That Hideous Strength (The Space Trilogy #3)

by C.S. Lewis

In one of these he found a serial children’s story which he had begun to read as a child but abandoned because his tenth birthday came when he was half way through it and he was ashamed to read it after that. Now, he chased it from volume to volume till he had finished it. It was good. The grown-up stories to which, after his tenth birthday, he had turned instead of it, now seemed to him, except for Sherlock Holmes, to be rubbish.

How did other people—people like Denniston or Dimble—find it so easy to saunter through the world with all their muscles relaxed and a careless eye roving the horizon, bubbling over with fancy and humor, sensitive to beauty, not continually on their guard and not needing to be? What was the secret of that fine, easy laughter which he could not by any efforts imitate?

“He has longed to go back to Perelandra,” said Mother Dimble. “He’s—sort of homesick. Always, always . . . I could see it in his eyes.”

“It is not contrary to the laws of Nature,” said a voice from the corner where Grace Ironwood sat, almost invisible in the shadows. “You are quite right. The laws of the universe are never broken. Your mistake is to think that the little regularities we have observed on one planet for a few hundred years are the real unbreakable laws; whereas they are only the remote results which the true laws bring about more often than not; as a kind of accident.” “Shakespeare never breaks the real laws of poetry,” put in Dimble. “But by following them he breaks every now and then the little regularities which critics mistake for the real laws. Then the little critics call it a ‘license.’ But there’s nothing licentious about it to Shakespeare.”

“He will be with Arthur, certainly,” said Dimble. “I can’t answer for the rest. There are people who have never died. We do not yet know why. We know a little more than we did about the How. There are many places in the universe—I mean, this same physical universe in which our planet moves—where an organism can last practically forever. Where Arthur is, we know.” “Where?” said Camilla. “In the Third Heaven, in Perelandra. In Aphallin, the distant island which the descendants of Tor and Tinidril will not find for a hundred centuries. Perhaps alone?” . . . he hesitated and looked at Ransom who shook his head.

Haven’t you noticed that we are two countries? After every Arthur, a Mordred; behind every Milton, a Cromwell: a nation of poets, a nation of shopkeepers; the home of Sidney—and of Cecil Rhodes. Is it any wonder they call us hypocrites? But what they mistake for hypocrisy is really the struggle between Logres and Britain.”

Some of the Pendragons are well known to history, though not under that name. Others you have never heard of. But in every age they and the little Logres which gathered round them have been the fingers which gave the tiny shove or the almost imperceptible pull, to prod England out of the drunken sleep or to draw her back from the final outrage into which Britain tempted her.”

I’d be greatly obliged if any one would tell me what we have done—always apart from feeding the pigs and raising some very decent vegetables.”

When Logres really dominates Britain, when the goddess Reason, the divine clearness, is really enthroned in France, when the order of Heaven is really followed in China—why, then it will be spring. But meantime, our concern is with Logres. We’ve got Britain down but who knows how long we can hold her down?

Curry always in later years regarded this as one of the turning points of his life. He had not up till then been a religious man. But the word that now instantly came into his mind was “Providential.”

“This,” said MacPhee with great emphasis, “is becoming indecent.” “On the contrary,” said Ransom, “decent, in the old sense, decens, fitting, is just what it is. Venus herself is over St. Anne’s.”

“In the name of Hell where’s all them beasts coming from?” he said. “They are the liberated prisoners from Belbury,” said the Director. “She comes more near the Earth than she was wont to— to make Earth sane. Perelandra is all about us and Man is no longer isolated. We are now as we ought to be—between the angels who are our elder brothers and the beasts who are our jesters, servants and playfellows.”

“No, no,” said MacPhee, standing well back, but extending his hand. “You’ll speak none of your blessings over me. If ever I take to religion, it won’t be your kind. My uncle was Moderator of the General Assembly. But there’s my hand. What you and I have seen together . . . but no matter for that. And I’ll say this, Dr. Ransom, that with all your faults (and there’s no man alive knows them better than myself), you are the best man, taking you by and large, that ever I knew or heard of. You are . . . you and I . . . but there are the ladies crying. I don’t rightly know what I was going to say. I’m away this minute. Why would a man want to lengthen it? God bless you, Dr. Ransom. Ladies, I’ll wish you a good night.”

“Yes. Your husband is waiting for you in the Lodge. It was your own marriage chamber that you prepared. Should you not go to him?”

Go in obedience and you will find love. You will have no more dreams. Have children instead. Urendi Maleldil.”

going down all the time, down to the lodge, descending the ladder of humility.