On October 26, 1963 Lewis writes to Nancy Warner:
“Thank you for your most kind letter. I feel like purring!
“Please remember me to your third son…He is not only a
promising scholar but the best mannered man of his generation I have ever met.
“I suppose your philosopher
son…means the chapter in which Puddleglum puts out the fire with his foot. He
must thank Anselm and Descartes for it, not me. I have simply put the ‘Ontological
Proof’ in a form suitable for children. And even that is not so remarkable a
feat as you might think.”
After reading the above letter I
opened The Silver Chair, turned to
Chapter 12, which Lewis refers to above, and found that I had heavily marked
and annotated this chapter in previous readings. My dear friend Bruce Harrison frequently
quotes from this chapter; I’ll get to Bruce’s favorite part below. While
Anselm, Descartes, Lewis, and Pascal used the ontological argument; many
philosophers are unimpressed by it; however, on a gut level the ontological
argument has a force that appeals to our raw nature – that is, it goes beyond
the intellectual and speaks to the depth of our personhood. This is why the
argument takes the form of a deep-seated cry from Puddleglum, a protest against
the Queen of Underland, a rebellion against the notion that the only things
real are the physical things we can see and touch.
“ “Narnia?” she [the queen/witch]
said. “Narnia? I have often heard your Lordship utter that name in your
ravings. Dear Prince, you are very sick. There is no land called Narnia.” ”
“ “Tell us…[the witch talking] where
is this other world? What ships and chariots go between it and ours?” ”
“She [Jill, one of the
protagonists] found herself saying… “No. I suppose that other world must be all
a dream.” ”
“For the last few minutes Jill
had been feeling that there was something she must remember at all costs. And
now she did. But it was dreadfully hard to say it. She felt as if huge weights
were laid on her lips. At last, with an effort that seemed to take all the good
out of her she said: “There’s Aslan.” ”
Throughout Chapter 12 the
Queen/Witch tries to make Puddleglum and the children believe that Aslan and
Narnia are dreams, myths; that they aren’t real. She has a counterargument for
everything they bring up, trying to lure them into a sleep that will allow her
to imprison them. She casts doubt upon every memory they have of Narnia, of
Aslan, of the sun, the moon, the stars; she is relentless. And then we come to
Bruce’s oft-quoted passage, perhaps the most stirring passage in the Narniad,
and it comes from, of all people, Puddleglum – a curmudgeonly character as
gloomy as Reepicheep (Prince Caspian
and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader)
is vibrant and upbeat.
“ “One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming
back from the fire; limping because of the pain. “One word. All you’ve been
saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know
the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what
you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those
things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose
we have. Then all I can say is that, in
that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real
ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And
that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up
a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world
which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the
play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if
there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can
even if there isn’t any Narnia…” ” [Bold
print mine].
Shades of Daniel’s three friends
in the furnace.
One of my marginal notes in
Chapter 12 is, “How do you know something?” There isn’t just the ontological
argument here, there is also the issue of epistemology – how do we know what we
know? Puddleglum and the children knew
the witch’s world was not the real world, they knew Aslan was real, they knew
Narnia was real.
The world is hollow indeed if we
are accidents looking for a place to happen. Pascal tells us that our dogs
never want to be lions or tigers or bears, and our cats never wake up wanting
to be elephants, but we know there are
greater and more meaningful things than what we can see and touch and taste –
we know, we know – we know there is a contradiction in mankind – we can be like
angels one minute and like ravenous beasts the next – we have a sense of an
ideal of perfection and a corresponding sense that things aren’t right – that
they aren’t the way they were meant to be.
And there are times, just like
Puddleglum, we need to say to the world’s nihilistic philosophies: Enough is enough. I know there is more!
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