Monday, February 20, 2012

Reflecting on "The Abolition of Man", by C.S.Lewis

[The schoolboy] is encouraged to reject the lure of the 'Western Ocean' on the very dangerous ground that in so doing he will prove himself a knowing fellow who can't be bubbled out of his cash. [His teachers], while teaching him nothing about letters, have cut out his soul, long before he is old enough to choose, the possibility of having certain experiences which thinkers of more authority than they have held to be generous, fruitful and humane.
Is it surprising that Philip Pullman should have come up with the idea of intercision in Northern Lights and yet be so opposed to C.S.Lewis? My hunch is that when Pullman thought about Christianity, he assumed it was no more than the experiences he had rejected. Any more than passing interest in Lewis (or, for that matter, the Bible) would have revealed that there was more to it than that.