If all men stood talking of their rights before they went up a mast or down a sewer or stoked a furnace or joined an army, we should all perish; nor while they talked of their rights would they learn to do these things. And I think we must agree with Kipling that the man preoccupied with
his own rights is not only a disastrous, but a very unlovely object; indeed, one of the worst mischiefs we do by treating a man unjustly is that we force him to be thus preoccupied.
But if so, then it is all the more important that men should in fact be treated with justice. If we all need ‘licking into shape’ and if, while undergoing the process, we must not guard our rights, then it is all the more important that someone else should guard them for us.
From They Asked for a Paper, a collection of various papers produced by Lewis over the years. This address was given to the English Association.
As always, Lewis discusses the subject with intensity and ease, with insight and detail, and, as always, he manages to produce some clear statements of his own that stand outside the subject.
his own rights is not only a disastrous, but a very unlovely object; indeed, one of the worst mischiefs we do by treating a man unjustly is that we force him to be thus preoccupied.But if so, then it is all the more important that men should in fact be treated with justice. If we all need ‘licking into shape’ and if, while undergoing the process, we must not guard our rights, then it is all the more important that someone else should guard them for us.
From They Asked for a Paper, a collection of various papers produced by Lewis over the years. This address was given to the English Association.
As always, Lewis discusses the subject with intensity and ease, with insight and detail, and, as always, he manages to produce some clear statements of his own that stand outside the subject.
2 comments:
B"H
Hey there Mike,
Nice blog you have my friend. I just discovered your site through a comment you left on Zack Exley's site (Revolution in Jesusland).
I am curious as to what C.S. Lewis might have said about Rudyard Kipling's work, "The White Man's Burden." Unlike many of my contemporaries, I'm not a big fan of Brother Lewis. I read "The Great Divorce" many years ago and liked it alright, but nothing else of his really interests me. Last year in a men's Bible study we went through "Mere Christianity." I didn't care for his analogies although I guess they have been helpful to a large number of people over the years. At one point he makes a rather benign racist comment and the other men in the group were first stunned, then apologetic as they sought to excuse the remark based on the times (1950s) when it was made. Racism is a gross sin in any age, in my humble opinion, and the fact of the prevailing cultural mood of the times cannot serve as a reasonable rationale.
It goes without contest that Rudyard Kipling was a great writer, but the very notion of the title, The White Man's Burden, speaks of paternalism and condescension of the highest order. In the world of talent and viewing writing as a craft, I highly regard Mr. Kipling, but in terms of his cultural enlightenment, I think he has set things far back in the field of race relations.
If Brother Lewis was silent on this topic, I would still love to hear your take on the matter.
Blessings,
Shlomo
I don't see Lewis saying anything about that particular book, even though he covers a lot of ground in the essay. As for racism, well you really do have to excuse people on the basis of the age they lived in. There's no point saying people of a previous age didn't think the way we do; it's taken our generation a long time to deal with racism, and even now we're not doing very well. Lewis might well find some of the things we think very peculiar - in fact, I'm sure he would.
Kipling, likewise, lived in an age when people still thought that certain nations had the right to lord it over others (actually that could easily describe the 21st century in any number of places in the world); what I mean, perhaps, is that both England and America thought they had the right to conquer other peoples. White Australia has only just this last month finally said they were sorry for what they did to the aborigines. Even then they haven't offered any compensation.
Pity you don't much like Lewis. He does have a lot of value to say. And there are plenty of other books besides Mere Christianity, which, you need to remember, wasn't originally written for Christians, but for soldiers in the War.
Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated.
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