from Perelandra

by C.S. Lewis

from Chapter Four

[Editor's Note: I find this illustration by C.S. Lewis of God's providence and human response to be particularly insightful.

As a matter of context, for better understanding the passage, this is from the second book in Lewis' 'Space Trilogy'. Ransom has been sent from Earth to Venus (called Perelandra) for an unknown purpose. When he arrives he finds a world analogous to Eden before the Fall, complete with Adam and Eve personae (here called the King and the Lady; Maledil is their name for God). Lady is an especially curious person, eager to learn from Ransom. This passage proceeds from a discussion where Ransom refused to explain the meaning of death.]

'You could never understand, Lady,' [Ransom] replied. 'But in our world not all events are pleasing or welcome. There may be such a thing that you would cut off both your arms and your legs to prevent it happening—and yet it happens: with us.'

'But how can one wish any of those waves not to reach us which Maledil is rolling towards us?'

Against his better judgment Ransom found himself goaded into argument.

'But even you,' he said, 'when you first saw me, I know now you were expecting and hoping that I was the King. When you found I was not, your face changed. Was that event not unwelcome? Did you not wish it to be otherwise?'

'Oh,' said the Lady. She turned aside with her head bowed and her hands clasped in an intensity of thought.

[....]

'What you have made me see,' answered the Lady, 'is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet it has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one's mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before—that the very moment of the finding is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished—if it were possible to wish—you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.'

Ransom interrputed. 'That is hardly the same thing as finding a stranger when you wanted your husband.'

'Oh, that is how I came to understand the whole thing. You and the King differ more than two kinds of fruit. The joy of finding him again and the joy of all the new knowledge I have had from you are more unlike than two tastes; and when the difference is as great as that, and each of the two things so great, then the first picture does stay in the mind quite a long time—many beats of the heart—after the other good has come. And this, O Piebald, is the glory and wonder you have made me see; that it is I, I myself, who turn from the good expected to the given good. Out of my own heart I do it. One can conceive a heart which did not: which clung to the good it had first thought of and turned the good which was given it into no good.'

[....]

'And have you no fear,' said Ransom, 'that it will ever be hard to turn your heart from the thing you wanted to the thing Maledil sends?'

'I see,' said the Lady presently. 'The wave you plunge into may be very swift and great. You may need all your force to swim into it. You mean, He might send me a good like that?'

'Yes—or like a wave so swift and great that all your force was too little.'

'It often happens that way in swimming,' said the Lady. 'Is not that part of the delight?'

'But are you happy without the King? Do you not want the King?'

'Want him?' she said. 'How could there be anything I did not want?'

There was something in her replies that began to repel Ransom.

'You can't want him very much if you are happy without him,' he said: and was immediately surprised at the sulkiness of his own voice.

'Why?' asked the Lady.