The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind

by Jason M. Baxter

when the cosmos is not perceived as “iconic,” having a meaning and a purpose, it turns into a lump of inert matter passively awaiting us to “dominate and use it for our own convenience.”18 In fact, Lewis points out that science and magic are more closely related than modern science would like to admit, because in essence they have pursued their crafts with the same end in mind. The modern world took up “the magician’s bargain: give up our soul, get power in return.”19 The only reason it preferred science to magic is because science worked: If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe’s Faustus, the similarity is striking. You will read in some critics that Faustus has a thirst for knowledge. In reality, he hardly mentions it. It is not truth he wants from the devils, but gold and guns and girls. . . . The true object is to extend Man’s power to the performance of all things possible. He rejects magic because it does not work; but his goal is that of the magician. . . . It might be going too far to say that the modern scientific movement was tainted from its birth: but I think it would be true to say that it was born in an unhealthy neighbourhood and at an inauspicious hour. Its triumphs may have been too rapid and purchased at too high a price: reconsideration, and something like repentance, may be required.20 All of this—the movement from an iconic cosmos to a mechanized one—is what Charles Taylor hauntingly called “excarnation.” In a past “enchan...