This is an illustration of C.S Lewis’ talk about the first of the four loves - 'Storge' or 'Affection'. Notes below...
Originally 'The Four Loves' series was recorded by Lewis in London in 1958, prepared as 10 talks to air on the ‘Protestant Hour’ on American radio. I believe the first two talks addressed 'Storge'. The second talk begins at 11:00, if you need smaller, bite-sized pieces. You can find my transcript of this talk here, as it is not available on the web for some reason: drive.google.com/file/d/0B8lk...
You can purchase Lewis' original radio broadcasts here: www.amazon.com/The-Four-Loves...
This was later turned into a larger book with more detail (with quite different examples), which you can find here: www.amazon.com/Four-Loves-C-S...
(1:55) “When we blame a man for being 'a mere animal', we mean not that he displays animal characteristics (we all do), but that he displays these, and only these, on occasions where the specifically human was demanded. When we call a man 'brutal' we usually mean that he commits cruelties impossible to most real brutes; they're not clever enough” (‘The Four Loves’, Chapter 3).
(9:20) Lewis: “In the nineteenth century some people thought that monogamous family life would automatically make them holy and happy; the savage anti-domestic literature of modern times - the Samuel Butlers, the Gosses, the Shaws - delivered the answer…The ‘debunkers’ may have been wrong about principles and may have forgotten the maxim abusus non tollit usum [the abuse of something does not abolish its use]: but in both cases they were pretty right about matters of fact [i.e. as to how domestic affections can become depraved]" (Lewis essay, ‘The Sermon and the Lunch’).
(9:25) Anthony Trollope wrote the Chronicles of Barsetshire of which ‘Framley Parsonage’ (1861) deals with ambition, and ‘Doctor Thorne’ (1858) with snobbery. Another book by Trollope, ‘The Way We Live Now’ (1875), deals with gambling. William Makepeace Thackeray wrote 'Vanity Fair' (1847-8). George Elliot (a.k.a. Mary Anne Evans) wrote seven novels, including 'Adam Bede' (1859), 'The Mill on the Floss' (1860), 'Silas Marner' (1861), and 'Middlemarch' (1871-72), most of which are set in provincial England.
(10:58) ‘Every one of Storge’s characteristics is ambivalent’, which means they can be turned to either evil or good.
(11:09) The larger quote from Butler is here. Pontifex: “He [his son, Ernest] is not fond of me, I’m sure he is not. He ought to be after all the trouble I have taken with him, but he is ungrateful and selfish. It is an unnatural thing for a boy not to be fond of his own father. If he was fond of me I should be fond of him, but I cannot like a son who, I am sure, dislikes me. He shrinks out of my way whenever he sees me coming near him. He will not stay five minutes in the same room with me if he can help it. He is deceitful. He would not want to hide himself away so much if he were not deceitful".
"I wish he was not so fond of music, it will interfere with his Latin and Greek. I will stop it as much as I can. Why, when he was translating Livy [the ancient author of 'The History of Rome and the Roman People'] the other day, he slipped out Handel’s name in mistake for Hannibal’s, and his mother tells me he knows half the tunes in the ‘Messiah’ by heart. What should a boy of his age know about the ‘Messiah’? If I had shown half as many dangerous tendencies when I was a boy, my father would have apprenticed me to a greengrocer, of that I’m very sure,” etc., etc."
“At other times, when not quite well, Pontifex would have his sons in for the fun of shaking his will at them. He would in his imagination cut them all out one after another and leave his money to found almshouses, till at last he was obliged to put them back, so that he might have the pleasure of cutting them out again the next time he was in a passion” (Samuel Butler, ‘The Way of All Flesh’).
(11:35) As a child Ernest was very late in being able to sound a hard “c” or “k,” and, instead of saying “Come,” he said “Tum”, and for this error he was beaten by his bad tempered father.
(13:14) ‘Trenchantly’ means vigorously, energetically or cuttingly.
(23:14) Lewis: “Imagine three men who go to war. One has the ordinary natural fear of danger that any man has and he subdues it by moral effort and becomes a brave man. Let us suppose that the other two have, as a result of things in their sub-consciousness, exaggerated, irrational fears, which no amount of moral effort can do anything about. Now suppose that a psychoanalyst comes along and cures these two: that is, he puts them both back in the position of the first man. Well it is just then that the psychoanalytical problem is over and the moral problem begins..." ('Mere Christianity', Book 3, ‘Morality and Psychoanalysis’).
13 май 2017
