A SCIENTIST STRIKES BACK
Two
attacks on C. S. Lewis by J. B. S. Haldane
(1) “Auld
Hornie, F.R.S.”
(2) “More
Anti-Lewisite”
introductory note
A long-overdue comprehensive collection of C. S. Lewis’s “shorter writings”
was published by HarperCollins in 2000. This Essay Collection and other
shorter pieces, also available in two paperbacks, contains nearly all of
Lewis’s shorter writings previously published by HarperCollins in smaller
collections. One exception is, regrettably, a piece of polemic against
J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964), a renowned biochemist, geneticist and
popular writer on science. The manuscript of this piece is incomplete as the
last one or two pages are missing. The incomplete piece was first published as
“A Reply to Professor Haldane” in 1966, when both men were dead, in a
volume called Of Other Worlds, ed. Walter Hooper (enlarged edition in
1982 as Of This and Other Worlds, reprinted in 2000).
Lewis was replying to Haldane’s essay “Auld Hornie,
F.R.S.”, a critique of Lewis’s Space Trilogy published in The Modern Quarterly, Autumn 1946. Haldane presumably never saw Lewis’s “Reply”, but continued
his attack in another piece, called “More Anti-Lewisite”. I don’t know whether
this sequel was printed before 1951. In that year Haldane included both pieces
in a volume of his essays, Everything Has a History. Lewis perhaps never
saw the second piece although, curiously, he wrote “Anti-Haldane” on the
manuscript of his Reply. Many years later Haldane’s first piece was reprinted
in a volume of essays by several authors on Lewis, Tolkien and Charles
Williams, Shadows of Imagination, ed. Mark R. Hillegas
(1969, reprinted 1979).
“Auld Hornie” is a Scottish mock-affectionate
name for Satan; “F.R.S.” is short for “Fellow of the Royal Society”. Haldane
had been a F.R.S. himself from 1932 onward.
For readers interested in Haldane as an antagonist of
C. S. Lewis, I would recommend
(1) Haldane’s early seminal
paper Daedalus (1923), reprinted in a memorial
volume Haldane’s Daedalus Revisited, ed.
Krishna R. Dronamraju (Oxford University Press 1995),
and now freely available at two web addresses: here and here.
(2) his essay “The Last
Judgment”, in Possible Worlds (1927); not included in the 1928 Harper
U.S. edition, and not on the internet.
(3) What I Require from Life. Writings on
Science and Life from J. B. S. Haldane,
edited by Krishna Dronamraju, with a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke (Oxford
University Press 2009).
(4) Mark B. Adams, “Last
Judgment: The Visionary Biology of J. B. S. Haldane”, Journal of the History of Biology Vol. 33,
No. 3 (December 2000), 457–491; available online from the publisher (not free),
or to JSTOR
subscribers. Print copies of the journal are available in university libraries
all over the world.
(5) Richard Jeffery, “C. S. Lewis and the Scientists”, The Chronicle of the Oxford University C. S. Lewis Society
Vol 2, No. 2 (May 2005).
Arend Smilde
Utrecht, The Netherlands
Auld Hornie, F.R.S.
by J. B. S. Haldane
Everything Has a History (1951), pp. 249–258
Mr. C. S. Lewis is a prolific writer of books which are
intended to defend Christianity. Some of these are cast in the form of fiction.
The most interesting group is perhaps a trilogy describing the adventures of
Mr. Ransom, a Cambridge teacher of philology. In the first volume Ransom is
kidnapped by a physicist called Weston and his accomplice, Devine, and taken in
a “spaceship” to the planet Mars, which is inhabited by three species of fairly
intelligent and highly virtuous and healthy vertebrates ruled by an angel.
Weston wants to colonise the planet, and Devine to
use it as a source of gold. Their efforts are frustrated, and they return to
earth, bringing Ransom with them.
In the second volume the angel in charge of Mars takes Ransom to Venus, where
he meets the Eve of a new human race, which has just been issued with souls.
Weston arrives, allows the devil to possess him, and acts as serpent in a
temptation of the new Eve. Ransom’s arguments against the devil are inadequate,
so he finally kills Weston, and is returned to earth by angels, with thanks for
services rendered.
In the final book two still more sinister scientists, Frost and Wither, who
have given their souls to the devil, are running the National Institute of Co-Ordinated Experiments. Devine, now a peer, is helping them.
The only experiment described is the perfusion of a severed human head, through
which the devil issues his commands. They are also hoping to resurrect Merlin,
who has been asleep for fifteen centuries in their neighbourhood.
Their aim appears to be the acquisition of superhuman power and of immortality;
though how this is to be done is far from clear, just as it is far from clear
why a severed head perfused with blood should live
longer than a normal one, or be a more suitable instrument for the devil.
However, Mr. Ransom is too much for them. He obtains the assistance not only of
Merlin, but of the angels who guide the planets on their paths, and regulate
the lives of their inhabitants. These angels arrive at his house, whose other
inhabitants become in their turn mercurial, venereal (but decorously so),
martial, saturnine, and jovial, but fortunately not lunatic. Merlin and the
angels smash up the National Institute and a small university town, Frost and
Wither are damned, and Ransom ascends into heaven, bound for Venus, where he is
to meet Kings Arthur and Melchizedek, and other select humans who escape death.
One Grammarian’s Funeral less, in fact.
The tale is told with very great skill, and the descriptions of celestial
landscapes and of human and nonhuman behaviour are
often brilliant. I cannot pay Mr. Lewis a higher compliment than to compare him
with Dante and Milton; but to make the balance fair I must also compare him
with Rolfe (alias Baron Corvo) and Velenovsky. Dante and Milton knew the science of their
time, and Dante was well ahead of most of his contemporaries in holding that
the earth was round, and that gravity changed direction at its centre; though
Milton hedged as to the Copernican system. Mr Lewis is often incorrect, as in
his account of the gravitational field in the spaceship, of the atmosphere on
Mars, the appearance of other planets from it, and so on. His accounts of
supernatural intervention would have been more impressive had he known more of
nature as it actually exists. Of course, the reason is clear enough. Christian
mythology incorporated the cosmological theories current eighteen centuries
ago. Dante found it a slight strain to combine this mythology with the facts
known in his own day. Milton found it harder. Mr. Lewis finds it impossible.
Mr. Lewis is a teacher of English literature at Oxford. The philologist Ransom
reminds me irresistibly of the idealised Rolfe who
becomes Pope as Hadrian VII; though of course it is even more distinguished to
escape death by ascending into heaven than to become a pope. Velenovsky (whose name is not so well known) was (or
perhaps is) a botanist who discovered a new species of primrose in the Balkans,
and called it Primula deorum,
the primrose of the gods. With such a
name one might expect a plant even nobler than the purple giants of the
Himalayas and Yunnan. Unfortunately it is a wretched little flower, which will
not bear comparison with any of our four British species. In his attempts to
defend Christianity, Mr. Lewis has also defended the beliefs in astrology,
black magic, Atlantis, and even polytheism; for the planetary angels are called
gods, perhaps in deference to Milton. Many sincere Christians will think that
he has done no more service to Jesus than Velenovsky
to Jupiter.
As a scientist I am particularly interested in his attitude to my profession.
There is one decent scientist in the three books, a physicist who is murdered
by the devil-worshippers before we have got to know him. The others have an
ideology which ranges from a Kiplingesque contempt
for “natives” to pure “national socialism,” with the devil substituted for the
God whose purposes Hitler claimed to carry out. As a matter of fact, very few
scientists of any note outside Germany and Italy have become Fascists. In
France only one, the engineer Claude, did so, though the Catholic biologist
Carrel came back from the U.S.A. to support the Vichy government. A very much
larger fraction of the clerical, legal, and literary professions bowed the knee
to Baal.
Weston is recognisable as a scientist; Frost and
Wither, the devil-worshippers, are not. They talk like some of the less
efficient of the Public Relations Officers who defend Big Business, and even
Mr. Lewis did not dare to assign them to any particular branch of science. At a
guess I should put them as psychologists who had early deserted the scientific
aspect of psychology for its mythological developments.
Mr. Lewis’s idea is clear enough. The application of science to human affairs
can only lead to hell. This world is largely run by the Devil. “The shadow of
the dark wing is over all Tellus,” and the best we
can do is to work out our own salvation in fear and trembling. Revealed
religion tells us how to do this. Any human attempts at a planned world are
merely playing into the hands of the Devil. Auld Hornie,
by the way, to use the pet name which the Scots have given him, perhaps in
thanks for his attacks on the Sabbath, has been in charge of our planet since
before life originated on it. He even had a swipe at Mars, and removed much of
its atmosphere. Some time in the future Jesus and the good angels will take our
planet over from him. Meanwhile the Church is a resistance movement, but
liberation must await a celestial D-Day. The destruction of Messrs. Frost and
Wither was only a commando operation comparable with the bombardment of Sodom
and Gomorrah.
In so far as Mr. Lewis succeeds in spreading his views, the results are fairly
predictable. He will not have much influence on scientists, if only because he
does not know enough science for this purpose. But he will influence public
opinion and that of politicians, particularly in Britain. I do not know if he
is a best seller in America. He will in no way discourage the more inhuman
developments of science, such as the manufacture of atomic bombs. But he will
make things more difficult for those who are trying to apply science to human
betterment, for example to get some kind of world organisation
of food supplies into being, or to arrive at physiological standards for
housing. In such cases we scientists are always told that we are treating human
beings as animals. Of course we are. My technical assistant keeps a lot of
mosquitoes in my laboratory. Their infantile mortality is considerably below
that of my own species in most countries, and I hope to get it down below the
level of English babies. But meanwhile I should be very happy if all human
babies had as good a chance of growing up as my mosquito larvae. Mr. Lewis is
presumably more concerned with their baptism, which is alleged to have a large
effect on their prospects after death.
More and more, among people who think about such matters, the division is
appearing between those who think it is worth while working for a better future
(which, since the various members of our species now form, for some purposes, a
single community, must be a better future for all mankind) and those who think
that the best we can do is to look after our immediate neighbours
and our noble selves. Clearly anyone who believes that he or she stands to lose
by social changes will be pleased to find arguments to prove that they are
impracticable or even devilish. So Mr. Lewis is a most useful prop to the
existing social order, the more so as his Martian creatures seem to practise some kind of primitive communism under angelic
guidance; so a good Lewisite can get a full measure of self-satisfaction from
condemning capitalism as a by-product of the fall of man, while taking no
concrete steps to replace it by a better system.
It is interesting to see how Mr. Lewis’s ideology has affected his writing. He
must obviously be compared with Wells and Stapledon,
rather than with the American school of “scientifiction,”
which is a somewhat lower form of literature than the detective story. The
criteria for fictional writing on scientific subjects are similar to those for
historical romance. The historical novelist may add to established history. He
must not deny it. He may describe the unknown private life of Hal o’ the Wynd or Fair Rosamund. He must
not contradict what little is known about them without sound reason given. In a
scientific romance new processes or substances may be postulated, for example Cavorite, which is opaque to gravitation, or animals which
reproduce by clouds of pollen. But apart from special cases our existing
knowledge of the properties of matter should be respected. Wells occasionally
broke this rule; for example, the giants in The Food of the Gods would
have broken their legs at every step; but much may be forgiven a pioneer. Stapledon is much more scrupulous. Lewis’s contempt for
science is constantly letting him down. I wish he would learn more, if only
because if he did so he would come to respect it. I do not complain of his
angels or “eldils”. If there are finite superhuman
beings they may well be as he describes. I do complain when, in the preface to The
Great Divorce, he writes: “A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going
back till you find the error and working afresh from that point, never by
simply going on.” I happen to be an addict of the kind of “sum” called
iteration. For example, I have recently had to solve the cubic equation
7009X3
– 7470X2 – 7801X + 516 = 0
This equation arises in the theory of mosquito
breeding. Writing it as
X = 516/7801 – X2 [1 – X – (331 – 792X)/7801]
I put X = .06 on the right-hand side, and get X =
.0629 as a better approximation. Then I substitute this value on the right-hand
side, and so on, finally getting X = .06261. If I shall make a small mistake it
gets corrected automatically, and may even speed up the approach to the final
result. I think the process of solving a moral problem, for example of arriving
at mutually satisfactory relations with a colleague, is a good deal more like
iteration than the ordinary method of solving such equations.
If Mr. Lewis would learn mathematics and science he might change his views on
other matters, for he is intelligent enough to make some very awkward if
unconscious admissions. For example, the sinless creatures on Mars had a
theology but no religion. They believed in a creator and an after-life, like
Benjamin Franklin and other great rationalists; but during a stay of several
months among them Mr. Ransom reported no religious ceremonies, or even private
prayers. Their conversations with passing angels, or “eldils,”
whom they occasionally saw and heard, were no more like religious acts than is
turning on the radio to listen to Mr. Attlee. This is entirely what one would
expect if Mr. Lewis’s other premises were true. A person fully adapted to his
environment would have no religion. As Marx put it (On Hegels’s
Philosophy of Law, 1844): “This state, this society, produce religion – an
inverted consciousness of the world – because it is an inverted world ... it is
the fantastic realisation of man, because man
possesses no true realisation.”
Again, it is striking that communism is only once mentioned in the books under
review, and though in The Great Divorce the narrator finds one Communist
in hell, he had left the party and become a conscientious objector in 1941; so
perhaps the punishment was deserved, if unduly severe. I take it that Mr.
Lewis, who is at least aware of the important difference between right and
wrong, though he draws what seems to me to be an incorrect line between them, recognises that Communists also take right and wrong
seriously, and is therefore loath to condemn them radically. In consequence the
conflict described in That Hideous Strength, which is supposed to be
important for the future of humanity, lacks reality. And in so far as Mr. Lewis
persuades anyone that devil-worship is any more important than other rare
perversions, he is merely pandering to moral escapism by diverting his readers
from the great moral problems of our day.
I fear that Mr. Lewis is too “bent,” to use his own word, to become a
communist. Look at his taste in grammar. In the celestial language, of which he
gives us some samples, the plurals of the word eldil, pfifltrigg,
oyarsa, and hnakra, are
eldila, pfifltriggi, oyéresu,
and hnéraki. If that is his ideal of grammar, no
wonder his ideals of society are peculiar. Parenthetically, I should have
thought the most striking character of a language used by sinless beings who
loved their neighbours as themselves would have been
the absence of any equivalent of the word “my” and very probably of the word
“I,” and of other personal pronouns and inflexions.
Nevertheless, if Mr. Lewis investigates the facts honestly, he will probably
discover two things. One is that if Christianity (in the sense of an attempt to
follow the precepts attributed to Jesus) has a future, that future, as things
are today, is far more likely to be realised within
the Orthodox Church than the western Churches. In fact, Marxism may prove to
have given Christianity a new lease of life. The second is that scientists are
less likely than any other group to sell their souls to the devil. A few of us
sell our souls to capitalists and politicians, and Mr. Lewis may have met some
such vendors at Oxford. But on the whole we possess moral and intellectual
standards, and live up to them as often as other people.
I think we even do so a little more often, because we possess objective
standards which others do not. One can find out whether samarium is heavier
than lead, whether dogs are more variable in weight than cats, or whether
trilobites or dinosaurs lived earliest. There is no way of finding out whether
Crashaw was a better poet than Vaughan, or whether Shakespeare wrote the parts
for his heroines to suit the leading boy actors of the moment. We also have to
risk our lives in the course of our profession rather more often than writers.
“The real importance of scientific war,” says Mr. Frost, “is that scientists
have to be reserved.” It is worth remembering that some of us were reserved to
unscrew magnetic mines and to test a variety of rather unpleasant chemical
substances on our own persons.
But my main quarrel with Mr. Lewis is not for his attack on my profession, but
for his attack on my species. I believe that, without any supernatural
promptings, men can be extremely good or extremely bad. He must explain human
evil by the Devil, and human virtue by God. For him, human freedom is a mere
choice between alternatives presented to our souls by supernatural beings. For
me it is something creative, in the sense that each generation makes newer and
greater possibilities of good and evil. I do not think that Shaw is a greater
dramatist than Shakespeare; but some of his characters, for example, Saint
Joan, Lavinia, or even Dudgeon, are morally better
than any of Shakespeare’s characters. Good has grown in three hundred years. So
has evil. I do not think that any of the Popes whom Dante saw in hell had done
an action as evil as that of Pius XI when he blessed fascism in the encyclical Quadragesimo
Anno.
Mr. Lewis’s characters are confronted with moral choices like slugs in an
experimental cage who get a cabbaage if they turn
right and an electric shock if they turn left. This is no doubt one step nearer
to the truth than a completely mechanistic view, but only one step. Two
thousand years ago some people had got further. I find Horace’s “justum et tenacem propositi virum,” who is not
deflected by mobs, tyrants, or the great hand of thundering Jove, a vastly more
admirable figure than Mr. Lewis’s saints who are “Servile to all the skyey influences ”; though of course Cato’s idea of
justice was as narrow as ours will, I hope, seem two thousand years hence. But
is was men with this Horatian ideal of dignity who
made Rome, and men with not very dissimilar ideals who made China, which did
not fall as Rome fell. Both the Roman and Chinese ideals were aristocratic.
They had to be so in societies where most men and women spent much of their
time as mere sources of mechanical power. Today a society is technically
possible where every man and woman can have the leisure and culture needed to
take a part in managing it. Democracy is in fact a possibility, but so far it
has only worked rather spasmodically. Some of us want to make it a reality. Mr
Lewis regards it as impossible. “There must be rule,” says an aged and learned
Martian, “yet how can creatures rule themselves? Beasts must be ruled by men,
men by angels, and angels by the creator” (I translate several celestial
words). As angels do not give most of us very explicit orders, it would seem
that we should entrust our destinies to someone like Dr. Frank Buchan or the
Pope, who claims to be divinely guided. If Mr. Lewis does not mean us to draw
such a conclusion, what does he mean by this passage?
In practice these self-styled mouthpieces of higher powers will presumably
transmit orders very similar to Mr. Lewis’s broadcast talks on Christian Behaviour. They will probably, for example, condemn
sodomy absolutely, but they will hedge regarding usury if they even mention it.
Mr. Lewis admits that Christian, Jewish, and pagan moralists condemned it, but
points out that our society is based on it, and adds: “Now it may not follow
that we are absolutely wrong.” If it had followed that usury was absolutely
wrong, Mr. Lewis’s series of radio talks might have been brought to a sudden
end like one of Mr. Priestly’s. I mention sodomy and
usury together because Dante, who expressed the ideals of medieval
Christianity, exposed sodomites and usurers to the same rain of flames in hell,
with the difference that the sodomites could dodge them, but the usurers (or,
as we should say, financiers) could not. If sodomy were an important part of
our social system, as it was of some past systems, Mr. Lewis would presumably
wonder whether sodomy was absolutely wrong.
The men and women who believe most in human dignity are fighting usury and
every other institution which makes man the slave of money. Those who share Mr.
Lewis’s view are compromising with these evils in one way or another, even if
they do not always attack democracy as openly as does Mr. Lewis. Any Marxist
can see why this must be so; and Christian readers of Mr. Lewis’s books might
well remember St. James’s statement: “Whosoever therefore will be a friend of
the world is the enemy of God.” His books certainly have very large sales, and
may have a very large influence. It is only for this reason that they are worth
attacking. They can of course be attacked on many other grounds than those
which I have given. But I would state my case briefly as follows. I agree with
Mr. Lewis that man is in a sense a fallen being. The Origin of the Family
seems to me to provide better evidence for this belief than the Book of
Genesis. But I disagree with him in that I also believe that man can rise again
by his own efforts. Those who hold the contrary view inevitably regard the
reform of society as a dangerous dream, and natural science as unworthy of
serious study. And they consequently end up by making friends with the mammon
of unrighteousness. But this friendship, so far from qualifying them for an
eternal habitation, may not even secure them a competence in this present world.
For Mammon has been cleared off a sixth of our planet’s surface, and his realm
is contracting in Europe today. It was men, not angels, who cast him out
by J. B. S. Haldane
Everything Has a History (1951), pp. 259–267
Lewisite is a poisonous liquid with a poisonous vapour,
called after an American chemist, Lewis. British Anti-Lewisite, or B.A.L. is a
compound invented by Professor Peters of Oxford, which neutralizes its
poisonous effects on men and animals, and would have been used had the Germans
used Lewisite against us. Fortunately, it can also be used against other
arsenic compounds than Lewisite, including the familiar poison, arsenious oxide, generally though incorrectly called
arsenic.
Mr. C. S.
Lewis is a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, which has become one of our
principal defenders of Christianity. His arguments seem to me to include many
which definitely muddy the stream of human thought. If I can precipitate some
of them, I shall help to clear this stream, thus performing in the mental
sphere a task similar to that of Peters in the chemical sphere. I shall deal
particularly with Mr. Lewis’ Broadcast Talks.
The
first part of these talks is devoted to proofs of the existence of God. It is
rather interesting to list some of the arguments which Mr. Lewis did not use.
First comes the ontological argument used by St. Anselm and others, and revived
by Descartes, which is roughly as follows. We can conceive of a most perfect
being. But existence is a kind of perfection. Therefore the most perfect being
must have existence. Mr. Lewis allows this argument to fall by its own weight,
perhaps because it might be used in an inverted form to prove the non-existence
of the least perfect being, namely the Devil, in whom he believes passionately.
Nor does
he set much store by any of St. Thomas Aquinas’ five arguments, particularly
those which depend on the alleged impossibility of an infinite series of
causes, or of movers. The plain fact is that St. Thomas had not the
intellectual equipment to deal with infinite series, and we have this equipment
to-day. They turn out to be much simpler than finite ones. Thus, if we consider
the series 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 and so on, no one can tell me the sum of its
first million terms, for the good reason that its numerator and denominator
each consist of 301,031 figures. But if we revise our definition of sum to
cover the sum of an infinite class, we can say that the sum of all its terms is
exactly unity. Mr. Lewis makes very little use of the argument from design,
which, as I have pointed out, leads, if logically pursued, to the conclusion
that even the animals and plants of our own planet suggest the existence of a
million or more mutually hostile designers.
His main
argument is from the fact that almost all human beings recognize the existence
of moral obligation. At an early stage (p. 11) he deals with the argument that
different societies have, or have had, different moralities. He states that
they have had “only slightly
different moralities” (his italics). Perhaps Mr. Lewis would be only slightly uncomfortable in a society
where cannibalism was the rule, or one in which a murderer was not punished,
but was compelled to adopt the children of his victim. The plain fact is that
different cultures have or have had almost every morality which is compatible
with the existence of society even in its crudest form. If he points out that
no society has existed in which it was thought praiseworthy to murder one’s
parents before they reached old age, my answer is that I don’t believe in
miracles, and the existence of such a society would be a miracle. Societies
have certainly existed in which the killing of babies and of old people were
regarded as praiseworthy acts. However, let us suppose for the moment that Mr.
Lewis is right, and that moral codes show a greater agreement than is
necessitated by the bare existence of society, let us see how his argument
continues.
He is
impressed by the fact that people are aware of the existence of moral
obligations, but yet do not conform to these obligations, and that people
regard one moral code as better than another. “the moment”, he writes on p. 17,
“you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are in
fact measuring both by a standard, saying that one conforms to that standard
better than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something
different from either.” Before we follow Mr. Lewis’ next step, let us examine
this argument. If it is formally correct, it will still be true if we alter the
terms in it. Thus, if “Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; so Socrates is
mortal” is a valid argument, we can substitute “Nelly” for “Socrates”, “cat”
for “man” and “clawed” for “mortal”, and see that it still works. Let us apply
this experimental method to Mr. Lewis’ argument. Now, “tall” is a simpler idea
than “good”. We do not for example ask “tall for what?” as we ask “good for
what?” and it is easier to determine whether one man is taller than another
than whether he is better. Here is Mr. Lewis’ argument subjected to this simple
transformation. “The moment you say that one man can be taller than another,
you are in fact measuring both by a standard, saying that one conforms to that
standard better than the other. But the standard that measures two things is
something different from either.”
The
conclusion is obviously untrue. One can tell that one man is taller than
another without any reference to a standard of measurement, and doubtless
primitive men did so and do so. There are standards of measurement, but there
is no absolute standard. If people thought as loosely about length as they do
about right and wrong, Britain and France would have waged a series of
religious wars between the adherents of the yard and those of the metre. But the transformation shows us something more. Mr.
Lewis writes about measuring a set of moral ideas, a notion which I find unduly
materialistic. But his notion of a standard is a standard of moral perfection
to which nobody conforms all the time. In fact it might be possible to grade
different moralities, as one can grade, say, mathematical or musical
performances. But one could not do so in terms of moral perfection. One can say
that one piece of conduct or one set of moral ideas is better than another. But
one cannot say there is a best standard. A simple example will show why this is
so. I find a man bleeding by the roadside. I certainly ought to help him in
some way. But the help that I can give depends on my knowledge and skill. If I
know nothing about first aid I can do a little, if I have taken a fist aid
course I can do more, if I am a surgeon a great deal more. I must always do the
best I can, and it can be argued that every one has the duty to learn some
first aid, so that he can stop a bleeding artery. It can hardly be argued that
everyone should learn surgery. The ideal man is doubtless skilled in surgery,
psychiatry and other cognate subjects, and if Mr. Lewis is correct, can even
pray with enough efficiency to pull off at least an occasional miracle. But he
is useless as a standard in this case. The practical standard is not the ideal
man but the man who can do a little better than myself, the man who has taken
the first aid course which I didn’t take, or memorized the location of the
nearest telephone box, which I didn’t. An absolute or ideal standard of conduct
is useless. And because it is useless it is immoral, in the sense that it
actually leads to a less good life than the practical standard. This is one of
the main reasons why, as a matter of hard fact, religion does not produce a
higher level of moral conduct in its adherents than does irreligion. It sets
standards which are impossible because they are self-contradictory. I cannot
learn surgery, Chinese, diving, fire-fighting, infantile hygiene, wrestling,
rock-climbing, weight-lifting and all the other accomplishments which might
enable me to save a life. In the same way I cannot be a moral paragon in all
respects. But I could always, or almost always, have done a little better than
I actually did.
Mr.
Lewis finds it unintelligible that we should be dissatisfied with our actual
conduct unless an absolute standard of conduct exists. He can understand it if
our ancestors fell from such a standard. It seems to me quite equally intelligible
if our standard is, on the whole, rising. Once a conscious being can form any
idea of the future he will wish it to be in some respects more satisfactory
than the present. He will realize that some of the unpleasantness of the
present arises from his own past actions, and will wish not to repeat such
actions in future. For example, he may wake up with a headache and determine
never again to drink so much whisky. This is a very elementary type of moral
decision, but it is one. The passage to altruistic conduct is a more
complicated matter. But one can regret past behavior and resolve to do better
without any altruism, and the possibility of doing so without any supernatural
standard is the point at issue.
Our own
moral behavior is complicated by two facts. We have a cerebral structure which
sometimes generates emotions more appropriate to a primitive savage than a
civilized man. And we live in a society whose customs and laws are at least
several generations out-of-date in relation to its productive forces, that is
to say, to the jobs on which people are engaged. For both these reasons, we are
frequently dissatisfied by our own conduct and that of our neighbours.
I can see no reason to postulate either a god or a devil to explain this state
of affairs.
Supposing
there were an extra-human, or at least superhuman, standard of morality, a
doctrine which I regard for the reasons explained above as dangerous and
untrue, Mr. Lewis’ next point would certainly not follow. “If you look at the
present state of the world”, he writes on page 30, “it’s pretty plain that
humanity has been making some big mistake. We’re on the wrong road. And if that
is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.” Some of our
religious teachers claim (and in a few cases with justice) not to be
reactionaries. Mr. Lewis can make no such claim. Now, supposing I were a
performing sea-lion extremely anxious to please my keeper, and aware that I
could not yet balance as many balls on my nose as he wished, it would not follow
that I had made any one big mistake. Much more probably I should have made a
lot of little ones. I am a critic (most people think too violent a critic) of
our present social system. But I don’t think it is one big mistake. I don’t
think it is a mistake that I should be allowed to own a toothbrush, or even a
dwelling house. I think it a mistake that I should be allowed to own ten acres
in the City of Westminster, though this was not unreasonable five hundred years
ago when this area was open country. I think it a mistake that I should be paid
to give lectures to a few students rather than make really good talking films
for a larger number, but this method of teaching was quite reasonable even
fifty years ago. And so on.
Supposing that the moral obligations which we recognize are the standard set by
a superhuman personal being, it seems just as probable that such a being for
some reason prefers us to improve our conduct gradually by learning from our
own mistakes, rather than use more drastic methods to make us good. The history
of man in the last few thousand years can be regarded as a series of moral
challenges to which men have responded by remodeling their conduct. Sometimes
this remodeling involved the collapse of a political system, as with the Roman
Empire, sometimes only its transformation, as with the decay of feudalism in
Britain. Such challenges have been met more or less satisfactorily in the past.
They might have been arranged by a superhuman being. However, I think they are
mainly the result of changes in productive forces. Thus improvements in
transport and food production made it possible for a hundred thousand or more
people to live in one city, and this demanded a new code of right and wrong.
Further improvements in transport made the city too small a political unit, and
so on. We are up against a very severe moral challenge at the present time. If
we think it came out of the blue from a supernatural being it seems to me that
we are much less likely to meet it effectively than if we think that it came
about through changes in industry and transport which have given us on the one
hand the possibility of universal plenty in a world community, and on the other
hand the atomic bomb and the long-range bomber. If we think our only course is
to go back, we shall not meet it at all.
So much
for Mr. Lewis’ argument from moral obligation. He has a few others, perhaps
rather better. For example, if the universe is not the work of a creative mind
he argues that thought is merely a by-product of chemical reactions in the
brain. “But if so,” he asks (p. 38) “how can I trust my own thinking to be
true? … Unless I believe in God, I can’t believe in thought: so I can never use
thought to disbelieve in God.” Let us suppose the creator has made intelligent
beings on two planets. On one they are endowed with free will, which they use
to such effect that most of them, after unhappy lives, go to eternal torment
after death. On the other, they behave well and live happily, either ceasing to
exist when they die, or going on to eternal bliss. They are all, however,
afflicted with a peculiar mental set-up which leads them to believe, when they
think of such matters, that there is only a finite number of prime numbers; and
a good deal of time is wasted in tabulating them, in the hope of finding the
largest one. I think the second world is considerably easier than the first to
reconcile with the hypothesis of a benevolent creator. In fact, if we were the
work of an almighty hand, and yet with no exceptions (or possibly one
exception) our moral conduct is imperfect, is it not at least highly probable
that our reasoning powers are equally imperfect? As a matter of fact we know
them to be so. For over two thousand years all educated men believed Euclid to
have proved several propositions which he did not prove. I don’t “believe in
thought” as Mr. Lewis perhaps does, as a process bound to lead to truth. I
believe in it as a process which fairly often does so. But if I believed in an
almighty creator I should certainly believe that he could make me think
anything he wished, and should therefore have no guarantee that my thought
processes have any validity. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may very
well wish that the creator had induced Rutherford into logical errors when he
started thinking about atomic nuclei. And if the creator exists, it is highly
probable that he has deliberately made it impossible for us to think about
other things which would be even more dangerous. Thus I should be prepared to reverse
Mr. Lewis’ statement and say that if I believe in God, I can’t believe in
thought.
Let me
be perfectly frank. I can’t give an account of thought which is any better than
Mr. Lewis’. But then I know a great deal less about the universe than he thinks
he knows. In particular I don’t expect that anyone will be able to give even a
moderately satisfactory account until a lot more is known about our brains. I
don’t think thought is a mere by-product of physical or chemical processes in
these organs. But if Mr. Lewis has ever been anaesthetized, or even drunk, he
must admit that, at least in this present wicked world, his capacity for
thought depends on the chemical state of his brain. On the other hand the
chemical state of his brain does not depend, except to a very slight extent, on
what he is thinking. By putting a narcotic in his coffee I could alter this
state so that he could no longer think. And I could do this equally well
whether he were thinking of the college wine cellar or the attributes of God.
For this reason I think our account of thought will have to wait for our
account of our brains. I think that when certain work now half finished is
published, we shall know a lot more both about cerebral physiology and about
how we do at least the classificatory part of thinking.
I think
I have now gone over the main arguments on which Mr. Lewis relies to make
listeners share his theories as to the existence and nature of God. I have
dealt with them in some detail because he was allowed a great deal of time by
the B.B.C., and those who think otherwise are not allowed time in proportion to
their numbers in the population. And, as happened to me in July, 1947, if they
want to say anything particularly effective, they are not allowed to do so. But
Mr. Lewis needs attacking particularly because of his attempts, which by no
means all Christian apologists make, to attack morality in the name of
religion. “If the universe is not governed by absolute goodness”, he writes (p.
31) “then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless.” In other words, unless
you share a large part of his beliefs, there is no point in trying to be good.
It may be that “in the long run” the human race will come to an end without
handing on its ethical, intellectual and cultural achievements to any other
rational beings. This conclusion was inevitable if Newtonian physics were true.
The clock had been wound up by the creator, and was bound to run down. If
Newtonian physics are not true, and diverge a great deal from truth when long
periods of time are considered, it may not be correct. But even if it is
correct, I think that it is possible so to act as to make people (including
ourselves) happy. If the universe as a whole is not governed either by good or
evil, it is up to us to inject some goodness into it. And this is not a
hopeless task. It is a difficult one. And those who say it is hopeless make it
more difficult.
Curiously enough Mr. Lewis is as contemptuous of some of the arguments for
theism which others have used, as he is of lay morality. He does not think we
can deduce the existence of a creator from the physical universe. “In the same
way”, he writes on p. 21 “if there is anything above or behind the observed
facts in the case of stones or the weather, we, by studying them from outside,
could never hope to discover it.”
This is
rather startling from a religious apologist. Two centuries ago, Addison could
say of the heavenly bodies that:
“In reason’s ear they all rejoice
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
The hand that made us is divine.”
Mr. Lewis’
inner ear seems to be as deaf as my own to this song. Kant based his theism
both on the starry heavens and the moral law. Mr. Lewis’ theology seems to
stand on one leg only. And if, as I have tried to show, his arguments from the
moral law are illogical, this means that it has not got a leg to stand on.
In fact
in the long run Mr. Lewis may be working for rationalism. I think that his
stories which bring in witchcraft, astrology, demoniacal possession and so on,
will probably bring it home to a number of people that those who reject these
beliefs are a good long way towards rejecting religion altogether. But in the
short run Mr. Lewis is a danger to clear thinking, and one must turn aside from
more constructive work to show him up.