What Hath Modern Man Wrought?

The Triumph of Science as the Collapse of the West

C.S. Lewis provides the inspiration for this post, as I have just completed That Hideous Strength, the first work of fiction I have read in years. Lewis himself is an interesting case study in terms of the critics of modernity. How often does one come across a thoroughly bourgeois American “Christian conservative” (in the mainstream GOP sense) who, aware only of the entertainments of his Narnia series, considers himself (more often, herself) a big fan of CS Lewis! They never consider that Lewis looked upon the mass culture being built by postwar American influence with appalled aggravation. They love the Lewis that produced for them a land of interesting talking animals and charming children-kings and queens, but they could hardly fathom the Lewis that would stand aghast at the continued collapse of the Old World and the triumph of that engine of cultural decadence known— and beloved by his largest contemporary reader base— as the United States. CS Lewis, as Chronicles Magazine recently labelled him, saw himself as the last of Old Western Man.

The question that might arise from hearing this is what exactly did Lewis see as Tragic in the modern developments of Western Man. In a future post, I would like to explore his inaugural address to Cambridge in which he comments on the Great Divide that separates the Old from the New, but for now, there is much to consider in his portrayal of institutionalized evil throughout That Hideous Strength.

Lewis sees in the revolution of Science and Technology, not the mechanisms that bring Man from lesser stages to higher ones, but rather a great facade that veils the collapse of civilization and the inauguration of evil under the banner and rhetoric of hysterical optimism. What is happening in the world— and has been happening since Lewis wrote the book at the end of the Second World War— is the cult of humanity has acted as a vehicle for a cosmic struggle in which the forces of Darkness would have seemed to gain the upper hand against a millennium and a half of Darkness’ suppression by the Christianization of the West.

Of course, being a medievalist himself, proponent of the long-extinguished age of Christian chivalry and feudalism, it is not the twentieth century that represents the birth of this trajectory, but rather the final achievement of modern man’s hard fought effort, beginning in the Enlightenment, to throw off the yolks of the Old Order. In other words, the twentieth century for Lewis was not merely a century of evil because of the examples of various totalitarianisms throughout the East, but in fact because also of developments in the Allied West: developments that made a cult of empirical science, the technification of social life, the rise of experts as society’s guiding minds, the quest for efficiency and practicality at the expense of beauty, tradition, and old ideals.

One finds the tragedy of history’s modern unfolding in a conversation between Merlin, protector of Ancient England, recently come back to life in the twentieth century, and the Director— acting as a sort of inspiration for the resistance against the Institute of Science that sought to remake the socio-political order. Earlier in the book, it was implied that the Great War was already underway, the confrontation between two cosmic forces going on beyond realization of the optimistic, “white pilled,” and triumphant Western peoples, duped as they had been by a Press that kept them in ideological and sentimental conformity, and addicted as they were to the comforts and leisures of their artificially provided standards of living that catered to their ever-cheapening sensations. The opponents of England were in their midst; in fact they were in power, gladly handing over England’s inheritance to the gods of finance, the dreamers of scientific endeavor, the prophets of material grandeur.

Merlin asks the director:

“Has not our Fair Lord made it a law for Himself that He will not send down the Powers to mend or mar in this Earth until the end of all things? Or is this the end that is even now coming to pass?”

And the response:

“It may be the beginning of the end... But I know nothing of that. But if men by enginry and natural philosophy learn to fly into the Heavens, and come, in the flesh, among the heavenly powers and trouble them, He has not forbidden the Powers to react. For all this is within the natural order. A wicked man did learn so to do. He came flying, by a subtle engine, to where Mars dwells in Heaven and to where Venus dwells, and took me with him as a captive. And there I spoke with the true Oyéresu face to face. You understand me?”

The Director continues:

“And so the wicked man had brought about… the thing he least intended. For now there was one man in the world — even myself — who was known to the Oyeresu and spoke their tongue, neither by God’s miracle nor by magic from Numinor, but naturally, as when two men meet in a road. Our enemies had taken away from themselves the protection of the Seventh Law.”

The response from Merlin indicates he was completely ignorant of all that had transpired since the days of King Arthur and the Christianization of Britain and the West. If the enemies were here, naturally the King—protector of the Christian realm— should be made aware:

“If the Powers must tear me in pieces to break our enemies, God’s will be done. But is it yet come to that? This Saxon king of yours who sits at Windsor, now. Is there no help in him?”

But the King no longer had power, we are now in the age of technocratic “leadership” rather than kingly rule: “He has no power in this matter.”

Merlin understands the enemy was within the gates, the King having no longer any power over them:

“Is it then his great men — the counts and legates and bishops — who do the evil and he does not know. of it?”

The Director affirms this is the case, though these men are mere pawns.

Merlin wants to seek the remnant of the English Christian order:

“But what of the true clerks? Is there no help in them? It cannot be that all your priests and bishops are corrupted.”

The Director denies this strategy:

“The Faith itself is torn in pieces since your day and speaks with a divided voice. Even if it were made whole, the Christians are but a tenth part of the people.There is no help there.”

England ought to look at her Christian neighbors for aid:

“Then let us seek help from over sea. Is there no Christian prince in Neustria or Ireland or Benwick who would come in and cleanse Britain if he were called?”

This too was out of the question:

“There is no Christian prince left. These other countries are even as Britain, or else sunk deeper still in the disease.”

Merlin again:

“Then we must go higher. We must go to him whose office it is to put down tyrants and give life to dying kingdoms.We must call on the Emperor.”

However:

“There is no Emperor.”

Merlin was stunned:

“No Emperor…” began Merlin, and then his voice died away. He sat still for some minutes wrestling with a world which he had never envisaged.”

“This is a cold age in which I have awaked. If all this West part of the world is apostate, might it not be lawful, in our great need, to look farther... beyond Christendom? Should we not find some even among the heathen who are not wholly corrupt? There were tales in my day of some such: men who knew not the articles of our most holy Faith, but who worshipped God as they could and acknowledged the Law of Nature.

Sir, I believe it would be lawful to seek help even there. Beyond Byzantium. It was rumoured also that there was knowledge in those lands — an Eastern circle and wisdom that came West from Numinor. I know not where — Babylon, Arabia, or Cathay. You said your ships had sailed all round the earth, above and beneath.”

But Merlin still did not understand.

The Director

shook his head. “You do not understand,” he said. “The poison was brewed in these West lands but it has spat itself everywhere by now. However far you went you would find the machines, the crowded cities, the empty thrones, the false writings, the barren beds: men maddened with false promises and soured with true miseries, worshipping the iron works of their own hands, cut off from Earth their mother and from the Father in Heaven.

You might go East so far that East became West and you returned to Britain across the great Ocean, but even so you would not have come out anywhere into the light. The shadow of one dark wing is over all Tellus.”

[Bold emphasis added— the West committed suicide]

“Is it then the end?” asked Merlin.

It may be nearing the end, perhaps, but the end is not ultimately characterized by Darkness’ victory:

“The Hideous Strength holds all this Earth in its fist to squeeze as it wishes. But for their one mistake, there would be no hope left. If of their own evil will they had not broken the frontier and let in the celestial Powers, this would be their moment of victory.Their own strength has betrayed them. They have gone to the gods who would not have come to them, and pulled down Deep Heaven on their heads.”

The twentieth century, while promoted by the Press, the educational system, the churches, the capitalists, and the governments as being a moment of progress and human triumph was in fact, under Lewis’s framework, man’s entry into the Wasteland. Souped up with dazzling lights, plush comforts, and mind-numbing pleasantries, man abandoned any reference to the overriding mystery of Creation, the struggles of cosmic powers, and his duty to defend both ancestor and heir.