alt.books.ghost-fiction

Adam Walter  (October 16, 2000)

I've just had a rather shocking experience--something on the level of Jungian synchronicity.  On impulse, I decided to pick up and re-read all of CS Lewis' "The Abolition of Man" tonight, and I'm simply awed by the correlation between this book--which I haven't read in at least 5 years--and Aickman's essay.  I realize this doesn't apply to ghost fiction directly, but I thought it might be of interest anyway.  
If not, please excuse this indulgence.   ;-)
   First, it's important to note that the two authors certainly come from different viewpoints regarding spiritual matters.  Lewis is a traditional theist, and Aickman has an interest wider than that tradition cares for--he is interested in the paranormal, for example.  However, the authors share a concern that the modern world has rejected "spirit" in favor of what Aickman termed "reason and scientific method."  It is truly startling how often the themes and arguments of these two meet--Lewis even comes around to using the example of "Faust" as a key reference, making exactly the same points Aickman returned to in his essay some 30 years later!
   It needs to be said that Lewis' book is not a religious book, but an ethical treatise.  His aim is to defend the idea of ultimate truth against mere relativist materialism.  This interest in ultimate truth is something he sees as having been dominant in all cultures, until recent times.  For this ultimate truth, he uses the eastern term "Tao"--
meaning the way, the right way, the one path.  And regarding the state of the world, Lewis may very well have endorsed this statement from Aickman: "I believe that at the time of the Industrial and French revolutions (I am not commenting upon the American one!), mankind took a wrong turning.  The beliefs that one day, by application of reason and the scientific method, everything will be known, and every problem and unhappiness solved, seem to me to have led to a situation where, first, we are in imminent danger of destroying the whole world, either with a loud report or by insatiable overconsumption and overbreeding, and where, second, everyone suffers from an existentialist angst, previously confined to the very few."
   Regarding science, Aickman says, "It has always seemed to me ... that nothing which is worthwhile can be predicted scientifically, let alone brought about, and least of all guaranteed...."  Lewis links the scientific impulse with magic, going so far as to call these two pursuits "twins."  He maintains that the 16th and 17th centuries were the "high noon" of both science and magic, and that they thrived together because they shared a goal--gaining power over one's environment, over nature.  A worldview based on science, Aickman says, ends essentially with a goal of attempting "...ceaselessly to modify the environment...."  Lewis is not entirely ready to throw away the legacy and progress of science--and I do not believe Aickman would either, not entirely.  However, Lewis does say: "Its triumphs may have been too rapid and purchased at too high a price: reconsideration, and something like repentance, may be required."
   Lewis' feeling is that this shift away from the Tao and toward a dreary humanism in the thrall of cold reason and science has created "men without chests"--there is no feeling between the head and the belly, between the intellect and the bare mechanism of the physical being.  In turning away from the Tao, as a symbol of ultimate truth, to what can be found only in the limited human mind, we have lost our hearts.
   Aickman writes: "The great prophetic work of the modern world is Goethe’s _Faust_, so little appreciated among the Anglo-Saxons.  Mephistopheles offers Faust unlimited knowledge and unlimited power in exchange for his soul.  Modern man has accepted that bargain."  Lewis also brings in Faust and equates him with Francis Bacon and with Bacon's thirst for power over nature.  About Bacon, Lewis writes: "The true object is to extend Man's power to the performance of all things possible.  He rejects magic because it does not work, but his goal is that of the magician."
   In the end, Lewis simply calls for what Aickman phrases "reverence for things one cannot understand."  The human mind cannot encompass the Tao, it must be the other way around.  One must be humble in the face of ultimate reality.
   Finally, Aickman's best summary of the situation is this: "Faust’s error was an aspiration to understand, and therefore master, things which, by God or by nature, are set beyond the human compass.  He could only achieve this at the cost of making the achievement pointless.  Once again, it is exactly what modern man has done."  Lewis says much the same thing when he states that modern mindset mistakenly aims to reduce everything to a comprehensible human formula, to eliminate the "myth" of ultimate truth, to "see through" nature: "It is no use to 'see through' first principles.  If you see through everything, then everything is transparent.  But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world.  To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see."

~Adam ooOoo