The Seeing Eye

I have long had a troubled relationship with C.S. Lewis.  I first met him as a young lad when I won a copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in some Bible Trivia contest.  I really liked the Chronicles of Narnia; I read the whole series multiple times when growing up.  I started his space trilogy as soon as I heard about it, but I only made it a few chapters into volume 1 before realizing it was really boring compared to the tales of Narnia.  (Later reading confirmed that my childish impression was correct.)   Over time, I heard more and more about him; he is one of those authors evangelical Christians are supposed to like.  So, I kept reading him and kept finding him mildly disappointing.  Interesting ideas, but never anything like a slam-dunk book.  Eventually, I came to appreciate him a bit.  I really like The Abolition of Man; not a perfect book, but a book well worth reading (and, it would seem, assigning in a class).  But, even still, I have this vague sense that while Lewis is good and all, I really should like him more than I do.

So, when I was offered the chance to go to a colloquium on Lewis, I didn’t hesitate.  It’s a Liberty Fund colloquium, which means you get a set of reading, and show up for two and a half days of conversation with 15 other invited participants.  No presentations, no papers, just talking about the reading.  Liberty Fund colloquia are without a doubt the best conferences in the world.

The colloquium is in September, so a few weeks back I got a box with the reading material.  The reading turned out to be The Abolition of Man (good news—I like that book!) and a dozen other essays.  The dozen essays are scattered among 5 books. So, here I was at the start of summer with five books of Lewis essays and I figured I might as well just read them all.  Seems like a decent project to add to my summer list.

The first volume I read: The Seeing Eye.  This is a posthumous collection of otherwise not collected essays.  And, as always with such things, it is hard to review.  If you step back and ask, “What unifies these essays?,” the honest answer is “Well, Lewis never put them in a collection of essays he made during his lifetime.”  Not much of a hook there.  So, who buys a book like this?  Presumably people who just can’t enough of Lewis.  Should you read it?  Yep—if you have read everything else he wrote and just can’t get enough of Lewis.

Don't get me wrong, it isn’t a bad book at all.  There are some interesting essays in here; indeed, I didn’t detest any of the essays.  Lewis writes well—he is an easy person to read, which is presumably a part of his appeal.  It is conversational writing, and not simply because many of his essays were originally talks he gave.  It is one of those depressing facts of life that far too many people giving talks cannot manage a conversational style even when giving a talk.  So, I found the book easy and thoughtful reading.  Perfect for while having that second and third cup of coffee in the morning.

But, and here is the problem with the book, the best of this book is already embedded in The Abolition of Man.  Indeed, part of the book could have been labeled, “First drafts of material which will later be included in another book.”   There are other essays which read like precursors to Lewis’ book on the Psalms.  So, if you have read the other Lewis books and come to this one, do you learn anything new?  Sort of.  It is interesting to see familiar material presented in a  new way.  Every now and then there is an interesting turn of phrase that stands out.  (“Some people make allowances for local and temporary conditions in the speeches of Our Lord on a scale which really implies that God chose the time and place of the Incarnation very injudiciously.”  “It may even be the duty of some Christians to be culture-sellers.”)  But, I can’t imagine recommending this collection of essays to someone over the more completed books which were finished off later on in his life. 

Now the good thing about reading a book like this is not really the book itself, but the idle speculation to which a book like this leads you.  Halfway through that third cup of coffee, you finish an essay, stare out the window and start mulling.  What exactly is Progress? you ask yourself.  Lewis is hard on the Apostles of Progress, the charlatans who talk about Societal Evolution as if evolution always improves matters.  But set aside Lewis’ target for a second, and wonder: suppose we wanted society to progress.  What change would constitute progress?  The first instinct is to say that progress would be fixing things I don’t like about the society.  But, that is a rather amusing answer.  Does Society progress when it becomes more to my liking?  Now that is rather egocentric of me.  I am confusing “I like these things” with “A Society progresses when it has more of the things I like and it regresses when it has fewer of the things I like.”  When did I become the standard for progress?

So, if we become a little less egocentric and say society progresses when it has more of the things people like me like, then it doesn't sound quite so silly, but it still sounds weird.  So, we modify it to say society progresses when it has more of the things Enlightened People like, which is a circular argument saying the same thing. 

So, to get progress, we have to have something more abstract.  Society progresses when it has more Liberty or Equality or Fraternity?  Take the second one.  As society becomes more equal, it makes progress on being more equal.  Tautologically true.  But “society progresses when it becomes more equal” just begs the question.  Why is more equality progress?  What enthroned equality as the progressive endpoint?  Or Liberty?  Or Fraternity?  And again, we are back to the idea that society progresses when people like me like the society more.

In the absence of something outside myself establishing the goal, I am not sure what Progress means.  Does theism get around the problem?  Does Society progress when God likes it more?  That gets us into all sorts of theological problems.  Is God’s goal for this society to improve until it hits an eschatological end?  Does Society progress when it gets more like Heaven and regress when it gets less like Heaven?  If the world ends in fire and condemnation, which the New Testament seems to suggest it does, is it progress to get closer or further away from condemnation?  There seem to be a slide here from the idea of progress as found in Pilgrim’s Progress and the idea of a society progressing by…what?  What are the rules to measure the progress of a society? 

The very term “progress” implies a goal which society is either moving toward or not.  Without a stated goal, it is a meaningless term.  Calling someone “progressive” sure sounds like a compliment, but surely it matters to what end they are progressing.  When you frame it that way, you realize that every act of progress toward one goal is simultaneously an act of regress from the opposite goal.  There is no such thing as progress in the abstract.  We spend too much time talking about progress and not enough time establishing what the goal is to which the progress is occurring.

And that is where I get stuck.  As soon as you try to articulate the goal toward which a society is progressing when people talk about ”societal progress” it gets rather messy.  I suspect if the goals were stated more clearly, it would be less attractive to talk about progress.  I suspect that the very idea of “progress” is just a mask for some very muddled thinking.

I’ve been puzzling over this for a while now, which is of course the sign of a good book. At best, Lewis only hints at any of this—I have no idea if he would even recognize these ruminations as related to the essays he wrote.  I am still back at my original problem though—is Lewis worth reading or not?  I rarely find that Lewis gives me a satisfying argument for anything, but he is easy to read and make me think.  I suspect he would be happy with that characterization.  Framed this way, I too find it a positive thing to say about an author.  But, while Lewis makes me think, I always find him far too yielding of a conversation partner; when I push back against Lewis, he just yields the terrain.  Maybe I just prefer stronger-willed conversation partners.  I don’t know.  But, I do have four more books of essays this summer to sort out my Lewis Problem.