Reverend Brian McGreevy continues his series, Not as Unwise but as Wise: Reflections from C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength on Living Christianly in a Post-Christian World. This is available as a podcast on iTunes.
Episode 19: Not as Unwise but as Wise: Reflections from C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength
SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 8, “MOONLIGHT AT BELBURY”
Adapted from Rudy Rentzel
Deputy Director Wither expresses his displeasure to Fairy Hardcastle about her arrest and torture of Jane Studdock and failure to prevent her escape. The Fairy replied that they all badly wanted Jane, and that it was necessary to do what she did in hopes of finding out the headquarters of the enemy. The Fairy is summoned to meet with the Head.
Meanwhile, Jane wakes up at St. Anne’s, where they are helping nurse her after her ordeal. Her sense of the atmosphere of St. Anne’s has changed from her initial distaste, and she becomes acquainted with other members of the Company, including Mr. Bultitude, a bear who lives there at peace with all. She is encouraged by the support of those at St. Anne’s and learns about the Director, who has charitably taken in many who have lost their homes. Jane admits her puzzlement about the Director’s views about marriage. Mother Dimble says it may be a lot of fuss “about something so simple and natural that it oughtn’t be mentioned at all,” but states she was raised with the intention “to love, honour, and obey.”
At Belbury, Mark is in good spirits as everyone talks about how well the riots went. He enjoys reading his account of it in the newspaper and is pleased that only the inner circle are aware that he wrote the articles which please Mark even more. The government now seems likely to put Edgestow and the whole district under the control of the N.I.C.E. police with emergency powers, with Lord Feverstone as governor.
Deputy Director Wither makes a point of flattering Mark and encourages him to invite Jane out to join them. Mark immediately reacts against the idea, realizing that her presence would make him uncomfortable and that she would not approve of all he liked about his life there. After he cuts off the conversation, Mark runs into the Fairy, who chides Mark for giving the D.D. the cold shoulder about inviting Jane to Belbury. She says this has again put Mark in the bad graces of the D.D. At dinner, Mark converses with Filostrato, who tells Mark how he would like to do away with the messiness of organic life, including trees, birds, and even humans, in favor of preserving only the mind and clean metal. Filostrato says he believes the request to invite Jane came not from the D.D., but directly from the Head. Mark thinks he means Jules, but Filostrato means someone else. Instead, Filostrato asserts Mark will meet the Head and hear the request from his lips. Filostrato then begins talking about the cleanness of the moon – with no vegetation, no atmosphere, no moisture, and its clean, white powder. Mark thinks it a dead world, but Filostrato believes its Masters, who live below ground, disinfected most of their world, dispensed with their organic bodies, and kept their minds alive without organic food. Filostrato then confides that the real purpose of the N.I.C.E. is the conquest of organic life, saying that the Head has survived death, and his brain lives on. He reveals the Head is Francois Alcasan, and then takes Mark to a distant room where there are many tubes and dials, all leading to an adjacent room. He tells Mark they must strip to their underclothes, wash, and put on white clothes, gloves, and surgical masks before going through an air lock to enter the chamber.
KEY PASSAGES FROM CHAPTER 8
“I AM THE LAST PERSON, Miss Hardcastle,” said the Deputy Director, “to wish to interfere with your — er — private pleasures. But really…!” It was some hours before breakfast time and the old gentleman was fully dressed and unshaved. But if he had been up all night, it was odd that he had let his fire out. He and the Fairy were standing by a cold and blackened grate in his study. “She can’t be far away,” said Fairy Hardcastle. “We’ll pick her up some other time. It was well worth trying. If I’d got out of her where she’d been — and I should have got it if I’d had a few minutes longer — why, it might have turned out to be enemy headquarters. We might have rounded up the whole gang.”–amorality
“At last they came to a place where the lights were on and there was a mixture of animal and chemical smells, and then to a door which was opened to them after they had parleyed through a speaking tube. Filostrato, wearing a white coat, confronted them in the doorway. “Enter,” said Filostrato. “He expect you for some time.” “Is it in a bad temper?” said Miss Hardcastle. “Sh!” said Wither. “And in any case, my dear lady, I don’t think that is quite the way in which one should speak of our Head. His sufferings — in his peculiar condition, you know—” “You are to go in at once,” said Filostrato, “as soon as you have made yourselves ready.”—usurping control of life and death
“Long after sunrise there came into Jane’s sleeping mind a sensation which, had she put it into words, would have sung, “Be glad thou sleeper and thy sorrow offcast. I am the gate to all good adventure.” And after she had wakened and found herself lying in pleasant langour with winter morning sunlight falling across her bed, the mood continued. “He must let me stay here now,” she thought.—joy and adventure
“You can get up in the afternoon if you like, Mrs. Studdock,” she said. “I should just take a quiet day till then. What would you like to read? There’s a pretty large library.” “I’d like the Curdie books, please.” said Jane, “and Mansfield Park and Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Having thus been provided with reading matter for several hours, she very comfortably went to sleep again.—literature of Truth and Beauty
“Mrs. Studdock,” said Ivy Maggs with some solemnity, “if the Director wanted to have a tiger about the house it would be safe. That’s the way he has with animals. There isn’t a creature in the place that would go for another or for us once he’s had his little talk with them. Just the same as he does with us. You’ll see.”—benevolent power of the Director
“A wide, open hearth glowing with burning wood lit up the comfortable form of Mrs. Dimble who was seated in a kitchen chair at one side of it, apparently, from the basin in her lap and other indications on a table beside her, engaged in preparing vegetables.—the beauty and dignity of honest work
“Mrs. Maggs had already left the room. Jane took advantage of this to say to Mother Dimble in a lower voice, “Mrs. Maggs seems to make herself very much at home here.” “My dear, she is at home here.” “As a maid, you mean?” “Well, no more than anyone else. She’s here chiefly because her house has been taken from her. She had nowhere else to go.” “You mean she is one of the Director’s charities.” “Certainly that. Why do you ask?” “Well — I don’t know. It did seem a little odd that she should call you Mother Dimble. I hope I’m not being snobbish. “You’re forgetting that Cecil and I are another of the Director’s charities.” “Isn’t that rather playing on words?” “Not a bit. Ivy and Cecil and I are all here because we were turned out of our homes.”—equality at the foot of the Cross
“My dear, the Director is a very wise man…. Some of what he says, or what the Masters say, about marriage does seem to me to be a lot of fuss about something so simple and natural that it oughtn’t to need saying at all. But I suppose there are young women now-a-days who need to be told it.” “You haven’t got much use for young women who do, I see.” “Well, perhaps I’m unfair. Things were easier for us. We were brought up on stories with happy endings and on the Prayer Book. We always intended to love, honour and obey, and we had figures and we wore petticoats and we liked waltzes.—the beauty of God’s design and the importance of good stories and Biblical worship
“Mark sat down to lunch that day in good spirits. Everyone reported that the riot had gone off most satisfactorily and he had enjoyed reading his own accounts of it in the morning papers. He enjoyed it even more when he heard Steele and Cosser talking about it in a way which showed that they did not even know how it had been engineered, much less who had written it up in the newspapers. And he had enjoyed his morning too. It had involved a conversation with Frost, the Fairy, and Wither himself, about the future of Edgestow. All were agreed that the government would follow the almost unanimous opinion of the nation (as expressed in the newspapers) and put it temporarily under the control of the Institutional Police. An emergency governor of Edgestow must be appointed. Feverstone was the obvious man. As a member of Parliament he represented the Nation, as a Fellow of Bracton he represented the University, as a member of the Institute he represented the Institute. All the competing claims that might otherwise have come into collision were reconciled in the person of Lord Feverstone.”—pride, inner ring, power through abrogating liberties
“Wither had thawed in a most encouraging manner…he had taken Mark aside, spoken vaguely but paternally of the great work he was doing, and finally asked after his wife. The D.D. hoped there was no truth in the rumour which had reached him that she was suffering from — er — some nervous disorder… “Because,” said Wither, “it had occurred to me, in view of the great pressure of work which rests on you at present and the difficulty, therefore, of your being at home as much as we should all wish, that in your case the Institute might be induced — I am speaking in a quite informal way — that we should all be delighted to welcome Mrs. Studdock here.” Until the D.D had said this Mark had not realised that there was nothing he would dislike so much as having Jane at Belbury. There were so many things that Jane would not understand: not only the pretty heavy drinking which was becoming his habit but — oh, everything from morning to night. For it is only justice both to Mark and to Jane to record that he would have found it impossible to conduct in her hearing any one of the hundred conversations which his life at Belbury involved. Her mere presence would have made all the laughter of the Inner Ring sound metallic, unreal; and what he now regarded as common prudence would seem to her, and through her to himself, mere flattery, back-biting and toad-eating. Jane in the middle of Belbury would turn the whole of Belbury into a vast vulgarity, flashy and yet furtive. His mind sickened at the thought…--inner ring, pride, guilt“I would not have any birds either. On the art tree I would have the art birds all singing when you press a switch inside the house. When you are tired of the singing you switch them off. Consider again the improvement. No feathers dropped about, no nests, no eggs, no dirt.” “It sounds,” said Mark, “like abolishing pretty well all organic life.” “And why not? It is simple hygiene. Listen, my friends. If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic life crawling over it, do you not say, ‘Oh, the horrid thing. It is alive,’ and then drop it?”—disdain for God’s creation and natural life“This Institute is for something better than housing and vaccinations and faster trains and curing the people of cancer. It is for the conquest of death: or for the conquest of organic life, if you prefer. They are the same thing. It is to bring out of that cocoon of organic life which sheltered the babyhood of mind the New Man, the man who will not die, the artificial man, free from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick her away.”—usurping God
“The Head himself has already survived death, and you shall speak to him this night.”…“Is the young man ready?” asked the voice of Straik. “You have explained it to him, then?” He turned to Mark and the moonlight in the room was so bright that Mark could now partially recognise his face “Do you mean really to join us, young man?” said Straik. “There is no tuning back once you have set your hand to the plough. And there are no reservations. The Head has sent for you. Do you understand — the Head? You will look upon one who was killed and is still alive. The resurrection of Jesus in the Bible was a symbol: tonight you shall see what it symbolised. This is real Man at last, and it claims all our allegiance.” “What the devil are you talking about?” said Mark.. “My friend is quite right,” said Filostrato. “Our Head is the first of the New Men — the first that lives beyond animal life. As far as Nature is concerned he is already dead: if Nature had her way his brain would now be mouldering in the grave. But he will speak to you within this hour, and you will obey his orders.” “But who is it?” said Mark. “It is François Alcasan,” said Filostrato. “It is the beginning of Man Immortal and Man Ubiquitous,” said Straik. “Man on the throne of the universe. It is what all the prophecies really meant.” “At first, of course,” said Filostrato, “the power will be confined to a number — a small number — of individual men. Those who are selected for eternal life.” “A king cometh,” said Straik, “who shall rule the universe with righteousness and the heavens with judgment. You thought all that was mythology–you thought because fables had clustered about the phrase, ‘Son of Man,’ that Man would never really have a son who will wield all power. But be will.” ““And so,” said Straik, “the lessons you learned at your mother’s knee return. God will have power to give eternal reward and eternal punishment.” “God?” said Mark. “How does He come into it? I don’t believe in God.” “But,” said Filostrato, “does it follow that because there was no God in the past that there will be no God also in the future?…We are offering you the unspeakable glory of being present at the creation of God Almighty? Here, in this house, you shall meet the first sketch of the real God. It is a man — or a being made by man — who will finally ascend the throne of the universe. And rule forever.”—blasphemy, false Christ, powerTHEMES THAT APPEAR IN CHAPTER 8
–amorality
— slavish obedience, manipulation and false pretenses
—usurping control of life and death
–joy and adventure
–literature of Truth and Beauty
–benevolent power of the Director
–the beauty and dignity of honest work
–the fragrance and weight of the beauty of holiness
–equality at the foot of the Cross
–the beauty of God’s design and the importance of Good stories and Biblical worship
–pride, inner ring, power through abrogating liberties
–inner ring, pride, guilt
–lies, manipulation, coercion
–disdain/contempt for God’s creation and for natural life
–rejection of the body and of God’s design
–usurping God
–blasphemy, false Christ
—contrast of journey to and presence of the Director and the Head
Practices of Hope and of Wisdom
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.—Philippians 4:8-9
1.Read Good stories and literature “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Mt. 6:22-23) As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. (Daniel 1:17)
2.Practice honest physical work that respects God’s creationThe Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Gen. 2:15) Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. (Eph. 4:28)
3.Beware the seduction of lies and the inner ring Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. (I Pet. 3:10-11) If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. (I John 1:6) To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech (Prov. 8:13)
4.Cling to robust Biblical teaching and worship For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (I Timothy 3:3-4) Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching you have heard from me, with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. (2 Tim. 1:13) In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. (Mt. 15:9) Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. (Ps. 29:2)
