149: Perelandra

Hi, welcome to classical stuff. You should know a podcast about classical education the classical world old books old things and The schools that are trying to do it We're gonna start doing a profile of different schools. Oh, we could But no, there is a movement called classical education that is in Well the US is in the world and Western world and actually there's a classical school in China Which I find fascinating because they're doing classical education, but they're also weaving in like classical pre-communist Chinese history I mean, they have the Eastern Canon, right? They're not as much part of the Western But with the same sort of pedagogical ideas about conversation and emphasis on language and round table discussions and that kind of stuff That's great.

That's fantastic. Anyway, they're classical schools all over the world, right? Yeah, and there's really good discussions about classical education in sub-Saharan Africa so like Andrew Kerns daughter lived in Africa and worked at a classical school in Kenya or Nigeria and She has some really great insights on their podcast talking about reading Homer with In the sort of the African culture. It's really cool.

Anyway, now we're further field. My name is Graham Donaldson I think that could be the name the subtitle for our podcast is further field And I am joined by a bright ray of sunshine Thomas MacVee Hello and AJ Hanenberg who is just as dour as a stump who is a stumstower? You ever seen a stum? It's so sad.

I'm strange to describe a stump. I never thought that before. You don't think stumps are like Calcitrant what do you mean? I'm dumb.

Can you explain that word to me? I think I'm using it right? Like stubborn or refractory. Yeah, like you can't get me out of here Well, I think I think it's the remnant of something that was once living in beautiful reaching towards the sky It's a tragedy.

Okay, okay, the story of Lost Light. Really? I see them as like they're holding on they're like, yeah Try to get me out the ground. No, I see it's holding on when you get that little extra sprig that goes Mm-hmm out of the stump.

It's like life again That's when they're like hold on anyway today We are talking about the second book of a trilogy without having done the first book in that trilogy for your convenience further a field boys No, actually, this is the C. S. Lewis space trilogy, which I have never read wait really I've never read them. I've read I've read the half of the first book and I was like this is weird It is weird.

I thought you both had read this book. No, no, I read I recently read the third book in the series And I loved it way more the second time through I've just started the third book and I'm not as crazy about it Why did you like it more the second time? I read it in college before I had actually been part of any sort of institution And there's a lot of institutional politics and things that happen and I don't know things about adult life They don't really make sense when you're in college Right? You're not really interested in councils and budgets and that sort of thing and those play apart And I just liked the way that he contrasted sort of the modern view of man with the Biblical primal view of man and brought in Merlin and a bunch of all their fun Alright, how about we just talk about the giving trees since we had such a great stomp conversation So we definitely do that piece of relationship is it though?

It's a codependency I don't know there's something noble about the tree giving to the child no matter what he asks for I'm just being a sliver to work again. That's I don't know the giving tree. Yeah, she'll still have no idea No, it's a book about a boy in the tree and the tree loves the boy and tell the tree cares for the boy No, okay, good talk. Okay, we will in fact be talking about paralanger today Paralanger is the second book in a trilogy.

I was gonna say a three part trilogy, but that is what trilogy Yep, nailed it as you can tell I've been grading some of our senior thesis recently and phrases like that have implanted in my mind Or three part trilogy. Yeah We are jumping into the second book of this trilogy and in case you I think Graham is trying to get some kind of dig at us starting at the second one and that being inconvenient I will read from the words of Mr. Clive Stapel Lewis himself this story can be read by itself But is also a sequel to out of the silent planet in which some accounts was given a ransom's adventures on Mars or as its inhabitants Call it Malekondra all the human characters in this book are purely fictitious and none of them is allegorical Which is delightful that little thing at the end I think he was frustrated with people calling Narnie an allegory He's like I'm it once and for all stop it. Yeah, and that's that's funny though Because Narnie is out.

Can I call it allegorical without it being an allegory clearly the characters represent something more than just what they are I mean, but I would say only like two of them do right the witch and the lion No, all the children that one is for the England England one is for America Oh my gosh I will fight you all in one of them is Rome and one of them That's none of this is true. Okay, so we can start with the second one because Lewis said that we could so we will I don't know if we've even said that this is a trilogy written by Cs Lewis Clive Stapel's Lewis He is a prolific author of many Oh, Prologothor many books See the story for trilogy I'm really gonna go with it right now I choose to blame most of this on that I'm wearing headphones for the first time ever and I'm very thrown off by the hearing of my Own voice as I'm going through this so I kind of feel like I should talk Okay, so why are we talking about the second book in the trilogy when I could have started with the first one first? I don't really like the first book so for whatever that's worth a day Do you remember reading through out of the silent planet? I read it and enjoyed it a moderate amount Yeah, that feels like the right way to put it and in my all too short research before this episode If you were if you were to look at the goodreads rankings of all three of these books They're pretty similar to each other But the second one is the highest out of the three and I want to say that the first is the lowest out of the three So kind of sets up a world that will get all the important stuff here I feel like out of the silent planet It's very focused on the language of this world a lot of world building and not a whole lot happens That's interesting as opposed to perilanger where a lot happens and I don't know what happened with the third book That hit a strength But it's like a hundred pages longer than the other two so it feels like Lewis was realizing You have to like wrap this trilogy up so I don't know maybe you disagree with that Maybe it's a good extra hundred pages.

I like it. Okay, so this is the second of these books So I guess again, I thought it'd be that all three of us talking about this But I apologize well no you're at half of the first book out of the silent planet So what is happening in this space trilogy like it's we're calling it a space trilogy what why is it? I remember so people again a spaceship and they go to another planet is Mars No, yes Mars Mars Mars one and when they land there they realize oh there's like civilization and people here And they realize that the people are unfallen that they are perfect creatures that have yet to have had their Garnet even eat the fruit sin against God and heaven moment and then that happens and that's all I remember Anything else from that was not the second one that was it? Yeah, the first one a lot of the same things So the spaceship part is the first one of the second one this I feel like most of what these books are about is a rediscovery of like what is space what is out there There's a perception of space as it being a cold dead lifeless Lewis is reimagining that as it's filled with life There's a very old episode on the music of the spheres which is idea that there is there's the sound coming from space There's this motion.

There's this movement. There's this life coming from space and Lewis is building out a sci-fi world in that universe I didn't like it as a kid why cuz I was so enmeshed in like the Star Wars Star Trek universe and just love more Star Wars just loving the idea of that as as sort of like the lens through which I sort of filtered all sci-fi so to have Lewis's vision was just so outside that that I was like this isn't space This isn't spaceships Lewis's vision is like what good sci-fi does it sort of removes you from a complicated question to see with fresh eyes and he's doing that with Genesis and the fall and the creation of man and sort of showing it like what if we're not caught up in our own ideas of what Christianity and Catholic Church are But we just see a primal deity making someone new and then dealing with that on an alien planet And so he gets to kind of talk about yeah life on earth through the lens of life in a different place, but it's not an allegory It's sci-fi. I said you I will fight you guys sci-fi our allegories have a one-to-one Yeah, character representation ratio like the part is like the allegory Yeah, and there's very little else that very little else that is good that is full allegory and that's I think Lewis's point We had people right in after which episode was it probably the one about Beowulfan typewriters about tokens I think it's the preface to the Hobbit or fellowship of the ring I think it's in the preface of one of those books where he talks about the difference between allegory and applicability and allegory is that formal definition of a one-to-one comparison applicability is just you can find lessons and stories that apply to your life Even though you don't live in the world isn't animal farm kind of allegory like every animal represents a group of people I think probably sure okay, so Poor boxer, yeah, poor boxer. Let's do an animal farm episode right now instead of parrot.

Sorry. See what? Okay. Let's talk about horses Okay, so the first book out of the silent planet not really gonna go into but it's the first adventure of this crew of people that will return these characters include Dr.

Ransom who is our protagonist in the second book a dr. Weston who is the antagonist a character named divine who will return later And then they introduce a lot of the vocabulary that I'm probably gonna skip over so apologies in advance One of you two can do a full episode on out of the silent planet if you so desire one day, but Pearland Drup is a follow-up So this group of people go to Mars in the first book They then come back to earth and it totally changes the way that they understand the world around them So they see things differently as a result Why am I talking about this book right now other than to be annoying and start with the second book of a trilogy? My main my main reason for this is that I haven't read it over the Christmas break and it Made me think a lot about our last two episodes on a Custom view on evil and echbethme because I'm gonna theater. I can't say make bath.

Oh No, I'm gonna break my leg or something. Okay, so I think two episodes ago We were arguing something similar to evil is not existent evil is not real my overstating it to say that no Okay, so that evil is not real we then moved into Macbeth Which is a story of evil having real ramifications on both the the married couple of characters That's a bit and then at some point almost the world around them nature itself Yeah, your story about the forest rising up versus eating each other because the king has been killed Yeah, yeah, and so I felt like there was some kind of disconnect between the ideas and those interesting Because evil is both not real and is having real impact in the story of Macbeth And I think Lewis will chart away that tries to pull these things together that I think says the same thing Age he was saying to us as a similar thing to what you were saying last time But I think maybe threads it in a way because do you all see the same apparent contradiction that I do to say evil is not real and also courses are eating themselves or whatever I see maybe a parent an apparent contradiction But you could also I think Augustine would say that what we are seeing is a twisting and disharmony in nature And I think that jabs pretty well with what's going on in the Beth right? He says that evil is when good things are in disharmony with each other Macbeth was originally good horses originally good the king is good Their relationship was good nature was good and then things went into disharmony. Yeah, is discord a thing in and of itself or is it?

Just the imperfect not even the perfection is it just the the The break the broken version of a good thing. Yeah, correct And I think that's the question we'll be getting into here broken versions of good things still have ramifications correct in impacts on the world Yeah, so what do you call that other than evil? I think that's what you're landing on. It doesn't that doesn't that We might come up with it different.

There's a Yeah, I bring these I prepare notes and then come here to have the conversation to land at a different place than I expected to so We might actually come up with a different word than evil by the end of this. We'll see if we get there We almost never do so paralandra here's where it goes at the end of out of the silent planet Cs Lewis writes himself into the book he is someone who's been researching some like neo-platonic document that reveals the existence of these planets that are alive At some version of that that is brought out in the beginning of paralandra where Lewis the narrator Lewis in a book by Cs Lewis is called by ransom to his house ransom tells Lewis Narrator Lewis about the story that he knows that he needs to travel to a distant planet the distant planet is paralandra and Paralandra is a different name for Venus is all that means all of these all the planets have different names in the space trilogy I think they're there they're Greek names the Roman names. They're thereafter the names of gods. I don't have a right from me.

Sorry Earth also has a different name Earth is whatever earth name is it means the silent planet so in case you're curious of what the silent planet is there's your answer So he reads and knows that he needs to travel to this distant planet and the way he's going to get there is through an ice coffin He's gonna be put into a coffin looking thing that's made of ice and he'll be teleported to this planet And then he has no idea what happens after that. That's the entire setup of this thing So Lewis's job in the book is to wait for ransom to return and take care of him when he does because he doesn't know what's going to happen Lewis waits there for a year ransom comes back and then the book is ransom recounting what happened during his time on Venus So there are I guess three main movements to this book that we'll talk about I Again just from going through Reviews of the book the thing that people most hate is that a lot of this book is just talking And I think that's why this book is better than out of the silent planet So I guess different strokes are different folks. Uh, I think you would like this book Graham I'm sure I'm already intrigued. Okay.

Yeah, it was great. Yeah, is this you know, do you like that idea strength more than perely? I don't think so. I don't think it's just awesome.

So Ransom gets into this thing this ice coffin looking thing and is transported to Venus He gets there and his coffin melts and so he's stuck on Venus He is blown away by the world around him He there are many times throughout the story where he'll all he can say is that he lacks words for what he's experiencing seeing tasting touching any of those things It's colors that he's never seen before it's taste that he's never seen before It's a it's like a temperate like beautiful day It's just this incredible world that he lands on He has this extended scene about picking up he picks a barrier like feed himself and it's the most perfect taste he's ever had in his life so Venus is a great place to be apparently he This whole first part is kind of this world building setting the stage section of it The purpose of this is to get us to ransom meeting the queen of perelyndro I think I didn't mention and I don't know if it will super matter during all this It's more to bring it up. Anyway, is that ransom is brought to this planet with no clothes? He's brought naked He will also then meet the queen of this planet who also doesn't wear any clothes They're pulling on this there's this image of enemy right just kind of this pre Pre-lapsarian pre this pre-fall world where clothing is not necessary, but there's no lust There's no impurity in this world So he's there and he meets the queen of perelyndro Her name is tinnidrill and drills. That's all right.

I think it's uncerful She she looks human the only main difference is that she has green skin So that's the main difference between her and ransom She talks about a king, but this king is absent and we don't need him until much much much later in the book and This this first part of the book this kind of this calm this world building is ended with Ransom spending months learning about perelyndro he And it's just happiness. It's just he enjoys his time there He was sent there not really knowing his mission in the first place and he still doesn't at this point And he just enjoys the time they learn from each other. They realize that there's no Knowledge of evil on this world. There's no knowledge of sin.

There's no knowledge of harm and violence or any of those bad things There's no There aren't even words in the language on perelyndro to express these ideas It's this great idyllic world that he has brought into Oh at one point he tries to lie. I just thought this was a I just really like this image. Hold on. Let me pull this up.

So he tries to lie to the queen at one point She's talking about the king and the king has left and hasn't come back and it doesn't bother the queen and ransoms like disgusted by this and The queen notices this in his face. That's something is bothering him. So The queen asks does this look on your face mean anything that you're looking upset ransoms says they mean nothing It was a small lie, but there it would not do it tore him as he uttered it like a vomit It became of infinite importance the silver meadow and the golden sky seemed to fling it back at him As if stunned by some measureless anger in the very air he stammered an imitation They mean nothing I could explain to you So it's also as if sin is impossible in this place where he's gone to We all think of this place right now. What do you think?

I mean? Lewis is queuing up his it sounds like the garden of Eden in perelyst lost. Oh interesting perelyst lost It's the garden in general. Yeah, what what is what's what's going on?

Well, we don't have that much detail in the garden in the bible Yes, we just have it that it's that it's the garden But all of this or description of where nature itself almost seems to have a personality that reacts to to To this guy's lie. Yes, I mean that we have that kind of thing where in perelyst lost once sin happens nature grown Like there's a sort of there's this collective almost Grown that the whole of create all the whole the garden does and so it kind of sounds like yet that that he's he's playing up that this that the perfection of the of the created order itself has Personality yes and interacts with ransom right he can't escape the nature and the moral realm is woven into nature Whereas maybe we more as modern people think that the moral realm is apart from nature nature is immoral It's you know not immoral amoral amoral. Yeah, it's amoral Morality has nothing to do like the lion doesn't feel guilty about killing the lamb or whatever, right? Yeah, it's the silver meadow in the golden sky that are judging him So there's no it's not something outside of nature that is judging him for this lie.

It is nature itself There's something in it that has a moral character to it. Mm-hmm. So yeah anything a day on Venus so far I was just gonna say it sounds like Schlitterblum. Schlitterblum.

Schlitterblum. Wonderful place golden skies. Hi. Beautiful.

I don't know about the golden skies I also I don't know if I Yeah, what do you mean some parts generally? I like water slide. That's like the one amusement park I'm super into really like have to see just like swimming. It's so bleak.

Oh, why am I the not way of sunshine? What you? I tried to talk about Survism and you grump it. No, no, you want to talk about the meaninglessness of life.

That's what we were responding to You grump tarred on one flew over. Yeah, yeah, because I've been after after talking about it. You had right to grow up. Yeah, okay But the thing is what's little bond is just like I'm moving past this.

No absolutely not Okay, so so ransom and the queen are having this wonderful time that I don't want to hear this Great. Patreon if you want to pay for this useful content then please do that. Okay, so then ransom and the queen have this great time Then but there's nothing nothing sexual nothing romantic It's just they are able to be around each other and there's no impropriety just ransom a fallen man feel inappropriate being naked No, he is he chained or like a little merist or he comments on it He's like this is weird that I'm being asked to do this But once he it's one of the things you forget about once he gets to Venus It's just it's not commented on really until this moment right now So ransom and the queen are again having this great time when a another character from out of the silent planet appears and this is western Weston is another doctor. Dr.

Weston and ransomer both doctors and Ransome, I'm sorry. Weston is looking to explore other planets It seems to conquer them that was essentially his goal on Mars was he viewed the native population as one right for Conquering so he could take resources from them No respect for the people who live on that planet. So not not a great guy Weston shows up his first accusation is what you're talking about Graham his first question is like what are you doing here? You're not wearing a clothes.

She's not wearing any clothes is this why you came to this planet You know, so that's his first observation like that's the first thing he brings to this This parrot he makes an accusation of impropriety right off the bat right off the bat. Yeah Ransome then has the queen leave because he doesn't want her to be corrupted by Weston appearing and they have this first Back and forth where Weston reveals that he's no longer purely Um, I think he would say he's no longer purely a materialist. He's no longer He no longer only thinks that physical things are what exists. He now is open to the spiritual existence.

Oh good Yeah, it's great. So are you sure? Have you read this part of it? I've never heard this book I've never opened it.

You literally described it when okay So he is having this back ransman wester and having this back and forth. You just know it I don't understand so they're having this back and forth about Weston no longer being purely materialist And the more ransome asks questions the more ransome realizes that wester believes in some kind of spiritual force But it's not a personal force and it's not moral or immoral. It's purely spirit, right? So it's like a deist kind of kind of well or like almost like a Hindu like sprahman Right, I was gonna say because it would be deist but an active god which isn't deism that may be more to it that there's no There's no name to this force and there's no goodness or badness to this force.

Maybe it's actually the force Oh, it sounds like he's a he's a new age. Yes, that's probably closer to it So there just is the spiritual realm around him. It's they go on about this for a little while It's not really it's not the meat of the book, but this goes poorly So they had this back and forth. Weston eventually says to ransome Do you see you timid at scruple mongering fool?

I am the universe. I wester than your god and your devil I call that force into me completely Oh, that sounds like an interesting thing to say when that's your turn then horrible things began happening Aspasm like that preceding a deadly vomit twisted western space out of recognition as it passed for one second Something like the old western reappeared and then western start calling out for help but to no avail Weston becomes possessed at this point. There's no other there's not really another word for it They keep using like zombie language to describe what western looks like after this point So he appears to be dead, but he's still in motion western shows himself to the queen like western finds a way to get to the queen As a part. Yeah, that's all there's to it right at that point Ransome catches up eventually gets to the palace where the queen and western are talking and this starts the the second part of the book the Really the kind of the meat of the book that most of what's happening here is the possessed western He's called the unmanned at certain points, but he's a figure He's like a double figure right he's trying to convince the queen to break the one rule that's clearly been set by Divine yeah by oh by god And the rule is that the queen cannot sleep on the fixed land a feature of this world I didn't mention is that the world that the it's made up of all these islands But they don't stay in one place they move all the time which just it sounds like c-signus right but apparently it's fine So she's like a penguin on the ice loads.

I guess so I guess the ice moves all the time. Yeah, so that's exactly right So she's a penguin so the The one rule is that she can't sleep on the fixed land the fixed land is the one spot in the world where the lands doesn't move And I think there's a mountain on it as well. Well the fixed land is where ransome and western just met they were on the fixed land And before ransome could come back he had to sleep because he got tired He slept on the fixed land and it was like a horrible night's sleep It's worse. It's as worse night's sleeps and he's been on the planet So what ransome has learned is that it's like it's not a good thing that's being withheld from her It's like she's being asked to not have a bad night's sleep This made me wonder in paradise lost doesn't say anything about like the taste of the fruit That is really good.

No it is actually good. Yeah, I was wondering if they would have prepared all of it. Well, no the smell of it is really good It smells great. I can't remember if when she eats it the thing is Eve eats the fruit so fast that she doesn't savor it She like shovels it in her mouth as fast as she can interesting and When adam eats it he just takes like a bite, but they don't really talk about the taste of it Satan says that the fruit was delicious But Eve just smells it or she's just sort of attracted to the scent, but they don't really he doesn't really go on about like the taste of it Why I can just because in this the one so the analog here is don't sleep on the island Queen is still not asleep on the fixed land which is this island that doesn't move Eve is told adam And Eve are told not to eat other fruit.

Lewis is setting this up as the thing being held from them isn't a good thing They're not missing out on some like awesome thing by not being able to sleep on the island. I wasn't sure if they're not really missing I mean Satan says they're missing out, but like it's not like this fruit is So delicious as every other food is like skunk fruit or whatever, right? That's what I was curious about. Okay, so they this that's what the Weston the possessed western is trying to convince the queen to Sleep on the fixed land and break this one rule.

He has all these arguments for it One of them is that this is actually what God wants for you is to break this rule is to experience this thing That you had to be prepared a certain length of time to be ready to have this experience Exactly same. Yeah, our own that is one of the features of Satan's argument is that God secretly wants you to do this And he was just waiting for you to like grow the colonies to do it Yes, they're anything about age and they're also like growing older like wisdom is a Sixty with no, I don't think so. Not that I can remember It's just it's like an obsession of the queens is that she wants to grow up and by that she means learn more Which then sleeping on the fixed land is this piece of knowledge. She doesn't have that she stepped it by there is the only Corollary would be that God has said that he wants or they're to turn the world into a garden and by eating the fruit she can be more divine and So you sort of levels up into an angel.

Yeah, you should be an angel eat the fruit and you'll become the stuff of angels You're making this wilderness a garden so that it can be like heaven so that she can be like angels in heaven Eat the fruit now and you can kind of like jump the line. Yes That's pretty similar to what is being talked about here that she could grow up on her own just from getting older or kind of jump Dump the line I guess is what they just said. It's like to me It's always when students say well mr. Gullinson How can I know what the bad is unless I like go and make a bunch of mistakes now as a teenager?

Right, it's like I mean you're just saying that to like go do stuff you want to do to justify the People around you there are plenty of people making mistakes man. I tell you all about how it's not worth making those mistakes Yeah, so that's one one one argument is this kind of knowledge side of it another is that she will What's the right way to say that the heroes of the women of earth would would do something like this They would act against the rules that are put in place They would become a hero by rejecting this rule doing what they know is right and going to sleep on the island Right, there are lots of different arguments that are tried This is this is this makes up days and days and days of of Conflict of contact of ransoms stop him ransoms is a part of these conversations also and on the first day He's like great. He's responding is this like great dialogue and again It's like really interesting stuff because you get these three different perspectives the kind of innocent person just trying to understand the two sides One trying to pull her toward evil one trying to keep her from that to keep her to pull through the good angel and bad angel Right, yeah, totally. Um, so on the first day.

This is going great. Well that night Uh, you know ransoms trying to go to sleep and uh, I might read it. I don't know if I will It's not like great dialogue all of this part though. This is the part of the member so ransoms trying to go to sleep and uh, the western to possess western it's just I think a few hours go by here.

Yeah, a few hours go by and then um Uh ransom it said western ransom western said well said ransom nothing said the unmanned Uh, it repeats a few times again. There were silence and again about a minute later the horrible mouth said ransom This time he made no reply. He w- uh he ransom made no reply Another minute and it uttered his name again and then like a minute gone ransom ransom ransom perhaps a hundred times What do you want ransom roared at last nothing said the voice and this is repeated all throughout the night So western is just keeping ransom awake by repeating his name over and over and over again So it's like that Yeah, it's the kid trying to bother their mom or dad and like not actually having anything to say right? It's not sophisticated evil.

It's petty childish evil. That's uh what chilled in almost cowed ransom the worst was the union of malice with something nearly childish So it's not you know that whatever picture of the devil being this kind of like suave figure is undermined here, right? He just wants to be obnoxious. Yes, it's embarrassing really is what it is.

Um, so he The possessed western keeps ransom up all night long so that ransom starts slipping He's not able to respond as well as he was before he starts sleeping in because he just can't um Can't get the sleep that he needs What western doesn't need sleep at this point because of this um spirit that has taken him over Okay, so kind of add all this together So you have this like really well educated um force that has taken over western and is making these really convincing arguments to the queen to persuade her to break This one rule Ransom is having some success, but he's losing I don't remember if the part i'll read now is before or after it happens, but western starts to have successes he is able to convince the queen to wear clothes She puts on this feathered outfit to try and look beautiful He western introduces the queen to mirrors to to teach her vanity and fear fear of old age There are all these successes that are happening and ransom realizes that he is Outgunned that he doesn't have the ability to win this fight I mean he's fighting like an age-old force. Yes, right? Yes, and so that leads to this part right here This is the part that when reading through this is what really um struck me and made me want to have this as an episode So hopefully we'll camp out here for a little while So this is ransom kind of at the bottom of um despair Oh, but this is nonsense. So the volleyball self he ransom with his ridiculous pibol body and his 10 times defeated arguments What sort of a miracle was that his mind darted?

Hopefully down a side alley that seems to promise escape very well then he had been brought here miraculously He was in god's hands as long as he did his best and he had done his best god would see to the final issue He had not succeeded, but he had done his best. No one could do more. It is not in mortals to command to command success He must not be worried about the final result Maladil which is the what god god would see to that and god would bring him safe back to earth and after his very real though unsuccessful efforts Probably god's real intention was that he should publish to the human race the truth He had learned on the planet Venus as for the fate of Venus that could not really rest upon his shoulders It was in god's hands one must be content to leave it there one must have faith Oh dude, there's an extra paragraph that i'll read in a second, but give me your response to kappa. Why is it a copout?

It's like it's that silly very very silly sermon illustration where the guy's like drowning and he's like oh lord save me and then like the speedboat comes up Yes, and he's like hey, i'm here to rescue And he's like no god's gonna save me and both like all right bye And then like it happens a couple of other times and then the guy drowns and he goes to heaven He's like god why didn't you save me and god's like uh since you speedboat since you this guy and canoe and send you all this stuff the idea being that um This is sort of like the reciprocal image of that is oh god's in control He doesn't need me to act in the world because if god wanted if god wants this to happen then he's gonna let it happen He doesn't need me to do it My real mission is to go do this other thing this like you know reporting of yes of scientific discovery or whatever It's like lower success right this thing that he can be successful at is all that god actually expected of him in this experience God doesn't want me to be a hero or want me to like speak into the spiritual life of this Enormous situation right that's like above my pay grade god just wants me. Yeah, it's it's carrots. Yes, okay. Okay.

Hey, do you agree? Yeah? I know what happens right? Yeah, I know what happens and I don't know how much more I want to add it's not that he's in a very difficult place Right if if you have done your absolute best and you have still found failure then You must wonder about your purpose there if your purpose was something else other than success because he's done his very best Um, we found out that second later is it's gonna look a bit different than he thought Yes, and that's so he's tried this one method of arguing with evil right and that hasn't led where he wanted it to go But I'm wondering on this one particularly if so to say that evil is nothing is to say that so there's a good god who is Uncorruptible and no evil can overcome that god right but we as individuals can be corrupted We can experience evil.

I'm just wondering if there's any connection between this and our points on evil from a few episodes ago Do they intersect at all or or I guess what they're arguing at different levels So to say if you have a set to go evil doesn't exist well does exist right we experience it in our day today And it's the thing that must be we must do something about Is it is a sufficient comfort to say that god can't be corrupted therefore evil doesn't exist? I think that that is a like what we're doing is sort of Maybe equivocation where we're giving two different definitions to evil so probably so one is like evil as something corrupt or corruptible Um versus evil as a cause what augustine is rejecting is evil as a self existing cause it is not in itself a thing Right what evil is is the corruption of good things. So is it corrupt a good thing evil? Yeah, you can call it evil It's a corrupt good thing just like this arguer you have was originally a doctor whose ultimate goal was to understand the universe He understood it poorly and then did a silly thing and invited the forces of the universe into body Right.

Yes, and that force of the universe was probably also originally a good thing that has come into disharmony with everything else And they're because of that bitterness or misunderstanding or loss of love right bitterness Come from loss of love they mean to corrupt more things and so are they corrupted? Yes is evil its own soul thing Well, no I mean you have the body of a person who was originally created good and you have a deity who was probably originally also good and they have become corrupted and so Yeah, I think what we're actually doing there is accidentally saying like evil doesn't exist because god can't be corrupted Well, no evil doesn't exist because it's not itself a soul cause something cannot be completely thoroughly Evil it is a corrupted good but corrupted good maybe called evil as so long as what we mean is corrupted good Yes, and that's on the side of western being corrupted I was 100% on the same page of western was not beyond salvation and even in a few chapters We see he gets one more chance right so clearly western is good that is corrupted It's that force though that I'm not so sure about you're saying there's that force came from somewhere ultimately right and maybe was not created Bad Lewis doesn't set that up but I mean if we look at say that you know Christian Christian doctrine on Satan originally he was the best of things and it was the corruption of something that used to be the best of things that has made him so Thoroughly disharmonized with everything else if it was something of a lower stature that had been corrupted well We're not going to be afraid of like a thoroughly corrupted ground squirrel right you can't he can't read as much havoc in the world But because I'm pretty nervous about that but because he had so much power originally That's what makes him dangerous is it is a good that was so good and so grand that has therefore become so disharmonized with everything else in creation Yes, okay. I think that I do I think part of this is again the I think it was a conversation at the end of the episode of like well There's still something we have to do in response to bad stuff in the world I think that was something that you were responding to I think that's your what you're saying here too Is that it is a cop-out to say that because evil doesn't have its own creation that we therefore get into it right? Is that?

Yes, you're on the same bit about that. Okay Yeah, just because it's not like an existence self-caused doesn't mean that like when we see that the disharmony of evil We aren't supposed to root out like if we can get rid of that disharmony and bring things back into harmony as our hero is trying to do Then we should yes Yeah, totally and that's which ultimately is his response to all of this right This the next paragraph immediately after that It snapped like a violin string not one rag of all this evasion was left Relentlessly unmistakably the darkness pressed down upon him the knowledge that this picture of the situation was utterly false His journey to parallandra was not a moral exercise nor a sham fight If the issue lay in God's hands ransom and the lady were those hands The fate of a world really depended on how they behaved in the next few hours There you go The thing was irreducibly negatively real They could if they chose to climb to save the innocence of this new race and if they declined its innocence would not be saved It rested with no other creature in all of time or all of space So ransam realizes he got to do something he does have to do something And I love the end of his book so much. Um, I guess I can go Yeah, we can be that and then we can be like actual take away stuff. He'll do that Okay, so at there's more that happens after this.

I'm not really gonna go into it I'll to get to the interesting part So what ransam realizes is that he's been going about this the wrong way in that his attempt to In encounter evil in its own terms is failing him He's not able to out argue evil evil has a way of twisting knowledge and words and is captivating in some sense to the queen And there's no there's no real way to get around that So what he he realizes it's kind of revealed to him is that he he needs to confront evil physically And so instead of this being an arguing match and trying to win over the queen He realizes he needs to kill western. He needs to kill or rather the possessed west and he needs to attack This is the part that you love what he loves I love this because in in my head when I read this book I'd read me christianity and a bunch of other csluis and in my head Lewis is a theologian He's a philosopher and an argument I thought what was going to happen in this book is that ransam was going to Come up with arguments that would defeat this guy right that he was going to figure it out And he was going to theologically put him in his place and then the the girl would the queen would think yes You are correct. I see that now and this guy's false. That's not what happens I don't like him spoilers But I mean we're at that point So he pummels him with his fists Right and I I stink and love that that that bent that I now see in csluis that he loves to bring things to the real natural Way things are supposed to be and so ransam just beats him up and I love and like the the adolescent in you and I read that I think that was early college I was like yeah Yeah, fight him beat the snot I was so excited I was like a fist fight as an end that's fantastic I got so excited it's also funny saying because they're like two middle-aged guys like they're not Good at fighting either is elegant in like the force that is taken over westin is is is a force of knowledge of intellect not of Just fighting and so making stronger and it'd be like us fighting and like academics Yes, correct and I mean they go after it right they're trying to figure out like how to punch because they don't really know what they're doing But they they fight they're gonna do a fist fight and ultimately western wins I'm sorry ransam wins that fist fight and the funny thing is isn't the queen there when this happens at the very beginning yes And but then western runs off right western runs off into the woods and tries to get away from ransam Weston is possessed western is realizing that he's not gonna win this fight that for all his knowledge and intellect He has no real power here.

He he's stuck inside the body of a middle-aged guy So they yeah wasn't ransam sort of afraid that he'd have a bunch of extra punching power because he has possessed and then it turns out No, he's like a negative and so western runs off into the woods ransam runs after him There's this little chase sequence and at one point the the force leaves western So western is himself for a little while and ransam and western have this back and forth ransam is trying to offer this chance to western to To leave the situation to improve western describes his horrible situation He he's stuck among the dead is how he describes it and it's no other he describes hell is what he describes for pages on pages on pages That's what western is experiencing right now, and he's miserable and he is scared to be there He's scared of being possessed again. It's like a really it's a sad it's a sad scene to read and ransam gives him this chance to escape that As western is fighting for control over his body ransam yells to him are you there western he shouted what she or pull yourself together all that stuff You've been talking as lunacy say a child's prayer if you can't say a man's repent your sins take my hand There are hundreds of mere boys on earth facing death at this moment will do very well but western can't do it can't bring himself to do it he's eventually possessed again by this force and Western and ransom are near each other I forget they're in the water and near the water But western now possessed again tries to drown ransam. So We thought that we thought that ransam was going to win western kind of gets the upper hand starts to drown Ransam gets a bummer ransam obviously come on obviously gets out of the situation Chases western to a cave. There's more fist fighting.

There's just like giant earthworm looking thing that shows up that western summons this like giant evil creature to Attack western or to attack ransam. I keep me wait wait. Did it come out of the water was like a sea serpent? No I think it came from Western I can read it.

Hold on. Yeah. Can you read it? I'm wondering if csl is pulling from horse mythology here slowly shakily with unnatural and inhuman movement Movement the human form scarlet is that him?

Oh, that's the unmanned hold on oh then a tubular mass which reflected the red glow As if it were polished his heart gave a great leap as the branches suddenly resolved themselves into long wiry feelers and the dotted lights Became the many eyes of a shell helmeted head in the mass that followed it was revealed as a large a roughly cylindrical body Horrible things followed angular many jointed legs. Does this ring any bells? No, I was thinking maybe he was doing a mid-guard serpent kind of thing I'd be way too cool. It's like slithered out of the water was like the serpent that encircles the world But no, but it sounds like a big crap.

It's yeah It's connected to these three parts so I get more like a kind of wasp like a Gross disgusting. It's not that So you know someone's a giant creature Ransom realizes there's nothing actually to be scared of because nothing can hurt him here They don't have death in this world and his lack of fear In essence conquers this beast such that it's just a creature. It's no longer something be feared more fistfighting and ultimately ransome beats western again and Realizes he can't just leave western as is western is not going to change from the situation Ultimately throws western they call it a sea of fire. It sounds like lava But throws him it's like a very more door scene, but takes ransome takes western throws him into this sea of fire And that's the end of western western is killed as a result of that Um, there's more that happens after this, but this is like the weird part of the book where does the queen ever sleep on the island?

Queen does not sleep on the island so the so paralandras saved in that way what happens with the mirror and the feathers I don't know if they resolve anything of that after the scene. Um, ransome is acquainted with um, they have different names for these gods What is the he meets the god of paralandra which I believe is named paralandra because nothing makes flavor So he meets um paralandra and the god of mars who is the one from the first book They have this long conversation. I'm not going to go into it He then goes back to see the queen the queen the king has returned to the queen and all is right The these two spiritual beings pass on authority to the king and queen for all of paralandra and all is right They have avoided a fall these this king and queen will live long long long lives and eventually will be a part of Um, um, fixing earth. I guess is one way of describing it of whatever end time thing happens They talk about they will be there they will be a part of that.

Oh, just because they are these um still perfect beings They've learned about evil even the king has learned about evil. Um, even though we didn't have to experience it The queen was tempted but did not give into this evil and she knows of it But it's not tempted by that knowledge anymore. It's like science fiction from a guy who loves medieval cosmology Literally, it's exactly what it is right. I mean if you meet the representatives of the planet That's totally a medieval cosmology, right?

There's intelligences in the spheres and the gods are the planets He's just it's very nerdy. I mean as it's like everything he does, right? I love it. Yeah, so and that's you know, it's a happy ending for all this stuff ransoms back to earth and then let's see that that so he There's all this imagery that I'm not pulling out there are you know, I focus mostly on the plot so apologies for all that stuff he finds that from his battle with the Possessed western that there's this bite on ransoms heal and that bite ultimately leads to him not being able to stay on parallandra So the death that he has to experience is a return to normal life, right?

Otherwise he would live there and be happy and let it but he doesn't get to stay there What's my point with all this? Um that in I just What's the way to say it that evil is a force that has to be fought and can't always be out reasoned I find very powerful this scene that AJ is talking about also that for all the attempts at talking to and Addressing the concerns of this evil force what ultimately has to happen to it is it has to be eradicated. There's no way around that What's the way to say it that um, there's not a what presents itself as reason and rationality isn't it's a force with it with a viewpoint um that evil also desires not just the corruption of That figure that the queen in that situation but of all the planet ultimately where the queen to fall all of nature would fall as a result of As well that there's this connection between the two they aren't separated in some artificial way Well because the only way that evil has Any kind of essence in the world is through the corruption of something so it makes sense that it has this desire to corrupt yes almost like Like a virus or something that is infectious. Yes, um, which I think we talked about on that on that episode before Or you even trace it back to talking about um coveting and the desire from rene jorard.

Um that that is a sort of the central the last commandment is to Is a warning against wanting yes, and um, and there's something about the power of desire Kind of like what AJ was saying with satan is the most glorious Uh, and then fell the hardest. There's something true about Uh our human desire that is glorious and falls the hardest as well. Yes I think of interest and I just look this up this book is published in the midst of world war two Yes, so that's his point about the you know, many boys are praying those prayers They die he's talking about soldiers that are dying at this time. Yeah, and and it would make sense that I mean you can't out reason nazis Right correct that there's no well.

That's complicated. Yeah, right ultimately they had to be fought and defeated in war I do worry. I don't want to overtake this to be like well all of your enemies need to be killed It's the ideology or the um Or no even even them that it's it's not it's the manifestation of evil in the world like we don't we don't say that This is maybe why we say this isn't an allegory. It's not like so go punch your enemies in the face Yes, evil still exists in the world and and satan needs to be punched in the face not Someone you don't like not like your neighbor who didn't give your lawnmower back.

Yeah, I think the the situation in world war two Like you could probably reason with Individual individuals on the Nazi church, right? But but as a whole as a force like it was something Visically defeated and this is this is why it's so interesting to me this book is because it's almost a commentary on just war Like there are wars that are justly and righteously fought which is a whole different conversation I don't know if you want to have it but not now, but uh, Because wesden is given the chance to repent wesden is given the chance to cut out the evil from his life and come back It's because this force is in him that he ultimately has to die has to be killed So it's not wesden wesden's the problem for inviting demon possession. Don't do that. That's not a great thing But wesden isn't ultimately the problem.

It's that force inside of them instead and also that force that is trying to corrupt the world Um of parallandra right not really wesden though wesden's um greed brought him there Um, so what am i trying to say that there is still an evil there's still evil evil is a thing that is experiencing our day today And I don't know a better way to say it than that it spreads It it starts in some form and Again, what the devil character in this book is trying to do is appeal to desires of the queen that are already there The queen wants to be beautiful international state she is beautiful and suddenly thinks that she can become more beautiful And so it's taking a string to pull on that thread there. Um, oh interesting Okay, so there was in so I subscribed to the form of periodical and they had an article in there about augustine talking about evil I'm so I thought it was really kind of interesting because we just had the podcast on it. I'm not saying that they listened to us Um, but they were in the article they drew a distinction between Being something imperfect is not the same thing as something sinful or fallen Um, and there's there's something about so the queen realizes that she's imperfect because she's young and hasn't grown up and wants to be wise But that is that imperfection isn't a Fallenness and it isn't a sin and it's not evil Um, but there is something incomplete so you can be a sinless creature that's incomplete And um, and this is so that the author was saying that this is one of augustine's positions about the garden is that like you have Adam and Eve who were incomplete humans that won't be made complete until until Well, we're going to milton until they finish the garden but according to our tradition Um, until christ, um, then I get some of the whole questions of like did the fall have to happen But I guess Lewis is saying that no the fall doesn't happen Not happen and says that explicitly this part was one of the arguments that the Satan figure puts forward is that this is Has that this is a necessary step in the evolution of the society you must do this for the good of your world? Obviously he's lying they have a great life even without they have an option with the full But then there's also they have the opportunity to be made perfect without the fall Yes, that's right because this is a lot of things that the students come away with impaired us lost as well The fall has to happen so that I can know Jesus and know God and be made perfect It's like, uh, it's always would say isn't true.

It's always would say isn't true and interesting in this section at the end of the book There's this ransoms trying to understand like what's next for these people and it's they have work to do on this world They're going to fix up this um the fixed land. They're going to make a monument to God there Um, but then When what we would call in times happen they only call that a beginning That's where they they will become whatever is next for them. It's not until God is ready Not until they're brought into that next station. So just a what's the I'm probably getting too algorical with it and I apologize because it's also Yeah, we'll see what you know Anyway, so that there is this um Evil is a real thing that we will encounter in that its desire is to spread and I know I'm giving Um, I'm giving like will to it But its desires to spread not just not just to stay in the one area where it exists in the first place Part of me wanting to do this episode now is that we're near the beginning of a new year where people are thinking about new year's resolutions And I think a resolution often is focused around wanting to do something better I would just I would consider wearing your life is there an evil that has some kind of foothold in your life Where's where's a habit in your life that is bringing you um pain that is making your life worse than it could be Um that habit won't be happy to stay just by itself It will lead to something else if it's fed and allowed to fester Um, and that whatever that evil thing is whatever that thing that's wasting your time probably can't be reasoned with Um, it's not something that you can depending on the nature of it.

You can't just say, you know, um, um, I'll only be a glutton on Tuesdays, right? It's it will want to spread and um, you can't contain it It's something that ultimately has to be killed. Um, that's why one an old an old phrase for getting rid of sin is mortification It's the actual killing of that sin that's something to be considering going into the new year And what's the point of all this is that the eradication of this sin is to make us worthy, um, rulers That's what they're called king and queen in this book But the goal is for us to be rulers of ourselves that we can rule over some some type of external creation to ourselves So the first step of ruling is the ruling of oneself. So just again, I'm being too allegorical with it But that's something that I got from reading through this book.

I'm starting up. Are you really? Yeah, okay You're getting the seven of January. So hopefully this will yeah, this will set you up for the next 11 and a half months Yep, I hope that is parallain boy.

That is purify flesh do it. Um, cool. Well, thanks. Maybe now I want now I feel like I want to read it.

I know it's in my box of books in my storage barn somewhere good luck Um, I have many books in there on my word. I can't wait for my library to be done. Um, but in your house in my house, okay Um, this has been classical stuff. You should know with a J Thomas and Graham You can find us at classical stuff.net.

You can email us at the guys at classical stuff.net You can patronize us on patreon You can tweet at us on the twits at classical stuff c l s c al stuff And we thank you for listening and we hope good luck with the mortification of the flesh in the this year ahead This is us signing off. Bye