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No doubt he must very soon realise that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assump- tions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based: I don t think that matters much provided that you can persuade him to postpone any open acknowledgment of the fact, and this, with the aid of shame, pride, modesty and vanity, will be easy to do. As long as the postponement lasts he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent_ He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and sceptical attitudes which are not really his_ But if you play him well, they may become his.
All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is ele- mentary: The real question is how to prepare for the Enemy's counter attack. The first thing is to delay as long as possible the moment at which he realises this new pleasure as temptation:
Since the Enemy's servants have been preaching about 4_ 'the World" as one of the great standard temptations for two thousand years, this might seem difficult to do But fortunately they have said very little about it for the last few decades. In modern Christian writings, though I see much (indeed more than I like) about Mammon, I see few 54 of the old warnings about Worldly Vanities, the Choice of Friends, and the Value of Time. All that, youropatient would probably classify as Puritanism and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life:
Sooner or later, however, the real nature of his new friends must become clear to him, and then your tactics must depend on the patient's intelligence; If he is a big enough fool you can get him to realise the character of the friends only while they are absent; their presence can be made to sweep away all criti- cism If this succeeds, he can be induced to live, as I have known many humans live, for quite long periods, two parallel lives; he will not only appear to be, but actually be, different man in each of the circles he frequents_ Failing this, there is a subtler and more enter- taining method: He can be made to take 2 positive pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent. This is done by exploiting his vanity. He can be taught to enjoy kneeling beside the grocer on Sunday just because he remembers that the grocer could not possibly understand the urbane 55 and mocking world which he inhabited on Saturday evening: and contrariwise, to enjoy the bawdy and blasphemy over the coffee with these admirable friends all the more because he is aware of a 'deeper' 'spiritual' world within him which they cannot understand, You see the idea the worldly friends touch him on one side and the grocer on the other, and he is the complete, balanced, complex man who sees round them all.
Thus, while being permanently treacherous to at least two sets of people, he will feel, instead of shame, a continual undercurrent of self-satisfaction_ Finally, if all else fails, you can persuade him, in defiance of conscience, to continue the new acquaintance 0n the ground that he is, in some unspecified way, doing these people good' by the mere fact of drinking their cocktails and laughing at their jokes, and that to cease to do SO would be 'priggish intolerant' and (of course) Puritanical Meanwhile you will of course take the obvious precaution of seeing that this new development induces him to spend more than he can afford and to neglect his work and his mother_ Her jealousy, and alarm, and his increasing evasive- ness or rudeness, will be invaluable for the aggravation of the domestic tension, Your affectionate uncle SCREWTAPE 56
Your affectionate uncle,
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