Quotations
and Allusions in
C.
S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
compiled by Arend Smilde (Utrecht, The Netherlands)
References
are to paragraph numbers in the Fount edition of 1978, with the first
few words of each paragraph added in small capitals. This paragraph division
has probably been the universal one for most of the time after the book’s first
publication in 1943. However,
– the
first edition has fewer paragraph divisions
– the
second British edition (1946) and most, perhaps all, subsequent editions, with
the exception of the 1978 Fount edition and its reprints, have an extra passage
inserted in Chapter II,
Different
paragraph numbers in the first edition are noted in square brackets from each
chapter’s point of divergence onward.
In addition to the added passage in Chapter II, I have
pointed out five small improvements found in the second British edition as
compared with the first. As far as I know, most of these changes have found
their way into all subsequent editions.
No references are given where Lewis gave adequate
notes, and no information from his notes is repeated here. The list is based on
the notes added tot my Dutch translation of The Abolition of Man,
published in 1997 (De afschaffing van de mens, 5th edition 2011). This
website also offers a 2,000-word Summary of the book, followed by a much briefer summary of just over 300 words.
I apologize for telling you that Shelley was “an
English poet” if you already knew that, and further apologize for not
telling you that Plato was “a Greek philosopher”, should that be news to you.
I still hope there will be at least a couple of interesting items for most
visitors of this page. Double question marks – ?? – represent places
where I did not find the information I wanted to give. Corrections and additions are
welcome.
Chapter
I: MEN WITHOUT CHESTS
chapter motto
So he sent the word to slay, etc.
From the
Christmas Carol, “Unto us is born a Son”. “...This did Herod sore affray, / And
grievously bewilder, / So he sent the word to slay / And slew the little
childer.”
para.
1 i doubt whether
Gaius and Titius, The Green Book
This book
is The Control of Language: A critical approach to reading and writing,
by Alex King and Martin Ketley, published in 1939. “Gaius” and “Titius” are, in
classical Latin, generally representative standard fictitious names. In modern
colloquial Italian, un tizio is still in use as a word for “a
guy”, “a fellow”.
para.
2 in
their second
the well-known story of Coleridge at the waterfall
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, (1772-1834), English poet and philosopher. Lewis appears to
be referring to a passage in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour
in Scotland, A.D. 1803 (published
in 1874, edited by J. C. Shairp), and to rely on The Green Book for the
way he cites it. There are considerable differences with the original account,
although the point Lewis wants to make can still be based on it.
Dorothy was the sister of William
Wordsworth (see note to next paragraph) and was making the tour with him and
Coleridge. The scene at the waterfall – Cora Linn, near New Lanark – appears in
her account of 21 August 1803 (p. 37 of the 1874 edition):
... we had different views of the Linn. We sat
upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down
upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more
expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the
seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge,
who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom
he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was
a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet,
particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the
words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with
William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a
majestic waterfall.” “Sublime and beautiful,” replied his friend. Poor
Coleridge could make no answer, and, not very desirous to continue the
conversation, came to us and related the story, laughing heartily.
No one actually calls the waterfall “pretty”, and there
are no signs of actual “disgust” on the part of Coleridge. What presumably made
him laugh was that the gentleman was using “sublime” and “beautiful” as
near-equivalent terms. Educated literary people like Wordsworth and Coleridge
in those days were all familiar with Edmund Burke’s Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756),
in which the two terms are completely opposed to each other:
Indeed, terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently,
the ruling principle of the sublime. (II.2, “Terror”)
By beauty I mean that quality or those qualities in bodies, by which they
cause love, or some passion similar to it. (III.1, “Of Beauty”)
Coleridge
was perhaps not so much rejecting the gentleman’s judgement as making fun of
his sloppy language and thinking. At the same time he probably felt some real
concern about the wrongness of the epithet “beautiful” for the waterfall.
In 20th-century language, the
incongruity noticed by Coleridge was certainly more effectively evoked by the
word “pretty” than by “beautiful”. Since The
Green Book was intended for school children, the authors were probably
justified in retelling the story this way – although it might have been advisable
and easy for them to make their point with a different story without so much
editing. The same is true for Lewis; but he was criticizing their point, not
their example. A little confusion is added by Lewis only when he calls the
story “well-known” while citing a very imperfect version of it.
para. 6 [first edition: 5 continued] they
might have
Johnson’s famous passage
Samuel Johnson
(1709-1784), English writer, poet, literary critic and lexicographer. The fame
of this passage, like Johnson’s own, is partly due to his biographer James
Boswell. It was Boswell who selected this passage as an example of the
“sublimity” of Johnson’s style.
Iona
Island on
the western coast of Scotland, site of an ancient abbey dating from the sixth
century A.D.
Wordsworth
William
Wordsworth (1770-1850), English poet.
para. 7 [first edition: 5 continued] what
they actually
Lamb, Virgil,
Thomas Browne, Mr. de la Mare
Charles Lamb (1775-1834), English essayist,
critic, poet, a friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge; Virgil (70-19 B.C.), Roman poet, author of the Aeneid; Thomas
Browne (1605-1682), English physician and writer famed for his
“poetical” prose; Walter de la Mare (1873-1956), English poet,
novelist and short-story writer.
para. 8
[first edition: 7] in reality, we
that we ought to obey
it.
The first
edition has “...that we ought to obey instinct.”
para. 9 [first
edition: 6] but it is
Orbilius
The book
referred to is The Reading and Writing of English (1936) by E. G.
Biaggini. The pseudonym is the name of an ancient Roman language teacher,
Lucius Orbilius Pupillus. According to the poet Horace (Epistulae II.1,
70), his rude treatment of pupils translating Homer got him the nickname Orbilius
Plagosus, “Orbilius with
the Ferule”. The idea to use this name for a modern language teacher (and thus
to accuse him of rudeness) likely came to Lewis from the example of Thomas
Fuller’s Worthies of England (1662). Writing about Richard Mulcaster,
language teacher of the young Edmund Spenser in the years 1561-1569, Fuller
describes Mulcaster’s “severity” and calls him plagosus Orbilius. See
Lewis’s English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, p. 350, where
Lewis appears to construe this “severity” as “cruelty”. Michael Stapleton in
his Cambridge Guide to English Literature (1983) describes Mulcaster as
“a teacher of formidable quality and a man with a passionate devotion to the
possibilities of English as a literary language; the schoolboy Spenser was
already practising the poet’s craft as Mulcaster’s pupil.”
Ruksh and
Sleipnir and the weeping horses of Achilles and the charger in the Book of Job
– Ruksh
is Rustum’s horse in Matthew Arnold’s poem “Sohrab and Rustum” (1853). “So
arm’d, he issued forth; and Ruksh, his horse, / Followed him like a faithful
hound at heel” (270–271). Ruksh grieved over the fate of his master Rustum and
the latter’s son Sohrab: “and from his dark, compassionate eyes / The big warm
tears roll’d down, and caked the sand” (735-36).
– Sleipnir,
in Germanic mythology, is Wodan’s eight-legged horse.
– The
Greek hero Achilles’s two horses, Xanthus and Balius, appear in Iliad
XVI.148-154, XVII.426-428 (where they weep over the death of Patroklos), and
XIX.400-424.
– The
“charger” is the horse described in Job 39,19–25.
Brer
Rabbit
Principal
character in the “Uncle Remus” stories, by J. C. Harris (c. 1848-1908).
Peter
Rabbit
Principal
character in the children’s book of the
same name, by Beatrix Potter (1866-1943).
ordinate
love
The
phrase certainly anticipates the references to Augustine’s ordo amoris
and Aristotle’s “ordinate affections” in para. 14 [10], notes 11 and 13.
para. 11
[first edition: 8] but i doubt
Dr.
Richards
Ivor
Armstrong Richards (1893-1979), British linguist and literary critic; his books
include The Meaning of Meaning (1923), Principles of Literary
Criticism (1924), Science and Poetry (1925), Practical Criticism
(1929), and How to Read a Page (1942). See also the second note to
Chapter II. Lewis later devoted a short paragraph to Richards and “the problem
of badness in literature” in the final chapter of his Studies in Words
(1960):
Dr Richards began by hoping he
had found the secret of badness in an appeal to stock responses. But Gray’s Elegy
beat him. … The solution of the problem is, I suspect, still far away.
para. 13
[first edition: 10] until quite modern times...
Shelley
Percy
Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), English poet.
Traherne
Thomas
Traherne (1637-1674), English mystical prose writer, poet and divine. The Centuries
of Meditations were not published until 1908.
N.B.
“Century” in the book’s title means not “one hundred years” but simply “one
hundred”: the book thus contains “hundreds of meditations”.
para. 14
[first edition: 10 continued] st augustine defines
In the
Republic ...
In note 9
to Chapter II Lewis refers to the same passage in Plato’s Republic (Politeia),
402a. Related passages can be found in 409a, 424d, 429b-c, and 430a. In these
sections (Books III and IV) Socrates is discussing the education, life, duties
and morality of the class of “guardians” in what he conceives to be an ideal
society.
Plato
said that the Good was “beyond existence”
Republic, Book VI, 509b. In a
letter of January 1928 to Owen Barfield, Lewis cited the same phrase in Greek
with a slightly different translation (Collected
Letters III, p. 1634):
You cannot get the that into the what as an element ... (I
take it this may be what Plato means when he says that good is ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας on the far side of being.)
The phrase is found
in a passage (506d-513e) where Socrates proposes the Sun as an image of the
Good: each in its way can be understood as the thing which (508a) “makes it
possible for our sight to see and for the things we see to be seen”.
I think you’ll agree that the
ability to be seen is not the only gift the sun gives to the things we see. It
is also the source of their generation, growth, and nourishment, although it
isn’t actually the process of generation. (...) And it isn’t
only the known-ness of the things we know which is conferred upon them by
goodness, but also their reality and their being, although goodness isn’t
actually the state of being, but surpasses
being in majesty and might.
–– translation by Robin Waterfield (World’s Classics, Oxford U.P. 1993, p. 236)
In Benjamin Jowett’s translation (1894) the second sentence reads:
...the good may be said to be not
only the author of knowledge to all things known, but of their being and
essence, and yet the good is not essence, but far exceeds essence
in dignity and power.
In Paul
Shorey’s translation (Loeb
1935, p. 107):
... the objects of knowledge not
only receive from the presence of the good their being known, but their very
existence and essence is derived to them from it, though the good itself is not
essence but still transcends essence
in dignity and surpassing power.
Lewis appears to be radicalizing
or overstating Plato’s case in two ways: by omitting the restrictive clause “in
majesty and might” (or “in dignity and power”), and by his rendering of ἐπέκεινα (epekeina) as “on the far side”.
Waterfield has actually added a note to this passage warning the reader that
The notion that goodness
“surpasses being” is hyperbole: it does not mean that we cannot talk of
goodness “being” and have to think of it as somehow beyond the intelligible
realm of types (otherwise we would have to think of the sun as beyond the
visible realm); it just stresses the exalted status of goodness within the
intelligible realm.
A note to Shorey’s
translation suggests that Lewis’s rendering may betray a Neopolatonic slant in
his understanding of the Greek word:
ἐπέκεινα became technical and a symbol for the
transcendental in Neoplatonism and all similar philosophies. Cf. Plotinus xvii. 1, Dionysius Areop. De divinis nominibus, ii. 2,
Friedländer, Platon, 1, p. 87.
In answer
to charges of exaggeration, Lewis would presumably have argued that the ontological
point he made must be distinguished from the epistemological. He was affirming,
not denying, that “the Good” is knowable and known.
Wordsworth
... through virtue the stars were strong
A
reference to William Wordsworth’s “Ode to Duty” (1805), stanza 7:
Stern
Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead’s most benignant grace;
Nor know we any thing so fair
As is the smile upon thy face;
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;
And Fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong;
And the most ancient Heavens through Thee are fresh and strong.
para. 16
[first edition: 11] this conception in
‘the Tao’
A fundamental
concept in ancient Chinese philosophy. Lewis is adopting the Confucian
interpretation of it while disregarding the rival Taoist view. Confucius
(551-479 B.C.) and the Confucian school talked of Tao as “the Way” – a
more or less obviously recommendable code of conduct. Taoists, on the other
hand, following Lao Tze (c. 600 B.C.) and the Tao Te Ching, have
always insisted on the impossibility of saying anything about Tao. For
them, Tao is “the Whole”. Since there can be nothing else beside “the
Whole”, and the function of words is (in Taoism) to mark the boundary between
what a thing is and what it is not, Tao can be said to be in a very
literal sense indefinable. There are no words about it because there are no
boundaries to it.
The idea to adopt the Chinese word for his
present purpose may have been suggested to Lewis by Charles Gore’s book The Philosophy of the Good Life (1930),
which he read in January 1940. See Collected
Letters II, pp. 321 and 324, and a quotation from p. 57 of Gore’s book in Adam
Barkman, C. S. Lewis &
Philosophy as a Way of Life (2009), p. 174-175:
Thus the traditional wisdom of China finds at the
basis of all things a divine principle or – the Tao [the Way] – closely akin to
what the Stoics described as Nature, to which all things in heaven and earth
must conform, and to which human nature is akin; so that for man the highest
knowledge is to know the Tao and the highest wisdom is to live by it. In the
Chinese Classics the Rites, religious and social, of the Chinese tradition are
regarded as the will of ‘Heaven’, hwhich is the name for the Supreme Power
ruling the affairs of men as an ominpotent and omniscient righteousness.
para. 19
[first edition: 14] perhaps this will
dulce et
decorum
(Latin)
“sweet and seemly” – as Lewis translates at the beginning of this paragraph.
Quoted from Horace, Odes III.2, 3: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria
mori” (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”).
para. 21
[first edition: 16] but this course
We were told
it all long ago by Plato
The parallel three-part
division of human communities and the individual human mind is established
toward the end of Book IV of the Republic, 441c, just before the
passage (442b-c) referred to by Lewis. It is a milestone in Plato’s overall
argument:
“It’s
not been easy,” I [|Socrates] said, “but we’ve made it to the other shore:
we’ve reached the reasonable conclusion that the constituent categories of a
community and of any individual’s mind are identical in nature and number.”
It is then further
concluded (441d) that just as
a
community’s morality consists in each of its three constituent classes doing
its own job ... [w]here each of the constituent parts of an individual does its
own job, the individual will be moral and will do his own job.
(translation by Robin Waterfield, 1994)
Among the many further
developments and application of the idea in the Republic are the passages
beginning at 435c and 580d. It is also found in Plato’s Timaeus, 69c-72d
and 89d-90b.
the chest
– the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity
Alanus ab
Insulis, or Alain de Lille (c. 1125-1203), was a French scholar reputed
to be a universally learned man. As a theologian he contributed towards a
mystical counter-movement against Scholasticism; as a defender of the Christian
faith he presented it as founded on self-evident basic principles. His poem De
planctu naturae (“Nature’s Complaint” or “The Plaint of Kind”) is a satire
on human vice. In The Allegory of Love (1936), C. S. Lewis describes him
as a poet in the “School of Chartres”; and admitting that the Plaint “is
difficult to read, and rather more difficult to buy”, he translates two long fragments,
one of which includes the remark about Magnanimity (Allegory, p. 109).
As a literary historian, Lewis discussed the “triadic pattern”
derived from Plato as a favorite device of medieval thinkers, including Alanus,
in The Discarded Image (1964), chapter III.D, p. 43-44, and IV.A, pp.
56-58; see also his essay “Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages”, in Studies
in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1966), pp. 57-59.
Chapter
II: THE WAY
para.
1 the
practical result
ἐν δὲ φάει καὶ ὄλεσσον
(Greek)
“Kill us in broad daylight!” Homer, Iliad XVII, 647. The idea of
accepting death rather than evading manifest truth is related, as a more
dramatic variant, to what Lewis elsewhere commended as a Socratic principle –
“Follow the argument wherever it leads”; cf. Plato’s Phaedo, 95b.
Cebes: ... I quite imagined that no
answer could be given to [Simmias], and therefore I was surprised at finding
that his argument could not sustain the first onset of yours, and not
impossibly the other ... may share a similar fate.
Socrates: Let us not boast, lest
some evil eye should put to flight the word which I am about to speak. That,
however, may be left in the hands of those above, while I draw near in Homeric
fashion, and try the mettle of your words. Here lies the point: You want to
have it proven to you that the soul is imperishable and immortal, and the
philosopher who is confident in death appears to you to have but a vain and
foolish confidence ...
para.
2 however
subjective they
It would
not be difficult to collect...
In the
first edition, the word “difficult” was followed by “(though it would be
unkind)”. Thus the passage ran, “It would not be difficult (though it would be
unkind) to collect...” As far as I know, only the 1978 Fount edition follows
the original 1943 text at this point.
para. 12
[first edition: 11] finally, it is
Olaf
Stapledon
British writer
and philosopher (1886-1950); his works include what he called “fantastic
fiction of a philosophic kind”. Denying that religion and a belief in
immortality were of any use, he postulated a sort of god-in-development. His
philosophical works include A Modern Theory of Ethics (1929), Philosophy
and Living (1939) and Beyond the “Isms” (1942). Much like C. S. Lewis,
he would deliberately blend his view of life into his science fiction
books – which include Last and First
Men (1930), Odd John (1935), Star
Maker (1937), and Sirius (1944).
para. 13
[first edition: 12] the truth finally becomes...
cuor
gentil
Probably
a reference to Dante, Inferno V, 100; Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto
s’apprende (“Love, rapidly clinging to noble hearts”).
the
Chün-tzu, the cuor gentil or gentleman
The first
edition puts the terms in a different order: “the Chün-tzu, the gentleman
or cuor gentil.”
“Do as
you would be done by”, says Jesus.
The first
edition has “...say Jesus and Confucius both.”
Humani
nihil a me alienum puto
(Latin)
“Nothing human is alien to me.” Terentius, Heautontimoroumenos (“The
Self-Tormenter”) I.1, 25. More fully quoted by Lewis in the Appendix, I ( b).
para. 15
[first edition: 14] the innovator, for example...
a duty to
our own kin, because they are our own kin, a part of traditional morality
In the second
edition, “a part of” is preceded by “is”. The corrected passage runs: “a duty
to our own kin, because they are our own kin, is a part of traditional
morality.’
para. 18
[first edition: 17] a theorist about language...
a great
poet, who has “loved, and been well nurtured in, his mother tongue’
John
Keats (1795-1821), The Fall of Hyperion I, 13–15. “Since every man whose
soul is not a clod / Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved / And been
well nurtured in his mother tongue.’
In the
same way, the
Tao admits development from within. There is a difference …
The words
“There is a difference” are the beginning of a seven-sentence passage – ending
with “...eating bricks and centipedes
instead” – which is absent from the first edition. Lewis introduced
this passage in the second edition (1946), and it has found its way to most or
all later editions, except for the 1978 Fount edition and its reprints. The
inserted passage is, after its first sentence, almost literally taken from
Lewis’s 1943 essay “The Poison of Subjectivism”.
In
the first edition, the sentence “In the same way … from within” opens a new
paragraph and is immediately followed by “Those who understand its spirit” etc.
When Lewis made the insertion, he removed this paragraph break and did not
start a new paragraph until immediately after the inserted passage, with the
sentence “Those who understand its spirit” etc. In spite of these different
openings, the new paragraph in each case ends with the words “…no ground for
criticizing either the Tao or
anything else.”
Chapter
III: THE ABOLITION OF MAN
chapter motto
It came burning hot into my mind, etc.
John
Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, ed.
James Blanton Wharey, 2nd edition revised by Roger Sharrock (Oxford 1960), Part
I, p. 70. The passage comes from the discourse between Christian and Faithful,
shortly after the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Lewis quoted the same words at
the end of his essay “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment” as published in
1949.
para. 6
[first edition: 5] i am not
Clotho
Clotho is
one of the three Moirai, or goddesses of Fate, in the ancient Greek
pantheon. Each was considered to perform an important task regarding a human
being’s “thread of life”; Clotho was the one who spun it, Lachesis gave it out,
Atropos cut it off.
para. 7
[first edition: 6] for the power
Plato ...
“a bastard nursed in a bureau”
cf. Republic, Book 5, 460b-c (translation by
Robin Waterfield, 1994):
... the officials whose job it is to take charge of
any children who are born ... [will] take the children of good parents to the
crèche and hand them over to nurses (who live in a separate section of the
community); and they’ll find some suitable way of hiding away in some secret
and secluded spot the children of worse parents and any handicapped children of
good parents.
Socrates
is talking about the relations between the sexes within the ideal society’s
class of “guardians”. In his defense it may be noted that
– this
whole section is introduced by Socrates asserting that “there are plenty of
reasons for misgivings”, and “I’m frightened of dragging my friends down with
me when I stumble and fall short of the truth in matters where uncertainty is
the last thing one wants” (450c, 451a);
– he
concludes by reminding his friends that “we’re trying to construct a
theoretical paradigm of a good community”, not a readily applicable political
program.
Lewis’s quotation is not from Plato and is
perhaps not actually a quotation. His reference to a “bastard” is somewhat
confusing since any notions of illegitimacy based on monogamous marriage are
out of the question in Plato’s class of guardians; “bastards” are here
precisely among the baby’s that are, presumably, not nursed in a bureau or government crèche – they are “without
standing or sanction” (461b).
Elyot
Sir
Thomas Elyot (c. 1490-1546), British scholar, diplomat and Member of
Parliament. The Governour (1531) is his principal work.
Locke
John
Locke (1632-1704), British philosopher and physician.
para. 8
[first edition: 6 continued] the second difference
Human nature
has been conquered – and, of course, has conquered
cf.
Plato, Republic 430e (translation
Robin Waterfield, 1994):
Isn’t the phrase “self-mastery” absurd? I mean, anyone
who is his own master is also his own slave, of course, and vice versa, since
it’s the same person who is the subject in all these expressions.
para. 11
[first edition: 8] to some it
to scorn
delights and live laborious days
John
Milton, Lycidas (1637), 72.
petitio
In full,
a petitio principii, a case of “begging the question”; a logical error
which consists in setting out to prove something by argument and then quietly
or unconsciously assuming it to be self-evident.
para.
12 [first edition: 9] yet
the conditioners
all
motives except one
cf.
Plato’s description of the dictatorial type of man, Republic 577d-580b.
sic volo,
sic jubeo
(Latin)
“This I will, this I command.” Juvenal, Satire VI (against women), line 223.
The full saying is Sic volo, sic iubeo; sit pro ratione voluntas: “This
I will, this I command: let [my] will takes Reason’s place.’
Lewis
doubtless knew his Juvenal, but it seems likely that his use of the Latin
phrase here was at least partly inspired by one of his favourite authors,
Richard Hooker (1554-1600), as quoted in Lewis’s English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, p. 49:
In the first book of Hooker we
find that God Himself, though the author, is also the voluntary subject, of
law. “They err who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no
reason besides his will” (I. i. 5). God does nothing except in pursuance of
that “constant Order and Law” of goodness which He has appointed to Himself.
Nowhere outside the minds of devils and bad men is there a sic volo, sic jubeo. The
universe itself is a constitutional monarchy. The Almighty Himself repudiates
the sort of sovereignty that Tyndale thinks fit for Henry VIII.
See also
Lewis’s letter of 11 January 1961 to Clyde S. Kilby, Collected Letters III, pp. 1226-1227.
para. 14
[first edition: 10] at the moment, then
Ferum
victorem cepit
(Latin)
“...and captured her savage conqueror.” Horace, Epistles II.2, 156–157.
The “savage conqueror” is Rome, “capturing” Greece on the battlefield in 168
B.C. only to see the Greeks “capturing” Rome in the field of arts and culture.
The full passage is Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit
agresti Latio, “Greece, when captured, captured her savage conqueror and
brought the arts into rustic Latium.’
para. 15
[first edition: 11] my point may
Nature is
a word of varying meanings
In a
later book, Studies in Words (Cambridge University Press, 1960),
C. S. Lewis spent fifty pages on the various meanings of “Nature”.
para. 16
[first edition: 12] from this point
always
conquering Nature, because “Nature” is...
In the
second edition, the word “because” is not in italics.
para. 18
[first edition: 14] i am not
ὕλη
Greek for
“matter”, “raw material”; also for timber or firewood. See Lewis’s undated 1930
letter to Owen Barfield in Collected
Letters III, pp. 1519-1520.
para. 19
[first edition: 15] the true significance
L.C.M.
In the
second edition this was changed into “H.C.F.” Lewis appears to have realized
that what he actually meant was not Lowest Common Multiple, but Highest Common
Factor.
para. 23
[first edition: 16 continued] if we compare
Bacon … a
spouse for fruit
Francis
Bacon (1561-1626), British statesman, philosopher and essayist. See also his
later work Novum Organum (“New
Instrument”), I.3 and I.81. It is quite usual, and certainly no original idea
of Lewis’s, to characterize Bacon as “chief trumpeter of the new era” or
something similar. Bacon himself famously called an earlier Italian philosopher
and scientist, Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588)
“the first of the moderns” (novorum
hominum primum), but was not an unqualified admirer of him; see his
unfinished work “On Principles and Origins according to the Fables of Cupid and
Cœlum”, in The Works of Francis Bacon,
ed. Spedding, Ellis & Heath, Vol. 5 (London 1861), 495, and
Ellis’s introduction to the original Latin text in Vol. III, 1859, p. 65-77, especially 74ff.
Lewis is referring to The
Advancement of Learning, Book I, chapter V, end of
section 11 (Works III, 294, just after the indented Latin quote):
But as both heaven and earth
do conspire and contribute to the use and benefit of man, so the end ought to
be, from both philosophies [viz. heavenly and earthly] to separate and reject
vain speculations, and whatsoever is empty and void, and to preserve and
augment whatsoever is solid and
fruitful; that knowledge may not be as a courtesan, for pleasure and vanity
only, or as a bond-woman, to acquire and gain to her master’s use; but as a
spouse, for generation, fruit, and comfort.
he
rejects magic because it does not work … Filum labyrinthi, i.
The title
stated is a term occurring in three different titles in the list of Bacon’s
works. Lewis is referring to Filum Labyrinthi, sive Formula Inquisitionis (“Thread of
the Labyrinth, or Formula of Inquiry”), found in Works III, 493ff, or VI, 418ff of the American edition. This volume also contains The
Advancement of Learning. An html text of Filum is available online
from the older Montagu edition.
The opening paragraph reads:
Francis Bacon thought in this manner. The knowledge whereof
the world is now possessed, especially that of nature, extendeth not to
magnitude and certainty of works. The Physician pronounceth many diseases
incurable, and faileth oft in the rest. The Alchemists wax old and die in
hopes. The Magicians perform nothing that is permanent and profitable. The
Mechanics take small light from natural philosophy, and do but spin on their
own little threads. Chance sometimes discovereth inventions; but that worketh
not in years, but ages. So he saw well, that the inventions known are very
unperfect, and that new are not like to be brought to light but in great length
of time; and that those which are, came not to light by philosophy.
Marlowe’s
Faustus
The
Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus, a tragedy in blank verse and
prose by Bacon’s contemporary Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593). Faustus was a
semi-legendary magician and astrologer in early sixteenth-century Germany. He
became the habitual hero of stories about the magician selling his soul to the
devil in exchange for knowledge and power – or chiefly for power, as Lewis
suggests.
Paracelcus
Pseudonym
of Theophrastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541), Swiss physician and alchemist. He
considered the human body to be a microcosm reflecting in each of its parts
some particular part of the Macrocosm, or Universe.
para. 24
[first edition: 17] is it, then
Dr. Steiner
Rudolf
Steiner (1861-1925), founder of Anthroposophy, editor of Goethe’s scientific
works. He assumed the existence of a spiritual world which we might get
knowledge of by (a training of) our highest cognitive powers.
Martin
Buber
German
Jewish theologian, Biblical scholar, Bible translator, philosopher of religion
and a master of German prose (1878-1965). Having abandoned early mystical views
about union of God an man, he published his Ich und Du (“I and Thou”) in
1923. An encounter (not union) of God and man is here presented as,
ideally, a model for all human relationships, especially those with
fellow-humans. The reduction of any Thou to an It ought to be
resisted. As Buber explained, in some other century he might have felt impelled
to preach the opposite message, but clearly his own time called for a
rehabilitation of this “Thou”.
para. 25
[first edition: 18] perhaps i am asking...
basilisk
Legendary
snake-like animal, a frequent subject or feature of stories from ancient times
until the seventeenth century. Eyes were not its only weapon; among other
things its breath, too, was considered to be lethal.
sui
generis
(Latin)
“a class of its own”, not reducible to or explainable from anything else.
UPDATES
14 August
2008
ch. I and II: two corrections in references to Iliad.
8
February 2011
ch. I: added notes on Plato and Wordsworth.
16 March
2011
ch. III: added note on the chapter epigraph (Bunyan).
8 January
2012
ch. I: expanded note on the well-known
story of Coleridge (with thanks to Sam Schulman and Jan Dirk Snel).
4 April
2014
ch. III: expanded note on ὕλη.
3 June 2015
added information and notes on the difference in paragraph breaks between first
and later editions.
13 July 2015
ch. II: expanded note on ἐν δὲ φάει καὶ ὅλεσσον.
25 July
2015
ch. I: expanded note on Plato said that
the Good was “beyond existence”.
25
September 2015
added notes on
ch. I: in the Republic...
ch. I: We were all told it long ago by
Plato.
ch. III: Plato ... “a bastard nursed in a
bureau”.
ch. III: Human nature has been conquered.
ch. III: all motives except one
5 January
2016
ch. I: expanded note on the ‘Tao’
27 June
2018
Various improvements from beginning to end, notably in paragraph numbers and on
the inserted passage toward the end of ch. II.
15 July
2018
expanded note on the chest – the
seat etc. in ch. I
31 July 2018
expanded note on sic volo, sic jubeo in ch. III
14 December 2019
expanded note on Bacon in ch. III, and added
subsequent note on Filum labyrinthi.
4 May 2020
expanded note on Dr. Richards in ch. I, and improved note on Filum labyrinthi in ch. III.
23 October 2020
improved note on Bacon
… a spouse for fruit
in ch. III.