The Hideous Strength: “a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge”

The title is, in my opinion, the most apt description of the post modern professional class presented by C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength. That he offers so many prescient and pithy portraits throughout the book demonstrates how profound it is. This particular description is offered as an explanation for the limitations of one his protagonists, Mark Studdock:

It must be remembered that in Mark’s mind hardly one rag of noble thought, either Christian or Pagan, had a secure lodging. His education had been neither scientific nor classical-merely “Modern “. The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour to help him. He was a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge (he had always done well on Essays and General Papers), and the first hint of a real threat to his bodily life knocked him sprawling.

That Hideous Strength, chapter 9

That was a stinging description. Like Mark, I too had always done well on essays and general papers, excelling in courses that required little in the way of pure, objective, or observational inquiry. I made passing grades in algebra, physics, and geometry, but it was several years before I grasped the concepts in ways that could be considered useful. When that happened, it was in the context of educating my own children outside of the modern institutional matrix.

What is most intriguing about this is how timely it is today, despite being written in the 1940s. During the mid 20th century, education was still, largely, producing competently functional hard science professionals. Biology was still biology, and even psychology was somewhat tethered to objective reality. In spite of this, and perhaps because as an academic his vantage point offered more insight, Lewis foresaw the dangers ahead. He implied that even the social “sciences” of his day were not sciences at all. When Hingest, a soon to be murdered chemist, expresses his misgivings to Mark about the nature of the organization who is courting them, he explains:

“I came here because I thought it had something to do with science. Now that I find it’s something more like a political conspiracy, I shall go home.”

“You mean, I suppose, that the social planning doesn’t appeal to you? I can understand that it doesn’t fit in with your work as it does with sciences like sociology, but–“

“There are no sciences like sociology. And if I found chemistry beginning to fit in with a secret police run by a middle-aged virago who doesn’t wear corsets and a scheme for taking away his farm and his shop and his children from every Englishman, I’d let chemistry go to the devil and take up gardening again.”

That Hideous Strength, chapter 3

If we learned anything from 2020-2021, it’s that science is highly malleable at best, and always open to reinterpretation according to the arbitrary impulses of those whom Lewis labeled, in his Abolition of Man, the conditioners*.

The terror of our age is that we have educated millions, and are continuing to educate millions more, on the notion that science is is determined not by information that is objective, requiring exact knowledge. Instead, we have as a society decided that we will determine what is good according to the whims of our emotions and will of our desires, then retroactively revise the science as confirmation for these new interpretations of reality.

We live in perilous times.

*Can Man conquer nature? Ultimately, man only gains understanding, but he does not change nature. The laws of nature are not undone by man’s knowledge. (E.g., Man may fly but the law of gravity remains.) Controlling nature is really some men exercising power and control over other men. Lewis now begins to call the Innovators the “Conditioners”, as they are now conditioning man to exercise control over others.

The C.S. Lewis Society of California

Those with Eyes to See: Francis Schaeffer

This is tangentially related to our discussions about That Hideous Strength and Harrison Bergeron.

Consider the chasm between the world views of C.S. Lewis and Kurt Vonnegut. Lewis was a famed Christian apologist while Vonnegut was a self-described “Christ-loving atheist”. Nevertheless, both of these men had eyes to see the ultimate end of a world in which humanism, under the guise of science, would usher in a world of perfect utopian equality. They saw the impossibility of such a world and that dystopia was its only result.

Whether or not Vonnegut fully recognized it, his understanding was the result of God’s common grace to all men who -even in error- attempt to live in harmony with the world as God made it rather than railing in rebellion against the plain truth of the world. Think of seed time and harvest, sowing and reaping, sunshine and rain which all men experience in relatively equal measure.

In the west, our bounties have been largely the result of the Protestant work ethic and a widespread basic belief that we are “all God’s children”; Imago Dei for those who prefer the fancy theological term, as I do. But we have abandoned those unifying principles, and are well on the way to the worlds which the Christian Lewis and the atheist Vonnegut foresaw. Francis Schaeffer offers his thoughts on the matter in this writing from 1984, The Great Evangelical Disaster:

Christianity is no longer providing the consensus for our society. And Christianity is no longer providing the consensus upon which our law is based. That is not to say that the United States ever was a “Christian nation” in the sense that all or most of our citizens were Christians, nor in the sense that the nation, its laws, and social life were ever a full and complete expression of Christian truth. There is no golden age in the past which we can idealize — whether it is early America, the Reformation, or the early church. But until recent decades something did exist which can rightly be called a Christian consensus or ethos which gave a distinctive shape to Western society and to the United States in a definite way. Now that consensus is all but gone, and the freedoms that it brought are being destroyed before our eyes. We are at a time when humanism is coming to its natural conclusion in morals, in values, and in law. All that society has today are relativistic values based upon statistical averages, or the arbitrary decisions of those who hold legal and political power.

Francis Schaeffer’s The Great Evangelical Disaster

This is worth pondering for a bit.

The Hideous Strength: Love =/= Equality

It’s been a while since we revisited the themes found in C.S. Lewis’ novel That Hideous Strength.

Gratefully, Hearthie’s recent comment served a two-fold purpose. The first was holding me accountable to finish what I’d begun. The second, and more important one, was wedging loose the block about which theme of the book is next worth exploring. The useful idiots theme readily jumps off the page at several points throughout this story. Other themes are equally observable, but are often open to various interpretations. I have, in recent years, grown wary of navigating the minefields of various interpretations. However, this theme, regardless of its controversial nature, is one worth exploring. More, the simple truth is that there is a most right interpretation. The fact that the most right is also the least popular is no reason to ignore it.

To that end, let’s begin with a particular passage from the book.

“Mark never takes any notice of what I say,” answered Jane.

“Perhaps,” said the Director, ” you have never asked anything as you will be able to ask this. Do you not want to save him as well as yourself?” Jane ignored this question.

She began speaking rapidly. “Don’t send me back,” she said. “I am all alone at home, with terrible dreams. It isn’t as if Mark and I saw much of one another at the best of times. I am so unhappy. He won’t care whether I come here or not.”

“Are you unhappy now?” said the Director. Suddenly she ceased at last to think how her words might make him think of her, and answered, “No. But,” she added after a short pause, ” it will be worse now, if I go back.”

“Will it?-”

“But is it really necessary?” she began. “I don’t think I look on marriage quite as you do—”

“Child,” said the Director, ” it is not a question of how you or I look on marriage but how my Masters look on it.”

“They would never think of finding out first whether Mark and I believed in their ideas of marriage?”

“Well-no,” said the Director with a curious smile. “They wouldn’t think of doing that.”

“And would it make no difference to them what a marriage was actually like . . . whether it was a success ? Whether the woman loved her husband?” Jane had not intended to say this. “But I suppose you will say I oughtn’t to have told you that,” she added.

“My dear child,” said the Director, ” you have been telling me that ever since your husband was mentioned.”

“Does it make no difference?”

“I suppose,” said the Director, ” it would depend on how he lost your love.” Jane was silent.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I suppose our marriage was just a mistake.” The Director said nothing. “What would you-what would the people you are talking of say about a case like that?”

“I will tell you if you really want to know,” said the Director.

“Please,” said Jane reluctantly.

“They would say,” he answered, ” that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.”

Something in Jane that would normally have reacted to such a remark with anger was banished by the fact that the word obedience-but certainly not obedience to Mark- came over her, in that room, like a strange oriental perfume, perilous, seductive. . .

That Hideous Strength, chapter 7

Their dialogue continues:

“You were saying, my dear?” resumed the Director.

“I thought love meant equality,” she said.

“Ah, equality!” said the Director. “Yes; we must all be guarded by equal rights from one another’s greed, because we are fallen. Just as we wear clothes for the same reason. But the naked body should be there underneath the clothes. Equality is not the deepest thing, you know.”

“I always thought that was just what it was. I thought it was in their souls that people were equal.”

“You were mistaken; that is the last place where they are equal. Equality before the law, equality of incomes- that is very well. Equality guards life; it doesn’t make it. It is medicine, not food.”

“But surely in marriage . . .?”

“Worse and worse,” said the Director. “Courtship knows nothing of it; nor does fruition. They never warned you. No one has ever told you that obedience- humility-is an erotic necessity. You are putting equality just where it ought not to be. As to your coming here, that may admit of some doubt. For the present, I must -send you back. You can come out and see us. In the meantime, talk to your husband and I will talk to my authorities.”

That Hideous Strength, chapter 7

The Director Ransom, the protagonist in the first two books of the series, enlightens our protagonist Jane about the nature of love in marriage and the fatal flaw in her reasoning about what a marriage is built upon. Namely, her presupposition that love -particularly in marriage- is based on a mutual coming together of equals. To the contrary, Ransom admonishes her: her obedience to her husband is an erotic necessity. I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

Imagine it: obedience as an erotic necessity! Consider the assertion that Lewis, through the character Ransom, is making here. He is telling our protagonist that her ability to love and desire her husband is intimately linked to her presupposition not of equality, but the presupposition that her husband is worthy of her obedience. By nature, obedience is an action which denotes hierarchy.

Herein lies the central source of Jane’s inability to love her husband. She views love as an exchange of affections among equals, and due to Mark’s character flaws, Jane has lost the ability to regard him as an equal, let alone someone worthy of obedience. As a strong modern woman, obedience was never a part of her understanding to begin with.

Is love a function of equality, a function of hierarchy, or both? Obviously it depends on the nature of the relationship in question, but Lewis posits that in the marriage relationship, it is nigh impossible for a wife to truly love a man whom she has regarded as her equal, much less inferior to her.

I have deeply pondered the Director’s assertion that “equality is medicine, not food”. What a remarkable turn of phrase that Lewis uses here to describe what has gone wrong in our postmodern culture. We have tried to build an entire society on medicine while neglecting the things that sustain the essence of humanity. Relationships. Honor. Love. Family. God.

I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Cooking is a major part of the way I spend my energy as a housewife. This portion caused me to picture presenting my husband and children plates which contained little mounds of salt, pepper, mustard, butter, and chimichurri. Imaging each night receiving a plate adorned with tasty condiments and seasonings, but no actual food accompanying them. If this scenario continued for very long, it would eventually become apparent that we are all malnourished.

We live in an anemic, malnourished society. We have tried to replace the essence of life with condiments designed to enhance those things which truly nourish. Love propelled by obedience to God, and to those whom He has commanded us to bestow proper honor and respect, provides fertile ground which allows equality to heal areas where it is needed most.

Jane has tried to build a marriage based on equality and self-protection, yet marvels that love is lost. She comes full circle by the end of the book, and I love that Lewis ends the story with a silent inference of Jane’s internal redemption illustrated by a clear indication that the first meeting of Mark and Jane, after the crisis has passed, is one in which their love is consummated, but from a right understanding of the nature of love and marriage. It’s as if they are coming together for the very first time.

The Downside Of Luxury

If a man does not have enough real problems, he will invent fake ones. Fake problems are even more destructive than real problems. Why? Real problems can prompt people to seek real solutions, but fake problems only prompt fake solutions. The man with fake problems is not only stuck with a certain level of fakeness, […]

The Downside Of Luxury

I am reblogging this brief bit of wisdom from Joshua Gibbs because I am certain that the fake solutions to the fake problems of post-modernity will usher in problems more real than most of us have ever experienced.