The Pilgrim's Regress, by C. S. Lewis, Annotated: Only the Best Bits! Part 5: The Giant Zeitgeist

This series was first posted on Data Secret Lox-I’m posting one entry per week here.

Part 1: The Preface
Part 2: Puritania
Part 3: Mr. Enlightenment
Part 4: Mr. Vertue and the Clevers

Captured by the Zeitgeist

We’re hardly skipping anything at all today. After limping out of Eschropolis John finds himself facing an obstacle along the road.

Now John looked up with his teeth chattering and saw that he was entering into a long valley of rocks with high cliffs on the right and the left.
 
And the far end of the valley was barred with a high cliff all across except for one narrow pass in the middle. The moonlight lay white on this cliff and right amidst it was a huge shadow like a man’s head. John glanced over his shoulder and saw that the shadow was thrown by a mountain behind him, which he had passed in the darkness.
 
It was far too cold for a man to stay still in the wind, and I dreamed of John going stumblingly forward up the valley till now he had come to the rock-wall and was about to enter the pass. But just as he rounded a great boulder and came lull in sight of the pass he saw some armed men sitting in it by a brazier; and immediately they sprang up and barred his way.
 
‘You can’t pass here,’ said their leader.
 
‘Where can I pass?’ said John.
 
‘Where are you going to?’
 
‘I am going to find the sea in order to set sail for an Island that I have seen in the West.’
 
‘Then you cannot pass.’
 
‘By whose orders?’
 
‘Do you not know that all this country belongs to the Spirit of the Age?’
 
‘I am sorry,’ said John, ‘I didn’t know. I have no wish to trespass. I will go round some other way. I will not go through his country at all.’
 
‘You fool,’ said the captain, ‘you are in his country now. This pass is the way out of it, not the way into it. He welcomes strangers. His quarrel is with runaways.’ Then he called to one of his men and said, ‘Here, Enlightenment, take this fugitive to our Master. ’
 
A young man stepped out and clapped fetters upon John’s hands: then putting the length of chain over his own shoulder and giving it a jerk he began to walk down the valley dragging John after him.
 
Then I saw them going down the valley, the way John had come up, with the moon full in their faces: and up against the moon was the mountain which had cast the shadow, and now it looked more like a man than before.
 
‘Mr. Enlightenment,’ said John at last. ‘Is it really you?’
 
‘Why should it not be?’ said the guard.
 
‘You looked so different when I met you before.’
 
‘We have never met before.’
 
‘What? Did you not meet me at the inn on the borders of Puritania and drive me five miles in your pony trap?’
 
‘Oh, that ?’ said the other. ‘That must have been my father, old Mr. Enlightenment. He is a vain and ignorant old man, almost a Puritanian, and we never mention him in the family. I am Sigismund Enlightenment and I have long since quarrelled with my father.’
 
They went on in silence for a bit. Then Sigismund spoke again.
 
‘It may save trouble if I tell you at once the best reason for not trying to escape: namely, that there is nowhere to escape to.’
 
‘How do you know there is no such place as my Island?’
 
‘Do you wish very much that there was?’
 
‘I do.’
 
‘Have you never before imagined anything to be true because you greatly wished for it?’
 
John thought for a little, and then he said ‘Yes.’
 
‘And your Island is like an imagination—isn’t it?’
 
‘I suppose so.’
 
‘It is just the sort of thing you would imagine merely through wanting it—the whole thing is very suspicious. But answer me another question. Have you ever—ever once yet—had a vision of the Island that did not end in brown girls?’
 
‘I don’t know that I have. But they weren’t what I wanted.’
 
‘No. What you wanted was to have them, and with them, the satisfaction of feeling that you were good. Hence the Island.’
 
‘You mean-’
 
‘The Island was the pretence that you put up to conceal your own lusts from yourself. ’
 
‘All the same—I was disappointed when it ended like that.’
 
‘Yes. You were disappointed at finding that you could not have it both ways. But you lost no time in having it the way you could: you did not reject the brown girls.’
 
They went on in silence for a time and always the mountain with its odd shape grew bigger in front of them; and now they were in its shadow. Then John spoke again, half in his sleep, for he was very tired.
 
‘After all, it isn’t only my Island. I might go back—back East and try the mountains.’
 
‘The mountains do not exist.’
 
‘How do you know?’
 
‘Have you ever been there? Have you ever seen them except at night or in a blaze of sunrise?’
 
‘No.’
 
‘And your ancestors must have enjoyed thinking that when their leases were out they would go up to the mountains and live in the Landlord’s castle—It is a more cheerful prospect than going —nowhere.’
 
‘I suppose so.’
 
‘It is clearly one more of the things people wish to believe.’
 
‘But do we never do anything else? Are all the things I see at this moment there, only because I wish to see them?’
 
‘Most of them,’ said Sigismund. ‘For example—you would like that thing in front of us to be a mountain; that is why you think it is a mountain.’
 
‘Why?’ cried John. ‘What is it?’
 
And then in my nightmare I thought John became like a terrified child and put his hands over his eyes not to see the giant; but young Mr. Enlightenment tore his hands away and forced his face round and made him see the Spirit of the Age where it sat like one of the stone giants, the size of a mountain, with its eyes shut. Then Mr. Enlightenment opened a little door among the rocks and flung John into a pit made in the side of a hill, just opposite the giant, so that the giant could look into it through its gratings.
 
‘He will open his eyes presently,’ said Mr. Enlightenment. Then he locked the door and left John in prison.

Some Context

From Lewis’ autobiography, we find a concurring passage about The Island (ie, Desire) leading to Brown Girls (ie, lust).

One thing, however, I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it is not a disguise of sexual desire. Those who think that if adolescents were all provided with suitable mistresses we should soon hear no more of "immortal longings" are certainly wrong. I learned this mistake to be a mistake by the simple, if discreditable, process of repeatedly making it… I repeatedly followed that path--to the end. And at the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly non-moral on that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a "lower" pleasure instead of a "higher". It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. The hounds had changed scent. One had caught the wrong quarry. You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. I did not recoil from the erotic conclusion with chaste horror, exclaiming, "Not that!" My feelings could rather have been expressed in the words, "Quite. I see. But haven't we wandered from the real point?" Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.

A Prisoner of the Giant

John lay in his fetters all night in the cold and stench of the dungeon. And when morning came there was a little light at the grating, and, looking round, John saw that he had many fellow prisoners, of all sexes and ages. But instead of speaking to him, they all huddled away from the light and drew as far back into the pit, away from the grating, as they could. But John thought that if he could breathe a little fresh air he would be better, and he crawled up to the grating. But as soon as he looked out and saw the giant, it crushed the heart out of him: and even as he looked, the giant began to open his eyes and John, without knowing why he did it, shrank from the grating. Now I dreamed that the giant’s eyes had this property, that whatever they looked on became transparent. Consequently, when John looked round into the dungeon, he retreated from his fellow prisoners in terror, for the place seemed to be thronged with demons. A woman was seated near him, but he did not know it was a woman, because, through the face, he saw the skull and through that the brains and the passages of the nose, and the larynx, and the saliva moving in the glands and the blood in the veins: and lower down the lungs panting like sponges, and the liver, and the intestines like a coil of snakes. And when he averted his eyes from her they fell on an old man, and this was worse for the old man had a cancer. And when John sat down and drooped his head, not to see the horrors, he saw only the working of his own inwards. Then I dreamed of all these creatures living in that hole under the giant’s eye for many days and nights. And John looked round on it all and suddenly he fell on his face and thrust his hands into his eyes and cried out, ‘It is the black hole. There may be no Landlord, but it is true about the black hole. I am mad. I am dead. I am in hell for ever.’
 
Every day a jailor brought the prisoners their food, and as he laid down the dishes he would say a word to them. If their meal was flesh he would remind them that they were eating corpses, or give them some account of the slaughtering: or, if it was the inwards of some beast, he would read them a lecture in anatomy and show the likeness of the mess to the same parts in themselves—which was the more easily done because the giant’s eyes were always staring into the dungeon at dinner time. Or if the meal were eggs he would recall to them that they were eating the menstruum of a verminous fowl, and crack a few jokes with the female prisoners. So he went on day by day. Then I dreamed that one day there was nothing but milk for them, and the jailor said as he put down the pipkin:
 
‘Our relations with the cow are not delicate—as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions.’
 
Now John had been in the pit a shorter time than any of the others: and at these words something seemed to snap in his head and he gave a great sigh and suddenly spoke out in a loud, clear voice:
 
‘Thank heaven! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense.’
 
‘What do you mean?’ said the jailor, wheeling round upon him.
 
‘You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung.’
 
‘And pray, what difference is there except by custom?’
 
‘Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores up as food?’
 
‘So Nature is a person, then, with purposes and consciousness,’ said the jailor with a sneer. ‘In fact, a Landlady. No doubt it comforts you to imagine you can believe that sort of thing;’ and he turned to leave the prison with his nose in the air.
 
‘I know nothing about that,’ shouted John after him. ‘I am talking of what happens. Milk does feed calves and dung does not.’
 
‘Look here,’ cried the jailor, coming back, ‘we have had enough of this. It is high treason and I shall bring you before the Master.’ Then he jerked John up by his chain and began to drag him towards the door; but John as he was being dragged, cried out to the others, ‘Can’t you see it’s all a cheat?’ Then the jailor struck him in the teeth so hard that his mouth was filled with blood and he became unable to speak: and while he was silent the jailor addressed the prisoners and said:
 
‘You see he is trying to argue. Now tell me, someone, what is argument?’
 
There was a confused murmur.
 
‘Come, come,’ said the jailor. ‘You must know your catechisms by now. You, there’ (and he pointed to a prisoner little older than a boy whose name was Master Parrot), ‘what is argument?’
 
‘Argument,’ said Master Parrot, ‘is the attempted rationalization of the arguer’s desires.’
 
‘Very good,’ replied the jailor, ‘but you should turn out your toes and put your hands behind your back. That is better. Now: what is the proper answer to an argument proving the existence of the Landlord?’
 
‘The proper answer is, “You say that because you are a Steward.’”
 
‘Good boy. But hold your head up. That’s right. And what is the answer to an argument proving that Mr. Phally’s songs are just as brown as Mr. Halfways’?’
 
‘There are two only generally necessary to damnation,’ said Master Parrot. ‘The first is, “You say that because you are a Puritanian,” and the second is, “You say that because you are a sensualist.’”
 
‘Good. Now just one more. What is the answer to an argument turning on the belief that two and two make four?’
 
‘The answer is, “You say that because you are a mathematician.’”
 
‘You are a very good boy,’ said the jailor. ‘And when I come back I shall bring you something nice. And now for you he added, giving John a kick and opening the grating.

More Context

In 1932 when this book was written Freud was still alive and Freudian thought was still popular. Lewis wrote on this a bit more in his essay “Bulverism”

The Freudians have discovered that we exist as bundles of complexes. The Marxians have discovered that we exist as members of some economic class. In the old days it was supposed that if a thing seemed obviously true to a hundred men, then it was probably true in fact. Nowadays the Freudian will tell you to go and analyze the hundred: you will find that they all think Elizabeth a great queen because they all have a mother-complex. Their thoughts are psychologically tainted at the source. And the Marxist will tell you to go and examine the economic interests of the hundred; you will find that they all think freedom a good thing because they are all members of the bourgeoisie whose prosperity is increased by a policy of laissez-faire. Their thoughts are 'ideologically tainted' at the source.

It is difficult to find a clear point in Lewis’s autobiography that directly corresponds to John’s time in the Giant’s prison. The closest I can find is this passage, referring to his time as a young man before the war:

The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many-islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow "rationalism". Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless. The exceptions were certain people (whom I loved and believed to be real) and nature herself. That is, nature as she appeared to the senses. I chewed endlessly on the problem: "How can it be so beautiful and also so cruel, wasteful and futile?" Hence at this time I could almost have said with Santayana, "All that is good is imaginary; all that is real is evil." In one sense nothing less like a "flight from reality" could be conceived. I was so far from wishful thinking that I hardly thought anything true unless it contradicted my wishes.

Hardly, but not quite. For there was one way in which the world, as Kirk's rationalism taught me to see it, gratified my wishes. It might be grim and deadly but at least it was free from the Christian God.

In our next post John will encounter the maiden warrior Reason, and start to learn how to think.