10 DECEMBER
10 DECEMBER
The Man Who Mistook the Means for the End
The Teacher tells a story:
‘There was a creature came here not long ago and went back—Sir Archibald they called him. In his earthly life he’d been interested in nothing but Survival. He’d written a whole shelf-full of books about it. . . . . It grew to be his only occupation—experimenting, lecturing, running a magazine. And travelling too: digging out queer stories among Tibetan lamas and being initiated into brotherhoods in Central Africa. Proofs—and more proofs—and then more proofs again—were what he wanted. . . . . Well, in good time, the poor creature died and came here: and there was no power in the universe would have prevented him staying and going on to the mountains. But do ye think that did him any good? This country was no use to him at all. Everyone here had “survived” already. Nobody took the least interest in the question. There was nothing more to prove. His occupation was clean gone. Of course if he would only have admitted that he’d mistaken the means for the end and had a good laugh at himself he could have begun all over again like a little child and entered into joy. But he would not do that. He cared nothing about joy. In the end he went away.’
‘How fantastic!’ said I.
‘Do ye think so?’ said the Teacher with a piercing glance. . . . . ’There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself. . .as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.’
—from The Great Divorce
1824 George MacDonald (d. 1905), of whose writing Lewis would later say, “What it did to me was to convert, even to baptize. . .my imagination,” is born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.