A smug atheist—let’s call him “Richard”—once wrote an article in a newspaper arguing that materialism was a more positive outlook than religion. If there is no afterlife, he said, then you are motivated to make the best possible use of the time you are given on this earth.
The next day, a letter from an equally smug Christian appeared in the newspaper. “Given by whom?” it asked.
The smug Christian had, arguably, caught the smug atheist in a contradiction. And various conclusions could have been drawn. “People sometimes say things they don’t really mean” would have been one. “It is impossible to talk about big questions without drifting into theological language” would have been another.
But I don’t think we could draw the conclusion that the atheist had shown his true colours—revealed what he really meant, or what he really believed. Not, at any rate, without checking it against the rest of his work. If the smug Christian had gone through Richard’s published writings and found that over and over again he talked as if there was one all-powerful Force controlling everything—well, that would be Quite Interesting. But if, having read his book and found that he consistently talked about evolution and physics as if they were blind, impersonal physical processes, it would be fair to assume that that was what he believed. If the smug Christian continued to say “But, of course, we know he really believes in the Force, because he said so” we wouldn’t think he was playing entirely fair.
Throughout the Control of Language, King and Ketley take it for granted that some things are good and some things are bad. But Lewis doesn’t take this as evidence against his thesis that they believe that value-judgements are subjective and unimportant. He simply accuses them of inconsistency. It demonstrates, he says, that they are “better than their principles”.
In an extended footnote [Abolition of Man, page 16] Lewis lists four things King and Ketley seem to approve of, and four things they seem to disapprove of. This, he says, demonstrates:
1: That they do, in fact have values.
2: That these values are the consensus values of those around them.
3: That the consensus values of those around them are contemptible values—at any rate, debased and partial values. (This is, I suppose the “and by the way I personally think those values are false” part of the argument.)
If you have damning evidence against the man in the dock, you don’t tell the jury that he is certainly, definitely, one hundred per cent guilty—and that even if he isn’t, it doesn’t matter, because he is bound to be guilty of something very nearly as bad. I think that Lewis knows that his case is a little weak. Otherwise he would not resort to saying, in effect “King and Ketley do not believe in moral values—and even if they do, the moral values they believe in are the wrong ones.”
Lewis’s complaint is that his adversaries see “comfort and security as the ultimate values” but that “those things which alone can preserve or spiritualise comfort and security are mocked.” But I am afraid that, in each case, Lewis has misunderstood or misrepresented what they actually say.
Lewis’s List of Disapprovals
1: “A mother’s appeal to a child to be brave is ‘nonsense’.”
King and Ketley are talking about propaganda, which they think is a kind of super advertising that utilises stock emotional responses to manipulate the listener. They acknowledge that appeals to emotion may sometimes be useful or necessary: parents often use them to socialise children. But propaganda is on the whole a bad thing precisely because it infantilises adults.
Lewis uses “dulce et decorum est…” as an example of moral belief that civilised people take to be a deep truth even though it could be debunked at a literal level. (Dying isn’t a kind of food and therefore can’t taste sweet, and death in battle is unlikely to be sweet even by analogy.) So until I tracked down a copy of Control of Language, I assumed that “a mother’s appeal to a child to be brave” was referencing a Roman parent sending her son off to fight for the Empire. In fact, it refers to a contemporary mum trying to persuade a toddler to take some medicine.
When a mother wants to get her child to swallow unpleasant medicine, she pours this artificially constructed emotive prose into his ears: “Be Mother’s brave little darling, now,” and so on. This sort of nonsense is often successful, and is a kind of propaganda. [Control of Language p62]
Some of the sounds which adults make to children are literally nonsensical (“Upsy daisy mummy’s ickle diddle diddums” etc etc.) In fact, King and Ketley’s example contains a fair amount of meaningful content:
It is right for a child to seek its mother’s approval
You know that your mother approves of courage
Bigger children with more privileges have courage
It will take courage to swallow this pill
Therefore you ought to put up with the unpleasant taste because it’s what an older child would do, and because it will make your mother proud of you
But it is certainly true that the mother is not giving her real reason for wanting her child to take the medicine. She could perfectly well have done so: “This will taste horrid for a few seconds, but afterwards your hurty tummy will go away.” But she chose to appeal to emotion instead. The analogy with propaganda is perfectly clear. On no possible view are King and Ketley saying that the concept of courage itself is nonsensical.
2: “The reference of the word gentleman is extremely vague”
This follows directly from the previous passage. The parent has used “propaganda” to make the child take the pill, and at school, the child will be subjected to similar “propaganda”. Stock responses to emotive words will be employed to make him do particular things, without giving him any rational grounds for thinking that they are the right things to do.
In school the child will be given, mostly in speech, a good many of these vaguely important words, whose reference is not clearly defined; the word “gentleman,” for instance. The word is supposed to rouse feelings of strong approval in such a sentence as: “That is not the action of a gentleman” though the reference is extremely vague. [p62]
Recall that the reference of “Sir Francis Drake” is “a man in a ruff and a boat who sets fire to Spaniard’s beards” but that the emotive meaning of his name is “freedom and heroism and patriotism”. In the same sense the emotional meaning of “gentleman” is “a person we strongly approve of ", but the reference is—what? A posh chap, as opposed to a working class oik? An immaculately turned out fellow in a pinstripe suit and a monocle? I rather think that if the word is in use at all nowadays, except as a polite euphemism for a men’s public lavatory, it has the connotation of good manners: a gentleman doesn’t cheat at cards, he holds the door open for ladies, and remembers to tip the waiter. King and Ketley are quite correct to say that “Don’t do this because it isn’t what a gentleman would do” says nothing more than “Don’t do this because it isn’t the kind of thing we approve of.” On no view are they saying that honour, good manners, politeness—or even social class—are meaningless or without value.
3: “To call a man a coward really tells us nothing about what he does.”
Lewis’s next example comes from King and Ketley’s critique of a ludicrous piece of war-time propaganda that they have invented in order to show how ludicrous it is. It advocates war against a fictional nation called the Utopians:
The Utopians are a contemptible race of low, cunning people—the dregs of the earth. Vicious, degraded, cowardly, lovers only of themselves and their invariably ill-gotten gold, they are unfit, and will ever be unfit, to mix with the proud splendour of our northern people... [p64]
Lewis seems to think that King and Ketley are skeptical about the virtue of courage—he has, after all, just falsely claimed that they think that injunctions to be brave in general are nonsensical. But their allegation is merely that the term coward, like the term gentleman is an emotive term of approval that hasn’t said anything specific.
To call a man an architect tells us something clear about what he does—he designs and supervises buildings; but to call a man a coward tells us really nothing about what he does. We use the word as a word of disapproval, not as a descriptive term. Before we know whether to call a man a coward, we must find out how he has acted and in what circumstances—and this the word does not tell us. [p64]
If the passage had given us an example of the Utopians' actual behaviour, King and Ketley might well have thought that “coward” was an appropriate description. On no possible view are they saying that no-one is a coward, or that cowardice is not under some circumstances reprehensible.
4: “Feelings about a country or an empire are feelings about nothing in particular.”
This time, King and Ketley’s target is a sentimental piece of writing that calls for Australians to show unswerving love for England.
The relation between England and the Dominions should naturally be the relation between a mother and her children. England is our Mother Country; and we should give her, for her ever-constant, protective love, the respect and affection which is her due. The sacred bond which binds all human families together, for their health and mutual wisdom, should bind our family of nations together… [p76]
Although Lewis doesn’t pick up on this, they do here take the passage to task for being literally untrue: they note that “England is actually not a mother, and the dominions are not her children”. But they are attacking the validity of the comparison, not making a point against metaphor in general. The patriotic screed appears to say “It is right that children love their mothers, therefore, it is right that Australians should love England”—but since the passage hasn’t established in what way England is mother-like, the metaphor doesn’t go anywhere. The accusation is the same as the one Thompson directed at the travel agent: the piece is trying to play the audience like a keyboard, clicking certain words and getting certain reactions in return:
The writer seeks to rouse certain feelings about the Empire, but what that Empire is, what actually are the relations between the Dominions (and colonies) and England, are so vaguely defined or hinted at, that we have nothing real to attach our feelings to. [p78]
Hence
It rouses feeling about nothing in particular; and that is always an insult to the intelligence.
Nothing in particular. They used exactly the same words when they were talking about the silly letter to the newspaper: it wasn’t a complaint about anything in particular. They rewrote it, adding specific details—the new movie house would be noisy, didn’t fit in with the local architecture, would cause traffic congestion, and so on. And they used the same words again with regard to the newspaper report of the riot: the journalist didn’t appear to have noticed anything in particular. They contrasted that with the good war reporter who painted a vivid picture of who specifically was doing what specifically to whom specifically and where specifically they were doing it.
This time, they suggest that imagining England as a father rather than a mother might be more apt; and use the analogy to refer to actual, concrete reasons why Australia might want to seek independence just yet:
Moreover, most of the children, as yet, do not earn enough to keep a sufficiently large body-guard of servants to protect themselves, so that Father feels it necessary to protect them, in return for promises of good behaviour and tokens of practical affection; and this again is a family bond. [p79]
The claim is that the bad piece of patriotic writing is so generalised that the emotions it evokes refer to “nothing in particular”. The omission of the emphasis changes the meaning of the text. On no possible view are they saying that patriotism in general is without meaning.
Unless, unless… Does Lewis think that Australians really should love England with the unquestioning love that a child feels for Mummy, and that to criticise patriotic writing necessarily implies the denial of that objective truth?
[continues]
This is the first section of an ongoing critique of C.S Lewis's book The Abolition of Man. (I think that my essays should make sense if you aren't familiar with that tome.) This first section (which runs to six chapters) has already been published in full on my Patreon page, and the second section is being serialised there at present.
Please consider joining the Patreon if you would like to read them, and to support the writer.
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