8.23.2015 excerpts from FIRST AND SECOND THINGS by c.s. lewis

taken from God in the Dock, p. 278f. (written during world war II)

...the retrogression would, in any case be deplorable - just as it would be deplorable if a full grown man reverted to the ethos of his preparatory school. but you would expect him at least to get the no-sneaking rule right and to be quite clear that new boys ought not to put their hands in their pockets.
TO SACRIFICE THE GREATER GOOD FOR THE LESS AND THEN NOT TO GET THE LESSER GOOD AFTER ALL...

and yet, it seemed to me as i thought about it, this may not be such a paradox as it looks. or, at least, it is a paradox which turns up so often that a man ought by now to be accustomed to it. other instances began to come to mind. until quite modern times -i think, until the time of the romantics -

romanticism - literary, artistic, philosophical movement in the 18th century..a reaction against neoclassicism (revival of classical principles...emphasis  on imagination, emotions and marked especially in english literature by sensibility....use of autobiographical material..exaltation of the primitive/common man..appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote...predilection for melancholy and the usage, in poetry, of older verse forms.

nobody ever suggested that literature and the arts were an end in themselves. they 'belonged to the ornamental part of life', they provided  'innocent diversion'; or else they 'refined our manners' or 'incited us to virtue' of glorified the gods. the great music had been written for Masses, the great pictures painted to fill up a space on the wall of a noble patron's diningroom or to kindle devotion in a church; the great tragedies were produced either by religious poets in honour of dionysus or by commercial poets to entertain londoners on half-holidays.

it was only in the nineteenth century that we became aware of the full dignity of art. we began to 'take it seriously' as the nazis take mythology seriously. but the result seems to have been a dislocation of the aesthetic life in which little is left for us but high minded works which fewer and fewer people want to read or hear or see and 'popular' works of which both those who make them and those who enjoy them are half ashamed. just like the nazis, BY VALUING A REAL BUT SUBORDINATE GOOD, WE HAVE COME NEAR TO LOSING THAT GOOD ITSELF.

the longer i looked into it the more i came to suspect that i was perceiving a universal law. on cause mieux quand on ne dit pas causons. (one converses better when one does not say 'let us converse'. the woman who makes a dog the centre of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping. the man who makes alcohol his chief good loses not only his job but his palate and all power of enjoying the earlier (and only pleasurable levels of intoxication.  it is a glorious thing to feel for a moment or two that the whole meaning of the universe is summed up in one woman - glorious so long as other duties and pleasures keep tearing you away from her. but clear the decks and so arrange your life (it is sometimes feasible) that you will have nothing to do but contemplate her, and what happens? of course this law has been discovered before, but it will stand re-discovery. it may be stated as follows : every preference of a mall good to a great or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was mad.

apparently the world is made that way. if esau really got the pottage in return for his birthright, then esau was a lucky exception. you can't get second things by putting them first; YOU CAN GET SECOND THINGS ONLY BY PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST. from which it would follow that they question, what things are first? is of concern not only to philosophers but to everyone.

it is impossible, in this context, not to inquire what our own civilization has been putting first for the last thirty years. and the answer is plain. it has been putting itself first. to preserve civilization has been the great aim; the collapse of civilization, the great bugbear. peace, a high standard of life, hygiene, transport, science  and amusement-all these, which are what we usually mean by civilization, have been our ends. it will be replied that our concern for civilization is very natural and very necessary at a time when civilization is so imperilled precisely by the fact that we have all made civilization our summum bonum.(note: philosophical term meaning, 'chief or highest good') perhaps it can't be preserved in that way. perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it.

the hypothesis has certain facts to support it. as far as peace (which is one ingredient in our idea of civilization) is concerned, i think many would now agree that a foreign policy dominated by desire for peace is one of the many roads that lead to war. and was civilization ever seriously endangered until civilization became the exclusive aim of human activity? there is much rash idealization of past ages about and i do not wish to encourage more of it. our ancestors were cruel, lecherous, greedy and stupid, like ourselves. but while they cared for other things more than for civilization-and they cared at different times for all sorts of things, for the will of God, for glory, for personal honour, for doctrinal purity, for justice-was civilization often in serious danger of disappearing?

at least the suggestion is worth a thought. to be sure, if it were true that civilization will never be safe till it is put second, that immediately raises the question, second to what? what is the first thing? the only reply i can offer here is that if we do not know, then the first and only truly practical thing is to set about finding out.