Seeking control, in white magic and The Green Book
“In my judgment the greatest of all of Lewis’s books is the one with the least resonant title: English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama). It is also the one that took him the longest to write and that gave him the greatest misery: it is part of the Oxford History of English Literature (OHEL) series, which just gave him an excuse to call it his ‘O Hell’ book. He signed on to write it in 1935; he finished it in 1953. His frustration with the interminable labor of it is an occasional feature of his correspondence, but in the end he produced a great masterpiece of literary and intellectual history. He wrote it in a very odd way: assembling it from a series of essays about individual authors that he wrote, he then graded them, as he graded his pupils’ weekly essays — perhaps it was his way of finally getting to read some essays that he could enjoy. This odd method lends a certain ease and charm to what is, after all, an immense feat of scholarship. (Here is yet another example of how he turned the very teaching environment he despised to good use for himself and his readers.) The book not only surveys the whole territory of English Renaissance but transforms the survey into a grand and compelling narrative. The best part of the book is its long introduction, ‘New Learning and New Ignorance,’ which is as learned and wide-ranging an account of the intellectual history of the period as one could imagine. And surely few books so learned have also been so witty. Only a man very secure in the depths of his learning — and Lewis read every single sixteenth-century book in Duke Humfrey’s Library, the oldest part of Oxford’s great Bodleian Library, in preparation for writing this history — can risk such an exhibition of panache: he obviously knows too much to be accused of frivolity.
“One of the most brilliant passages in the book concerns the rise of experimental science. It was a topic he also treated in his lectures — yes, the English don talking about science again, but in this case not to lament the cultural dominance of modern pseudo-science but to launch another attack on the cheap and easy distinctions that strengthen our ‘chronological snobbery.’ We all know that science is rational and magic superstitious, do we not? But it turns out that, like many other things that everybody knows, this is untrue. In this passage Lewis is writing about magia — high magic, that is, or what we might call white magic, as opposed to the dark magic that the Renaissance called goetia:
The new magia . . . falls into place among the other dreams of power which then haunted the European mind. Most obviously it falls into place beside the thought of [Sir Francis] Bacon. His endeavour is no doubt contrasted in our minds with that of the magicians: but contrasted only in light of the event, only because we know that science succeeded and magic failed. That event was then still uncertain. Stripping off our knowledge of it, we see at once that Bacon and the magicians have the closest possible affinity. Both seek knowledge for the sake of power (in Bacon’s words, as a ‘spouse for fruit’ not a ‘curtesan for pleasure’), both move in a grandiose dream of days when Man shall have been raised to the performance of ‘all things possible.’ . . . Nor would Bacon have denied the affinity: he thought the aim of the magicians was ‘noble.’
“This historical argument proves to be crucial to the critique of modern culture that we have been tracing throughout this chapter. Lewis makes this clear when he pursues exactly the same point in The Abolition of Man: ‘The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other was strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same im-pulse.” But what is that impulse?
There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious.
“The ‘impulse’ that magic and ‘applied science’ share, then, is control — and at this point we must remember that the real title of Gaius and Titius’s Green Book is The Control of Language. Though they are educators, they do not believe that they are in the business of ‘conforming the soul to reality’ through ‘knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue’; instead, they want to liberate young people from the control that language has over them. For them language is but an instrument by which some people control and others are controlled. As Humpty Dumpty once said, in a very similar context, ‘The question is which is to be master, that’s all.’ As Lewis emphasizes with great force in The Abolition of Man, Humpty Dumpty’s view of things is deeply embedded in all the projects and hopes of modernity, even (or especially) when we talk about achieving human power over Nature: ‘What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.’
“This view was shared exactly by Tolkien, who wrote in a letter that his work — especially but not only The Lord of the Rings — ‘is concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine,’ and who links the Machine directly with Magic. The most corrupted of beings — first the Adversary Morgoth, then his lieutenant Sauron, and ultimately the wizard Saruman — seek to remedy all ills (or what they think of as ills) by the Machine. In Tolkien’s understanding, the Rings of Power are simply the most subtle and advanced of machines. Saruman treats with contempt Gandalf’s pursuit of wisdom even in such unlikely corners of Middle-Earth as the Shire, but that is because, as Treebeard the Ent says, ‘He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.’ By contrast, Gandalf, who cares nothing for machines and among the Wise is ‘the only one that goes in for hobbit-lore,’ is the one who finds the way to defeat the evils of the great Technocrats of [pagebreak] Middle-Earth. For Saruman such ‘lore’ is deeply impractical, and one of the key traits that scientists and magicians have in common is practicality. Lewis writes of Jadis [i.e., the witch in The Magician’s Nephew], as she waits in Uncle Andrew’s laboratory for him to do some service for her, ‘Now that she was left alone with the children, she took no notice of them. . . . I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical.’
“Modern humanists, like the scientists and magicians of the Renaissance, seek power and control rather than wisdom. That is how they have cut themselves off from the moral law — what Lewis calls the Tao — and are contributing, not to the enrichment of humanity, but to its abolition. (Lewis takes great pains to insist that his quarrel is not with science itself, though he is aware that some will not be able to get the distinction: ‘Nothing I can say will prevent some people from describing this lecture as an attack on science.’ Science as such — scientific method, scientific practice — is for Lewis morally neutral. But science also has a history, and as we have seen, it arose in a time when the European mind was ‘haunted’ by ‘dreams of power.’ As he puts it in The Abolition of Man, science ‘was born in an unhealthy neighbourhood and at an inauspicious hour.’)”
— from Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005). You can hear Alan Jacobs talk about this book in our Conversation, available here.
Albert Borgmann (1937–2023) believes Christians have an obligation to discuss and discern the kind of world that technology creates and encourages. (12 minutes)
Aslan, the Christ-figure of Narnia — Alex Markos explores the transformational power of Aslan as the Christ figure in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. (31 minutes)
The gift of meaningful work — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler argues that genuine work is inherently meaningful and facilitates an encounter with reality and therefore, ultimately, with God. (36 minutes)
Daniel Gabelman attempts to correct the notion that George MacDonald prizes seriousness and sobriety. (20 minutes)
Theological realism — Kevin J. Vanhoozer discusses theologian T. F. Torrance’s understanding of the positive relation between science and theology. (52 minutes)
“Reading Lewis with blinders on” — Chris Armstrong explains how C. S. Lewis’s work is grounded deeply in the Christian humanist tradition. (45 minutes)
Orienting reason and passions — In an essay titled “The Abolition of Mania” (Modern Age, Spring 2022), Michael Ward applies C. S. Lewis’s insights to the polarization that afflicts modern societies. (16 minutes)
Freedom from the nature of things? — Leon Kass on the pressure exerted by the authority of science to embrace reductionistic materialism
Life, liberty, and the defense of dignity — In a 2003 interview, Leon Kass discussed his book Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. The unifying theme in the book’s essays is the threat of dehumanization in one form or another. (36 minutes)
Among Oppenheimer’s company — James L. Nolan, Jr., the author of Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, discusses the Manhattan Project as a case study in the dangers of technological enthusiasm outpacing wisdom and caution. (27 minutes)
Neal Postman discuses the ways in which how we think about the world has been influenced by communications technology, even in its earliest forms. (11 minutes)
A.I., power, control, & knowledge — Ken Myers shares some paragraphs from Langdon Winner‘s seminal book, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (1977) and from Roger Shattuck‘s Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (1996). An interview with Shattuck is also presented. (31 minutes)
Philosopher Peter Kreeft was interviewed in 1982 by Ken Myers about his book, Between Heaven and Hell. In 1992, that interview was featured on the pilot cassette tape which became the Mars Hill Tapes. (10 minutes)
Technology and social imaginaries — In this interview from 1999, cultural historian David Nye insists that societies have choices about how they use technologies, but that once choices are made and established, a definite momentum is established. (19 minutes)
Living into focus — As our lives are increasingly shaped by technologically defined ways of living, Arthur Boers discusses how we might choose focal practices that counter distraction and isolation. (32 minutes)
Albert Borgmann, R.I.P. — Albert Borgmann argues that, despite its promise to the contrary, technology fails to provide meaning, significance, and coherence to our lives. (47 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 156 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Kimbell Kornu, Paul Tyson, Mark Noll, David Ney, William C. Hackett, and Marian Schwartz
Recovering natural philosophy — Science teacher Ravi Scott Jain discusses natural philosophy, the “love of wisdom in the realm of nature,” as the overarching discipline in the sciences. (21 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 155 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Donald Kraybill, Thaddeus Kozinski, David Bentley Hart, Nigel Biggar, Ravi Scott Jain, and Jason Baxter
The Narnian as Jeremiah — Michael Ward on the bleak prognosis in C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 154 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Felicia Wu Song, Michael Ward, Norman Wirzba, Carl Trueman, D. C. Schindler, and Kerry McCarthy
MYST and mythic guests — Game designers Rand and Robyn Miller explain how their game’s creation was influenced by their love for the fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. (13 minutes)
We are not Cybermen — Essayist L. M. Sacasas discusses some of the ideas of Ivan Illich, whose work has influenced Sacasas’s own understanding of the anti-human dynamics of technological society. (21 minutes)
Technological choices become culture — David E. Nye insists that societies do have choices about how they use technologies, but that once choices are made and established both politically and economically, a definite momentum is established. (19 minutes)
Sneaking past watchful dragons — Junius Johnson describes how Hans Urs von Balthasar’s understanding of Creation resonates with that of C. S. Lewis and Bonaventure, all three of whom served as mentors in his thinking about beauty. (18 minutes)
Loss of significance — Steve Talbott on how technology alienates us from the world
Technology as magic — Richard Stivers describes how the hyperrationality of technological societies drives many people to lives guided by instinct, emotion, superstition, and fantasy. Also included in this Feature is an interview with David Gill, who summarizes some of the key ideas in the work of Jacques Ellul, a major influence in the writings of Stivers. (24 minutes)
All how, no why — Langdon Winner summarizes a key theme in Jacques Ellul’s writing about technology
What is at stake for us in a self-driving future? — Matthew Crawford vividly details the “personal knowledge” acquired in interaction with physical things, their mecho-systems, and the people who care for them. (16 minutes)
Wise use of educational technologies — David I. Smith articulates the difficulties Christian schools face as they seek to use technology in a faithful way. (24 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 150 — FEATURED GUESTS:
David I. Smith, Eric O. Jacobsen, Matthew Crawford, Andrew Davison, Joseph E. Davis, and Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung
Cosmology without God — Modern science is practiced in the context of beliefs that are intrinsically metaphysical and theological, even though practitioners of science claim (and usually genuinely believe) that their disciplines are philosophically neutral. David Alcalde challenges such claims within a sub-field of astrophysics. (21 minutes)
Walter Hooper, R.I.P., and Christina Rossetti’s Advent poems — Walter Hooper (1931-2020) describes his first meeting with C. S. Lewis, a man he so admired and long served. In a second chapter in today’s Feature, Emma Mason explains how Christina Rossetti’s hopeful eschatological beliefs influenced the poems she wrote about the season of Advent. (21 minutes)
The correspondence between Lewis and Sayers — Gina Dalfonzo chronicles the encouragement and occasional spats documented in letters between C. S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers, two very different but nonetheless mutually sympathetic Christians. (24 minutes)
Diagnosing our political conflicts — Michael Hanby explains why the modern pursuit of freedom — obeying its founding logic — has taken such a destructive turn. (36 minutes)
Thomas Howard, R.I.P. — Thomas Howard encouraged in many students and readers an imaginative appropriation of faith and truth. This interview — released at the time of his death in 2020 — includes his discussion of C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces.(55 minutes)
