Rostrevor,
Co. Down
[4 April 1934]
My dear Griffiths,
A wet day—and a cold—and this delightful sea and mountain village where I have been spending my holiday, seems a good occasion for answering your most welcome letter.
I think our positions about Pantheism are exactly the same: for we both, in places, travelled the same road to Christianity, and the result of the arrival is certainly not any ingratitude or contempt to the various signposts or hostelries that helped on the journey. On the contrary, it is only since I have become a Christian that I have learned really to value the elements of truth in Paganism and Idealism. I wished to value them in the old days; now I really do. Don’t suppose that I ever thought myself that certain elements of pantheism were incompatible with Christianity or with Catholicism.
What I did think—and still do think—was that an influential school of thought both in your church and mine—were very antagonistic to Idealism,
(#ulink_ee3992c3-f226-5a5f-9507-8df85ba38d33) and in fact were availing themselves of a general secular reaction against 19th century thought, to run something which they call Neo-Scholasticism
(#ulink_48633bd0-40a6-5c0c-b75f-0a46c256a1b3) as the cure for all our evils. The people I mean are led by Maritain
(#ulink_a601c1b9-4c86-5885-86bb-7b25984716cb) on your side and by T. S. Eliot on ours. Perhaps I over-rate their importance. I hope I do, for I confess there is no section of religious opinion with which I feel less sympathy. Indeed I consider that it is no overstatement to say that your Church and mine are, at the moment, closest to each other where each is at its worst. God forgive me if I do them wrong, but there are some of this set who seem to me to be anxious to make of the Christian faith itself one more of their high brow fads. Then their ignorance! As if there ever was any such thing as ‘scholasticism’ as a doctrine! But enough of this.
The question of ‘generality’ in prayer is not so simple. The doctrine held by your own Church about the position of the virtuous heretic or pagan—I need hardly say that I use both the word virtuous and the word heretic positionis causa—is, you will find, far from crude. Is it not held that many who have lived and died outside the visible Church are finally saved, because Divine Grace has guided them to concentrate solely on the true elements in their own religions?
(#ulink_63f320bf-92d7-5531-af98-91bbcb11b020) And if so, must one not admit that it was the mysterious will of God that these persons should be saved in that peculiar way? I use this argument to point out that even such a comparatively general prayer as that for a man’s conversion, may yet be too particular.
And while I am on the subject, I had better say once and for all that I do not intend to discuss with you in future, if I can help it, any of the questions at issue between our respective churches. It would have the same unreality as those absurd conversations in which we are invited to speak frankly to a woman about some indelicate matter—wh. means that she can say what she likes and we can’t. I could not, now that you are a monk, use that freedom in attacking your position which you undoubtedly would use in attacking mine. I do not think there is any thing distressing for either of us in agreeing to be silent on this matter: I have had a Catholic among my most intimate friends for many years
(#ulink_5fc24e1e-9128-52e9-bfcf-e94d9fdc493a) and a great deal of our conversation has been religious. When all is said (and truly said) about the divisions of Christendom, there remains, by God’s mercy, an enormous common ground. It is abstaining from one tree in the whole garden.
I should rather like to attend your Greek class, for it is a perpetual puzzle to me how New Testament Greek got the reputation of being easy. St Luke I find particularly difficult. As regards matter—leaving the question of language—you will be glad to hear that I am at last beginning to get some small understanding of St Paul: hitherto an author quite opaque to me. I am speaking now, of course, of the general drift of whole epistles: short passages, treated devotionally, are of course another matter. And yet the distinction is not, for me, quite a happy one. Devotion is best raised when we intend something else. At least that is my experience. Sit down to meditate devotionally on a single verse, and nothing happens. Hammer your way through a continued argument, just as you would in a profane writer, and the heart will sometimes sing unbidden.
I think I agree with you that ‘historical research’ as now understood, is no work for a monk, nor for a man either. To all that side of my own work I attach less and less importance: yet I become each year more contented in the actual teaching and lecturing. I have very little doubt now that the work is worth doing. It is true that neither the terms of my appointment nor my own stature allow me to teach the most important things: but on the lower level there is honest work to be done in eradicating false habits of mind and teaching the elements of reason herself, and English Literature is as good a subject as any other. I should be in a bad way by now if I had been allowed to follow my own desire and be a research fellow with no pupils. As it is, nearly every generation leaves me one permanent friend.
Please accept my thanks, and convey them to the Prior, for your offered hospitality. Some week end in the long Vacation would suit me best, and I should like to come.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
P.S. This has some relevance both to the questions of Prayer and Idealism. I wrote it over a year ago.
They tell me, Lord, that when I seemTo be in speech with You, Since You make no replies, it’s all a dream—One talker aping two.
And so it is, but not as theyFalsely believe. For ISeek in myself the things I meant to say, And lo!, the wells are dry.
Then, seeing me empty, You forsakeThe listener’s part, and throughMy dumb lips breathe and into utterance wakeThe thoughts I never knew.
Therefore You neither need replyNor can: for while we seemTwo talking, Thou art one forever; and INo dreamer, but Thy dream.
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For months Jack, Warnie, Tolkien, Barfield and Harwood had been planning to attend a festival of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung at Covent Garden in London. Cecil Harwood was appointed to book tickets for the party, and in preparation jack and Warnie were meeting regularly with Tolkien to read the operas in German. The opportunity of seeing the whole Ring cycle meant so much to Lewis that he reminded Harwood of the important commission placed upon him:
TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford
[April 1934]
Dear Harwood
It is vain to conceal from you the solicitude we feel for our seats at Co. Garden. Pray, pray, Sir, exert yourself. Reflect that no small part of the satisfaction of five persons depends upon your conduct: that the object of their desires is rational and innocent: and that their desires are fervent and of long standing. Omit no manly degree of importunity and complaisance that may achieve our object, and thus, my dear Sir, give me one more reason to subscribe myself
your most obliged most obedient servant
C. S. Lewis
For some reason Harwood failed to book seats for the Ring of the Nibelung. On learning of this Lewis sent him the following letter:
TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford
May 7th 1934
Sir,
I have read your pathetical letter with such sentiments as it naturally suggests and write to assure you that you need expect from me no ungenerous reproach. It would be cruel, if it were possible, and impossible, if it were attempted, to add to the mortification which you must now be supposed to suffer. Where I cannot console, it is far from my purpose to aggravate: for it is part of the complicated misery of your state that while I pity your sufferings, I cannot innocently wish them lighter. He would be no friend to your reason or your virtue who would wish you to pass over so great a miscarriage in heartless frivolity or brutal insensibility. As the loss is irretrievable, so your remorse will be lasting. As those whom you have betrayed are your friends, so your conduct admits of no exculpation. As you were once virtuous, so now you must be forever miserable. Far be it from me that ferocious virtue which would remind you that the trust was originally transferred from Barfield to you in the hope of better things, and that thus both our honours were engaged. I will not paint to you the consequences of your conduct which are doubtless daily and nightly before your eyes. Believe, my dear Sir, that I forgive you.
As soon as you can, pray let me know through some respectable acquaintance what plans you have formed for the future. In what quarter of the globe do you intend to sustain that irrevocable exile, hopeless penury, and perpetual disgrace to which you have condemned yourself? Do not give in to the sin of Despair: learn from this example the fatal consequences of error and hope, in some humbler station and some distant land, that you may yet become useful to your species.
Yours etc
C. S. Lewis
TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):
[Magdalen College]
May 16th 1934
Sir
Your resolution of seeing me and receiving my forgiveness face to face before you forever quit these shores does not displease me. As you have rightly judged, to admit you to my house would now be an offence against the grand Principle of Subordination, but you will be welcome to the grounds—flumina ames silvasque inglorius.
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