'The Discarded Image' by C.S. Lewis - Derek's Notes
A look into the last book by C.S. Lewis on the fascinating Medieval Model of the Universe that is held together by love
Here are a few highlights and favorite quotes inside my personal notebook from reading C.S. Lewis’s final published book before he passed in 1964, The Discarded Image. Most of the notes are the parts that resonated with me most and what I was researching or writing at the time (the philosophy of Arrival).
The copy I have of The Discarded Image was purchased second-hand from Thriftbooks.com. The risky part is that you never know exactly what you will receive in the mail. But in this special case, I got a gem. It is an old library copy from the Poplar Creek Public Library District in Streamwood, Illinois. Inside the cover page is the word “Discarded” stamped above the text that reads “Canto is an imprint offering a range of…” Symbolism happens, my friends. I have a “discarded” copy of The Discarded Image.
You can watch/listen to my book discussion of D.I. with historian Seraphim Richard Rohlin. These notes are a good companion to the conversation.
Derek’s Notes from The Discarded Image
Language: 1) has its own personality, 2) implies an outlook, 3) reveals a mental activity, 4) has a resonance, 5) not quite the same as others - is sui generis.
The Medieval man had a systematic mind that codified everything to the model of the universe, what Lewis calls the Medieval Model.
Poets describe life, not biologists.
Pseudo Dionysus describes an angelology that was a dynamic mean between God and man.
Modern man sees himself in the universe as standing at the top of a flight of stairs “whose foot is lost in obscurity”; and the middle man sees himself standing at the bottom of the stairs whose top is “invisible with light.” p74-75
The Boethian image of The wheel of Destiny and the hub of Providence. The closer we get to the center of a wheel the less motion. As finite beings come closer to participating in the Divine (unmoving) Nature, becomes less subject to Destiny, which is a moving picture of Destiny.
“On the utmost circumference the planets, the dispensers of fate, are depicted. On a smaller circle, within and above them, are the Intelligences that move them. At the centre, with hands upraised in guidance, sits the Unmoved Mover.” p87
Intelligentsia, the “knowing faculty” (understanding) is above ratio (reason). We glimpse of a knowledge without determinism.
Eternity versus Perpetuity:
“Eternity is quite distinct from perpetuity, from mere endless continuance in time. Perpetuity is only the attainment of an endless series of moments, each lost as soon as it is attained. Eternity is the actual and timeless fruition of illimitable life. Time, even endless time, is only an image, almost a parody, of that plenitude; a hopelss attempt to compensate for the transitoriness of its ‘presents’ by infinitely multiplying them.” p89
God is eternal. He sees.
God is eternal, not perpetual. Strictly speaking, He never foresees; He simply sees. Your ‘future’ is only an area, and only for us a special area, of His infinite Now. He sees (not remembers) your yesterday’s acts because yesterday is still ‘there’ for Him.
The Medieval man saw the universe as an expansion of spheres. Each layer influenced people differently. The layers below the moon were mutable; they changed. The layers above the moon were eternal; they didn’t change. The moon was the liminal place of transition.
People interacted with the spheres, or planetary structures, through intuition rather than conceptualization. Lewis notes the difference between knowing (connaitre in latin, conocer in spanish) and knowing about them (savoir, or saber). The planets were influential characters.
Moved by Love
Everything moves to return to its origin, a “kindly enclyning” to their “kindly stede”. p.92
Every kindly thing that is
Hath a kindly stede ther he
May best in hit conserved be;
Unto which place every thing
Through his kindly enclyning
Moveth for to come to
- (Chaucer, Hous of Fame)
The soul longs to return to the place from which it comes, heaven. Heaven is “pure light, intellectual light, full of love” (Paradiso, XXX, 38). “The light beyond the material universe [spaciality] is intellectual light.” a 3-dimentional space has no ‘end’. p.97
Aristotle wrote of time and space: “Outside the heaven there is neither place nor void nor time. Hence whatever is there is of such a kind as not to occupy space, nor does time affect it.” (De Caelo, 279)
The Medieval Model is vertiginous (turns about an axis). People act in relation to the model; they make contributions coherent with its pattern. The model is centered upon the Christian story. The Medieval world saw the universe as a series of concentric circles, as “spheres” that formed a whole. Planets - Moon - Earth - Man - Heart. The Model centered upon an axis that connected all things in every sphere.
The way to perceive the Model is not in the studying but in the doing, in the experiencing. “The recipe for such realisation is not the study of books.” Lewis encourages readers to go for a walk in a starry night and gaze into the sky intending to see it as a medieval would.
Modern man approaches the universe like he is lost at sea, while the Medieval man like being “conducted through an immense cathedral.” The model was “unimaginably large” and “unambiguously finite” with an “orderly variety.” People have a role mapped territory. p.99
Moderns are “under the influence of pictures” that follow the laws of perspective. While Medieval art determined the shape of objects in images based on the emphasis the artist intended to show the viewer.
“Sometimes the old intuitions survive; when they do not, we falter.” p.109
The cosmic spheres of the premium mobile was put into place and its spheres set in motion by an agent that did not occupy a place and was unaffected by time. He was motionless to set things into motion. As Aristotle wrote in Metaphysics, we find the Prime Mover, who is the wholly transcendent and immaterial God. p.113
The cosmos is moved and held together by love, by a desire to draw closer to God. It “communicates motion to the rest of the universe.”
God loved man first describes the order of Grace. Dante ends the Comedy with “the love that moves the Sun and the other stars”.
Q: Why spheres moving in a rotation?
Love seeks to participate in its object, to become as like its object as it can. But finite and created beings can never fully share the motionless ubiquity of God, just as time, however it multiplies its transitory presents, can never achieve the ‘totum simul’ of eternity. The nearest approach to the divine and perfect ubiquity that the spheres can attain is the swiftest and most regular possible movement, in the most perfect form which is circular. Each sphere attains it in a less degree than the sphere above it, and therefore has a slower pace. - p.114-5
In my conversation about D.I. with historian Richard Rohlin, he pointed out that hell is at the center of the earth because it is furthest from heaven. That is why you see depictions like the one above with the fire serpent in the center and the enthroned Christ on the outermost sphere.
Earth and her Inhabitants
Man is a “rational animal”, a “composite being” that is rational like the angels and animal like the bests of the earth. He is a “little world” or a microcosm. Man is a “cross-section of being”. “Every mode of being in the whole universe contributes to him.” p.152-3
The two faculties of the Rational Soul are Intellectus and Ratio. Intellectus can be called ‘understanding’ and is considered higher than ratio or ‘reason’. Intellectus is a clouded intelligence. Lewis quotes Aquinas:
intellect is the simple (indivisible, uncompounded) grasp of an intelligible towards an intelligible truth, whereas reasoning is the progression towards an intelligible truth by going from one understood (intellecto) point to another. The difference between them is thus like the difference between rest and motion or between progression and acquisition’.
Intellect is when we perceive, when we ‘just see’ a truth. Ratio is when we proceed step-by-step towards that truth that is not self-evident. “Nothing can be proved is nothing is self-evident.” p.157
Lewis quotes Timothy Bright in his Treatise of Melancholy. The Spirits are “a true love knot to couple heaven and earth together.”
View of History and the Influence of the Model
Historicism: the belief that by studying the past we can learn not only historical but meta-historical or transcendental truth. p.174
Carlyle spoke of history as “a book of revelations.” Joachim of Flora considered himself a “dabbler in the future.” It was a time that Historicists “often felt most at home.” Most of the Medieval historians are not of this kind.
Historically as well as cosmically, medieval man stood at the foot of a stairway; looking up, he felt delight. The backward, like the upward, glance exhilarated him with a majestic spectacle, and humility was rewarded with the pleasures of admiration. p.185
People were part of a “great succession”
The saints looked down on one’s spiritual life, the kings, sages, and warriors on one’s secular life, the great lovers of old on one’s own amours, to foster, encourage, and instruct. There were friends, ancestors, patrons in every age. One had one’s place, however modest, in a great succession; one need be either proud nor lonely.
The number 7 is numinous. The Liberal Arts are constituted by 7 pillars: Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy.
There were 3 kinds of proof: from Reason, from Authority, and from Experience.
The medieval type of imagination is a “realising imagination.” p.206
The period was marked by humility. The skill of any occupation is the means to an end beyond itself.
The purpose of literature is to “teach what is useful, to honour what deserves honour, to appreciate what is delightful.” p.214
Subscribe for more entries from Derek’s notebook:
Read more entries from Derek’s notebook: