Inklings Forever Volume 8 A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth Frances White Ewbank Article 22 Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends and The C.S. Lewis & Society Conference

5-31-2012 A Meaningful Hierarchy: How C.S. Lewis Perceives Humanity's Significance Zachary A. Rhone Indiana University of Pennsylvania

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INKLINGS FOREVER, Volume VIII A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of

The Eighth FRANCES WHITE EWBANK COLLOQUIUM ON C.S. LEWIS & FRIENDS and

THE C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS SOCIETY CONFERENCE Taylor University 2012 Upland, Indiana

A Meaningful Hierarchy: How C.S. Lewis Perceives Humanity’s Significance

Zachary A. Rhone Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Rhone, Zachary A. “A Meaningful Hierarchy: How C.S. Lewis Perceives Humanity’s Significance.” Inklings Forever 8 (2012) www.taylor.edu/cslewis

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A Meaningful Hierarchy: How C.S. Lewis Perceives Humanity’s Significance

Zachary A. Rhone Indiana University of Pennsylvania

On Saturday 19 September 1931, In a paradoxical statement—a C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien bonded style for which he is often recognized— over the term mythopoeia (“myth- Chesterton sets the stage for Lewis when making”) during their famous stroll down he notes the irony of the human animal: Addison’s Walk (Carpenter 42). While on “the more we really look at man as an this walk, Lewis and Tolkien discussed animal, the less he will look like one” (The how a storyteller “‘or sub-creator’ as Everlasting Man 27), for, as Chesterton Tolkien liked to call such a person, is further remarks in Orthodoxy, “we do not actually fulfilling God’s purpose, and fit in to the world. I had tried to be happy reflecting a splintered fragment of the by telling myself that man is an animal, true light” (43). Lewis wrote to one of his like any other which sought its meat from dearest friends, Arthur Greeves, twelve God. But now I really was happy, for I had days later, claiming that he went from learnt that man is a monstrosity. I had believing in God to definitely believing in been right in feeling all things as odd, for I Christ (45). While this event certainly myself was at once worse and better than reveals a theological standpoint of all things” (72-73). Chesterton argues Tolkien and Lewis, the claim that humans that humans are set apart from other fulfill God’s purpose by sub-creating creatures: “In so far as I am Man I am the implies another important aspect of their chief of creatures….Man was a state of worldview: that humanity is somehow God walking about the garden. Man had different from other creatures.1 Perhaps, pre-eminence over all the brutes; man as G. K. Chesterton remarks in The was only sad because he was not a beast, Everlasting Man, a text we know but a broken god” (Orthodoxy 87).2 contributed to Lewis’ conversion, Humanity, thus, finds itself in a conflicted, humanity is “the measure of all things” paradoxical state of existence—between (35). Measurement, of course, demands a the earthly and the divine, the physical scale from great to small—in this case, a and the metaphysical. hierarchy from the greatest of beings to Lewis, likewise, recognizes the the lowest. Lewis, through his literature, uniqueness of humans among all other reveals the significance of humanity in the creatures. In , Lewis hierarchy of the universe. Within his core states that a human “is subjected to works, humanity’s significance may be various biological laws which he cannot observed in three contexts: humanity as a disobey any more than an animal hybrid of bestial and divine; humanity as can…but the law which is peculiar to his the protagonist of the Christian divine human nature, the law he does not share metanarrative; and humanity as a with animals or vegetables or inorganic transformative creature. things, is the one he can disobey if he

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chooses” (16)—what Lewis calls the Law Maleldil—or, God, in Lewis’ Space of Nature, the Law of Descent Behaviour, Trilogy—in a prayer, his calculating side or the Moral Law. The Moral Law “is not continued to “pour queries and objections any one instinct or set of instincts: it is into his brain” in order to combat his faith something which makes a kind of tune (141). His reason, at this moment, is (the tune we call goodness or right wrestling with his faith. conduct) by directing the instincts)” (21). Lewis further portrays the In regard to animals, humans are, as divisions of the human mind in That Ransom of states, Hideous Strength when Jane is given “More. But not less” (379). The demon direction from Ransom; while one part of Screwtape describes humans quite well as herself is completely receptive to amphibians, “half spirit and half Ransom, another seeks to control the animal…As spirits they belong to the situation, another produced moral eternal world, but as animals they inhabit confusion, and still a final portion felt joy time” (206). Through Screwtape, Lewis (150-51). Characters like Jane and, later further asserts that the hybrid quality of in the story, Mark experience a division of humans is the cause of Lucifer’s revolt. mind; one part reasons the event and Humans, therefore, are hybrids of animal contexts while the other expresses and spirit, time and eternity. Bios is the feelings about the event. One must, term Lewis gives to the natural, animal eventually, choose a side. When Mark is side of humans which “is always tending overcome by reason and its parallel with to run down and decay so that it can only emotion, he had “his first deeply moral be kept up by incessant subsidies from experience. He was choosing a side: the Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc.” Normal. ‘All that,’ as he called it, was (Mere Christianity 131) In regard to the what he chose. If the scientific point of spiritual side, however, Lewis uses the view led away from ‘all that,’ then be term Zoe to refer to the spiritual energy damned to the scientific point of view” and knowledge which is of God (131). (294). Mark, thus, chooses the irrational, According to Lewis, because of the yet reasonable side: the “normal.” He paradoxical presence of both Bios and Zoe decides against what science, stimulus, in humans, humans are “the highest of the and evidence might suggest in the animals,” and “we get the completest rational point of view; Mark, instead, resemblance to God which we know of” exercises reason, faith, emotion, and (131). imagination together to accept divine The power of reason is often truth. recognized as one of the characteristics Mark’s reasoning may be sharply that divides humanity from the rest of the contrasted to the actions of dear Mr. animal Kingdom. Agreeably, Lewis posits Bultitude, the “great snuffly, wheezly, for two lobes of the human mind: while beady-eyed, loose-skinned, gor-bellied faith is built upon what is accepted in brown bear,” who is treated kindly and reason, “the battle is between faith and pronounced a safe animal (164). The reason on one side and emotion and wizard Merlin prophesizes the imagination on the other” (Mere significance of the bear’s role in the story Christianity 116). The narrator of of the world: “He said that before , for example, calls the Christmas this bear would do the best reasoning quadrant “a chattering part of deed that any bear had done in Britain the mind which continues, until it is except some other bear that none of us corrected, to chatter on even in the had ever heard of” (282). His “mind was holiest of places” (140). Thus, while as furry and as unhuman in shape as his Ransom stands in the presence of body,” having no ability to remember

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much of his history, to recognize himself hierarchy. When explaining the as a bear and his caretakers as humans, or relationship between God and humans, to know that he did love and trust his Lewis personifies God: “Let us pretend caretakers: “The words I and Me and Thou that this is not a mere creature, but our was absent from his mind” (306). He is Son. It is like Christ in so far as it is a Man, incapable of asking the question “why?” for He became Man. Let us pretend that it (307) Mr. Bultitude is, in fact, only a bear, is also like Him in Spirit. Let us treat it as able to feel Ivy’s love and care but unable if it were what in fact it is not. Let us to comprehend it (308), for he possessed pretend in order to make the pretence “an inarticulate want for human into a reality” (155). Sandwiched companionship to which he was between the animals and the divine, accustomed...[and] sorrow such as only humanity dresses up to be like Sons of animals know—huge seas of disconsolate God when, in fact, they are incomplete emotion with not one little raft of reason Sons of God. Humanity, as you recall, to float on” (350). The bear’s inability to relies on Bios and must be fed Zoe reason, however, is what most separates through God. Humanity may rise or fall in him from humans; thus, his part in the that hierarchy: traveling beastward or story consists of ruthless killings of the into the holy. As Donald T. Williams Belbury group members. In the midst of writes in Mere Humanity, “In summary, to his slaughtering of humans, “The pride be human is to be an animal who is more, and insolent glory of the beast, the who has also a spiritual nature and is carelessness of its killings, seemed to therefore aware of and accountable to crush his spirit even as its flat feet were follow spiritual values” (33). crushing women and men. Here surely Humans, thus, have a choice came the King of the world…then whether to accept the role of a Son or everything went black and he knew no Daughter of God. Again, addressing the more” (350). Mr. Bultitude cannot reader through a persona of God, “Make comprehend his emotion; he can only act. no mistake…if you let me, I will make you He lacks the reason, faith, imagination, perfect. The moment you put yourself in and emotional awareness that Lewis my hands, that is what you are in for. believes to be part of humanity. Nothing less, or other, than that. You The animal’s inability to reason is have free will, and if you choose you can not the only characteristic which push Me away. But if you do not push Me separates humans from beasts; Lewis also away, understand that I am going to see notes the ability to create art as a point of this job through” (161). Accordingly, one separation from beasts. To aid his has a choice either to follow God’s position, Lewis defines the words creating purpose to perfection or not to do so; and begetting: “To beget is to become the there is no neutral ground. As Camilla father of: to create is to make. And the remarks to Jane in That Hideous Strength, difference is this. When you beget, you “Don’t you see…that you can’t be neutral? beget something of the same kind as If you don’t give yourself to us, the enemy yourself. A man begets human will use you” (115). Alan Jacobs placed babies….But when you make, you make Lewis’ worldview in terms of “forks” something of a different kind from yesterday, not unlike the direction we are yourself” (Mere Christianity 130). Any going here. animal can reproduce, but humans are the In agreement with Process only animals who can really create.3 , Lewis posits that everyone is Humanity is certainly the highest moving in one direction or the other, of animals; in regard to the divine, either toward or away from God, however, humanity is at the base of the participating in a divine metanarrative.

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Some are Christians but losing their appear connected with every other” (146- Christianity; others may not dare call 47), or as Screwtape claims, humans “are themselves Christians but are on their to be one with Him, but yet themselves” way there (Mere Christianity 165). The (207). Humans, while individual and middle is a dangerous place to be, separate from one another, are a part of however, whether one is moving toward the whole of humanity; God, accordingly, or away from God. Screwtape remarks, seeks to make humans more like Himself: “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the one who is more than one. Essentially, gradual one—the gentle slope, soft each person must contribute his or her underfoot, without sudden turnings, part of the body to fulfill the task of that without milestones, without signposts” organ, as Paul writes of the church in 1 (Screwtape 220). In Lewis’ view, while Corinthians 12.12-27. Lewis admits, one is constantly traveling in either “Christians are Christ’s body, the direction, she must choose a side both organism through which He works. Every definitively and purposefully. addition to that body enables Him to do Although Process Theology seems more” (Mere Christianity 60). Humanity tangential to our discussion of the is, essentially, the protagonist of a divine significance of humanity, Lewis argues metanarrative— moving either away that one’s journey toward or away from from God and toward isolation or away God is what makes humanity especially from isolation and toward God with His significant. Individually, humans have the presence on earth through the Church. unique opportunity, unlike any other While each person may have a animal, to become more and more place in the body of Christ and in the spiritual until, ultimately, becoming divine metanarrative, Lewis asserts that : “He is beginning to turn you finding and accepting one’s place in the into the same kind of thing as Himself. He narrative is sometimes difficult. In is beginning, so to speak, to ‘inject’ His Perelandra, for example, Ransom kind of life and thought, His Zoe, into you; struggles with his position in the body of beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live the church. Amidst discursive arguments man” (Mere Christianity 153). The between himself and the Un-man, Ransom Christian becomes more spiritual, more questions God: alive, and more knowledgeable in the way Why did no miracle come? Or that God is the way, the life, and the rather, why no miracle on the right truth—but on a smaller scale, for side? For the presence of the “Christianity thinks of human individuals Enemy was in itself a kind of not as mere members of a group or items Miracle. Had Hell a prerogative to in a list, but as organs in a body— work wonders? Why did Heaven different from one another and each work none? Not for the first time contributing what no other could” (149). he found himself questioning The part of humanity who journeys Divine Justice. He could not toward God must unite with one another, understand why Maleldil should existing as a part of the body of Christ in remain absent when the Enemy the world. The individual journey was there in person. (140) becomes a journey together. As Lewis writes, “If you could see humanity spread As he is mentally grumbling about God’s out in time, as God sees it, it would not inactivity in the events around him, look like a lot of separate things dotted Ransom suddenly “knew that Maleldil about. It would look like on single was not absent” (140). Within moments, growing thing—rather like a very Ransom realizes that, while the Un-man complicated tree. Every individual would was the ambassador of Hell, “That miracle

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on the right side, which he had demanded, instead, he posits that each person has a had in fact occurred. He himself was the unique command, forbidding, and overall miracle” (141). Following his epiphany, purpose as individual parts of the body of Ransom accepts his role in the Christian the church. Accordingly, the Lady body—to be God’s representative in the comments, “I am His beast, and all His fight over the Lady of Perelandra; biddings are joys” (76). The joy of ultimately, if Perelandra’s fate “lay in obeying Christ’s biddings—that is the joy Maleldil’s hands, Ransom and the Lady which Lewis believes we all should have. were those hands” (142). The joy the Lady finds in Ransom discovers his role as what obedience to God is like the New Human’s Lewis terms the “New Man”—that is, joy; in Mere Christianity, Lewis writes, “To Ransom acts as one of God’s children: become new men means losing what we “God became man to turn creatures into now call ‘ourselves’….The more we get sons: not simply to produce better men of what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the the old kind but to produce a new kind of way and let Him take us over, the more man. It is not like teaching a horse to truly ourselves we become” (175). In a jump better and better but like turning a sense, humanity has embraced the half- horse into a winged creature….It is not animal side rather than the half-spiritual mere improvement but Transformation” side; by giving it all over, Lewis believes (Mere Christianity 170-71).4 When God that one can discover her true self: “Until has been given the submission and you have given up your self to Him you willingness of humans to become the New will not have a real self” (176). Human, he infects us with his energy, joy, But where does this loss of self wisdom, and love to make us into gods leave the animal side of the human? What and goddesses reflective of the God. As about the human’s responsibility as a Lewis notes, “The process will be long and creature of God as well as a Son of God? in parts very painful, but that is what we The third element of humanity’s are in for” (163). But, as the New Humans significance in the hierarchy of the divine admit in Perelandra, “it is He who is metanarrative, according to Lewis, is the strong and makes me strong” (66). mastering of animals. Donald T. Williams Empowered by and reflecting God, asserts that Lewis means leadership each New Human has a special plan and rather than mastering in terms of slavery, purpose in the divine metanarrative as a the word which Lewis repeatedly uses part of the church. Lewis argues that as (97-98); however, I do not believe that each person has a different command, the term leadership reaches as far as each person has a different set of rules Lewis intends. In Mere Christianity, Lewis and responsibilities. On Perelandra, for uses the metaphor of a human’s example, “Maleldil has forbidden in one relationship with a dog: “We treat our what He allows in another” (Perelandra dogs as if they were ‘almost human’: that 75). This is not to be confused with is why they really become ‘almost human’ relativist morality but understood that in the end” (155). A dog’s knowledge Lewis is describing the different purposes does not result from setting an example, for the various parts of the body of the as leadership might imply; rather, the Church. On Perelandra (), the Lady knowledge to be more human-like is a is forbidden to be on fixed land and must result of being treated humanly: “I think I remain on floating lands until she is can see how the higher animals are in a rejoined with her King; on Thulcandra sense drawn into Man when he loves (Earth), humans are permitted to reside them and makes them (as he does) much on fixed lands: nothing else exists! Lewis, more nearly human than they would thus, is not arguing for relativist morality; otherwise be” (159).

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In the same way that God treats the descent of the vessel which is to take humans with the potential of rising in the him into the Deep Heaven, entering into hierarchy, humans are supposed to act as the fullness of Zoe and the Numinous beastmasters by training the beasts to be (381). more human-like. Ransom, likewise, states to the Lady of Perelandra, “The beasts in your world seem almost rational” to which the Lady responds, “We make them older every day….Is not that what it means to be a beast?” (Perelandra 65) Accordingly, the King of Perelandra states, “We will make the nobler of the beasts so wise that they will become hnau and speak: their lives shall awake to a new life in us as we awake in Maleldil” (211). Lewis, therefore, posits that hnau, including humans, must take care of the Works Cited world around them, for “beasts must be ruled by hnau and hnau by eldila and Carpenter, Humphrey. The Inklings. London: eldila by Maleldil” ( HarperCollins, 1981. Print. 102). One does not have to search far in Chesterton, G. K. The Everlasting Man. San Lewis’ canon to find examples of the Francisco: Ignatius P, 2008. Print. beast-mastering principle: from Shasta ---. Orthodoxy. New York: Dover, 2004. Print. and Bree in to the Glaspey, Terry. Not a Tame Lion. Nashville: cabby’s horse-turned-unicorn in The Cumberland House, 2005. Magician’s Nephew to Ransom and Mr. Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. The Complete C. Bultitude in . That Hideous Strength S. Lewis Signature Classics. New York: Perhaps Ransom articulates HarperOne, 2007. Print. humanity’s place in the hierarchy best as ---. Out of the Silent Planet. New York: the eldila—the angels of the Space Scribner, 1996. Print. Trilogy—and the animals gather around ---. Perelandra. New York: Scribner, 1996. the humans in Lewis’ That Hideous Print. Strength: “We are now as we ought to ---. . be—between the angels who are our The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics. New York: elder brothers and the beasts who are our HarperOne, 2007. Print. jesters, servants and playfellows” (378). ---. That Hideous Strength. New York: The true New Human, who, like Ransom, Scribner, 1996. Print. follows the Law of Human Nature, MacDonald, George. . submits himself to God, and shepherds The Princess and Curdie The George MacDonald Treasury. Ed. the lesser animals, will eventually pass Glenn Kahley. Glenn Kahley, 2006. into heaven, becoming full of Zoe. As the Williams, Donald T. Mere Humanity. hrossa sing during the funeral service in Nashville: B&H, 2006. Out of the Silent Planet, “Let it go down; the hnau rises from it” (131). Lewis posits, through the words of Ransom, that heaven removes the “present functions and appetites of the human body” and takes us into heaven as one of heaven’s own (32). Accordingly, the last of Ransom is a kind farewell to all of his house before

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1 Lewis and Tolkien were not validating a 3 Certainly, other animals can create, but they humanistic philosophy like that which affirms do so with a very limited capacity. Chesterton humans as perfect; rather, as will be further notes in The Everlasting Man that “the very discussed, the authors posited humanity’s fact that birds do build nests is one of those significance and purpose in the story of the similarities that sharpen the startling universe. difference. The very fact that the bird can get as far as building a nest, and cannot get any 2 In discussing the development of humanity, farther, proves that he has not a mind as man Chesterton, unavoidably, deals with has a mind; it proves it more completely than evolutionary theory; accordingly, he wrote if he built nothing at all” (37). The Everlasting Man to combat the “vague notion” of evolution (71). Evolutionary 4 Terry Glaspey in Not a Tame Lion, cites theory, for Chesterton, is vague for its lack of Eustace’s transformation into a dragon in The evidence. Because science devalues the Voyage of the Dawn Treader as an example of Creation story for the absence of empirical how transformation can, similarly, happen in evidence, Chesterton argues, “There is not a reverse. Lewis may have adapted this concept shadow of evidence that this thing [human] from MacDonald. Lina, for example, has the was evolved at all. There is not a particle of appearance of a dog but the soul of a child proof that this transition came slowly, or even who “was naughty, but is now growing good” that it came naturally. In a strictly scientific (137). sense, we simply know nothing whatever about how it grew, or whether it grew, or what it is” (38). In regard to the evolutionary assumption that humans are the same as any other animal, he writes about the superiority of humans over animals: We can accept man as a fact, if we are content with an unexplained fact. We can accept him as an animal, if we can live with a fabulous animal. But if we must needs have sequence and necessity, then indeed, we must provide a prelude and crescendo of mounting , that ushered in with unthinkable thunders in all the seven heavens of another order, a man may be an ordinary thing. (39) Although confusing, the statement essentially claims that humans are superior from whatever perspective the race is viewed—as fact or animal; however, if one establishes a process of evolution from animals to humans, then the uniqueness of humans is entirely lost, for humans are only another link in the chain of evolution—and, therefore, nothing special.

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