is right. In the first five chapters of Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis discusses the fact that people are always referring to some standard of behavior that they expect other people to know about. People are always defending themselves by arguing that what they have been doing does not really go against that standard, or that they have some special excuse for violating it.

What they have in mind is a law of fair play or a rule of decent behavior. Different people use different labels for this law--traditional morality or the Moral Law, the knowledge of right and wrong, or Virtue, or the Way. We choose to call it the Natural Law. This law is an obvious principle that is not made up by humans but is for humans to observe. Lewis claims that all over the earth humans know about this law, and all over the earth they break it; he further claims that there is Something or Somebody behind this Natural Law.

According to Lewis, we find out more about God from Natural Law than from the universe in general, just as we find out more about a person by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he built. We can tell from Natural Law that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness. However, the Natural Law does not give us any grounds for assuming that God is soft or indulgent. Natural Law obliges us to do the straight thing no matter how painful or dangerous or difficult it is to do. Natural Law is hard: "It is as hard as nails" (Mere Christianity 23).

This last sentence also appears as the central thought in Lewis's moving poem "Love." In the first stanza he tells us how love is as warm as tears; in the second, how it is as fierce as fire; in the third, how it is as fresh as spring. And in the final stanza he tells us how love is as hard as nails.

Love's as hard as nails,

Love is nails;

Blunt, thick, hammered through

The medial nerve of One

Who, having made us, knew

The thing He had done,

Seeing (with all that is)

Our cross, and His. (Poems 123)

In Lewis's first chronicle of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, this hardness of the love of God was predicted by the lion Aslan when he promised to save Edmund from the results of treachery. He said "All shall by done. But it may be harder than you think" (104). When he and the White Witch discussed her claim on Edmund's life, she referred to the law of that universe as the Deep Magic. Aslan would not consider going against the Deep Magic; instead, he gave himself to die in Edmund's place, and the next morning came back to life. He explained to Susan that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a far deeper magic that she did not know. This deeper magic says that when a willing victim is killed in place of a traitor, death itself would start working backwards. The deepest magic worked toward life and goodness. In Narnia, and in this world as well, if the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness all our efforts and hopes are doomed. But if the universe is ruled by perfect goodness, says Lewis, we are falling short of that goodness all the time; we are not good enough to consider ourselves allies of perfect goodness (Mere 4). In Narnia Edmund fell so far short of goodness that he finally realized with a shock of despair that he needed forgiveness.

At the end of the chapter entitled "Right and Wrong As A Clue to the Meaning of the Universe" in Mere Christianity, Lewis claimed that until people repent and want forgiveness, Christianity won't make sense. Christianity explains how God can be the impersonal mind behind the Natural Law and yet also be a Person. It tells us how, since we cannot meet the demands of the law, God Himself became a human being to save us from our failure.

Lewis was of course aware that the presence of natural and moral evil in the world makes the governance of the world by absolute goodness seem questionable, to say the least. He understood Housman in his bitter complaint against "whatever brute and blackguard made the world." But Lewis asks by what standard the creator is judged a blackguard. The very lament for Moral law or rejection of Moral Law itself implies a Moral Law.

Lewis was deeply concerned about the fact that many people in this century are losing their belief in Natural Law. He spoke about this in the Riddell Memorial Lectures given at the University of Durham, published in 1947 as The Abolition of Man.

In Abolition he used "the Tao" as a shorthand term for the Natural Law or First Principle. A clarification may be helpful. The term "Tao" in the West is most often associated with Chinese Taoism. According to its scripture, the Tao Te Ching, the Tao (though ineffable) can best be described with words such as "the Flow," "the way things change," "the Life," "the Source." Its locus is first of all in nature. To follow the Tao is indeed to live morally, for it requires respect for the lowly and avoidance of oppression or pride. However, the Tao is ultimately a way of accepting what is, whether tending toward life or death. Confucianists see the locus of the Tao as first of all in human society, expressed primarily in the respect of inferiors for patriarchal superiors, the responsibility of superiors for inferiors, and the subordination of the individual to the welfare of the group. Neither of these uses quite corresponds to what Lewis seems to intend in Abolition. Perhaps the Chinese concept that comes closest to Lewis's apparent intent would be "The Way of Heaven."

Lewis claimed in Abolition that until quite recent times everyone believed that objects could merit our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt. It was assumed that some emotional reactions were more appropriate than others.

This conception is vividly represented in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; Edmund had inappropriate emotional responses from the very beginning. His brother and sisters imagined pleasant creatures they would like to meet in the woods, and Edmund hoped for foxes; but Lewis changed Edmund's choice to snakes for readers of the Macmillan version in the United States. In both versions, when the children met the wise old professor, Edmund laughed at his looks. When Edmund met the White Witch, his initial fear quickly turned to trust; and when she gave him a choice of foods, he stuffed himself with Turkish Delight candy. His attitude toward his sister Lucy was resentful and superior; he was even suspicious of the good Robin and Beaver who came to guide the children to safety. Instead of noticing the Beaver's house, he noticed the location of the Witch's castle in the distance. When the name Aslan was first spoken to the four children, they all had wonderful feelings except Edmund; he had a sensation of mysterious horror. Later events would educate Edmund to respond as the others did.

Lewis pointed out that according to Aristotle the aim of education, the foundation of ethics, was to make a pupil like and dislike what he ought. According to Plato, we need to learn to feel pleasure at pleasant things, liking for likeable things, disgust for disgusting things, and hatred for hateful things. In early Hindu teaching righteousness and correctness corresponded to knowing truth and reality. Psalm 119 says the law is "true." The Hebrew word for truth here is "emeth," meaning intrinsic validity, rock-bottom reality, and a firmness and dependability as solid as nature.

This meaning is reflected in the final book of Narnia, The Last Battle, where Lewis introduced a young man named Emeth who had grown up in an oppressive country where people worship the evil deity Tash. In spite of his upbringing, Emeth was a man of honor and honesty who sought what was good. He died worshipping Tash and found himself in the presence of Aslan instead. He responded with reverence and delight. All that he thought he was doing for Tash could be counted as service to Aslan instead. He was one of Aslan's friends long before he knew it because he liked what was likeable and hated what was hateful.

Lewis was alarmed by all the people in our day who deny that some things are inherently likeable, debunking traditional morality and the Natural Law, thinking that there can be innovation in values. Some of them try to substitute necessity, progress or efficiency for goodness. But in fact necessity, progress or efficiency have to be related to a standard outside themselves to have any meaning. In many cases that standard will be, in the last analysis, the preservation of the person who thinks of himself as a moral innovator, or the preservation of the society of his choice. Such people direct their scepticism toward any values but their own, disparaging other values as "sentimental" (Abolition 19).

But Lewis's analysis shows that if Natural Law is sentimental, all value is sentimental. No factual propositions such as "our society is in danger of extinction" can give any basis for a system of values; no observations of instinct such as "I want to prolong my life" give any basis for a system of values. Why is our society valuable? Why is my life worth preserving? Only the Natural Law, asserting that human life is of value, gives us a basis for a coherent system of values.

"If nothing is self evident, nothing can be proved," Lewis claimed. "If nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all" (27). He means that if we do not accept Natural

Law as self-evident and obligatory for its own sake, then all a person's conceptions of value fall away. There are no values that are not derived from Natural Law. Anything that is judged good is such because of values in the Natural Law. The concept of goodness springs from no other source.

Thus, modern innovations in ethics are just shreds of the old Natural Law, sometimes isolated and exaggerated. If any values at all are retained, the Natural Law is retained. According to Lewis, there never has been and never will be a radically new value or value system. The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of inventing a new primary color.

Admittedly, there are imperfections and contradictions in historical manifestation and interpretations of Natural Law. Some reformers help us to improve our perceptions of value. But

only those who live by the Law know its spirit well enough to interpret it successfully. People who live outside the Natural Law have no grounds for criticizing Natural Law or anything else. A few who reject it intend to take the logical next step as well: they intend to live without any values at all, disbelieving all values and choosing to live their lives according to their whims and fancies.

Lewis's poem "The Country of the Blind," published in Punch in 1951, presents an image of people who have come to this. He describes what it would be like to live as a misfit with eyes in a country of eyeless people who no longer believe that vision ever existed.

This poem tells of "hard" light shining on a whole nation of eyeless men who were unaware of their handicap. Blindness had come on gradually through many centuries. At some transitional stage a few citizens remained who still had eyes and vision after most people were blind. The blind were normal and up-to-date. They used the same words that their ancestors had used, but no longer knew their meaning. They spoke of light still, meaning an abstract thought. If one who could see tried to describe the grey dawn or the stars or the green-sloped sea waves or the color of a lady's cheek, the blind majority insisted that they understood the feeling the sighted one expressed in metaphor. There was no way he could explain the facts to them. The blind ridiculed such a person who took figures of speech literally and concocted a myth about a kind of sense perception that no one has ever really had.

If one thinks this is a far-fetched picture, Lewis concluded, one need only go to famous men today and try to talk to them about the truths of Natural Law which used to stand huge, awesome, and clear to the inner eye.

One of those famous men is B. F. Skinner, who answered in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity that the abolition of the inner man and traditional morality is necessary so that science can prevent the abolition of the human race. Lewis had already exclaimed in Abolition, "The preservation of the species?--But why should the species be preserved?" (40) Skinner does not provide an answer, but welcomes Lewis's scientific "Controllers" who aim to change and dehumanize the human race in order more efficiently to fulfill their purposes.

Lewis satirized this kind of progress in his poem "Evolutionary Hymn," which appeared in The Cambridge Review in 1957. Using Longfellow's popular hymn stanza form from "Psalm of Life," Lewis exclaimed: What do we care about wrong or justice, joy or sorrow, so long as our posterity survives? The old norms of good and evil are outmoded. It matters not if our posterity turns out to be hairy, squashy, or crustacean, tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless. "Goodness is what comes next." His conclusion is that our progeny may be far from pleasant by present standards; but that matters not, if they survive.

Lewis has often been carelessly accused of being against science. In fact, he gives us an admirable scientist in Bill Hingest in That Hideous Strength. Significantly, Hingest was murdered by order of the supposed scientists who directed the NICE. The enemy is not true science, which is fueled by a love of truth, but that applied science whose practitioners are motivated by a love of power. In Lewis's opinion the technological developments that are called steps in Man's Conquest of Nature in fact give certain men power over others. Discarding Natural Law will always increase the dangers of having some people control others. Only Natural Law provides human standards which over-arch rulers and ruled alike. Lewis went so far as to claim, "A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery." (Abolition 46)

The Magician's Nephew, the tale of the creation of Narnia, gives us two characters who exemplify the Controllers--Jadis and Uncle Andrew Ketterley. Both claimed to be above Natural Law; they had "a high and lonely destiny." Jadis was a monarch and Uncle Andrew was a magician, but both were strongly suggestive of modern science gone wrong. They both held that common rules are fine for common people, but that singular great people must be freeÑto experiment without limits in search of knowledge, to seize power and wealth. The result was cruelty and destruction. In contrast, the wise men of old had sought to conform the soul to reality, and the result had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.

Two examples from Lewis's verse illustrate this traditional wisdom. The 1956 poem "After Aristotle" praises virtue, stating that in Greece men gladly toiled in search of virtue as their most valuable treasure. Men would willingly die or live in hard labor for the beauty of virtue. Virtue powerfully touched the heart and gave unfading fruit; virtue made those who love her strong.

A second example is "On a Theme from Nicolas of Cusa," published in the Times Literary Supplement in 1955. In the first stanza Lewis notes how physical foods are transformed by our bodies when we assimilate them; in the second, he points out that when we assimilate goodness and truth they are not transformed, but we are.

At the end of Abolition Lewis implores his readers to pause before considering Natural Law only one more accident of human history in a wholly material universe. To "explain away" this transcendent reality is perhaps to explain away all explanations. To "see through" the Natural Law is the same as not to see at all.

The idea that some things are inherently good and others are not is also the basis for Lewis's approach to literature in An Experiment in Criticism. His thesis is that the work of art, and particularly the literary work, is to be received for its own sake, not used for other purposes. Each detail is to be savored and, if good, enjoyed. We are to look at the work, not to use it as a mirror to reflect ourselves and our own fantasies or as a lens through which we look at the world.

This principle is a particular application of the Natural Law. We approach a work of literature, as we might a person or flower, with the assumption that here is something good for its own sake, something worth attending to. After we have looked at it attentively, objectively, either our efforts will have been rewarded or we may decide it is not of much value after all; but in any case we will have given it a fair try, done it justice.

In Experiment Lewis contrasts the principle of the inherent value of works of literature with the habits of people who use literature (and thus misuse it), who prostitute the work to some other purpose.

The unliterary read a work only for the excitement they can get from the plot (as in an adventure story), for the provocation and satisfaction of their curiosity (as in a detective story), or for vicarious emotional fulfillment (as in a love story). Such readers use literature much as a child uses a toy, or a worshiper a crucifix: as a starting point for a journey inward or beyond. Unlike the child or the worshiper, who cherish their object and use it many times over, the unliterary usually use a story only once; then it is used up, discarded.

There are also users among the literary. There are the status seekers, who read the academically fashionable literature in order to impress themselves and others. There are the self-improvers, whose concern with their mental enrichment takes the place of a focus on the work itself.

And there are the wisdom-seekers, who value a work for the Statement about Life that it presents. But, says Lewis, works of art do not give us adequate world views. Too much selection is involved. In life, suffering is not often grand and noble and attributable to Tragic Flaws; matters do not end at points of satisfying finality, but go drizzling on. Works of literature may in fact make us wiser, but that is really incidental to their true function; and the wisdom we think came from a particular Great Work may in fact have come largely from within ourselves. Wisdom seeking is carried to absurdity in a particularly keen group he calls the Vigilants (he is surely referring to F.R. Leavis and friends) who will place their stamp of approval only on those few works that express their own conception of how life should be lived. They form a kind of Committee of Public Safety, lopping a new head every month.

By contrast with the users, the receivers surrender to a work of literature, getting themselves out of the way, attending closely to each part and its relationship to other parts, for the time being taking the author's viewpoint as their own. Their refusal of a subjective reading enables them to enlarge the narrow prison of the self and see with others' eyes. The temporary annihilation of the self that takes place actually serves to heal the loneliness of the self. Lewis overtly compares the process to what happens in the pursuit of knowledge, or of justice, or the experience of love: we temporarily reject the facts as they are for us in favor of the facts as they are. In the work of literature we are experiencing the (morally) good or evil data, the (aesthetically) good or poor data, that really are out there and really possess the qualities we perceived. Lewis does not deny that our perception and judgment are sometimes flawed. But good and bad are real.

Lewis's aesthetic provides a necessary and refreshing corrective to rigorously dutiful approaches that have ruined the enjoyment of literature for many from student days onward. For those Christians to whom literary pleasures have seemed frivolous or dangerous temptations that might lead away from the Straight Path, Lewis affirms their goodness. He also exposes the sort of single-issue criticism that darkens counsel by words without knowledge. Unless we can put ourselves to one side for a time and see what is actually in the text, we ought not to say anything about a work; and in many instances we might be better off not reading it at all.

Having gratefully accepted Lewis's basic aesthetic enterprise, we must express a few reservations. Of course it is true that any work of imaginative literature is too selective to present an adequate philosophy of life. But much the same could be said of any essay or multi-volumed work in discursive prose. Any time we want to speak of the whole, of universals (or the absence thereof), we must be selective. Most formal treatises on Being, Becoming or Causality leave out the terror and the joy of the world. The supposedly universal human experience of Reality discussed in nearly all of theology turns out to be male reality. Humans are limited; we may intend the universal, but any reflection upon it is bound to be limited.

The need for selectivity does not prohibit a work of literature from being intended, or taken, as a dramatized world view. This is particularly evident when a work gives support to oppressive social structures. For example, a story whose few Jewish characters are rapacious schemers or (if admirable) get baptized, may well give generous minds such as Lewis's the enlarging experience of finding out what it is like to be antisemitic. Unfortunately, it will also cause certain readers to come away with sharpened convictions that the Jewish Conspiracy is the fountainhead of the world's evil. Likewise, a work whose achieving and admirable characters are all male, with its females frothy, manipulative, passive, victimized, and/or marginal, is saying something about the relative value of male and female.

Lewis in fact acknowledges, in an exchange of letters in Theology (1939-1940), that there are (morally) bad books that corrupt people by making false values attractive (Christian Reflections 30-35). He does not refer specifically to fiction, nor does he exclude it. Surely, then a (morally) bad work of literature can be bad because it presents a dangerously false view of life, quite possibly by its selections. In contrast, a (morally) good work of literature can present true values. There is no reason why we cannot receive such a work with diligent and delighted care, and also use it as a parable. Surely what is objectionable is, in Kant's language, to make the work a means only and not an end also. It is ironic that Lewis should have rejected the concept of the literary work as a parable, in view of the fact that his own novels (especially the Narnian tales) are parables of such enormous power and wisdom.

This, of course, is not to say that every work of literature offers a world view. The comedy is not necessarily saying that life is finally a joke, nor is the whodunit perforce telling us that the ills of the world have a neat and gratifying solution right at hand, if we could only be perceptive enough to see. Even Freud realized that sometimes a cigar is just a good cigar.

We have affirmed, with minor reservations, Lewis's reasoning that a work of literature possesses value in itself. Now we turn back to his thesis of intrinsic value as applied to all of life, his corrective to a totally relativistic value (or rather nonvalue) system. Sensitive persons who have felt their meaning-world collapse around them know how dehumanizing felt meaninglessness is. Lewis knew whereof he spoke. (People who experience this collapse without pain are even more dehumanized.) As to the end result of consistent subjectivism, the world of the Controllers, Lewis's portraits of Jadis and the directors of the NICE tell us more vividly than his discursive prose just how nightmarish such a world would be.

Within the context of a basic agreement, once more we offer a qualifier. Consistent and total subjectivism we certainly do not want, and we know why. But subjectivism and relativism can be good things sometimes; they can be freeing. People with a sharp and absolute vision are not often as broad in mental sympathies and as rich in charity as Lewis; they tend more towards psychological imperialism. Many of us, Lewis included, would rather live among people who hold firmly that "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is the only universally binding principle in personal morality, leaving to the individual's own judgment this rule's application to sexual ethics, the role of women, or to political allegianceÑ than among people who know in detail God's will for other private lives as well as for their own and are busy trying to bring about theocracy. Theocracy is one of our oldest banes, and one that Lewis particularly detested.

In conclusion, Lewis's teaching about Natural Law has acquired unique urgency since his day. He published Abolition in 1947; since then there have been radical shifts in the locus and imminence of threat to the world. The danger of nuclear armaments was obvious in 1947, but there were not enough in existence then to destroy all life on earth. Only part of the public foresaw the cancer-like proliferation of nuclear weapons that would soon threaten to destroy human life (and our libraries and literary heritage), and to cause a nuclear winter. This scenario sounds like the end of the world as foretold in the Norse mythology that Lewis found so compelling.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the threat of worldwide destruction caused by weaponry is far more diffuse. Biological and nuclear tools of modern death technology (as well as possible new alternatives) are sought by power-hungry men with many motives. In 1932 Lewis published the allegorical Pilgrim's Regress, in which he warned that savage dwarfs called "the Cruels" were then multiplying; communists, fascists, organized crime syndicates, and many other sub-species that value violence and a perverse kind of heroism. It seems reasonable to assume that he would have included contemporary perpetrators of genocide and terrorist groups of all kinds as sub-species of the Cruels.

Lewis sensed, by 1955, the increasing power of modern death technology. In The Magician's Nephew Jadis decided to use the Deplorable Word, a weapon she had paid a terrible price to obtain. A moment later every living thing in the world of Charn was dead. She did this in outright defiance of Natural Law. The fate of Charn can be read as Lewis's commentary on possible large-scale use of today's arsenal.

In 1956 Lewis published The Last Battle, in which the land of Narnia died away more gradually than the land of Charn, ending in ice. "Yes, and I did hope," said Jill, "That it might go on forever. I knew our world couldn't" (160). Lewis always assumed that our earth has to die eventually, but he would have been intensely grieved by todayÕs accelerated destruction of the environment caused not by acts of war, but by reckless plundering and pollution in defiance of the Natural Law. (Obvious examples are depletion of the ozone layer, burning of the rain forests, accumulation of nuclear waste, and contamination of the oceans.)

In Aslan's beautiful everlasting country Peter found that Lucy was crying because of the death of Narnia, and he tried to stop her. But Lucy appealed to the law in all our hearts and said she was sure it was not wrong to mourn the death of the world they dearly loved. And Tirian, last king of Narnia, affirmed her. "It were no virtue, but grave discourtesy, if we did not mourn" (160).

The Natural Law teaches us to fight to save our world from death, and, should it die, to mourn its destruction. But C.S. Lewis predicted that the Natural Law itself will outlast all worlds. And he promises us a new life that will be the Great Story which goes on for ever, in which every chapter is better than the one before (184). And all who live that story will be receivers.

Works Cited

The Abolition of Man. New York: Macmillan, 1947.

Christian Reflections. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967.

The Last Battle. London: The Bodley Head, 1956.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. New York: Macmillan, 1950.

Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan, 1953. Poems. New York: Harcourt, 1964.

Letter to the Editor

Mythprint, August 1995

Wendell Wagner, Jr., 9146 Edmonston Road, Apt. 201, Greenbelt MD 20770

While I largely agree ~with David Bratman's '' review of Light in the Shadowlands in the November/December 1994 Mythprint when it says that both parties in the Lewis controversies seem to be just making "murky accusations" against each other, I think it understates the strength of Kathryn Lindskoog's arguments against Walter Hooper's story of the provenance of The Dark Tower. In her new book Lindskoog has provided an even stronger case against there ever having been a fire from which Hooper. could have rescued the manuscript of The Dark Tower. Not only did Fred Paxford deny ever having burned any important papers of C.S. Lewis, but Lindskoog shows that Hooper's time scheme for the bonfire is impossible. Hooper claims that the bonfire occurred in January of 1964 and that he brought the rescued papers back to his rooms at Keble College. (He also claims to have spent three weeks during that month working with Warren Lewis on C.S. Lewis's letters.) But it's clear from Warren's letters that Warren and Hooper didn't even meet until Warren returned from Ireland in February of 1964, by which time Hooper had moved from Keble to Wycliffe Hall. To place any credence in Hooper's story, we would have to believe that he got the month of the bonfire and the place he was living at the time wrong and that Paxford had somehow forgotten the bonfire entirely. Lindskoog has also discovered that in a published interview in 1979 Hooper forgot the bonfire story and claimed that he found the manuscript when he and Douglas Gresham cleaned out Lewis's rooms at Cambridge in the summer of 1963.

Having seen the manuscript of The Dark Tower when I was in Oxford last year, I think it's unlikely that anyone will ever find a "smoking gun" in the manuscript itself that would convince Hooper's defenders of its falseness. If it's a fake, it's a very good fake. The oddest thing about it to me are the supposed first draftsof thefirst paragraphs of TheLion, TheWitch and the Wardrobe and Surprised by Joy on the backs of the first and second pages of the manuscript. There's something too clever and convenient about this, like the sort of interesting detail that a forger who's trying too hard would