wanting it to happen

My favorite part of Perelandra, the first book in Lewis' space trilogy, is the part in which Weston is making a speech which Ransom is translating into Malacandrian. It brings an amazing amount of clarity to silly humanist reasoning. Here's just the last bit.

"I may fall," said Weston. "But while I live I will not, with such a key in my hand, consent to close the gates of the future on my race. What lies in that future, beyond our present ken, passes imagination to conceive: it is enough for me that there is a Beyond."
"He is saying," Ransom translated, "that he will not stop trying to do all this unless you kill him. And he says that though he doesn't know what will happen to the creatures sprung from us, he wants it to happen very much."

Whose wish?

"'I see,' said John, 'But what was the second interpretation?'
'In the second,' said Reason, 'the bridge signifies the giant's own favorite doctrine of the wish-fulfillment dream. For this he also wishes to use and not to use.'
'I don't see how he wishes not to use it'
'Does he not keep on telling people that the Landlord is a wish-fulfillment dream?'
'Yes. Surely that is true- the only true thing he did say.'
'Now, think. Is it really true that the giant and Sigismund, and the people in Eschropolis, and Mr. Halfways, are going about filled with a longing that there should be a Landlord, and cards of rules, and a mountain land beyond that brook, with a possibility of a black hole?'
Then John stood still in the road to think. And first he gave a shake of his shoulders, and then he began to laugh until he was almost shaken to pieces. And when he had nearly finished, the vastness and impudence and simplicity of the fraud which had been practiced came over him all again, and he laughed harder. And just when he had nearly recovered and was beginning to get his breath again, suddenly he had a picture in his mind of Victoriana and Glugly and Gus Halfways and how they would look if a rumour reached them that there was a Landlord and he was coming to Eschropolis. This was too much for him, and he laughed so hard that the broken chains of the Spirit of the Age fell off his wrists altogether. But all the while Reason sat and watched him
'You had better hear the rest of the argument,' she said at last, 'It may not be such a laughing matter as you suppose.'
'Oh yes- the argument, said John, wiping his eyes.
'You see now the direction in which the giant does not want the wish-fulfillment theory used?'
'I'm not sure that I do,' said John.
'Don't you see what follows if you adopt his own rules?'
'No,' said John very loudly: for a terrible apprehension was stealing over him.
'But you must see,' said Reason, 'that for him and all his subjects disbelief in the Landlord is a wish-fulfillment dream.'
'I shall not adopt his rules.'
'You would be foolish not to have profited at all by your stay in his country,' said Reason, 'There is some force in the wish-fulfillment doctrine.'
'Some, perhaps, but very little.'
'I only wanted to make it clear that whatever force it had was in favour of the Landlord's existence, not against it- specially in your case.'
'Why specially in mine?' said John sulkily.
'Because the Landlord is the thing you have been most afraid of all your life. I do not say that any theory should be accepted because it is disagreeable, but if any should, then belief in the Landlord should be accepted first.'" C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress, Book 4, Chapter IV

To reason or not to reason

"In the warmth of the afternoon they went on again, and it came into John's mind to ask the lady the meaning of her second riddle.
'It has two meanings,' said she, 'and in the first the bridge signifies Reasoning. The Spirit of the Age wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument.'
'How is that?'
'You heard what they said. If anyone argues with them they say that he is rationalizing his own desires, and therefore need not be answered. But if anyone listens to them they will argue themselves to show that their own doctrines are true.'
'I see. And what is the cure for this?'
'You must ask them whether any reasoning is valid or not. If they say no, then their own doctrines, being reached by reasoning, fall to the ground. If they say yes, then they will have to examine your arguments and refute them on their merits: for if some reasoning is valid, for all they know, your bit of reasoning may be one of the valid bits.'"
C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress, Book 4, Chapter IV

What is the colour of things in the dark?

"'You said that there were two things to say,' said John, 'What was the second?'
'The second was this. Did you think that the things you saw in the dungeon were real: that we really are like that?'
'Of course I did. It is only our skin that hides them.'
'Then I must ask you the same question that I asked the giant. What is the colour of things in the dark?'
'I suppose no color at all.'
'And what of their shape? Have you any notion of it save as what could be seen or touched, or what you could collect from many seeing and touchings?'
'I don't know that I have.'
'Then do you not see how the giant has deceived you?'
'Not quite clearly.'
'He showed you by a trick what our inwards would look like if they were visible. That is, he showed you something that is not, but something that would be if the world were made all other than it is. But in the real world our inwards are invisible. They are not coloured shapes at all, they are feelings. The warmth in your limbs at this moment, the sweetness of your breath as you draw it in, the comfort in your belly because we breakfasted well, and your hunger for the next meal- these are the reality: all the sponges and tubes you saw in the dungeon are the lie.'
'But if I cut a man open I should see them in him.'
'A man cut open is, so far, not a man: and if you did not sew him up speedily you would be seeing not organs, but death. I am not denying that death is ugly: but the giant made you believe that life is ugly.'
'I cannot forget the man with the cancer.'
'What you saw was unreality. The ugly lump was the giant's trick: the reality was pain which has no colour or shape.'
'Is that much better?'
'That depends on the man.'
'I think I begin to see.'
'Is it surprising that things should look strange if you see them as they are not? If you take an organ out of a man's body- or a longing out of the dark part of a man's mind- and give to the one shape and colour, and to the other the self-consciousness, which they never have in reality, would you expect them to be other than monstrous?'
'Is there, then, no truth at all in what I saw under the giant's eyes?'
'Such pictures are useful to physicians.'
'Then I really am clean,' said John. 'I am not- like those.'
Reason smiled, 'There, too,' she said, 'there is truth mixed up with the giant's conjuring tricks. It will do you know harm to remember from time to time the ugly sights inside. You come of a race that cannot afford to be proud.'" C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress, Book 4, Chapter III

Surprised by Joy

"In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself i for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere-- 'Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,' as Herbert says, 'fine nets and stratagems.' God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous."

I just finished reading Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis's telling of his early life. It's very interesting (and closely related to his book The Pilgrim's Regress). It isn't child friendly actually, because Lewis's life was not G rated. But it's full of insights and quotable quotes like the above. It's definitely worthwhile in helping to understand how the great man thought.