by C. S. Lewis
As the study of history progresses it is almost inevitable, and surely not unreasonable, that partial or departmental histories should arise. The whole past, even within a limited period, becomes too large. Thus we get histories of particular human activities—of law, of shipbuilding, of clothes, of cookery, architecture, or literature. Their justification is the same as that of history simpliciter (which, after all, usually meant in effect the history of war and politics). They exist to gratify a liberal curiosity. The knowledge of how men dressed or built or wrote in the past, and why, and why they liked doing it that way, and what it felt like to like that sort of thing, is being sought for its own sake.
Clearly a Fordist view might be taken of these partial histories. It might be maintained that the history of law was legitimate in so far as it yielded practical results: that it studied, or ought to study, ‘the valuable’ and therefore should notice bad laws and unjust modes of trial only because, and in so far as, those taught us to appreciate more fully the practise of the nineteenth century and therefore to resist more obstinately what seems likely to come upon us in the latter part of the twentieth. This of course is a worthy object. But the claim that legal history depends for its whole right to exist on the performance of such a corvée will be granted only by a thorough-going Fordist. We others feel that we should like to know and understand the legal behaviour and legal thought of our ancestors even if no practical gains follow from it.
The departmental history which seems most liable to such attack just at present is the history of literature. Mr Mason said recently in the Review, ‘It is the study of what is valuable; study of minor figures is only justified if it contributes to the understanding of what is meant by major’.2 Now of course, if we grant that the discipline of literary history is, or can be, or ought to be, merely ancillary to the art of literary criticism, we shall agree with Mr Mason. But why should we grant this?
Let us be quite clear what the question is. If a man says, ‘I have no interest in the history of literature simply as history’, one would have no controversy with him. One would reply, ‘Well, I dare say not; don’t let me detain you.’ If he says, ‘I think criticism twenty times more important than any knowledge of the past’, one would say, ‘No doubt that is quite a reasonable view.’ If he said, ‘Literary history is not criticism’, I should heartily agree. That indeed is my point. The study of the forms and styles and sentiments of past literature, the attempt to understand how and why they evolved as they did, and (if possible) by a sort of instructed empathy to re-live momentarily in ourselves the tastes for which they catered, seems to me as legitimate and liberal as any other discipline; even to be one without which our knowledge of man will be very defective. Of course it is not a department of criticism; it is a department of a department of history (Kulturgeschichte). As such it has its own standing. It is not to be judged by the use it may or may not happen to have for those whose interests are purely critical.
Of course I would grant (and so, I expect, would Mr Mason) that literary history and criticism can overlap. They usually do. Literary historians nearly always allow themselves some valuations, and literary critics nearly always commit themselves to some historical propositions. (To describe an element in Donne’s poetry as new commits you to the historical proposition that it is not to be found in previous poetry.) And I would agree (if that is part of what he means) that this overlap creates a danger of confusions. Literary (like constitutional) historians can be betrayed into thinking that when they have traced the evolution of a thing they have somehow proved its worth; literary critics may be unaware of the historical implications (often risky) which lurk in their evaluative criticism.
But if Mr Mason is denying literary history’s right to exist, if he is saying that no one must study the past of literature except as a means of criticism, I think his position is far from self-evident and ought to be supported. And I think he is denying that. For if one values literary history as history, it is of course very clear why we study bad work as well as good. To the literary historian a bad, though once popular, poem is a challenge; just as some apparently irrational institution is a challenge to the political historian. We want to know how such stuff came to be written and why it was applauded; we want to understand the whole ethos which made it attractive. We are, you see, interested in men. We do not demand that everyone should share our interests.
The whole question invites further discussion. But I think that discussion will have to begin further back. Aristotle’s (or Newman’s) whole conception of the liberal may have to be questioned. Fordism may admit of some brilliant defence. We may have to ask whether literary criticism is itself an end or a means and, if a means, to what. But till all this has been canvassed I was unwilling that the case for literary history should go by default. We cannot, pending a real discussion, let pass the assumption that this species of history, any more than others, is to be condemned unless it can deliver some sort of ‘goods’ for present use.
XIX
SEX IN LITERATURE
I am told that one of the causes which led to the abandonment of our older penal code was the fact that as juries grew more humane they simply refused to convict. The evidence showed beyond doubt that the famished girl in the dock had stolen a handkerchief. But they didn’t want her to be hanged for that, so they returned a verdict of Not Guilty.
That people were no longer hanged for trivial offences was obviously a change for the better. But patently false verdicts were not the best way of bringing that change about. It is a bad thing that the results of trials should depend on the personal moral philosophy of a particular jury rather than on what has been proved in court. For one thing, that procedure, though it may lead to mercy in one case, may have the opposite effect in another.
The moral seems to me to be clear. When the prevalent morality of a nation comes to differ unduly from that presupposed in its laws, the laws must sooner or later change and conform to it. And the sooner they do so the better. For till they do we inevitably have humbug, perjury, and confusion.
This applies equally whether prevalent morality is departing from that embodied in the laws for the better or for the worse. The law must rise to our standards when we improve and sink to them when we decay. It is a lesser evil that the laws should sink than that all judicial procedure should become a travesty.
If we ceased to disapprove of murder, we should, no doubt, be fools and villains. But it would be better to admit the fact and alter the law accordingly than to go on acquitting of murder those who had certainly committed it.
But this, I believe, is the actual situation as regards ‘obscene’ or ‘corrupting’ literature. The older law—for compromise has now begun—embodied a morality for which masturbation, perversion, fornication, and adultery were great evils. It therefore, not illogically, discountenanced the publication of books which seemed likely to encourage these modes of behaviour.
The morality of the modern intelligentsia—who supply ‘expert witnesses’—is different. If it were fully and frankly stated it would, I believe, run as follows: ‘We are not sure that these things are evils at all, and we are quite sure that they are not the sort of evils the law ought to be concerned with.’
My own view—just to get it out of the way—is that they are evils, but that the law should be concerned with none of them except adultery. Adultery is an affair for law because it offends the Hobbesian principle ‘that men perform their covenants’. The fact that this particular breach of covenant involves the sexual act is (in the logical sense) an accident.
But I am not here arguing my own view. What I want is a straight fight between the new morality and that of the law. Do not be alarmed, my fellow authors; your side will almost certainly win.
In the meantime the situation is most unsatisfactory. Behind much discussion, and even behind the recent modification of the law, there hover two propositions that I think far less admissible than the new morality:
(1) That if a book is
real ‘literature’ it cannot corrupt. But there is no evidence for this, and some against it. No one can predict what may inflame adolescents, any more than what may frighten children; I have heard of the most improbable results as regards both. This is a stock argument against forbidding certain books. But it is equally an argument against this particular plea for tolerating them.
(2) That if a book is a great ‘work of art’ it doesn’t matter whether it corrupts or not, because art matters more than behaviour. In other words, art matters more than life; comment on life, or the mirroring of life, more than life itself. This sounds very like nonsense.
Whatever happens we don’t want anything like the Lady Chatterley case again.1 Now that the (strangely savage) yells of triumph are dying down, it may be suggested that this was not an affair to feel very proud of. I don’t mean because of the verdict. I think it mattered very little either to our literature or to our morals how it was decided. It is the conduct of the case that disquiets me.
What was really at issue? The jury were told from the bench that ‘we are not sitting here as judges of taste’ (p. 27 in Mr Rolph’s account). They were told later by counsel that they were ‘not concerned with a question of personal good taste’ (p. 35). Yet in fact nearly all the witnesses were examined at great length on the literary merits of the book. How would you define taste so as to make literary merits not a question of taste?
Again, these witnesses are summoned as ‘experts’. The implication is that there are ‘experts’ in literature in the same sense in which there are experts in engineering or medicine.
Now I am not at all suggesting that literature is a realm in which anyone’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s. Most undoubtedly the judgements of ripe critics should be heard with great respect. The point is that they are judgements, not statements about matters of fact. They are all reversible.
Anyone familiar with literary history knows that an almost unanimous critical opinion may prove transient. Think where Scott and Byron were once placed. I should like some assurance that the distinction between literary ‘experts’ and expert witnesses ordinarily so called was clear in the minds of the jury.
The Bishop of Woolwich appears to have been cited as an expert in the general nature of good and evil.2 It may be, for all I know, that his wisdom and sanctity qualify him for this prophetic role. But the qualification mentioned in court was that he had read ethics.
So have I and a good many others. I don’t think that discipline qualifies us to say what is or is not ‘sacred’ more than other men. A witness put forward to tell the jury, as an expert, what is right or wrong strikes at the roots of trial by jury. Its presupposition is that twelve good men and true know that already.
The lesser of the evils now before us is to abandon all moral censorship. We have either sunk beneath or risen above it. If we do, there will be reams of filth. But we need not read it. Nor, probably, will the fashion last for ever. Four-letter words may soon be as dated as antimacassars.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CLIVE STAPLES LEWIS (1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and have been transformed into three major motion pictures.
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ALSO BY C. S. LEWIS
A Grief Observed
George MacDonald: An Anthology
Mere Christianity
Miracles
The Abolition of Man
The Great Divorce
The Problem of Pain
The Screwtape Letters (with “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”)
The Weight of Glory
The Four Loves
Till We Have Faces
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
Reflections on the Psalms
Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
The Personal Heresy
The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays
Poems
The Dark Tower: And Other Stories
Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories
Narrative Poems
A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis
Letters of C. S. Lewis
All My Road Before Me
The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis
Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics
On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM HARPERCOLLINS
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Magician’s Nephew
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Horse and His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Last Battle
FURTHER READING
CREDITS
Cover design and illustration: Kimberly Glyder
COPYRIGHT
PRESENT CONCERNS. Copyright © 1986 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published in the United Kingdom in 1986 by Fount Paperbacks.
EPub Edition February 2017 ISBN 9780062565594
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples),1898-1963, author. | Hooper, Walter, editor.
Title: Present concerns : journalistic essays / C. S. Lewis ; edited by Walter Hooper.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : HarperOne,2017. | “Originally published as Present Concerns in the United Kingdom in1986 by Fount Paperbacks”
Identifiers: LCCN 2016030649 | ISBN 9780062643599 (paperback) | ISBN 9780062565594 (e-book)
Subjects: | BISAC: RELIGION / Spirituality. | RELIGION / Christianity / Literature & the Arts. | RELIGION / Christianity / General.
Classification: LCC PR6023.E926 P74 2017 | DDC 824/.912—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016030649
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1 Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur (1485), XXI, xii.
2 Le Morte d’Arthur, XIX, v.
1 John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), Book IV, line 740.
2 Naomi Mitchison, The Home and a Changing Civilisation (London, 1934), chapter 1, pp. 49–50.
1 Philippians 1:21.
1 F. Anstey, Vice Versa (1882).
2 Wackford Squeers is the headmaster of Dotheboys Hall in Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39).
3 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, ed. James Blanton Wharey, second edition revised by Roger Scharrock (1960), Part I, p. 155.
4 In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy (1955), Lewis devoted a chapter to his first school which he refers to as ‘Belsen’. Its real name was Wynyard School and it was located in Watford, Hertfordshire. Wynyard was sliding into ruin when Lewis went there in 1908, and he won his freedom when the school came to an end in 1910. It was not until after the publication of Surprised by Joy that Lewis discovered that the extremely brutal headmaster had long been insane. A year after his school collapsed he died in an insane asylum.
1 The title of ‘The Norwood Report’, so called after its chairman Sir Cyril Norwood, is Curriculum and Examinations in Secondary Schools: Report of the Committee of the Secondary School Examinations Council Appointed by the President of the Board of Education in 1941 (1943). See also Lewis’s essay ‘The Parthenon and the Optative’ in his Of This and Other Worlds, ed. Walter Hooper (1982). The American title of this book is On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature (1982).
