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 20: Not as Unwise but as Wise: Reflections from C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength
SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 9, “THE SARACEN’S HEAD”adapted from Rudy Rentzel
Jane tells her latest dream to Grace Ironwood and the Director. She saw a head floating before her – a face with a beard, nose, and eyes with colored glasses on. The top of its removed skull boiled over with a great mass as though something inside had boiled over. Then she realized the head did not actually float. It was fixed on something with rubber tubes, bulbs, and little metal things hanging below it, with the tubes going into a wall. It began an imitation of breathing, in a rhythmic – huff, huff, huff – and it dribbled at the mouth, but had no hands to wipe it. It worked its mouth and licked its lips, almost like a machine someone was getting into working order. Jane then saw three persons enter the room carefully, all dressed in white with masks. She recognized the third person as her husband, Mark. They bowed to the Head, and it spoke to them in French. One of the three seemed to introduce Mark to it. It said something to Mark, and Mark replied he would try to do something in a few days. Jane saw Mark get sick and collapse; she felt horror about the dream as she realized Mark’s real surroundings and associates. The Director assures Jane they will try to rescue Mark.
Meanwhile, Mark resolved he must bring Jane to Belbury, not for the purposes the N.I.C.E. had in mind, but to save his life, which he now worries about after seeing the Head artificially kept alive with air and saliva pumped from the adjoining room. With his “modern” education, he has nothing else to fall back on but self-interest, though he does worry they would bring her to the Head if she came. Suddenly, Fairy Hardcastle appears and tries to convince Mark to sign a form which would allow the Fairy to bring Jane immediately to him at Belbury. She argues otherwise Jane might be sent to an Asylum for accusing the Fairy of burning her with cigarettes. Mark decides to go home at once to talk with Jane and tries to see Wither to report his decision. He bursts into Wither’s office but finds him in a trance-like mostly unresponsive state. Mark attempts to flee, but then finds Wither blocking his path on the border of the property, so he returns to Belbury.
Back at St. Anne’s, MacPhee (the resident skeptic) invites Jane into “his little room” to explain more about the Company. He says the Director is actually Ransom, the famous philologist, and that he had been to Mars, where he met eldils on Mars. These beings live in empty space and alight on planets like birds on trees.The eldils explain that Earth is in danger because its eldils have turned to the dark side to form a conspiracy against the human race. MacPhee skeptically relates that the Director claims to continuously receive communications from the eldils about this plot. Later, Camilla tells Jane that the Director’s youthful appearance results from his time on Perelandra (Venus), where Paradise still goes on, and those who return from there never age, never die but instead move on to Deep Heaven. She reveals him as the Pendragon of Logres.
Later, the Director holds Council with those at St. Anne’s, stating that that Jane’s dreams reveal that the N.I.C.E. have discovered a way of making themselves immortal, which they will call the next step in Evolution. MacPhee wants the Director to act, but the Director says he acts under the directions of the eldils, who somehow brought them all together, and will reveal their plan in their good time. They then discuss why the N.I.C.E. wanted Bragdon Wood, realizing it has something to do with the Arthurian legends about where Merlin was buried. The Director believes that the N.I.C.E. wants to join Merlin’s ancient powers to its modern powers, but says Merlin’s powers were not exactly magical, but somehow more profound than the powers we possess in the modern world, deriving from Numinor (which ties Lewis’ world to Tolkien’s, as well as to the Atlantis’ legends). The N.I.C.E. hopes to use these combined powers to subjugate the Earth and the entire human race.
KEY PASSAGES FROM CHAPTER 9
“I dreamed I was in a dark room,” said Jane, “with queer smells in it and a sort of low humming noise… But as I got used to the light, I got a horrible shock. I thought the face was a mask tied on to a kind of balloon thing. But it wasn’t, exactly. Perhaps it looked a bit like a man wearing a sort of turban… I’m telling this dreadfully badly. What it really was, was a head (the rest of a head) which had had the top part of the skull taken off and then… then — as if something inside had boiled over. A great big mass which bulged out from inside what was left of the skull… Even in my fright I remember thinking, ‘Oh kill it, kill it Put it out of its pain.’ But only for a second because I thought the thing was real, really. It was green looking and the mouth was wide open and quite dry…And soon I saw that it wasn’t exactly floating. It was fixed up on some kind of bracket, or shelf, or pedestal…Yes, it had a neck and a sort of collar thing round it, but nothing below the collar; no shoulders or body. Only these hanging things. In the dream I thought it was some kind of new man that had only head and entrails: I thought all those tubes were its insides…All the tubes went into the wall…Well, quite suddenly, like when an engine is started, there came a puff of air out of its mouth, with a hard dry rasping sound. And then there came another, and it settled down into a sort of rhythm — huff, huff, huff — like an imitation of breathing. Then came a most horrible thing: the mouth began to dribble. I know it sounds silly but in a way I felt sorry for it because it had no hands and couldn’t wipe its mouth…Then it began working its mouth about and even licking its lips. It was like someone getting a machine into working order. To see it doing that just as if it was alive, and at the same time dribbling over the beard which was all stiff and dead looking…”—usurping the role of God with life and death, men without chests“Then three people came into the room, all dressed up in white, with masks on, walking as carefully as cats on the top of a wall. One was a great fat man, and another was lanky and bony. The third…” here Jane paused involuntarily. “The third… I think it was Mark… I mean my husband. “And then,” said Jane, “all three of them came round and stood in front of the Head. They bowed to it. You couldn’t tell if it was looking at them because of its dark glasses. It kept on with that rhythmical huffing noise. Then it spoke.”—blasphemy, false worship
“Yes. Don’t think hardly of him. He is suffering. If we are defeated we shall all go down with him. If we win we will rescue him; he cannot be far gone yet.” He paused, smiled, and added, “We are quite used to trouble about husbands here, you know. Poor Ivy’s is in jail.” “In jail?” “Oh, yes — for ordinary theft. But quite a good fellow…”Though Jane felt horror, even to the point of nausea, at the sight (in her dream) of Mark’s real surroundings and associates, it had been horror that carried a certain grandeur and mystery with it. The sudden equation between his predicament and that of a common convict whipped the blood to her cheeks.”—compassion, redemption, equality at the foot of the Cross
A Head without any body underneath. A Head that could speak when they turned on the air and the artificial saliva with taps in the next room. His own head began to throb so hard that he had to stop thinking. But he knew it was true. And he could not, as they say, “take it.” He was very ashamed of this;…the virtues he had almost succeeded in banishing from his mind still lived, if only negatively and as weaknesses, in his body.”—innate Horror of Evil“Apparently he would have to bring Jane to Belbury. His mind had made this decision for him at some moment he did not remember. He must get her, to save his life. All his anxieties about being in the Inner ring or getting a job had shrunk into insignificance. It was a question of life or death. They would kill him if he annoyed them; perhaps behead him… oh God, if only they would really kill that monstrous little lump of torture, that lump with a face, which they kept there talking on its steel bracket. All the minor fears at Belbury — for he knew now that all except the leaders were always afraid — were only emanations from that central fear. He must get Jane; he wasn’t fighting against that now.”—self-preservation, coercion, fear of death, sorting priorities
“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…and the first hint of a real threat to his bodily life knocked him sprawling. And his head ached so terribly and he felt so sick. Luckily he now kept a bottle of whisky in his room. A stiff one enabled him to shave and dress.”—miseducation=defenselessness, self-medication
“Take my advice, Studdock, and have her over here at once. She’ll be properly looked after here.” “You haven’t yet told me what she said or did.” “I wouldn’t like to have anyone belonging to me popped into Edgestow Asylum. Specially now that we’re getting our emergency powers. They’ll be using the ordinary patients experimentally, you know. Whereas if you’ll just sign this form I’ll run over after lunch and have her here this evening.” Mark threw his pen on the desk. “I shall do nothing of the sort.”—lies, emergency powers to abrogate liberties, loss of sacredness of body“The Deputy Director was not listening. He was so far from listening that Mark felt an insane doubt whether he was there at all, whether the soul of the Deputy Director were not floating far away, spreading and dissipating itself like a gas through formless and lightless worlds, waste lands and lumber rooms of the universe. What looked out of those pale watery eyes was, in a sense, infinity — the shapeless and the interminable. The room was still and cold: there was no clock and the fire had gone out. It was impossible to speak to a face like that… Mark was afraid; it was so unlike any experience he had ever had before. When at last Mr. Wither spoke, his eyes were not fixed on Mark but on some remote point beyond him, beyond the window, perhaps in the sky. “I know who it is,” said Wither. “Your name is Studdock. What do you mean by coming here? You had better have stayed outside. Go away.” It was then that Mark’s nerve suddenly broke.—innate Horror of Evil“All the slowly mounting fears of the last few days ran together into one fixed determination and a few seconds later he was going downstairs three steps at a time…Opposite the entrance was a thick belt of trees pierced by a field path. That path would bring him in half an hour to Courthampton and there he could get a country bus to Edgestow. About the future he did not think at all. Only two things mattered: firstly, to get out of that house, and, secondly, to get back to Jane. He was devoured with a longing for Jane which was physical without being at all sensual: as if comfort and fortitude would flow from her body, as if her very skin would clean away all the filth that seemed to hang about him. He stopped suddenly. Something impossible was happening. There was a figure before him on the path: a tall, very tall, slightly stooping figure, sauntering and humming a little dreary tune: the Deputy Director himself. And in one moment all that brittle hardihood was gone from Mark’s mood. He turned back. He stood in the road; this seemed to him the worst pain that he ever felt. Then, tired, so tired that he felt the weak tears filling his eyes, he walked very slowly back into Belbury.”—Evil, danger of being complicit, being captive
“But he also says he met one kind of creature there which specially concerns us at this moment. He called them eldils.” “A kind of animal, do you mean?” “Did ever you try to define the word Animal, Mrs. Studdock?” “Not that I remember. I meant, were these things well, intelligent? Could they talk?” “Aye. They could talk. They were intelligent, for-bye, which is not always the same thing.” “In fact, these were the Martians?” “That’s just what they weren’t — according to his account. They were on Mars but they didn’t rightly belong there. He says they are, creatures that live in empty space.”—reality of beings from spiritual world“The long and short of it is that this house is dominated either by the creatures I’m talking about or by a sheer delusion. It is by advices he thinks he has received from eldils that the Director has discovered the conspiracy against the human race; and what’s more, it’s on instructions from eldils that he’s conducting the campaign — if you can call it conducting! It may have occurred to you to wonder, Mrs. Studdock, how any man in his senses thinks we’re going to defeat a powerful conspiracy by sitting here growing winter vegetables and training performing bears. It is a question I have propounded on more than one occasion. The answer is always the same; we’re waiting for orders.” “From the eldils? It was they he meant when he spoke of his Masters?… it’s not our own ones that the Director claims to be in communication with. It’s his friends from Outer Space. Our own crew, the terrestrial eldils, are at the back of the whole conspiracy. You are to imagine us, Mrs. Studdock, living on a world where the criminal classes of the eldils have established their headquarters. And what’s happening now, if the Director’s views are correct, is that their own respectable kith and kin are visiting this planet to red the place up.” “You mean that the other eldils out of space actually come here — to this house?” “That is what the Director thinks.”—spiritual guidance, spiritual warfare, difference from worldly wisdom and weapons“You mean his looking — er being — so young — if you call it young?” “Yes. That is what people are like who come back from the stars. Or at least from Perelandra. Paradise is still going on there; make him tell you about it some time. He will never grow a year or a month older again.”—Zoe life of Deep Heaven, unfallen Creation“It tells us something in the long run even more important,” said the Director. “It means that if this technique is really successful, the Belbury people have for all practical purposes discovered a way of making themselves immortal.” There was a moment’s silence, and then he continued: “It is the beginning of what is really a new species — the Chosen Heads who never die. They will call it the next step in Evolution. And henceforward, all the creatures that you and I call human are mere candidates for admission to the new species or else its slaves — perhaps its food. The emergence of the Bodiless Men!”—usurping God’s role in life and death, men without chests
“Mr. Director,” said MacPhee. “You’ll excuse me for speaking frankly. Your enemies have provided themselves with this Head. They have taken possession of Edgestow and they’re in a fair way to suspend the laws of England. And still you tell us it is not time to move. If you had taken my advice six months ago we would have had an organisation all over this island by now and maybe a party in the House of Commons. I know well what you’ll say — that those are not the right methods. And maybe no. But if you can neither take our advice nor give us anything to do, what are we all sitting here for? Have you seriously considered sending us away and getting some other colleagues that you can work with?”—waiting on the Lord versus worldly wisdom and weapons
“I am the Director,” said Ransom, smiling. “Do you think I would claim the authority I do if the relation between us depended either on your choice or mine? You never chose me. I never chose you. Even the great Oyeresu whom I serve never chose me. I came into their worlds by what seemed, at first, a chance; as you came to me as the very animals in this house first came to it. You and I have not started or devised this: it has descended on us — sucked us into itself, if you like. It is, no doubt, an organisation: but we are not the organisers. And that is why I have no authority to give any one of you permission to leave my household.”—Heavenly authority and plan“We knew already that the enemy wanted the Wood. Some of us guessed why. Now Jane has seen — or rather felt — in a vision what it is they are looking for in Bragdon. It may be the greater danger of the two. But what is certain is that the greatest danger of all is the junction of the enemies’ forces. He is staking everything on that. When the new power from Belbury joins up with the old power under Bragdon Wood, Logres — indeed Man — will be almost surrounded. For us everything turns on preventing that junction. That is the point at which we must be ready both to kill and die. But we cannot strike yet. We cannot get into Bragdon and start excavating for ourselves. There must be a moment when they find him — it. I have no doubt we shall be told in one way or another. Till then we must wait.”—danger of worldly power allied with dark spiritual power“What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men? The time was ripe. From the point of view which is accepted in Hell, the whole history of our Earth had led up to this moment. There was now at last a real chance for fallen Man to shake off that limitation of his powers which mercy had imposed upon him as a protection from the full results of his fall. If this succeeded, Hell would be at last incarnate. Bad men, while still in the body, still crawling on this little globe, would enter that state which, heretofore, they had entered only after death, would have the diuturnity and power of evil spirits. Nature, all over the globe of Tellus, would become their slave; and of that dominion no end, before the end of time itself, could be certainly foreseen.”—end result of subjectivism, spiritual warfare, Babel and Hell on earthTHEMES THAT APPEAR IN CHAPTER 9
–usurping the role of God with life and death, men without chests
—blasphemy, false worship
—compassion, redemption, equality at the foot of the Cross
—innate Horror of Evil.
—power of self-preservation instinct, coercion, fear of death, sorting priorities
—miseducation = defenselessness against Evil, self-medication
—lies, emergency powers to abrogate liberties, loss of sacredness of body
—Evil, danger of being complicit, becoming captive
—Ransom connotations
—reality of beings from spiritual world
—spiritual guidance, spiritual warfare, difference from worldly wisdom and weapons
—waiting on the Lord, Arthurian wisdom
—Zoe life of Deep Heaven, unfallen Creation
—eternal life of Deep Heaven, Logres
—usurping God’s role in life and death, men without chests
—waiting on the Lord versus worldly wisdom and weapons
—Heavenly authority and plan
—danger of worldly power allied with dark spiritual power
—spiritual warfare, manipulation, corruption of science
—end result of subjectivism, spiritual warfare, Babel and Hell on earth
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.—Phil. 4:8-9
1. Deepen your understanding of the sacredness of the human body created by God.Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (I Cor. 6:19-20) For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. (Ps. 139:13-14)
2. Cultivate an understanding and practice of waiting on the Lord with patience, rather than embracing earthly wisdom. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (Ps. 27:14) Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. (Romans 12:12) The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.(2 Peter 3:9)
3. Be aware of the reality of spiritual warfare and seek to be strong in the Lord.Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. (Eph. 6:10-18)
4. Remember daily that your true life is the eternal life of the Kingdom 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. (Col. 3:2-4)
COME, MY WAY, MY TRUTH, MY LIFE
—George Herbert, 1633
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
such a way as gives us breath;
such a truth as ends all strife;
such a life as killeth death.
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
such a light as shows a feast;
such a feast as mends in length;
such a strength as makes a guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
such a joy as none can move:
such a love as none can part;
such a heart as joys in love.
