- •Pilgrim's regress
- •Preface to third edition
- •Did the instructors really mean it?
- •He hears of Death and what his elders pretend to believe about it
- •Everyone except John cheers up on the way home
- •Greed to recover Desire hides the real offer of its return
- •Ichabod11
- •Sin and the Law torment him, each aggravating the other
- •In hand she boldly took
- •Which can explain away religion by any number of methods
- •"Evolution" and "Comparative Religion"
- •And all the guess-work which masquerades as "Science"
- •He abandons his religion with profound relief
- •The Moral Imperative does not fully understand itself
- •John decides that Aesthetic Experience is the thing to pursue
- •For a moment it seems to have kept its promise
- •And would finally turn into Lust, but that in the nick of time
- •Ichabod22
- •The "modern" literary movement offers to "debunk" it
- •The poetry of the Machine Age is so very pure
- •The poetry of Silly Twenties
- •The "Courage" and mutual loyalty of Artists
- •It was a low-brow blunder to mention the most obvious thing about it
- •If Religion is a Wish-Fulfilment dream, whose wishes does it fulfil?
- •Its pretentiousness and cold frivolity
- •Its hatred of all systematic reasoning
- •Its ignorant and dilettante scepticism
- •Its unacknowledged dependences
- •These "sensible" men are parasitic
- •Their culture is precarious
- •Take away its power of commanding labour
- •And the whole thing collapses
- •In the presence of these thought traditional morality falters
- •Vertue is Sick
- •It is friends with the World and goes on no pilgrimage;
- •It is fond of wildflowers
- •Idealist Philosophy rejects the literal truth of religion
- •It is dangerous to welcome Sweet Desire, but fatal to reject it
- •Ignorantia
- •Its supreme mode of temptation is to make all else insipid
- •19 Leah for rachel refers to Genesis 29, where Jacob was tricked by his uncle Laban into taking Leah for his wife, rather than her sister Rachel, whom Jacob had really wanted.
- •24 Non est hic "He is not here." Vulgate for Luke 24:5-6
- •43 Archtype and Ectype words used by Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, XXX-XXXI, to mean "original" and "copy".
- •44 Esse is Percipi - "to be is to be perceived", Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge.
- •115 Exoteric and esoteric what is for public consumption, and what is for private consumption; for everybody, and for the inner few.
- •123 Monism the doctrine that matter and mind are one and inseparable--the philosophical corollary of pantheism, which sees God and uncreated Nature as indistinguishable
- •159 Limbo in traditional Christian belief the place where babies who die before baptism go and live forever in a state of natural happiness.
And would finally turn into Lust, but that in the nick of time
CHAPTER SIX
Ichabod22
"Media, I love you," said John.
"We have come to the real Island," said Media.
"But oh, alas!" said he, "so long our bodies why do we forbear23?"
"Else a great prince in prison lies," sighed she.
"No one can understand the mystery of our love," said he.
At that moment a brisk, hobnailed step was heard and a tall young man strode into the room carrying a light in his hand. He had coal-black hair and a straight mouth like the slit in a pillar-box, and he was dressed in various kinds of metal wire. As soon as he saw them he burst into a great guffaw. The lovers instantly sprang up and apart.
"Well, Brownie," said he, "at your tricks again?"
"Don't call me that name," said Media, stamping her foot. "I have told you before not to call me that."
The young man made an obscene gesture at her, and then turned to John, "I see that old fool of a father of mine has been at you."
"You have no right to speak that way of father," said Media. Then, turning to John, her cheeks flaming, her breast heaving, she said, "All is over. Our dream--is shattered. Our mystery--is profaned. I would have taught you all the secrets of love, and now you are lost to me for ever. We must part. I shall go and kill myself," and with that she rushed from the room.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Non est Hic24
"Don't bother about her," said the young man. "She has threatened that a hundred times. She is only a brown girl, though she doesn't know it."
The "modern" literary movement offers to "debunk" it
"A brown girl!" cried John. "And your father..."
"My father has been in the pay of the Brownies all his life. He doesn't know it, the old chucklehead. Calls them the Muses, or the Spirit, or some rot. In actual fact, he is by profession a pimp."
"And the Island?" said John.
"We'll talk about it in the morning. Ain't the kind of Island you're thinking of. Tell you what. I don't live with my father and my precious sister. I live in Eschropolis25 and I am going back tomorrow. I'll take you down to the laboratory and show you some real poetry. Not fantasies. The real thing."
"Thank you very much," said John.
Then young Mr. Halfways found his room for him and the whole of that household went to bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Great Promises
Gus Halfways was the name of Mr. Halfways' son. As soon as he rose in the morning he called John down to breakfast with him so that they might start early on their journey. There was no one to hinder them, for old Halfways was still asleep and Media always had her breakfast in bed. When they had eaten, Gus brought him into a shed beside his father's house and showed him a machine on wheels.
"What is this?" said John.
"My old bus," said young Halfways. Then he stood back with his head on one side and gazed at it for a bit: but presently he began to speak in a changed and reverent voice.
"She is a poem. She is the daughter of the spirit of the age. What was the speed of Atalanta26 to her speed? The beauty of Apollo to her beauty?"
Now beauty to John meant nothing save glimpses of his Island, and the machine did not remind him of his Island at all: so he held his tongue.
"Don't you see?" said Gus. "Our fathers made images of what they