From the final paragraph of Mere Christianity (quoted in our last post), we now turn to the first paragraph of The Screwtape Letters. Here the subject is acting on what we believe—or "connecting thinking with doing"–and once again, the possible inspiration is that old favourite of Lewis's, MacDonald's beloved masterpiece Sir Gibbie.
“My Dear Wormwood...
I note what you say about guiding your patient’s reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naïve? It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the enemy’s clutches...A few centuries earlier the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning.
”
“Janet saw from the first that Gibbie’s ignorance at its worst was but room vacant for the truth: when it came it found bolt nor bar on door or window, but had immediate entrance. The secret of this power of reception was, that to see a truth and to do it was one and the same thing with Gibbie. To know and not do would have seemed to him an impossibility, as it is in vital idea a monstrosity.
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