The Great Divorce

by C.S. Lewis

I seemed to be standing in a busy queue by the side of a long, mean street.

‘this is hardly the sort of society I’m used to as a matter of fact.’

So what with one thing and another the queue had reduced itself to manageable proportions long before the bus appeared.

My fellow passengers fought like hens to get on board the bus though there was plenty of room for us all.

They won’t like it at all when we get there, and they’d really be much more comfortable at home. It’s different for you and me.’

living near the bus stop: but they’d taken centuries—of our time—to get there, by gradual removals.’

Every now and then they move further still. That’s one of the disappointments. I thought you’d meet interesting historical characters. But you don’t: they’re too far away.’

The trouble is they have no Needs. You get everything you want (not very good quality, of course)

by just imagining it. That’s why it never costs any trouble to move to another street or build another house. In other words, there’s no proper economic basis for any community life.

‘You mean, if they had to live together they’d gradually learn to quarrel less?’

Safety in numbers.’

‘Who are “They”?’ I asked. ‘And what are you afraid they’ll do to you? And why should they come out when it’s dark? And what protection could an imaginary house give if there was any danger?’

There is not a shred of evidence that this twilight is ever going to turn into a night.

What we now see in this subdued and delicate half-light is the promise of the dawn: the slow turning of a whole nation towards the light.

Hours later there came a change. It began to grow light in the bus. The greyness outside the windows turned from mud-colour to mother of pearl, then to faintest blue, then to a bright blueness that stung the eyes.

Then, suddenly we were at rest. Everyone had jumped up. Curses, taunts, blows, a filth of vituperation, came to my ears as my fellow-passengers struggled to get out. A moment later, and they had all succeeded. I was alone in the bus, and through the open door there came to me in the fresh stillness the singing of a lark.

caught by my fellow-passengers, who were still grouped about in the neighbourhood of the omnibus, though beginning, some of them, to walk forward into the landscape with hesitating steps. I gasped when I saw them. Now that they were in the light, they were transparent—fully transparent when they stood between me and it, smudgy and imperfectly opaque when they stood in the shadow of some tree. They were in fact ghosts: man-shaped stains on the brightness of that air.

Then some re-adjustment of the mind or some focussing of my eyes took place, and I saw the whole phenomenon the other way round. The men were as they had always been; as all the men I had known had been perhaps. It was the light, the grass, the trees that were different; made of some different substance, so much solider than things in our country that men were ghosts by comparison.

‘I don’t like it! I don’t like it,’ screamed a voice. ‘It gives me the pip!’ One of the ghosts had darted past me, back into the bus. She never came out of it again as far as I know.

‘Hi, Mister,’ said the Big Man, addressing the Driver, ‘when have we got to be back?’ ‘You need never come back unless you want to,’ he replied. ‘Stay as long as you please.’

Long after that I saw people coming to meet us. Because they were bright I saw them while they were still very distant, and at first I did not know that they were people at all.

Two of the ghosts screamed and ran for the bus. The rest of us huddled closer to one another.

Almost at once I was followed by what I have called the Big Man—to speak more accurately, the Big Ghost. He in his turn was followed by one of the bright people. ‘Don’t you know me?’ he shouted to the Ghost: and I found it impossible not to turn and attend. The face of the solid spirit—he was one of those that wore a robe—made me want to dance, it was so jocund, so established in its youthfulness.

‘He is here,’ said the other. ‘You will meet him soon, if you stay.’ ‘But you murdered him.’ ‘Of course I did. It is all right now.’ ‘All right, is it? All right for you, you mean. But what about the poor chap himself, laying cold and dead?’ ‘But he isn’t. I have told you, you will meet him soon. He sent you his love.’ ‘What I’d like to understand,’ said the Ghost, ‘is what you’re here for, as pleased as Punch, you, a bloody murderer, while I’ve been walking the streets down there and living in a place like a pigsty all these years.’ ‘That is a little hard to understand at first. But it is all over now. You will be pleased about it presently. Till then there is no need to bother about it.’

‘Oh no. It’s not so bad as that. I haven’t got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours either. You’ll get something far better. Never fear.’

‘Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought.’

The other shook his head. ‘You can never do it like that,’ he said. ‘Your feet will never grow hard enough to walk on our grass that way. You’d be tired out before we got to the mountains. And it isn’t exactly true, you know.’ Mirth danced in his eyes as he said it. ‘What isn’t true?’ asked the Ghost sulkily. ‘You weren’t a decent man and you didn’t do your best. We none of us were and none of us did. Lord bless you, it doesn’t matter. There is no need to go into it all now.’

‘Come and show me now,’ said the other with laughter in his voice, ‘It will be joy going to the mountains, but there will be plenty of work.’ ‘You don’t suppose I’d go with you?’ ‘Don’t refuse. You will never get there alone. And I am the one who was sent to you.’

‘That’s what I’ll do,’ it repeated, ‘I’ll go home. I didn’t come here to be treated like a dog. I’ll go home. That’s what I’ll do. Damn and blast the whole pack of you…’ In the end, still grumbling, but whimpering also a little as it picked its way over the sharp grasses, it made off.

‘Now that you mention it, I don’t think we ever do give it a name. What do you call it?’ ‘We call it Hell.’

‘Mine certainly were. They were not only honest but heroic. I asserted them fearlessly. When the doctrine of the Resurrection ceased to commend itself to the critical faculties which God had given me, I openly rejected it. I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole chapter. I took every risk.’ ‘What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came—popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric?’

‘Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into

it because it seemed modern and successful.

The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man’s mind. If that’s what you mean by sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.’

‘There is no meantime,’ replied the other. ‘All that is over. We are not playing now. I have been talking of the past (your past and mine) only in order that you may turn from it forever.

And—I have come a long journey to meet you. You have seen Hell: you are in sight of Heaven. Will you, even now, repent and believe?’

the Spirit. ‘I am telling you to repent and believe.’ ‘But my dear boy, I believe already. We may not be perfectly agreed, but you have completely misjudged me if you do not realise that my religion is a very real and a very precious thing to me.’

‘Well, that is a plan. I am perfectly ready to consider it. Of course I should require some assurances…I should want a guarantee that you are taking me to a place where I shall find a wider sphere of usefulness—and scope for the talents that God has given me—and an atmosphere of free inquiry—in short, all that one means by civilisation and—er—the spiritual life.’ ‘No,’ said the other. ‘I can promise you none of these things. No sphere of usefulness: you are not needed there at all. No scope for your talents: only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmosphere of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God.’

‘Well, really, you know, I am not aware of a thirst for some ready-made truth which puts an end to intellectual activity in the way you seem to be describing. Will it leave me the free play of Mind, Dick? I must insist on that, you know.’

‘Listen!’ said the White Spirit. ‘Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again: even now.’ ‘Ah, but when I became a man I put away childish things.’

‘You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.’

‘We know nothing of religion here: we think only of Christ.

‘I should object very strongly to describing God as a “fact”. The Supreme Value would surely be a less inadequate description. It is hardly…’

‘Happiness, my dear Dick,’ said the Ghost placidly, ‘happiness, as you will come to see when you are older, lies in the path of duty.

I can’t come with you. I have to be back next Friday to read a paper. We have a little Theological Society down there.

I knew that the waterfall itself was speaking: and I saw now (though it did not cease to look like a waterfall) that it was also a bright angel who stood, like one crucified, against the rocks and poured himself perpetually down towards the forest with loud joy.

‘Fool’, he said, ‘put it down. You cannot take it back. There is not room for it in Hell. Stay here and learn to eat such apples.

‘Thinking of going back?’

‘I don’t know,’ said I. ‘Are you?’ ‘Yes,’ it replied. ‘I guess I’ve seen about all there is to see.’ ‘You don’t think of staying?’ ‘That’s all propaganda,’ it said. ‘Of course there never was any question of our staying. You can’t eat the fruit and you can’t drink the water and it takes you all your time to walk on the grass. A human being couldn’t live here. All that idea of staying is only an advertisement stunt.’ ‘Then why did you come?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Just to have a look round. I’m the sort of chap who likes to see things for himself. Wherever I’ve been I’ve always had a look at anything that was being cracked up. When I was out East, I went to see Pekin. When…’