by C. S. Lewis
‘beyond existence’ and Wordsworth that sentiments are alogical. But they can be through virtue the stars were strong, so the reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Indian masters say that the gods themselves Reason or fail to conform. The heart never are born of the Rta and obey it. The Chinese takes the place of the head: but it can, and also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) should, obey it.
called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Over against this stands the world of The Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Green Book. In it the very possibility of a Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes sentiment being reasonable—or even unrea-on, the Way in which things everlastingly sonable— has been excluded from the outset.
emerges stilly and tranquilly, into space and It can be reasonable or unreasonable only if it time. It is also the Way which every man conforms or fails to conform to something should tread in imitation of that cosmic and else. To say that the cataract is sublime means supercosmic progression, conforming all saying that our emotion of humility is appro-activities to that great exemplar. ‘In ritual’, priate or ordinate to the reality, and thus to say the Analects, ‘it is harmony with Nature speak of something else besides the emotion: that is prized.’ The ancient Jews likewise just as to say that a shoe fits is to speak not praise the Law as being ‘true.’ This concep-only of shoes but of feet. But this reference to tion in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, something beyond the emotion is what Gaius Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall and Titius exclude from every sentence henceforth refer to for brevity simply as ‘the containing a predicate of value. Such state-Tao.’ Some of the accounts of it which I have ments, for them, refer solely to the emotion.
quoted will seem, perhaps, to many of you Now the ennotion, thus considered by itself, merely quaint or even magical. But what is cannot be either in agreement or disagreement comrnon to them all is something we cannot with Reason. It is irrational not as a paralo-neglect. It is the doctrine of objective value, gism is irrational, but as a physical event is the belief that certain attitudes are really true, irrational: it does not rise even to the dignity and others really false, to the kind of thing the of error. On this view, the world of facts, universe is and the kind of things we are.
without one trace of value, and the world of Those who know the Tao can hold that to call feelings without one trace of truth or children delightful or old men venerable is not falseilood, justice or injustice, confront one simply to record a psychological fact about another, and no rapprochement is possible.
set themselves to work to produce, from Hence the educational problem is wholly outside, a sentiment which they believe to be different according as you stand within or of no value to the pupil and which may cost without the Tao. For those within, the task is him his life, because it is useful to us (the to train in the pupil those responses which survivors) that our young men should feel it.
are in themselves appropriate, whether If they embark on this course the difference anyone is making them or not, and in making between the old and the new education will be which the very nature of man consists.
an important one. Where the old initiated, the Those without, if they are logical, must new merely ‘conditions.’ The old dealt with its regard all sentiments as equally non-rational, pupils as grown birds deal with young birds as mere mists between us and the real
when they teach them to fly: the new deals obiects. As a result, they must either decide with them more as the poultry-keeper deals to remove all sentiments, as far as possible, with young birds—making them thus or thus from the pupil’s mind: or else to encourage for purposes of which the birds know nothing.
some sentiments for reasons that have
In a word, the old was a kind of propagation—
nothing to do with their intrinsic ‘justness’ or men transmitting manhood to men: the new is
‘ordinacy.’ The latter course involves them in merely propaganda.
the questionable process of creating in others by ‘suggestion’ or incantation a mirage It is to their credit that Gaius and Titius which their own reason has successfully embrace the first alternative. Propaganda is dissipated.
their abomination: not because their own philosophy gives a ground for condemning it Perhaps this will become clearer if we take (or anything else) but because they are better a concrete instance. When a Roman father told than their principles. They probably have his son that it was a sweet and seemly thing to some vague notion (I will examine it in my die for his country, he believed what he said.
next lecture) that valour and good faith and He was communicating to the son an emotion justice could be sufflciently commended to the which he himself shared and which he be-pupil on what they would call ‘rational’ or lieved to be in accord with the value which his
‘biological’ or ‘modern’ grounds, if it should judgement discerned in noble death. He was ever become necessary. In the rneantime, they giving the boy the best he had, giving of his leave the matter alone and get on with the spirit to humanize him as he hall given of his business of debunking.
body to beget him. But Gaius and Titius cannot believe that in calling such a death But this course, though less inhuman, is sweet and seemly they would be saying
not less disastrous than the opposite alterna-
‘something important about something.’ Their tive of cynical propaganda. Let us suppose own method of debunking would cry out
for a moment that the harder virtues could against them if they attempted to do so. For really be theoretically justified with no appeal death is not something to eat and therefore to objective value. It still remains true that no cannot be dulce in the literal sense, and it is justification of virtue will enable a man to be unlikely that the real sensations preceding it virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions will be dulce even by analogy. And as for the intellect is power-less against the animal decorum— that is only a word describing how organism. I had sooner play cards against a some other people will feel about your death man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but when they happen to think of it, which won’t bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not be often, and will certainly do you no good.
cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral There are only two courses open to Gaius and philosopher who had been brought up among Titius. Either they must go the whole way and sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that debunk this sentiment like any other, or must will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to
their post in the third hour of the bombard-shocked to find traitors in our midst. We ment. The crudest sentimentalism (such as castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. .
Gaius and Titius would wince at) about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element.; The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions orga-nized by trained habit into stable sentiments.
The Chest-Magnanimity- Sentiment- these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal. The operation of The Green Book and its kind is to produce what may be called Men without Chests. It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so.
They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her. Indeed it would be strange if they were: a persevering devo-tions to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment which Gaius and Titus could debunk as easily as any other. It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks t
hem out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.
And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive,’ or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity.’ In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are
