Part 13

[12] Mr. Lewis’s predominant emotion is disgust and he is therefore snobbishly old-fashioned; Mr. Eliot’s is moral anxiety, and he is therefore snobbishly ‘advanced’--what seems old-fashioned or mediæval or Thomist in Mr. Eliot is really his greater (than the silly emotional orthodox mob’s) strictness in keeping up-to-date, in time with the universe of reason. He is at pains to discover the right side and to fight on it. Mr. Lewis is so disgusted with everything that he has abandoned all positive questions of right, and like a Swiss, retained nothing but his fighting conscience, a haughtiness of bearing in which alone he finds himself in sympathy with Mr. Eliot. In matters of faith they must certainly disagree. Mr. Eliot’s Toryism is modern, intellectual, in sober perspective. Mr. Lewis’s is petulantly old-fashioned, sentimental, ‘geometric’: the good, Swiss stern old days when everything happened anyhow, without historical significance or morality, are his fighting, anarchistic slogan against the presumptuous mob-consciousness of modern life. What Mr. Lewis fails to see is that if he devoted his energy to individualism (cultivating his own individuality) instead of anarchism (knocking the mob on the head with his individuality) the mob might develop a social regularity, an automatic geometricity that even he might share in without disturbance to his individuality; that it is the anarchism of a few that gives false historical significance to the days of man, not the co-operative unanimity of the many.

[13] See, for example, in Mr. Lewis’s _Time and Western Man_, the chapter _The Object as King of the Physical World_.

[14] To Mr. Lewis, Science, popularized magic, rather than Reason, the artist’s personal magic. (Compare, similarly, New Testament pseudo-primitive communism, with properly modernized Old Testament individualism.)

[15] ‘I, of course, admit that the principle I advocate is not for everybody.’--Mr. Lewis.

Transcriber’s Notes

The book cover image that accompanies some ebook formats was made by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. Surrounding characters have been used to indicate _italics_. Inconsistent use of hyphens has been retained save as noted below. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the book. The following changes to the original text are noted: p. 36 added period following ‘And it is.’ p. 86 changed single quotes to double quotes around “the constant and sacred harmony of life.”; added close single quote immediately after p. 98 retained spelling of ‘esthetic’ p. 109 added close parenthesis in ‘(Mr. Read’s phrase).’ p. 109 added hyphen to ‘the individual-real’ p. 128 added hyphen to ‘re-inforce’ in ‘space-men re-inforce’ p. 155 capitalized ‘To’ in ‘_The Man Who Told Lies To His Mother_’ p. 178 uncapitalized ‘queendom’ p. 196 changed ‘role’ to ‘rôle’ p. 199 changed ‘Bölshe’ to ‘Bölsche’ p. 204 added close quote following ‘maintain it.’ p. 209 joined unhyphenated ‘sincerity’ p. 215 changed single quotes to double quotes around “The fathers of our girl friends are lecherous,” and “Philosophy is teetotal whisky.”; added close single quote immediately after p. 216 changed ‘æsthlete’ to ‘æsthete’ footnote 3 changed ‘considerations’ to ‘consideration’ in ‘the essential consideration is’