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 17: Not as Unwise but as Wise: Reflections from C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and That Hideous StrengthChapter 6 summary
Adapted from Rudy Rentzel
An ever-thickening fog envelopes Belbury, the N.I.C.E., Edgestow, and the surrounding countryside where the N.I.C.E. is building new facilities. In sharp contrast, as we find near the end of this chapter, St. Anne’s-on-the-Hill stands bathed in sunlight and clear skies, where one can look out above and over the surrounding fog, which covers up the ugly N.I.C.E. construction site.
Mark brings an employment contract form back to Wither (the Deputy Director of the N.I.C.E.), but Wither looks back at Mark with a blank stare, saying he understood Mark refused the job, and that he could not offer it again (shocking Mark). After berating Mark about the many quarrels he has had, Wither suggests with reluctance a probationary appointment at a significantly reduced salary, which Mark accepts immediately in desperation. Wither refuses to answer Mark’s questions about responsibilities and reporting relationships, instead emphasizing elasticity.
Meanwhile, Jane feels better about her dreams, viewing them as news reports, as Denniston had suggested. She has a recurring dream of someone sitting next to her bed with a notebook watching her and taking notes, sitting perfectly still and being patiently attentive. He had pince-nez (glasses), well chiseled features, and a little pointed beard. She says nothing about this to the Dennistons, hoping her silence would result in a visit from them, bringing her hope without having to go to St. Anne’s.
Working on the project to rehabilitate the criminal Alcasan as requested by Fairy Hardcastle, Mark finds his ego thrilled with the knowledge that his writing is now appearing in several newspapers read by millions (instead of the limited audience for academic writing). He is amazed to discover that if he needs money, all he needs to do is ask the Steward, and funds would be supplied, since the N.I.C.E. is now making the money and plans to take over the whole currency. The N.I.C.E. rewards Mark’s success by admission into an inner circle which meets at the library between 10 and midnight, something Mark greatly desires. Professor Frost belongs to this inner circle – a silent man who has pince-nez glasses and a pointed beard.
The inner circle informs Mark they plan to cause a riot (which will appear instigated by others) in Edgestow the next day, so they want him to start writing about it all night long so the articles will be ready to be distributed to the papers quickly after the event. The N.I.C.E. planned the riot so as to gain emergency powers to do what they wish, without interference, and with ready acceptance by the populace. Mark is shocked by this plan. However, the inner circle treats his astonishment with jocularity and intimacy, and so Mark goes along with it, never noticing he has agreed to something both immoral and illegal – writing about an event before it occurs, participating in the conspiracy of planning a riot, planning to write a false narrative about it before it occurs, and covering up the true nature and source of the “news item.” Mark, enamored with being intimately included in the inner circle, has suppressed whatever moral sensibilities he has.Mark writes two articles about the riots: one aimed at an educated (academic) audience, and one aimed at the common people. Both praise the response of the N.I.C.E. police to riots (though, in reality, the N.I.C.E. caused the riots), and urge the granting of immediate emergency power to the N.I.C.E. police. Mark, who felt as though he wrote with tongue in cheek (in order to overlook the falsehoods he wrote), feels very satisfied with his writing. He justifies it as a temporary stage the N.I.C.E. must go through.
At home, Jane dreams about a very large corpse that she can barely see in the dark and must discover (against her better judgment) by touching. The bearded corpse is clad in a very coarse, heavily embroidered robe, and Jane somehow feels she needs to curtsey to the corpse. Desperate to distract herself, Jane goes into the village to seek a new part-time housekeeper to replace Ivy Maggs, and sees a man with pince-nez glasses and a pointed beard whom she recognizes from her latest dream. When he gets into a N.I.C.E. car, she immediately decides to go to St. Anne’s-on-the-Hill, not so much from fear, but from “a total rejection, or revulsion from, this man on all levels of her being at once.”KEY PASSAGES IN CHAPTER 6
“[Wither] doubted if Mark were really suited to a learned career, but disclaimed any intention of giving advice. Only after he had hinted and murmured Mark into a sufficient state of dejection did he throw him, like a bone to a dog, the suggestion of an appointment for a probationary period at roughly — (he could not commit the Institute) six hundred a year. And Mark took it”.—manipulation by power
“I do not think the Institute could allow anyone to remain in it. who showed a disposition to stand on his rights — who grudged this or that piece of service because it fell outside some function which he had chosen to circumscribe by as rigid definition. On the other hand, it would be quite equally disastrous …if you allowed yourself ever to be distracted from your real work by unauthorised collaboration — or, worse still, interference — with the work of other members.”—doublespeak and cognitive dissonance
“The fog, which covered Edgestow as well as Belbury, continued and grew denser. At Edgestow one regarded it as “coming up from the river,” but in reality it lay all over the heart of England. It blanketed the whole town so that walls dripped and you could write your name in the dampness on tables and men worked by artificial light at midday. The workings, where Bragdon Wood had been, ceased to offend conservative eyes and become mere clangings, thuddings, hootings, shouts, curses, and metallic screams in an invisible world.” –fog and obscurantism
“This was still strictly confidential, but the Institute had already powers to force it. This being so, a new adjustment of boundaries between it and the College was clearly needed. Busby’s jaw fell when he realised that the Institute wanted to come right up to the College walls. He refused of course. And it was then that he first heard a hint of requisitioning. The College could sell today and the Institute offered a good price: If they did not, compulsion and a merely nominal compensation awaited them.”—coercive authority“Bracton as a whole bore the blame for bringing the N.I.C.E. to Edgestow at all. This was unfair, for many high authorities in the University had thoroughly approved Bracton’s action in doing so, but now that the result was becoming apparent people refused to remember this.” –selective memory, denial of responsibility“The disturbance in which the Bracton windows had been broken was taken little notice of in the London papers or even in the Edgestow Telegraph. But it was followed by other episodes. There was an indecent assault in one of the mean streets down by the station. There were two “beatings up” in a public house. There were increasing complaints of threatening and disorderly behaviour on the part of the N.I.C.E. workmen. But these complaints never appeared in the papers. Those who had actually seen ugly incidents were surprised to read in the Telegraph that the new Institute was settling down very comfortably in Edgestow and the most cordial relations developing between it and the natives. Those who had not seen them but only heard of them, finding nothing in the Telegraph, dismissed the stories as rumours or exaggerations. Those who had seen them wrote letters to it, but it did not print their letters.”—media manipulation, propaganda, violence“Aren’t we going to take over the whole currency question? It’s we that make money.” “Do you mean?” gasped Mark and then paused and added, “But they’d come down on you for the lot if you left.” “What do you want to be talking about leaving for at all?” said O’Hara. “No one leaves the Institute. At least, the only one that ever I heard of was old Hingest.”—economic manipulation, coercive authority
“Canon Storey took it. His voice was still beautiful, and there was beauty too in his isolation from all that company. He was isolated both by his faith and by his deafness.” –beauty that shines in darkness
“The pleasantest of the rewards which fell to Mark for his obedience was admission to the library…he had discovered that this room, though nominally public, was in practice reserved for what one had learned, at school, to call “bloods” and, at Bracton, “the Progressive Element.” It was on the library hearthrug and during the hours between ten and midnight that the important and confidential talks took place; and that was why, when Feverstone one evening sidled up to Mark in the lounge and said, “What about a drink in the library?” Mark smiled and agreed and harboured no resentment for the last conversation he had had with Feverstone. If he felt a little contempt of himself for doing so, he repressed and forgot it: that sort of thing was childish and unrealistic.”—lure of Inner Ring, compromise/”selling out”
“You mean you’ve engineered the disturbances?” said Mark, To do him justice, his mind was reeling from this new revelation. Nor was he aware of any decision to conceal his state of mind: in the snugness and intimacy of that circle he found his facial muscles and his voice, without any conscious volition, taking on the tone of his colleagues. “That’s a crude way of putting it,” said Feverstone. “It makes no difference,” said Filostrato. “This is how things have to be managed.” “Quite,” said Miss Hardcastle. “It’s always done. Anyone who knows police work will tell you. And as I say, the real thing — the big riot — must take place within the next forty-eight hours.”—engineered violence for political ends
“But — what’s it all for?” “Emergency regulations,” said Feverstone. “You’ll never get the powers we want at Edgestow until the Government declares that a state of emergency exists there.” “Exactly,” said Filostrato. “It is folly to talk of peaceful revolutions. Not that the canaglia would always resist — often they have to be prodded into it — but until there is the disturbance, the firing, the barricades — no one gets powers to act effectively. There is not enough what you call weigh on the boat to steer him.”—abuse of emergency powers to abrogate liberties“I’ve one bit of advice. If you hear anyone backbiting the N.I.C.E. police, tell him where he gets off. If you hear anyone comparing them to the Gestapo or the Ogpu, tell him you’ve heard that one before. If you hear anyone talking about the liberties of England (by which he means the liberties of the obscurantists, the Mrs. Grundies, the Bishops, and the capitalists), watch that man. He’s the enemy. Tell him from me that the N.I.C.E. is the boxing glove on the democracy’s fist, and if he doesn’t like it, he’d best get out of the way.”—liberties as reactionary and stopping “progress”
“She wanted to be with Nice people, away from Nasty people — that nursery distinction seeming at the moment more important than any later categories of Good and Bad or Friend and Enemy. She was roused from this state by noticing that it was lighter. She looked ahead: surely that bend in the road was more visible than it ought to be in such a fog? Certainly what had been grey was becoming white, almost dazzlingly white. A few yards further and luminous blue was showing overhead, and trees cast shadows (she had not seen a shadow for days), and then all of a sudden the enormous spaces of the sky had become visible and the pale golden sun, and looking back, as she took the turn to the Manor, Jane saw that she was standing on the shore of a little green sun-lit island looking down on a sea of white fog, furrowed and ridged yet level on the whole, which spread as far as she could see.”—light and beauty and Goodness versus fog and Evil
THEMES THAT APPEAR IN CHAPTER 6
—manipulation by power
—doublespeak and cognitive dissonance
—coercive authority
–-fog and obscurantism
–selective memory, denial of responsibility
—media manipulation, propaganda, violence
—supplanting the police
—comfort without commitment
—economic manipulation, coercive authority
–beauty that shines in darkness
—lure of Inner Ring, compromise/”selling out”
—false teaching, false Christ
—engineered violence for political ends
—abuse of emergency powers to abrogate liberties
—Evil, compromise, and self-deception
—disdain of resistance, redefining criminal justice
–liberties as reactionary and stopping “progress”
—visceral Evil
—light and beauty and Goodness versus fog and Evil
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy,[drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. –Galatians 5
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 4:8-91.Seek always to be true to your faith and its principles. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry (Col. 3:1-3)2.Be aware of the power of Beauty and Holiness and seek after them. One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to meditate in His temple. (Ps. 27:4) Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14) So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. (2 Tim. 2:22) And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Cor. 3:18)3.Stand up for what is right, even when it is costly. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. (Hebrews 12:3-4) Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. (John 17:17-18)4.Flee from Evil in all its manifestations.Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it; do not go on it; turn away from it and pass on. (Proverbs 4:14-15) But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.(I Timothy 6:11)
How Lovely are Thy Dwellings Fair
How lovely are Thy dwellings fair, O Lord of Hosts.
My soul ever longeth and fainteth sore
for the blest courts of the Lord:
My heart and flesh do cry to the living God.
O blest are they that in Thy house are dwelling:
They ever praise Thee, O Lord, for evermore.
(1868, Fourth movement of Johannes Brahms’
“Ein deutsches Requiem” (Op. 45).
The text [originally “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen”]
is based on Psalm 84)
