The Spiritual Nature
A common quote:
“Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.”
C. S. Lewis from the essay “Equality“
While this short quote gets a certain point across, I recommend a read of the full essay. It’s short. You can find it here.
The full essay is not quite what this initial quote is portrayed as. Regardless, it is still very interesting and worthwhile to ponder on—Both the quote and the essay.
A short excerpt from the full writing:
I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. Whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people — all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
[…]
We Britons should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy (we still need more of the economic) without losing our ceremonial Monarchy. For there, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man’s reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be “debunked”, but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut — whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead — even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served — deny it food and it will gobble poison.
That is why this whole question is of practical importance. Every intrusion of the spirit that says, “I’m as good as you” into our personal and spiritual life is to be resisted just as jealously as every intrusion of bureaucracy or privilege into our politics. Hierarchy within can alone preserve egalitarianism without. Romantic attacks on democracy will come again. We shall never be safe unless we already understand in our hearts all that the anti-democrats can say, and have provided for it better than they. Human nature will not permanently endure flat equality if it is extended from its proper political field into the more real, more concrete fields within. Let us wear equality; but let us undress every night.
He still argued for egalitarianism, just not in the manner the leftists would pursue. His ideal monarch was the democratic monarchy. I am not saying this is good or bad, but it is relevant to the quote.
In that same link, Lewis has another essay about democracy. A few noteworthy quotes from this essay:
The improbability that a nation thus educated could survive need not be labored. Obviously it can escape destruction only if its rivals and enemies are so obliging as to adopt the same system. A nation of dunces can be safe only in a world of dunces. But the question of desirability is more interesting.
[…]
Equality (outside mathematics) is a purely social conception. It applies to man as a political and economic animal. It has no place in the world of the mind. Beauty is not democratic — she reveals herself more to the few than to the many, more to the persistent and disciplined seekers than to the careless. Virtue is not democratic — she is achieved by those who pursue her more hotly than most men. Truth is not democratic — she demands special talents and special industry in those to whom she gives her favors. Political democracy is doomed if it tries to extend its demand for equality into these higher spheres. Ethical, intellectual, or aesthetic democracy is death.
[…]
A truly democratic education — one which will preserve democracy — must be, in its own field, ruthlessly aristocratic, shamelessly “highbrow”. In drawing up its curriculum it should always have chiefly in view the interests of the boy who wants to know and who can know (with very few exceptions they are the same boy). The stupid boy, nearly always, is the boy who does not want to know. It must, in a certain sense, subordinate the interests of the many to those of the few, and it must subordinate the school to the university. Only thus can it be a nursery of those first-class intellects without which neither a democracy nor any other State can thrive.
I don’t personally agree with the majority of the political leanings of Lewis. Still, they are interesting to think about.
If you want a better incursion into the political beliefs of C. S. Lewis, read this. It’s much more accurate than any quotes.
As far as the original (famous) quote that I mentioned at the beginning:
“Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.”
C. S. Lewis from the essay “Equality“
He is not wrong. The natural order includes a natural spiritual order. It is not solely physical. C. S. Lewis understood this.
I spoke about this cult worship of modernity’s heros in an article here: Who The Nation Admires. We’ve degenerated, so where we place our focus on honor has likewise degenerated.
This is my issue with the right-wing rationalists. They don’t seem to grasp that the reason we have such degeneration is not because of some physical issue with a physical fix, but a root metaphysical issue that requires a metaphysical solution.
The European stock used to conquer the world; now half of us are soyjacks and beached lards. This is not because of increased tax rates or a republican system. There is a root spiritual decay that is afflicting the entirety of our Western civilization. Which is why the entirety of the West is sick with the same disease, even given vastly different countries, nations, traditions, and culture. We all are suffering from it because we are all tied to that spiritual West, which is decaying.
We can’t simply deport some immigrants and suddenly have a Roman Empire. Nor can we simply change a few policies about who exactly elects senators or restrict women from voting and expect some magical soul-level change in our people. These aren’t necessarily bad ideas, but they won’t actually fix anything. They will be nothing more than a band-aid which will be ripped off later when worse spiritual degeneration occurs.
We need a return to tradition, a return to Christ, a return to faith, a return to the metaphysical focus, and a return to a spiritual mind. There is a chance that we can’t even expect a true “return” to any of these because a complete revitalization is probably necessary.
Some mundane policy changes or political system alterations won’t do this. The degeneration is far too entrenched.
As C. S. Lewis said, we do not have healthy spiritual outlets; we have individualistic, capitalistic, materialist (physical) outlets. This is part of the problem, so the solution must address it.
While we may not need a monarch, we do need a proper outlet. And I’m not entirely sold that the rationalist will give us that.
Read next: The Indoctrination of White Children
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