If I were now writing a book I could bring the question between those thinkers and myself to a much finer point. One of them described Romanticism as spilled religion. I accept the description. And I agree that he who has religion ought not to spill it. But does it follow that he who finds it spilled should avert his eyes? How if there is a man to whom those bright drops on the floor are the beginning of a trail which, duly followed, will lead him in the end to taste the cup itself? How if no other trail, humanly speaking, were possible? Seen in this light my ten-years-old quarrel both with the counter-Romantics on the one hand and with the sub-Romantics on the other (the apostles of instinct and even of gibberish) assumes, I trust, a certain permanent interest. Out of this double quarrel came the dominant image of my allegory the barren, aching rocks of its North, the foetid swamps of its South, and between them the Road on which alone mankind can safely walk.
The things I have symbolised by North and South, which are to me equal and opposite evils, each continually strengthened and made plausible by its critique of the other, enter our experience on many different levels. In agriculture we have to fear both the barren soil and the soil which is irresistibly fertile. In the animal kingdom, the crustacean and the jellyfish represent two low solutions of the problem of existence. In our eating, the palate revolts both from excessive bitter and excessive sweet. In art, we find on the one hand, purists and doctrinaires, who would rather (like Scaliger) lose a hundred beauties than admit a single fault, and who cannot believe anything to be good if the unlearned spontaneously enjoy it: on the other hand, we find the uncritical and slovenly artists who will spoil the whole work rather than deny themselves any indulgence of sentiment or humour or sensationalism. Everyone can pick out among his own acquaintance the Northern and Southern types the high noses, compressed lips, pale complexions, dryness and taciturnity of the one, the open mouths, the facile laughter and tears, the garrulity and (so to speak) general greasiness of the others. The Northerners are the men of rigid systems whether sceptical or dogmatic, Aristocrats, Stoics, Pharisees, Rigorists, signed and sealed members of highly organised Parties. The Southerners are by their very nature less definable; boneless souls whose doors stand open day and night to almost every visitant, but always with readiest welcome for those, whether Maenad or Mystagogue, who offer some sort of intoxication. The delicious tang of the forbidden and the unknown draws them on with fatal attraction; the smudging of all frontiers, the relaxation of all resistances, dream, opium, darkness, death, and the return to the womb. Every feeling is justified by the mere fact that it is felt: for a Northerner, every feeling on the same ground is suspect. An arrogant and hasty selectiveness on some narrow a priori basis cuts him off from the sources of life. In Theology also there is a North
pointing South on the seven Northern roads (in the fashion of the newspaper war maps) and others pointing North on the six southern roads, you would get a clear picture of the Holy War as I see it. You might amuse yourself by deciding where to put them a question that admits different answers. On the Northern front, for example, I should represent the enemy in occupation of Cruelsland and Superbia, and thus threatening the Pale Men with a pincer movement. But I dont claim to know; and doubtless the position shifts every day. 2. The name Mother Kirk was chosen because Christianity is not a very convincing name. Its defect was that it not unnaturally led the reader to attribute to me a much more definite Ecclesiastical position than I could really boast of. The book is concerned solely with Christianity as against unbelief. Denominational questions do not come in. 3. In this preface the autobiographical element in John has had to be stressed because the source of the obscurities lay there. But you must not assume that everything in the book is autobiographical. I was attempting to generalise, not to tell people about my own life.
C. S. LEWIS
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Preface to the Third Edition
BOOK 1 THE DATA
1 The Rules
2 The Island
3 The Eastern Mountains
4 Leah for Rachel
5 Ichabod
6 Quem Quaeritis in Sepulchro? Non Est Hic
BOOK 2 THRILL
1 Dixit Insipiens
2 The Hill
3 A Little Southward
4 Soft Going
5 Leah for Rachel
6 Ichabod
7 Non Est Hic
8 Great Promises
BOOK 3 THROUGH DARKEST ZEITGEISTHEIM
1 Eschropolis
2 A South Wind
3 Freedom of Thought
4 The Man Behind the Gun
5 Under Arrest
6 Poisoning the Wells
7 Facing the Facts
8 Parrot Disease
9 The Giant Slayer
BOOK 4 BACK TO THE ROAD
1 Let Grill Be Grill
1 The Same Yet Different
2 The Synthetic Man
3 Limbo
4 The Black Hole
5 Superbia
6 Ignorantia
7 Luxuria
8 The Northern Dragon
9 The Southern Dragon
10 The Brook
About the Author
Other Books By
About the Publisher
BOOK I
THE DATA