The following is from an essay, “A Reply to Professor Haldane,” which was published after C.S. Lewis’ death and can be found, most recently, in the collection On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature.
Lewis’ comments were brought to my attention by bellatrys in comments to this post, and I’m cutting and pasting the quote from this Theologyweb page.
The Professor Haldane to whom Lewis is replying had written a Marxist critique of Lewis’ science fiction trilogy. Lewis’ response rejects what he sees as a kind of “theocratic” impulse in Haldane’s Marxism. It is this theocratic aspect, and not Haldane’s Marxism per se that incurs Lewis’ anger.
In light of Michael Sheridan’s theocratic foolishness (see previous post), this seems especially apt:
I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber barron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.
And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme — whose highest claim is to reasonable prudence — the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In