Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963

I am greatly shocked at your news. My correspondence with Borst was so pleasant and even so intimate that I feel his death as, in some sort, a personal loss. I am sure it will be deeply felt by all of you in many ways. I will try not to give Miss Boxill as much trouble as I gave her predecessor.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ELSIE SNICKERS (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

May 18th 1953

Dear Mrs Snickers

No. I don’t think sin is completely accounted for by faulty reasoning nor that it can be completely cured by re-education. That view has, indeed, been put forward: by Socrates and, in the early 19th Century, by Godwin. But I think it overlooked the (to me) obviously central fact that our will is not necessarily determined by our reason. If it were, then, as you say, what are called ‘sins’ wd. not be sins at all but only mistakes, and would require not repentances but merely correction.

But surely daily experience shows that it is just not so. A man’s reason sees perfectly clearly that the resulting discomfort and inconvenience will far outweigh the pleasure of the ten minutes in bed. Yet he stays in bed: not at all because his reason is deceived but because desire is stronger than reason. A woman knows that the sharp ‘last word’ in an argument will produce a serious quarrel which was the very thing she had intended to avoid when that argument began and which may permanently destroy her happiness. Yet she says it: not at all because her reason is deceived but because the desire to score a point is at the moment stronger than her reason. People–you and I among them-constantly choose between two courses of action the one which we know to be the worse: because, at the moment, we prefer the gratification of our anger, lust, sloth, greed, vanity, curiosity or cowardice, not only to the known will of God but even to what we know will make for our own real comfort and security. If you don’t recognise this, then I must solemnly assure you that either [you] are an angel, or else are still living in ‘a fool’s paradise’: a world of illusion.

Of course it is true that many people are so mis-educated or so psychopathic that their freedom of action is v. much curtailed & their responsibility therefore v. small. We cannot remember that too much when we are tempted to judge harshly the acts of other people whose difficulties we don’t know. But we know that some of our own acts have sprung from evil will (proud, resentful, cowardly, envious, lascivious or spiteful will) although we knew better, and that what we need is not-or not only-re-education but repentance, God’s forgiveness, and His Grace to help us to do better next time. Until one has faced this fact one is a child.

And it is not the function of psychotherapy to make us face this. Its work is the non-moral aspects of conduct. You must not go to the psychologists for spiritual guidance. (One goes to the dentist to cure one’s toothache, not to teach one in what spirit to bear it if it cannot be cured: for that you must go to God and God’s spokesmen).

For this reason I am rather sorry that you have taken Psychology as a subject for your academic course. A continued interest in it on the part of those who have had psychotherapeutic treatment is usually, I think, not a good thing. At least, not until a long interval has elapsed and their personal interest in it, the interest connected with their own case, has quite died away. At least that is how it seems to me. All blessings.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W): TS

REF.67/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20th May 1953.

Dear Nell,

By all means rope me in as a reference to ‘the integrity of the family’: a subject on which I feel I can speak with conviction. I return the form. Court Stairs must be looking lovely now. Love to Alan and yourself. I’d write more, but there is the devil of a mail this morning.

Yours ever,

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

May 20th 1953

Dear Miss Bodle

Your letter written on Good Friday reached me today. I was a little shocked at first to hear of a child who found The Pilgrims Progress boring:

(#ulink_cf0e0aa5-fe6b-5e12-a637-88f5fad37c33) but then I remembered that the dialogue, of which there is a good deal, does interrupt the story with matter no child cd. be expected to enjoy.

The restraints imposed on you by ‘secular education’ are, no doubt, very galling.

(#ulink_0ddd8e71-bf54-598a-a6f1-dcbad85062f9) But I wonder whether secular education will do us all the harm the secularists hope. Secular teachers will. But Christian teachers in secular schools may, I sometimes think, do more good precisely because they are not allowed to give religious instruction in class. At least I think that, as a child, I shd. have been very allured and impressed by the discovery–which must be made when questions are asked–that the teacher believed firmly in a whole mass of things he wasn’t allowed to teach! Let them give us the charm of mystery if they please.

It was v. nice to hear from you again. All blessings on you and your work.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

May 21st 1953

Dear Roger

A good many disturbances made me postpone reading the new story

(#ulink_5df39137-d0e6-5b03-b073-9cd25d5038a3) and then (for much longer) writing about it. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It is best after they have left the Castle–the night in the cave is the high light of the whole story–but all enjoyable. My brother read it with such gusto that he was moved to go back & read The Luck of the Lynns and then the Lewis Carroll, all with great satisfaction.

It is a very odd fact that I enjoy a story no more, and perhaps even a little less, for having been at the scene of operations. It certainly isn’t your fault, for I have had the same experience with other authors: but certainly the memory of the real Beaumaris did not help me. I thought the way in which the malapropisms were slightly toned down in this book–appropriately, as the malapropist gets older–was v. skilful.

I’m not in the best of health at present but perhaps better than I was. The last Narnian story is complete & shall go to you when typed: my present leisure, such as it is, goes mainly on proofs and bibliography for the OHEL volume.

Love to all of you and many thanks for the book.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College