1 00:00:26,978 --> 00:00:28,038 - Hey, they're ready for you Max. 2 00:00:28,073 --> 00:00:29,243 - Oh, good. 3 00:00:29,278 --> 00:00:31,208 - It is black. Extra strong. - Thank you. 4 00:00:31,244 --> 00:00:33,513 - Okay. We're on our way. 5 00:00:45,491 --> 00:00:46,928 - Okay, one minute till we shoot. 6 00:00:46,963 --> 00:00:48,660 Thank you guys. Let's be ready. 7 00:00:50,767 --> 00:00:51,630 - There we go. 8 00:00:55,138 --> 00:00:57,372 - Final check- - Is this my chair? 9 00:00:58,240 --> 00:01:00,477 - Let's have a red light bell, please. 10 00:01:01,174 --> 00:01:02,843 - Where's my phone? 11 00:01:02,911 --> 00:01:04,478 Who has my phone? 12 00:01:05,109 --> 00:01:06,216 - Sound. 13 00:01:07,815 --> 00:01:08,713 Camera. 14 00:01:10,085 --> 00:01:10,850 - All right. How's my hair? 15 00:01:10,919 --> 00:01:11,988 How's my hair? 16 00:01:12,023 --> 00:01:12,920 - It's looking good. Looking good. 17 00:01:12,956 --> 00:01:14,723 - Nice and quiet, please. 18 00:01:14,791 --> 00:01:15,720 Ready for a take. 19 00:01:19,324 --> 00:01:20,363 Cameras are rolling. 20 00:01:20,399 --> 00:01:21,297 Set. 21 00:01:22,064 --> 00:01:23,731 - One take one. - Mark it. 22 00:01:25,998 --> 00:01:26,863 Quiet. 23 00:01:28,673 --> 00:01:29,866 Stand by and... 24 00:01:32,411 --> 00:01:33,309 Action. 25 00:01:34,211 --> 00:01:37,979 - When I was an atheist, if you had asked me, 26 00:01:38,014 --> 00:01:39,877 why do you not believe in God? 27 00:01:40,847 --> 00:01:45,351 I would've answered, look at the universe we live in. 28 00:01:45,386 --> 00:01:48,691 Mostly empty space, completely dark. 29 00:01:48,726 --> 00:01:51,159 Unimaginably cold. 30 00:01:51,194 --> 00:01:52,756 Most scientists think it improbable 31 00:01:52,792 --> 00:01:56,025 that any planet in our solar system sustains life 32 00:01:56,094 --> 00:02:00,969 and Earth herself existed without life for millions of years 33 00:02:01,004 --> 00:02:02,565 and may exist millions more 34 00:02:02,634 --> 00:02:05,972 after life has once again left her. 35 00:02:06,007 --> 00:02:08,510 And what is life? 36 00:02:08,545 --> 00:02:12,910 So arranged that creatures live only by preying on another. 37 00:02:13,646 --> 00:02:16,649 In the lower forms, this means only death. 38 00:02:16,684 --> 00:02:19,319 In the higher forms something called consciousness 39 00:02:19,354 --> 00:02:23,321 enables the living to experience pain. 40 00:02:23,356 --> 00:02:25,260 Creatures are born in pain, 41 00:02:25,329 --> 00:02:30,359 live by inflicting pain and mostly die in pain. 42 00:02:30,894 --> 00:02:34,431 In the most complex of all creatures, man, 43 00:02:34,466 --> 00:02:37,239 another quality appears, reason. 44 00:02:37,274 --> 00:02:41,311 And by reason we can foresee our own pain. 45 00:02:42,176 --> 00:02:43,610 This we call suffering. 46 00:02:44,476 --> 00:02:46,346 We can foresee our own death 47 00:02:46,381 --> 00:02:48,917 while keenly desiring to go on living. 48 00:02:49,586 --> 00:02:54,090 Reason enables humans to invent hundreds of ingenious ways 49 00:02:54,125 --> 00:02:56,291 of inflicting a great deal more pain 50 00:02:56,327 --> 00:02:59,855 than we could have done as irrational creatures. 51 00:02:59,890 --> 00:03:02,893 This power we have exploited to the full. 52 00:03:02,928 --> 00:03:07,433 History's our record of crime, war, disease, terror, 53 00:03:07,468 --> 00:03:09,367 with just enough happiness to give us 54 00:03:09,402 --> 00:03:11,968 an agonized fear of losing it. 55 00:03:13,243 --> 00:03:16,110 And when lost, the poignant misery 56 00:03:16,145 --> 00:03:18,975 of remembering how good it felt. 57 00:03:23,783 --> 00:03:26,153 Every now and then our condition is improved 58 00:03:26,188 --> 00:03:28,991 by what we call civilization. 59 00:03:29,026 --> 00:03:31,791 But all civilizations pass away. 60 00:03:31,827 --> 00:03:35,758 That our own civilization will pass away is surely probable, 61 00:03:35,793 --> 00:03:38,333 and even if it should not pass away, 62 00:03:38,401 --> 00:03:41,437 we're all doomed, the universe is doomed. 63 00:03:42,699 --> 00:03:44,339 The astronomers hold out no hope 64 00:03:44,407 --> 00:03:46,870 that this planet is permanently inhabitable. 65 00:03:46,906 --> 00:03:49,574 The physicists hold out no hope that organic life 66 00:03:49,610 --> 00:03:51,881 is a permanent possibility in any part 67 00:03:51,917 --> 00:03:53,282 of the material universe. 68 00:03:53,317 --> 00:03:56,317 Not only this earth, but the whole show. 69 00:03:56,352 --> 00:03:59,152 All the suns of space are to run down. 70 00:03:59,188 --> 00:04:02,623 Nature is a sinking ship. 71 00:04:04,089 --> 00:04:07,990 So if you asked me to believe all this I've just described 72 00:04:08,025 --> 00:04:10,901 as the work of an omnipotent, benevolent God, 73 00:04:10,969 --> 00:04:12,499 I would have laughed and said 74 00:04:12,535 --> 00:04:14,798 the evidence points in the opposite direction. 75 00:04:14,833 --> 00:04:17,107 Either there's no God behind the universe, 76 00:04:17,142 --> 00:04:19,909 a God indifferent to good and evil, 77 00:04:19,944 --> 00:04:22,478 or worse, an evil God, 78 00:04:23,544 --> 00:04:25,073 Never dreamed of raising the question 79 00:04:25,109 --> 00:04:28,548 if the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, 80 00:04:28,617 --> 00:04:30,550 how on Earth did humans ever come to attribute 81 00:04:30,585 --> 00:04:33,922 it to the work of a wise and good creator? 82 00:04:33,990 --> 00:04:35,387 Oh men are fools! 83 00:04:35,422 --> 00:04:36,852 But not so foolish as that, 84 00:04:36,887 --> 00:04:40,130 to direct inference from black to white, 85 00:04:40,165 --> 00:04:42,496 from evil flower to virtuous root, 86 00:04:42,532 --> 00:04:47,033 from senseless work to a workman infinitely wise. 87 00:04:47,069 --> 00:04:48,702 Staggers belief. 88 00:04:50,439 --> 00:04:53,803 No, I did not believe God existed. 89 00:04:53,838 --> 00:04:56,038 I was angry at God for not existing. 90 00:04:56,107 --> 00:04:58,709 Why should creatures have the burden of existence 91 00:04:58,744 --> 00:05:01,048 forced upon them without their consent? 92 00:05:20,104 --> 00:05:22,536 I lost my mother to cancer. 93 00:05:22,571 --> 00:05:25,106 Had an estranged relationship with my father 94 00:05:25,141 --> 00:05:26,972 that I regret even now. 95 00:05:27,708 --> 00:05:29,707 Was in the trenches during the Great War, 96 00:05:29,742 --> 00:05:32,708 the hell where youth and laughter go 97 00:05:32,743 --> 00:05:35,911 only to see horribly smashed men 98 00:05:35,946 --> 00:05:39,688 still moving about like crushed beetles. 99 00:05:39,723 --> 00:05:42,453 A mortar shell that wounded me, killed the man next to me, 100 00:05:42,488 --> 00:05:43,722 splattering shrapnel, 101 00:05:43,757 --> 00:05:47,126 some of which I carry my body to this day. 102 00:05:58,708 --> 00:06:02,611 When I returned to Oxford after the war in 1919, 103 00:06:02,646 --> 00:06:06,480 I read the minutes to my college's last meeting in 1914, 104 00:06:06,548 --> 00:06:09,482 nothing made me realize more thoroughly 105 00:06:09,551 --> 00:06:12,048 the absolute waste of those years. 106 00:06:12,084 --> 00:06:15,453 I was asked "Were you much frightened in France?" 107 00:06:15,488 --> 00:06:17,160 "All the time," I said, 108 00:06:17,229 --> 00:06:19,958 "but I never sank so low as to pray." 109 00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:23,126 Some people have got the impression from my books 110 00:06:23,161 --> 00:06:26,561 that I was raised in a strict and vivid puritanism. 111 00:06:26,597 --> 00:06:27,801 This is untrue. 112 00:06:30,237 --> 00:06:31,039 - Mr. Lewis. 113 00:06:31,108 --> 00:06:33,008 - Roger, usual please. 114 00:06:33,044 --> 00:06:35,944 You? Make that two. 115 00:06:35,980 --> 00:06:36,639 I'll get these. 116 00:06:36,675 --> 00:06:38,246 Edel will find us a table. 117 00:06:38,281 --> 00:06:39,978 - You can have this one. 118 00:06:40,711 --> 00:06:42,112 There you go. All done. 119 00:06:43,919 --> 00:06:47,557 - No, religious experience did not occur in my family. 120 00:06:49,759 --> 00:06:52,755 Was taught the usual things, made to say my prayers, 121 00:06:52,790 --> 00:06:54,730 in due time taken to church. 122 00:06:55,532 --> 00:06:57,864 Can't remember feeling much interest in it. 123 00:06:58,803 --> 00:06:59,701 Cheers! 124 00:07:03,738 --> 00:07:06,640 Father was a solicitor in Belfast, Ireland. 125 00:07:06,676 --> 00:07:10,839 He was Welsh by blood, passionate, rhetorical, 126 00:07:10,874 --> 00:07:13,077 laughed and cried a great deal. 127 00:07:13,879 --> 00:07:15,915 Had almost no talent for happiness. 128 00:07:16,748 --> 00:07:18,385 Mother was of a cooler race. 129 00:07:18,453 --> 00:07:20,690 She was tranquil, affectionate. 130 00:07:21,593 --> 00:07:25,160 She had a talent for happiness. Went straight for it. 131 00:07:25,196 --> 00:07:26,856 As an experienced traveler 132 00:07:26,892 --> 00:07:28,862 goes for the best seat on a train. 133 00:07:34,472 --> 00:07:37,468 I lived in a large house that to a small boy 134 00:07:37,504 --> 00:07:39,103 seemed like a city. 135 00:07:45,515 --> 00:07:48,177 I am a product of long corridors, 136 00:07:48,213 --> 00:07:53,417 empty sunlit rooms, attics explored in solitude, 137 00:07:54,053 --> 00:07:58,492 distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes. 138 00:07:58,528 --> 00:08:01,965 The noise of wind under the tiles 139 00:08:02,033 --> 00:08:03,930 and endless books. 140 00:08:06,831 --> 00:08:10,134 Books readable and unreadable, 141 00:08:10,170 --> 00:08:15,612 books suitable for a child and books emphatically not. 142 00:08:16,477 --> 00:08:18,513 Nothing was forbidden. 143 00:08:18,548 --> 00:08:22,783 In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons 144 00:08:22,852 --> 00:08:26,656 I almost literally read my way through the house. 145 00:08:31,225 --> 00:08:31,953 - Jack. 146 00:08:31,988 --> 00:08:33,960 You'll never guess what I found! 147 00:08:34,833 --> 00:08:35,724 Quick! 148 00:08:35,759 --> 00:08:36,930 - Hey wait for me! 149 00:08:38,002 --> 00:08:38,935 Hey wait! 150 00:08:38,970 --> 00:08:39,933 - Catch up. 151 00:08:40,936 --> 00:08:43,673 - Hey Jack, now stop! Don't disturb your father! 152 00:08:44,370 --> 00:08:45,268 - Boys! 153 00:08:47,010 --> 00:08:47,908 Boys! 154 00:08:51,608 --> 00:08:52,682 - Boys. 155 00:09:02,159 --> 00:09:03,022 - Happy days. 156 00:09:04,663 --> 00:09:07,961 My brother Warnie and I enjoyed them to the full. 157 00:09:11,162 --> 00:09:14,099 Until the great loss that befell our family. 158 00:09:16,938 --> 00:09:20,507 One night, my father in tears came into my room 159 00:09:20,542 --> 00:09:23,642 to convey to my terrified mind 160 00:09:23,677 --> 00:09:26,045 things I'd never conceived of. 161 00:09:26,910 --> 00:09:28,748 My mother had cancer. 162 00:09:28,783 --> 00:09:30,014 - The doctor said, we can't- 163 00:09:30,050 --> 00:09:31,312 - I don't think children suffer 164 00:09:31,348 --> 00:09:34,685 less than their elders, they suffer differently. 165 00:09:34,721 --> 00:09:36,220 - So we have to be strong. 166 00:09:37,256 --> 00:09:39,990 - And as our whole existence changed 167 00:09:40,025 --> 00:09:43,433 into something alien and menacing. 168 00:09:43,468 --> 00:09:45,229 - Your mother loves you very much. 169 00:09:45,264 --> 00:09:48,870 - The house became full of strange smells, 170 00:09:48,905 --> 00:09:54,139 midnight noises and sinister whispered conversations. 171 00:10:01,686 --> 00:10:02,881 - We need some fresh bandages quickly. 172 00:10:02,950 --> 00:10:04,347 - My brother Warnie and I 173 00:10:04,383 --> 00:10:07,050 lost our mother gradually as she was slowly withdrawn 174 00:10:07,118 --> 00:10:10,390 from our life into the hands of nurses, 175 00:10:10,459 --> 00:10:13,059 delirium and morphea. 176 00:10:16,697 --> 00:10:17,830 - Oh Doctor. Thank goodness. 177 00:10:17,899 --> 00:10:20,297 - The disease followed the usual course, 178 00:10:20,332 --> 00:10:23,066 an operation, they operated in the patient's house 179 00:10:23,134 --> 00:10:26,676 in those days, an apparent recovery, 180 00:10:26,712 --> 00:10:31,781 the return at the disease, increasing pain, death. 181 00:10:35,345 --> 00:10:38,816 When mother died, all settled happiness 182 00:10:38,851 --> 00:10:41,758 disappeared from our lives. 183 00:10:42,426 --> 00:10:44,893 A great continent had sunk. 184 00:10:45,957 --> 00:10:48,825 It was only sea and islands now. 185 00:11:10,949 --> 00:11:12,756 My father never recovered. 186 00:11:15,090 --> 00:11:18,993 Under the pressure he spoke wildly, acted unjustly, 187 00:11:20,027 --> 00:11:22,561 as this unfortunate man was losing his sons 188 00:11:22,597 --> 00:11:23,899 as well as his wife. 189 00:11:25,299 --> 00:11:28,464 My brother Warnie and I had already begun to lie to him. 190 00:11:29,539 --> 00:11:30,936 We were two frightened urchins, 191 00:11:30,971 --> 00:11:33,337 huddled for warmth in a bleak world. 192 00:11:36,442 --> 00:11:39,910 Mother's death occasioned, what some might say at the time, 193 00:11:39,945 --> 00:11:43,048 my first religious experience. 194 00:11:43,084 --> 00:11:45,488 When my mother's case was pronounced hopeless 195 00:11:45,557 --> 00:11:47,415 I remembered what I had been taught, 196 00:11:47,451 --> 00:11:51,255 that prayers offered in faith would be granted. 197 00:11:51,290 --> 00:11:55,431 Accordingly, I set myself to produce in prayer 198 00:11:55,466 --> 00:11:57,994 a firm belief for her recovery. 199 00:11:58,029 --> 00:12:00,299 When she died, I shifted ground. 200 00:12:00,367 --> 00:12:05,809 I worked myself into belief that there was to be a miracle. 201 00:12:06,839 --> 00:12:09,074 Oh, I approached God. 202 00:12:09,109 --> 00:12:12,374 Not as savior or as judge, but as magician. 203 00:12:12,410 --> 00:12:16,445 I simply wanted him to restore the status quo. 204 00:12:16,480 --> 00:12:19,949 And when he had done what was required of him, 205 00:12:19,984 --> 00:12:22,958 he would simply go away. 206 00:12:25,958 --> 00:12:27,860 The prayer hadn't worked. 207 00:12:27,929 --> 00:12:30,465 Oh, I was used to things not working, 208 00:12:30,501 --> 00:12:31,901 thought no more about it. 209 00:12:41,272 --> 00:12:43,779 Mother's death among other things, 210 00:12:43,814 --> 00:12:48,176 produced in me a deeply ingrained pessimism. 211 00:12:48,211 --> 00:12:51,317 Oh, I was by no means unhappy, 212 00:12:51,352 --> 00:12:54,790 but I had definitely formed the opinion that the universe 213 00:12:54,826 --> 00:12:58,928 in the main was a rather regrettable institution. 214 00:13:07,905 --> 00:13:12,074 Father's melancholy was a contributing factor. 215 00:13:12,109 --> 00:13:16,009 A prosperous man who by our present tax-ridden standards 216 00:13:16,044 --> 00:13:18,675 would be described as incredibly secure. 217 00:13:19,445 --> 00:13:24,888 Expressed adult life as one unremitting struggle. 218 00:13:29,123 --> 00:13:31,592 Best one could hope for, according to him, 219 00:13:31,661 --> 00:13:35,091 was to avoid the workhouse. 220 00:13:35,159 --> 00:13:37,967 This only by extreme exertion. 221 00:13:38,970 --> 00:13:42,097 Never thought to check his highly colored comments 222 00:13:42,132 --> 00:13:43,399 against the obvious fact 223 00:13:43,467 --> 00:13:46,768 that we were living very uncomfortable lives. 224 00:13:47,804 --> 00:13:51,280 Temperamental widower still grieving the loss of his wife 225 00:13:51,950 --> 00:13:55,280 must be very wise to raise two noisy school boys 226 00:13:55,349 --> 00:13:58,482 who reserve their confidence only for each other. 227 00:13:59,923 --> 00:14:04,158 The same scene, reenacted time after time. 228 00:14:08,364 --> 00:14:09,263 - Well? 229 00:14:10,232 --> 00:14:12,527 - When he opened his mouth to reprove us 230 00:14:12,563 --> 00:14:16,603 he no doubt intended a short well-chosen appeal 231 00:14:16,639 --> 00:14:18,434 to our common sense. 232 00:14:18,502 --> 00:14:20,975 - Have you nothing to say in your defense? 233 00:14:21,043 --> 00:14:24,207 - But alas, he had been a public prosecutor, 234 00:14:24,243 --> 00:14:26,576 long before he had become a father. 235 00:14:26,611 --> 00:14:31,814 Words came to him and intoxicated him as they came. 236 00:14:32,216 --> 00:14:35,385 - Never in all my born days 237 00:14:35,421 --> 00:14:39,655 have I come across such recalcitrant behavior. 238 00:14:41,828 --> 00:14:44,165 Disobedience. 239 00:14:45,429 --> 00:14:49,468 Deliberate disobedience and willfulness, 240 00:14:49,537 --> 00:14:54,307 such as would dismay the very founders of our civilization. 241 00:14:56,081 --> 00:14:58,577 - What happened was a small boy who left the bathroom 242 00:14:58,612 --> 00:15:03,846 in a pickle, found himself attacked like Cicero on Catiline. 243 00:15:04,682 --> 00:15:08,924 Simile on simile, rhetorical question on rhetorical 244 00:15:08,959 --> 00:15:11,286 question, the flash of an orator's eye, 245 00:15:11,321 --> 00:15:14,756 the gestures, the cadences... 246 00:15:15,795 --> 00:15:17,396 The pauses. 247 00:15:19,232 --> 00:15:21,468 The pauses were the chief danger. 248 00:15:21,503 --> 00:15:24,970 - Well? 249 00:15:25,005 --> 00:15:27,374 - One was so long 250 00:15:27,442 --> 00:15:31,310 that my brother, assuming the denunciation to have ended, 251 00:15:31,345 --> 00:15:34,510 humbly picked up his book and resumed reading, 252 00:15:34,546 --> 00:15:37,680 a gesture which my father, who had only made 253 00:15:37,749 --> 00:15:41,423 a rhetorical miscalculation of about a second and a half 254 00:15:41,459 --> 00:15:42,724 described as- 255 00:15:42,792 --> 00:15:46,195 - Cool, premeditated, insolent! 256 00:15:46,964 --> 00:15:49,524 - The disproportion between the tirades 257 00:15:49,559 --> 00:15:52,866 and what prompted them was ludicrous. 258 00:15:52,901 --> 00:15:54,736 From the wilderness of words, 259 00:15:54,804 --> 00:15:57,807 emerged ideas I took literally. 260 00:15:57,842 --> 00:16:00,439 - Perhaps I should board up the house. 261 00:16:02,847 --> 00:16:06,010 Keep you both in school all year round. 262 00:16:06,045 --> 00:16:07,179 - And that we should be- 263 00:16:07,214 --> 00:16:12,253 - Sent to the colonies to end in misery 264 00:16:12,355 --> 00:16:17,522 the career of crime on which you have both already embarked. 265 00:16:23,001 --> 00:16:26,201 - Such was the effect of my father's rhetoric, 266 00:16:27,236 --> 00:16:30,770 until I began to perceive him as ridiculous. 267 00:16:35,275 --> 00:16:38,147 At 14, I ceased to be a Christian. 268 00:16:38,881 --> 00:16:41,084 At that age one barely notices. 269 00:16:42,779 --> 00:16:45,551 At school, all the teachers and book editors 270 00:16:45,586 --> 00:16:49,190 took it for granted that religion was some sort of endemic 271 00:16:49,226 --> 00:16:52,522 nonsense into which humanity tended to blunder. 272 00:16:52,558 --> 00:16:57,031 In the midst of a thousand false religions, 273 00:16:57,067 --> 00:17:00,097 stood our own, the thousand and first, 274 00:17:00,132 --> 00:17:03,106 labeled completely true. 275 00:17:04,968 --> 00:17:10,209 On what grounds I asked, why was it treated so differently? 276 00:17:10,478 --> 00:17:13,978 I was eager not to, if Adonis could be explained away, 277 00:17:14,014 --> 00:17:15,984 then why not Christ? 278 00:17:16,053 --> 00:17:19,548 So little by little, I became an apostate 279 00:17:19,583 --> 00:17:22,758 dropping my faith with no sense of loss 280 00:17:22,793 --> 00:17:24,457 and with the greatest relief. 281 00:17:24,493 --> 00:17:27,696 Oh, there was no faith, hope or charity in my religion. 282 00:17:27,765 --> 00:17:29,627 I feared not God, but hell, 283 00:17:29,696 --> 00:17:33,596 and heaven was only the lesser of two intolerable evils. 284 00:17:33,631 --> 00:17:36,431 Oh, I became a vigorous debunker and argued 285 00:17:36,467 --> 00:17:39,008 there's no proof for any religion 286 00:17:39,077 --> 00:17:42,176 and that Christianity is not even the best. 287 00:17:42,211 --> 00:17:44,940 Religion was invented to explain things 288 00:17:44,975 --> 00:17:50,181 that terrified primitive man, thunder, pestilence, snakes. 289 00:17:50,417 --> 00:17:51,914 What could be more natural than to suppose 290 00:17:51,949 --> 00:17:55,519 they were animated by spirits and that by singing songs 291 00:17:55,588 --> 00:17:58,624 and making sacrifices, one might appease them. 292 00:17:58,660 --> 00:18:02,657 Great men such as Hercules and Odin were thought to be gods. 293 00:18:02,725 --> 00:18:05,460 After their death, hence after the death 294 00:18:05,495 --> 00:18:07,663 of a Hebrew philosopher, Yeshua, 295 00:18:07,698 --> 00:18:10,732 whose name we have corrupted into Jesus, 296 00:18:10,767 --> 00:18:13,535 a cult sprang up and Christianity began, 297 00:18:13,604 --> 00:18:16,541 just another mythology among many. 298 00:18:16,610 --> 00:18:21,644 Oh the superstitions always held by common people, 299 00:18:21,780 --> 00:18:25,450 but educated thinking was always stood outside it, 300 00:18:25,485 --> 00:18:30,456 conceding to it only out of convenience. 301 00:18:30,492 --> 00:18:32,893 And I was not prepared to believe in a bogey man 302 00:18:32,962 --> 00:18:34,857 who would torture me forever 303 00:18:34,926 --> 00:18:40,368 because I failed to live up to an impossible standard. 304 00:18:50,479 --> 00:18:53,678 With my deliberate withdrawal from divine protection, 305 00:18:53,713 --> 00:18:58,251 I underwent a successful assault of sexual temptation. 306 00:18:58,286 --> 00:19:00,584 Part of it was the age I had reached. 307 00:19:00,652 --> 00:19:03,587 The electric effect was a dancing mistress. 308 00:19:03,622 --> 00:19:07,523 She was the first woman to speak to my blood 309 00:19:07,559 --> 00:19:10,700 whom I looked upon to lust after. 310 00:19:10,735 --> 00:19:12,329 - Good morning, boys. 311 00:19:12,364 --> 00:19:14,266 - Good morning Miss. 312 00:19:14,335 --> 00:19:16,266 - This was of no fault of her own. 313 00:19:16,301 --> 00:19:18,107 A gesture, tone of voice 314 00:19:18,176 --> 00:19:21,575 has unpredictable results in these matters. 315 00:19:21,610 --> 00:19:25,275 As it happened, the school room was decorated for dance. 316 00:19:25,310 --> 00:19:28,050 She came in and said. 317 00:19:28,086 --> 00:19:32,281 - I love the smell of bunting. 318 00:19:32,317 --> 00:19:33,487 - And I was undone. 319 00:19:35,188 --> 00:19:36,424 - Now, let us begin. 320 00:19:37,861 --> 00:19:39,658 Follow my every move. 321 00:19:40,324 --> 00:19:41,730 Thank you Elsie. 322 00:19:43,699 --> 00:19:44,597 Up. 323 00:19:45,867 --> 00:19:46,764 And down. 324 00:19:48,704 --> 00:19:49,602 And up. 325 00:19:52,336 --> 00:19:53,973 And dainty toes. 326 00:19:54,042 --> 00:19:55,237 Dainty toes, very good. 327 00:19:55,272 --> 00:19:56,909 Dainty toes. 328 00:19:56,945 --> 00:19:58,479 And around sway. 329 00:19:59,781 --> 00:20:00,679 Sway. 330 00:20:03,618 --> 00:20:06,485 - This was not a knight devoting himself to a lady, 331 00:20:06,554 --> 00:20:09,219 more like a Turk looking at a Circassian woman 332 00:20:09,255 --> 00:20:10,858 he could not afford. 333 00:20:10,927 --> 00:20:12,856 I knew what I wanted. 334 00:20:18,597 --> 00:20:20,699 You might think this produced guilt. 335 00:20:21,598 --> 00:20:25,600 Guilt was not a thing I knew. 336 00:20:25,635 --> 00:20:28,344 - Well done boys. Well done. 337 00:20:31,841 --> 00:20:34,680 - I had been a tender-hearted boy, 338 00:20:34,749 --> 00:20:39,955 but now I labored hard to become a fop, a cad, a snob. 339 00:20:39,990 --> 00:20:43,486 I was at that time as non-moral 340 00:20:43,521 --> 00:20:46,695 as a human creature could be. 341 00:20:46,730 --> 00:20:47,693 - Oh Lewis. 342 00:20:49,626 --> 00:20:51,829 Do enjoy the holidays won't you? 343 00:20:54,133 --> 00:20:55,030 - Yes, miss. 344 00:21:00,211 --> 00:21:03,375 - Oh, there you are. Where have you been? 345 00:21:03,444 --> 00:21:05,047 - Sorry Father. - Come on, come on. 346 00:21:05,116 --> 00:21:07,915 It won't wait you know. Thank you. 347 00:21:13,719 --> 00:21:15,219 - I could not tell my father 348 00:21:15,255 --> 00:21:16,654 my change of belief. 349 00:21:16,690 --> 00:21:19,987 He was no fool. He even had a streak of genius. 350 00:21:20,022 --> 00:21:22,659 But for a man who was formidable in court 351 00:21:22,694 --> 00:21:25,960 and I presume efficient in his office, 352 00:21:25,995 --> 00:21:29,565 he had more power for confusing an issue 353 00:21:29,600 --> 00:21:32,705 than any man I have ever known. 354 00:21:41,944 --> 00:21:45,383 Oh, the first barrier to communication 355 00:21:45,418 --> 00:21:48,321 was having asked the question, 356 00:21:48,357 --> 00:21:50,420 he would not stay for the answer. 357 00:21:51,089 --> 00:21:56,260 Tell him that a boy called Churchwood had caught a mouse 358 00:21:56,329 --> 00:21:58,800 and kept it as a pet. 359 00:21:58,869 --> 00:22:00,202 He would ask- 360 00:22:00,237 --> 00:22:02,531 - Whatever became of young Chickweed 361 00:22:02,567 --> 00:22:04,539 who was so afraid of rats? 362 00:22:05,204 --> 00:22:06,101 - Who sir? 363 00:22:07,107 --> 00:22:08,103 - Chickweed. 364 00:22:10,445 --> 00:22:13,509 - Oh, I think you mean Churchwood. 365 00:22:13,545 --> 00:22:15,979 It was a mouse, not a rat. 366 00:22:16,715 --> 00:22:18,718 And he wasn't afraid of it, at all. 367 00:22:20,316 --> 00:22:25,394 - Attempts to correct his version produced an incredulous. 368 00:22:25,430 --> 00:22:30,299 - That's not the story you used to tell, my boy. 369 00:22:30,334 --> 00:22:33,194 - All this explains, though does not excuse, 370 00:22:33,863 --> 00:22:37,473 one of the worst acts of my life. 371 00:22:39,938 --> 00:22:43,004 I allowed myself to prepare for confirmation. 372 00:22:43,039 --> 00:22:47,146 To be confirmed, make my first communion, 373 00:22:47,215 --> 00:22:51,279 all in total disbelief, 374 00:22:51,314 --> 00:22:56,756 acting a part, eating and drinking my own condemnation. 375 00:22:57,556 --> 00:22:59,790 I knew I was acting a lie. 376 00:22:59,826 --> 00:23:04,462 I simply could not tell my father my real views. 377 00:23:04,497 --> 00:23:06,260 Not that he would have stopped. 378 00:23:06,295 --> 00:23:09,437 Let's talk the whole thing over, he would have said. 379 00:23:09,472 --> 00:23:12,038 But the thread would have been lost at once. 380 00:23:12,107 --> 00:23:14,109 His arguments. 381 00:23:14,144 --> 00:23:15,970 I would not have valued a straw, 382 00:23:16,005 --> 00:23:19,343 the beauty of the authorized version, 383 00:23:19,412 --> 00:23:22,050 the Christian tradition. 384 00:23:22,086 --> 00:23:24,353 Oh, it was all sentiment. 385 00:23:24,422 --> 00:23:29,452 And if I tried to make by exact points clear, 386 00:23:29,854 --> 00:23:32,326 there would have been thunder from him 387 00:23:32,362 --> 00:23:34,594 and a thin peevish rattle from me, 388 00:23:34,630 --> 00:23:38,061 Nor could the subject ever have been dropped. 389 00:23:40,170 --> 00:23:43,506 All this I ought to have dared 390 00:23:44,405 --> 00:23:47,671 rather than the thing I did. 391 00:23:47,707 --> 00:23:50,876 It seemed impossible at the time, 392 00:23:51,544 --> 00:23:55,645 cowardice drove me to hypocrisy 393 00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:59,049 and hypocrisy to blasphemy. 394 00:24:05,256 --> 00:24:09,891 The years passed, then the most fortunate thing happened. 395 00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:11,894 - A bit more to the right, please. 396 00:24:11,929 --> 00:24:13,731 - My father had declared 397 00:24:13,800 --> 00:24:16,237 that he would send my brother to a tutor 398 00:24:16,272 --> 00:24:18,337 in Surrey, south of London. 399 00:24:18,372 --> 00:24:19,573 - That's it. Thank you. 400 00:24:19,608 --> 00:24:21,336 - In a surprisingly short time, 401 00:24:21,371 --> 00:24:26,214 this tutor had so rebuilt the ruins of Warnie's education, 402 00:24:26,249 --> 00:24:27,976 that he passed into Sandhurst 403 00:24:28,011 --> 00:24:30,949 and received a prize army cadetship. 404 00:24:32,315 --> 00:24:36,117 For some time, my own schooling had been going nowhere. 405 00:24:36,153 --> 00:24:40,261 It had neither engaged my mind nor my heart, 406 00:24:40,329 --> 00:24:42,595 but seeing my brothers progress, 407 00:24:42,664 --> 00:24:45,233 I finally plucked up the courage to ask. 408 00:24:45,268 --> 00:24:47,735 - Jack! Jack! Are you up there? 409 00:24:52,935 --> 00:24:55,870 Come on boy. Well get your coat. 410 00:24:55,905 --> 00:24:57,745 We're 10 minutes late already. 411 00:25:03,887 --> 00:25:08,290 - Papa, you know, when you send Warnie off to Surrey 412 00:25:08,326 --> 00:25:10,389 to your old tutor Mr. Kirkpatrick. 413 00:25:10,425 --> 00:25:12,053 - Yes. 414 00:25:12,088 --> 00:25:13,959 The Great Knock we used to call him. 415 00:25:13,994 --> 00:25:16,691 - Warnie seemed to benefit from him greatly. 416 00:25:16,726 --> 00:25:17,628 - He did. 417 00:25:17,663 --> 00:25:19,129 He did. He's a fine teacher. 418 00:25:23,305 --> 00:25:24,365 - I've been thinking. 419 00:25:26,269 --> 00:25:29,612 Might it not be good to send me to Surrey too? 420 00:25:36,849 --> 00:25:38,819 - Well, there'll be no other boys. 421 00:25:39,951 --> 00:25:42,083 You won't be able to play your games. 422 00:25:42,118 --> 00:25:46,556 - I tried to look grave, no other boys. 423 00:25:46,592 --> 00:25:48,631 Never to play games. 424 00:25:49,561 --> 00:25:51,832 I was transported. 425 00:26:10,352 --> 00:26:11,685 Ah yes, this is the day 426 00:26:11,753 --> 00:26:14,352 the rest of my life really began to happen. 427 00:26:21,194 --> 00:26:24,697 I was still in my teens when I made my way over to England 428 00:26:24,766 --> 00:26:27,901 and down to Surrey to meet my new tutor. 429 00:26:28,569 --> 00:26:30,532 I wasn't sure what to expect. 430 00:26:31,134 --> 00:26:34,072 At first sight he seemed decent enough. 431 00:26:38,315 --> 00:26:39,944 - Hello, lovely to meet you. 432 00:26:39,979 --> 00:26:44,181 - William T. Kirkpatrick. The Great Knock. 433 00:26:46,083 --> 00:26:49,057 - His grip was like iron pincers. 434 00:26:49,092 --> 00:26:50,088 - Follow me! 435 00:26:54,127 --> 00:26:56,725 - I remember feeling the need to make conversation 436 00:26:56,794 --> 00:26:57,928 in the deplorable manner 437 00:26:57,997 --> 00:27:00,167 I felt necessary to use with my father. 438 00:27:00,970 --> 00:27:03,736 - I was quite surprised by the scenery of Surrey, sir. 439 00:27:03,771 --> 00:27:05,199 It's really much wilder than I expected. 440 00:27:05,268 --> 00:27:08,110 - Stop! What do you mean by wildness? 441 00:27:08,779 --> 00:27:11,743 And on what grounds have you based your expectations? 442 00:27:11,779 --> 00:27:15,383 On the flora and geology of Surrey? 443 00:27:15,418 --> 00:27:19,120 Was it maps, photographs, books? 444 00:27:19,156 --> 00:27:20,215 - Sorry, sir. 445 00:27:20,250 --> 00:27:23,185 - As answer after answer was torn to shreds 446 00:27:23,221 --> 00:27:26,592 Kirk concluded that my comment was meaningless 447 00:27:26,660 --> 00:27:27,991 and that I had no right to have 448 00:27:28,026 --> 00:27:31,061 any opinion whatsoever on the subject. 449 00:27:31,096 --> 00:27:32,697 It never occurred to me that my thoughts 450 00:27:32,732 --> 00:27:34,803 needed to be based on anything. 451 00:27:36,870 --> 00:27:40,774 That conversation lasted three minutes 452 00:27:40,842 --> 00:27:45,176 and set the tone for my two years in Surrey. 453 00:27:45,211 --> 00:27:50,379 Kirk's ruthless dialectic was the only way he spoke. 454 00:27:52,147 --> 00:27:54,754 It was an astonishment to Kirk 455 00:27:54,789 --> 00:27:58,123 that you should not want to be corrected. 456 00:27:59,156 --> 00:28:01,927 Kirk lived with his wife in a comfortable 457 00:28:01,963 --> 00:28:06,335 and secluded cottage on the edge of the village. 458 00:28:06,370 --> 00:28:09,534 It was all rather wonderful. 459 00:28:09,570 --> 00:28:11,268 - Welcome! Welcome! 460 00:28:11,937 --> 00:28:13,975 Now you put your case down there. 461 00:28:14,043 --> 00:28:18,108 - I felt welcomed as soon as I stepped inside, 462 00:28:18,143 --> 00:28:21,809 the whole place was stuffed with books. 463 00:28:21,878 --> 00:28:24,485 I had come home. 464 00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:27,249 - And this is my wife, Louisa. 465 00:28:27,284 --> 00:28:29,357 - Pleased to meet you Mrs. Kirkpatrick. 466 00:28:29,426 --> 00:28:30,150 - Pleasure's ours entirely. 467 00:28:30,219 --> 00:28:31,920 - We'll show you up to your room. 468 00:28:31,956 --> 00:28:33,023 - I have it all prepared. 469 00:28:33,058 --> 00:28:34,523 - You come down when you're ready, 470 00:28:34,558 --> 00:28:37,965 and we'll start knocking that mind of yours into shape. 471 00:28:42,672 --> 00:28:45,203 - There you are. I hope you like it. 472 00:28:48,406 --> 00:28:51,511 Oh, and by the way, don't worry about my husband. 473 00:28:51,580 --> 00:28:54,982 He likes to argue, a lot. 474 00:28:56,181 --> 00:28:58,646 - Most boys would have cowered at all this. 475 00:28:58,681 --> 00:29:03,919 I loved the treat, but it was red beef and strong beer. 476 00:29:03,954 --> 00:29:05,155 After a few knockdowns, 477 00:29:05,190 --> 00:29:07,929 I began to put on some intellectual muscle 478 00:29:07,964 --> 00:29:12,230 and became a bit of a sparring partner to my new tutor. 479 00:29:16,699 --> 00:29:21,038 If I could please myself, I'd always live as I lived here. 480 00:29:21,074 --> 00:29:24,307 breakfast at eight, at my desk by nine 481 00:29:24,342 --> 00:29:28,543 to read and write to precisely one, then lunch. 482 00:29:29,948 --> 00:29:31,178 - That was absolutely delicious. 483 00:29:31,213 --> 00:29:32,384 Thank you, Mrs. Kirkpatrick. 484 00:29:32,419 --> 00:29:33,614 - Fine. 485 00:29:33,650 --> 00:29:37,387 - Oh yes. I was encouraged to eat, as well as to think. 486 00:29:43,096 --> 00:29:46,196 Off for a walk by two, not with a friend. 487 00:29:46,231 --> 00:29:48,735 Walking and talking are two great pleasures, 488 00:29:48,804 --> 00:29:51,201 but it is a mistake to combine them. 489 00:29:51,236 --> 00:29:54,705 Our noise blocks out the sounds and silences 490 00:29:54,741 --> 00:29:56,043 of the outer world. 491 00:29:57,907 --> 00:29:59,013 - Thank you. 492 00:30:01,113 --> 00:30:03,181 - My return and the arrival of tea 493 00:30:03,217 --> 00:30:07,755 would coincide at exactly four, taken in solitude. 494 00:30:07,823 --> 00:30:10,084 Eating and reading are two pleasures 495 00:30:10,119 --> 00:30:12,925 that combine admirably. 496 00:30:12,994 --> 00:30:15,859 Work till seven, deep into the classics, 497 00:30:15,894 --> 00:30:17,933 not sparing the horses. 498 00:30:25,709 --> 00:30:27,937 Good talk all evening, all challenging, 499 00:30:27,972 --> 00:30:29,911 brain-rattling stuff. 500 00:30:29,947 --> 00:30:32,107 In bed by 11, unless you're making a night of it 501 00:30:32,175 --> 00:30:34,477 at the pub with your cronies. 502 00:30:35,546 --> 00:30:39,280 - Passable. You're still a little shaky on accuracy. 503 00:30:39,349 --> 00:30:41,622 And I fear you've missed my point 504 00:30:41,657 --> 00:30:44,289 about the classics entirely. 505 00:30:45,092 --> 00:30:48,926 He that neither knoweth nor will be taught 506 00:30:48,961 --> 00:30:51,626 by the instruction of the wise, 507 00:30:52,833 --> 00:30:55,696 this man is not Herodotus. 508 00:30:58,607 --> 00:31:00,140 He knew a thing or two. 509 00:31:02,072 --> 00:31:03,605 - That's not Herodotus. 510 00:31:04,875 --> 00:31:06,710 It's Hesiod. 511 00:31:06,745 --> 00:31:07,979 - Prove it. 512 00:31:08,048 --> 00:31:10,814 - It's from his poem "Days in work." 513 00:31:10,850 --> 00:31:12,119 I have it somewhere. 514 00:31:14,950 --> 00:31:15,984 Here. 515 00:31:16,020 --> 00:31:18,521 - Good lad! 516 00:31:21,325 --> 00:31:23,957 - My work was mostly Latin and Greek. 517 00:31:24,893 --> 00:31:30,131 Homer first. Oh still relish the brightness and music of it. 518 00:31:30,233 --> 00:31:33,206 Then the two great bores, 519 00:31:34,208 --> 00:31:38,076 Cicero and Demosthenes could not be avoided. 520 00:31:38,111 --> 00:31:42,342 Followed by Lucretius. Oh, the glory! 521 00:31:42,377 --> 00:31:45,350 Herodotus, Aeschylus, Euripides. 522 00:31:46,556 --> 00:31:47,850 Had no taste for Virgil. 523 00:31:48,619 --> 00:31:51,818 In the evening we mastered French, Italian and German 524 00:31:51,887 --> 00:31:55,294 plunging into the likes of Voltaire, Faust in the inferno. 525 00:31:57,229 --> 00:32:01,669 Kirk was my great teacher. 526 00:32:01,704 --> 00:32:04,502 My debt remains to this day. 527 00:32:05,338 --> 00:32:08,370 As for religion, he was a Presbyterian atheist. 528 00:32:08,439 --> 00:32:11,178 On Sundays, he gardened in nicer clothes. 529 00:32:15,512 --> 00:32:19,583 Among the poets I was reading at the time, 530 00:32:20,252 --> 00:32:25,258 one stood apart, William Butler Yeats. 531 00:32:25,961 --> 00:32:28,057 He believed that there was a world 532 00:32:28,126 --> 00:32:29,458 beyond the material curtain 533 00:32:29,494 --> 00:32:33,200 and that contact with that world was possible. 534 00:32:33,236 --> 00:32:37,533 Oh, I regarded Yeats as a learned responsible writer. 535 00:32:37,602 --> 00:32:41,070 Later when I met him, I was awed by his personality 536 00:32:41,106 --> 00:32:42,811 and he rejected the whole 537 00:32:42,846 --> 00:32:46,214 materialist philosophy out of hand. 538 00:32:46,249 --> 00:32:50,149 If Yeats had been a Christian, I would have discounted him. 539 00:32:50,185 --> 00:32:54,617 I had Christians placed, disposed of for ever. 540 00:32:55,859 --> 00:32:59,858 Yeats offered something else, a perhaps. 541 00:32:59,894 --> 00:33:01,425 And through this perhaps, 542 00:33:01,494 --> 00:33:05,227 a drop of disturbing doubt fell into my materialism 543 00:33:05,262 --> 00:33:06,767 and introduced me to something 544 00:33:06,803 --> 00:33:08,629 I've had trouble with ever since, 545 00:33:08,664 --> 00:33:11,939 a ravenous desire for the supernatural. 546 00:33:11,974 --> 00:33:15,605 Or to put it bluntly, the occult. 547 00:33:26,153 --> 00:33:29,223 I once tried to describe it in a novel. 548 00:33:29,258 --> 00:33:34,028 It's a spiritual lust and like the lust of the flesh 549 00:33:34,064 --> 00:33:36,391 has the fatal power of making everything else 550 00:33:36,427 --> 00:33:38,727 seem uninteresting while it lasts. 551 00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:42,036 Oh I loved the vagueness of it. 552 00:33:42,071 --> 00:33:47,308 Circles, pentangles, Ouija boards, seances, 553 00:33:47,878 --> 00:33:51,479 all seemed able to raise a spirit. 554 00:33:51,515 --> 00:33:52,940 Oh, this magic! 555 00:33:53,008 --> 00:33:57,483 No connection of my atheism swayed me in different moods. 556 00:33:57,551 --> 00:34:01,822 And that it was scorned by both Christians and rationalists 557 00:34:01,857 --> 00:34:04,719 appealed to the rebel in me. 558 00:34:04,755 --> 00:34:10,198 My descent was from eccentricity to perversity. 559 00:34:11,531 --> 00:34:14,367 The world and the flesh had made their appearance. 560 00:34:15,001 --> 00:34:17,832 Now came the devil. 561 00:34:20,241 --> 00:34:21,972 Had there been an elder in the neighborhood 562 00:34:22,008 --> 00:34:24,342 who dabbled in dirt, 563 00:34:24,410 --> 00:34:28,345 oh they have a nose for potential disciples, 564 00:34:28,381 --> 00:34:33,221 I might now be a Satanist or a maniac. 565 00:34:35,223 --> 00:34:40,162 Then, in the super abundance of mercy, 566 00:34:41,459 --> 00:34:43,963 came that event which I have attempted 567 00:34:43,998 --> 00:34:46,729 to describe in many of my books. 568 00:34:52,372 --> 00:34:54,672 I was in the habit of walking a few miles 569 00:34:54,707 --> 00:34:59,181 to Leatherhead Station and taking the train back to Kirk's. 570 00:35:04,483 --> 00:35:07,022 While waiting for the train I rummaged in 571 00:35:07,057 --> 00:35:09,851 the second hand bookstore and picked out 572 00:35:09,886 --> 00:35:15,329 an unusual title, "Phantastes" by George MacDonald. 573 00:35:17,163 --> 00:35:19,532 It looked a little unusual. 574 00:35:20,535 --> 00:35:25,570 I hadn't the faintest notion of what I'd let myself in for. 575 00:35:26,940 --> 00:35:27,841 - This one please. 576 00:35:27,877 --> 00:35:30,212 - A tuppence, please sir. 577 00:35:31,611 --> 00:35:35,346 Thank you very much sir. 578 00:35:35,381 --> 00:35:40,618 - Sorry. 579 00:35:55,536 --> 00:35:59,205 - As I began to read my new book, I was electrified. 580 00:35:59,240 --> 00:36:02,275 I felt like a miner who had struck gold. 581 00:36:02,310 --> 00:36:05,273 In those pages I met all that had charmed me 582 00:36:05,342 --> 00:36:07,574 in Yeats and others. 583 00:36:07,609 --> 00:36:09,513 Yet, everything was changed. 584 00:36:09,548 --> 00:36:12,083 The bright shadow coming out of this book, 585 00:36:12,118 --> 00:36:13,880 transformed everything 586 00:36:13,915 --> 00:36:17,424 and it would affect my own writing forever. 587 00:36:19,162 --> 00:36:21,521 It was as if I had died in the old country 588 00:36:21,557 --> 00:36:23,397 and come alive in the new, 589 00:36:23,432 --> 00:36:28,402 all my occult and erotic fantasies began to feel sordid. 590 00:36:28,437 --> 00:36:33,470 Disarmed, what I really wanted was just out of reach. 591 00:36:33,538 --> 00:36:36,243 Not because of something I could not do, 592 00:36:36,279 --> 00:36:40,115 but because of something I could not stop doing. 593 00:36:40,150 --> 00:36:44,913 Oh, if I could only let go, unmake myself. 594 00:36:46,618 --> 00:36:49,819 I did not know the name of this new quality. 595 00:36:51,091 --> 00:36:54,296 Oh I do now. Holiness. 596 00:36:55,428 --> 00:36:58,262 That night as I read "Phantastes" 597 00:36:58,297 --> 00:37:01,864 my imagination was baptized. 598 00:37:05,174 --> 00:37:07,441 The rest of me took a little longer. 599 00:37:13,647 --> 00:37:15,978 I first met it as a memory that would arise suddenly 600 00:37:16,046 --> 00:37:20,883 without warning from the depth of not years, but centuries. 601 00:37:23,388 --> 00:37:26,194 The memory was from childhood 602 00:37:26,263 --> 00:37:29,661 when my brother brought the lid of a biscuit tin 603 00:37:29,696 --> 00:37:34,268 garnished with twigs and flowers to make a toy garden. 604 00:37:34,303 --> 00:37:38,373 It was the first beauty I had ever known, 605 00:37:39,073 --> 00:37:41,642 a sensation of desire. 606 00:37:42,445 --> 00:37:45,939 But before I knew what I desired, the desire was gone, 607 00:37:45,974 --> 00:37:49,417 withdrawn, the world turned common again. 608 00:37:51,685 --> 00:37:56,389 Since then my constant endeavor was to get it again, 609 00:37:56,457 --> 00:37:59,889 in reading every book, going on every walk, 610 00:38:00,559 --> 00:38:04,361 listening to every piece of music. 611 00:38:04,396 --> 00:38:07,865 Occasionally the sky would turn. 612 00:38:07,933 --> 00:38:13,375 Far more often, I frightened it away by my greed to have it. 613 00:38:20,015 --> 00:38:22,043 I call this desire, joy, 614 00:38:23,253 --> 00:38:25,151 which must be distinguished very sharply 615 00:38:25,186 --> 00:38:26,584 from happiness or pleasure, 616 00:38:26,653 --> 00:38:30,418 except that anyone who has ever experienced joy 617 00:38:30,487 --> 00:38:32,556 will want it again. 618 00:38:32,591 --> 00:38:34,423 Apart from that, it might be called 619 00:38:34,492 --> 00:38:37,960 a particular kind of grief, 620 00:38:39,497 --> 00:38:40,995 but then it's the kind we want. 621 00:38:41,030 --> 00:38:45,473 It is the scent of a flower we have not found, 622 00:38:46,605 --> 00:38:50,478 the echo of a tune we've not heard. 623 00:38:51,777 --> 00:38:56,451 News from a country we have not yet visited. 624 00:38:57,453 --> 00:39:00,917 Oh, I doubt that anyone who has ever tasted joy 625 00:39:02,086 --> 00:39:06,054 would exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. 626 00:39:07,892 --> 00:39:12,830 But joy is never in our path. And pleasure is. 627 00:39:20,538 --> 00:39:23,609 At 18, I arrived at Oxford, 628 00:39:23,645 --> 00:39:27,378 the fabled cluster of towers and dreaming spires 629 00:39:27,413 --> 00:39:30,079 had never looked more beautiful. 630 00:39:31,015 --> 00:39:35,017 Less than a term later, like most of my generation, 631 00:39:35,717 --> 00:39:37,291 I enlisted in the army, 632 00:39:37,326 --> 00:39:39,593 was sent to the front lines in France, 633 00:39:40,327 --> 00:39:43,157 on my 19th birthday to be exact. 634 00:39:45,764 --> 00:39:50,038 First bullet I heard brought not fear, 635 00:39:50,106 --> 00:39:54,306 but the thought, this is war. 636 00:39:54,341 --> 00:39:56,709 This is what Homer wrote about. 637 00:39:57,678 --> 00:40:01,681 Five months later, I was wounded and sent home. 638 00:40:02,415 --> 00:40:04,118 In between, I had the good luck 639 00:40:04,153 --> 00:40:06,015 to fall sick with trench fever. 640 00:40:09,752 --> 00:40:11,524 Compared to the trenches, 641 00:40:11,592 --> 00:40:15,123 a hospital bed and a book were heaven itself. 642 00:40:17,731 --> 00:40:19,692 - And how are you tonight Lieutenant Lewis? 643 00:40:19,761 --> 00:40:21,636 - Fine. Thank you nurse. 644 00:40:22,506 --> 00:40:25,807 - Well Stanley. Time for your inspection, I think. 645 00:40:25,842 --> 00:40:26,569 - Yes nurse. 646 00:40:26,604 --> 00:40:28,002 - Except that the night nurse 647 00:40:28,038 --> 00:40:31,839 was conducting a furious affair with my roommate. 648 00:40:31,875 --> 00:40:34,616 I was too sick to be embarrassed, 649 00:40:34,651 --> 00:40:39,015 but the sound of two lovers whispering in the nighttime 650 00:40:39,990 --> 00:40:42,216 is a tedious noise. 651 00:40:45,024 --> 00:40:49,097 It was here I first read G.K Chesterton. Never heard of him. 652 00:40:49,165 --> 00:40:50,863 Had no idea what he stood for, 653 00:40:50,898 --> 00:40:54,234 nor could I understand why it made such a conquest of me. 654 00:40:54,269 --> 00:40:55,998 His humor was the kind I like. 655 00:40:56,033 --> 00:41:00,041 No, not jokes, still less a tone of flippancy. 656 00:41:00,076 --> 00:41:02,237 Oh that I cannot endure. 657 00:41:03,073 --> 00:41:08,043 Rather his humor was the bloom of his argument. 658 00:41:08,112 --> 00:41:11,048 Strange as it seems I liked him for his goodness. 659 00:41:11,083 --> 00:41:15,283 Oh not that it had anything to do with being good myself. 660 00:41:15,318 --> 00:41:19,588 I did not have the cynics nose for hypocrisy and smugness 661 00:41:19,624 --> 00:41:22,259 so common among my peers. 662 00:41:29,539 --> 00:41:32,405 In Chesterton, as in MacDonald, I did not know 663 00:41:32,441 --> 00:41:34,370 what I was letting myself in for. 664 00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:38,379 A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist 665 00:41:38,414 --> 00:41:40,615 cannot be too careful of his reading. 666 00:41:43,819 --> 00:41:48,150 After my convalescence, I returned to the front lines. 667 00:42:07,404 --> 00:42:08,302 - Wait. 668 00:42:16,816 --> 00:42:18,018 - Turn off the light! 669 00:42:31,833 --> 00:42:36,500 The moment I was hit and found that I was not breathing 670 00:42:36,536 --> 00:42:38,970 I concluded this is death. 671 00:42:40,038 --> 00:42:44,338 I felt no fear, no courage, just the thought, 672 00:42:45,380 --> 00:42:48,716 here lies a man who died. 673 00:42:49,681 --> 00:42:51,813 It wasn't even interesting. 674 00:42:51,848 --> 00:42:53,212 The fruit of this experience 675 00:42:53,248 --> 00:42:56,249 is there appeared a fully conscious I, 676 00:42:56,285 --> 00:43:00,090 whose connection with me was coming to an end. 677 00:43:00,125 --> 00:43:04,996 And I, whoever that may be, cared not two farthings. 678 00:43:05,765 --> 00:43:08,065 Oh, it was more than an abstraction. 679 00:43:09,566 --> 00:43:10,499 I tasted it. 680 00:43:17,605 --> 00:43:22,178 As for the rest of the war, the cold, the fear, the fright. 681 00:43:24,119 --> 00:43:25,379 The corpses. 682 00:43:27,350 --> 00:43:31,220 It was a ghastly interruption to rational life. 683 00:43:33,190 --> 00:43:36,698 Now it feels like it happened to someone else. 684 00:43:39,161 --> 00:43:41,769 Except for the recurring nightmares. 685 00:43:51,813 --> 00:43:56,144 When I returned to Oxford, I put on a new look, 686 00:43:56,180 --> 00:43:59,281 which meant to act with the greatest good sense, 687 00:43:59,316 --> 00:44:03,890 and to have no more flirtations with the supernatural. 688 00:44:07,124 --> 00:44:10,225 Directly after the war, I spent a fortnight 689 00:44:10,294 --> 00:44:13,930 with a man I'd dearly loved, who was going mad. 690 00:44:13,999 --> 00:44:17,000 I held him as he wallowed on the floor 691 00:44:17,035 --> 00:44:21,275 and screamed "Devils are tearing me apart. 692 00:44:21,310 --> 00:44:24,311 I'm falling into hell." 693 00:44:24,380 --> 00:44:25,942 I knew this man had flirted 694 00:44:25,977 --> 00:44:29,110 with all sorts of occult ideas as I had. 695 00:44:29,178 --> 00:44:31,885 Oh, perhaps there was no connection, 696 00:44:31,921 --> 00:44:35,923 but I took it as a warning to stay on the beaten track, 697 00:44:35,958 --> 00:44:41,158 the approved material center of the road with the lights on. 698 00:44:45,262 --> 00:44:48,032 The early days of my new look were quite happy, 699 00:44:48,068 --> 00:44:52,101 busy engaged in my studies of classics, philosophy. 700 00:44:52,136 --> 00:44:54,340 At that time we were all swept up by Freud 701 00:44:54,409 --> 00:44:56,944 and his new psychology. 702 00:44:56,979 --> 00:45:01,913 By my mid 20s, I was elected a fellow at Magdalen College, 703 00:45:01,948 --> 00:45:04,478 hence my career as a scholar and tutor began. 704 00:45:05,816 --> 00:45:07,050 - After you dear boy. 705 00:45:07,086 --> 00:45:08,919 - The answer of course, is that . 706 00:45:08,955 --> 00:45:11,152 - They even provided rooms for me here, 707 00:45:11,220 --> 00:45:14,422 to read, to write for my tutorials. 708 00:45:15,924 --> 00:45:17,260 I had arrived. 709 00:45:19,765 --> 00:45:21,099 I felt like I'd found a home 710 00:45:21,134 --> 00:45:23,935 with some of the finest scholars I would ever meet. 711 00:45:23,970 --> 00:45:27,975 We were young, clear-headed, invincible. 712 00:45:28,845 --> 00:45:32,474 Then one day, my very dear friend, Owen Barfield, 713 00:45:32,542 --> 00:45:36,244 who satisfied my hunger for debate and rational opposition 714 00:45:36,279 --> 00:45:39,854 announced that he had changed his views. 715 00:45:41,022 --> 00:45:46,023 He was no longer a materialist and had become a theist. 716 00:45:46,058 --> 00:45:48,662 I was shocked. I thought Barfield was safe. 717 00:45:48,698 --> 00:45:50,961 He came from such a free-thinkig family. 718 00:45:50,996 --> 00:45:53,701 He'd barely even heard of Christianity. 719 00:45:53,736 --> 00:45:56,370 Barfield bought up all the abominations: 720 00:45:56,405 --> 00:45:59,101 God, spirit, afterlife. 721 00:45:59,136 --> 00:46:02,808 I said, "Dammit Owen, it's medieval." 722 00:46:02,843 --> 00:46:05,473 - Dammit Owen, it's medieval. 723 00:46:07,247 --> 00:46:09,317 - You may say that Jack, but the medieval world 724 00:46:09,352 --> 00:46:10,479 has a lot to teach us. 725 00:46:11,182 --> 00:46:13,820 - You mean that the world is flat. 726 00:46:13,856 --> 00:46:16,990 - Oh come on Jack, be serious. Open your mind. 727 00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:19,620 - I have. 728 00:46:19,655 --> 00:46:23,530 And as a wise man once said to me, he that neither knoweth- 729 00:46:23,565 --> 00:46:25,592 - This started our great war, 730 00:46:25,627 --> 00:46:29,002 our philosophic disputation that lasted for years. 731 00:46:30,033 --> 00:46:32,168 I remember Barfield asking: 732 00:46:32,204 --> 00:46:35,740 - Jack, do you believe that logic and reason 733 00:46:35,808 --> 00:46:37,508 bring forth indisputable truth? 734 00:46:37,544 --> 00:46:38,746 - I do. 735 00:46:38,814 --> 00:46:40,040 - And are your moral and aesthetic judgments 736 00:46:40,075 --> 00:46:41,446 valid and meaningful? 737 00:46:41,481 --> 00:46:42,749 - They are. 738 00:46:42,818 --> 00:46:45,348 - Well then materialism must be abandoned. 739 00:46:45,383 --> 00:46:47,381 There is a hopeless discord between what our minds 740 00:46:47,416 --> 00:46:49,984 claim to be and what they really must be 741 00:46:50,019 --> 00:46:51,719 if materialism is true. 742 00:46:52,388 --> 00:46:56,060 We claim our minds to be reason-perceiving 743 00:46:56,096 --> 00:46:58,157 universal intellectual principles, moral laws, 744 00:46:58,193 --> 00:47:00,033 and possessing free will. 745 00:47:00,069 --> 00:47:03,266 But if materialism is true, our minds must in reality, 746 00:47:03,335 --> 00:47:06,606 be merely chance arrangements of atoms in skulls. 747 00:47:06,641 --> 00:47:08,007 - I of course, argued back. 748 00:47:08,043 --> 00:47:10,571 - We are to accept reality as it is revealed to us 749 00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:14,782 by our senses and the findings of science have concluded 750 00:47:14,817 --> 00:47:17,046 that human reason is merely cognitive maps 751 00:47:17,082 --> 00:47:18,412 resulting from natural selection, 752 00:47:18,481 --> 00:47:22,119 with random mutations over millions of years 753 00:47:22,155 --> 00:47:24,490 to confer on humans a reproductive advantage 754 00:47:24,559 --> 00:47:25,993 over other species. 755 00:47:27,156 --> 00:47:28,928 - I had to say something. 756 00:47:28,963 --> 00:47:32,430 I'd been defending materialism for years. 757 00:47:32,465 --> 00:47:33,330 - Look. 758 00:47:34,670 --> 00:47:36,498 If my clearest reasoning tells me 759 00:47:36,534 --> 00:47:39,436 that my mind is nothing more than the accidental result 760 00:47:39,471 --> 00:47:43,910 of atoms colliding in skulls, there must be some mistake. 761 00:47:43,946 --> 00:47:46,410 How should I trust my mind when it tells me 762 00:47:46,445 --> 00:47:49,815 that my most profound thoughts are merely mental patterns 763 00:47:49,884 --> 00:47:52,118 resulting from heredity and physics? 764 00:47:55,089 --> 00:47:58,791 - Barfield's notion that if materialism is true 765 00:47:58,827 --> 00:48:01,254 my conscious mind is nothing more 766 00:48:01,289 --> 00:48:04,196 than atoms colliding in skulls. 767 00:48:06,395 --> 00:48:08,561 This was simply unbelievable to me. 768 00:48:08,596 --> 00:48:11,632 I could not force my thought into that shape 769 00:48:11,667 --> 00:48:15,172 any more than I could scratch my ear with my big toe. 770 00:48:15,207 --> 00:48:18,912 It was as final as a physical impossibility. 771 00:48:18,947 --> 00:48:22,816 Mind, reason, imagination, consciousness 772 00:48:22,851 --> 00:48:25,179 must be more than mere biochemistry. 773 00:48:25,247 --> 00:48:28,414 It must be a real participation. 774 00:48:28,450 --> 00:48:32,390 Something further up, further in. 775 00:48:33,159 --> 00:48:38,362 Rock-bottom reality had to be intelligent. 776 00:48:41,564 --> 00:48:44,132 It's astonishing I've not seen this before. 777 00:48:44,167 --> 00:48:46,338 Willful blindness, I suppose. 778 00:48:46,373 --> 00:48:50,372 And I was careful not to attach rock-bottom reality to God, 779 00:48:50,441 --> 00:48:54,211 my skepticism would not allow me to go that far. 780 00:48:54,246 --> 00:48:57,480 Rather I attached it to the universe itself. 781 00:48:59,820 --> 00:49:02,220 Still it had immense potency. 782 00:49:02,289 --> 00:49:06,226 Behind the material curtain lay the hidden glory. 783 00:49:06,261 --> 00:49:10,196 Barfield and I began to talk religiously about an absolute. 784 00:49:11,298 --> 00:49:13,533 Of course, this was a religion that cost nothing. 785 00:49:13,569 --> 00:49:15,601 It wasn't personal. 786 00:49:15,670 --> 00:49:16,695 It wouldn't do anything. 787 00:49:16,731 --> 00:49:19,706 It wouldn't lead to dark places where men scream 788 00:49:19,741 --> 00:49:21,537 they're being dragged into hell. 789 00:49:22,478 --> 00:49:23,702 It was there. 790 00:49:23,738 --> 00:49:27,741 Never come here. Make a nuisance of itself. 791 00:49:31,647 --> 00:49:35,548 Within the faculty, I befriended Hugo Dyson 792 00:49:35,583 --> 00:49:40,127 and J.R.R. Tolkien, both Christians. 793 00:49:41,295 --> 00:49:44,390 Oh these queer people were popping up on every side. 794 00:49:44,425 --> 00:49:46,394 There was a wider disturbance. 795 00:49:46,430 --> 00:49:48,527 All my books were turning against me. 796 00:49:48,563 --> 00:49:50,396 I must've been as blind as a bat, 797 00:49:50,431 --> 00:49:51,898 not to have seen this before. 798 00:49:51,933 --> 00:49:55,209 George McDonald had done more to me than any other writer. 799 00:49:55,244 --> 00:49:58,777 Of course he had that bee in his bonnet about Christianity. 800 00:49:58,846 --> 00:50:00,914 He was good in spite of it. 801 00:50:00,949 --> 00:50:04,050 Spenser, Dante, Milton had it too. 802 00:50:04,086 --> 00:50:06,852 I thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive, 803 00:50:06,887 --> 00:50:09,121 apart from his Christianity. 804 00:50:09,156 --> 00:50:10,958 I was beginning to think that Christianity 805 00:50:11,027 --> 00:50:14,459 was quite sensible apart from its Christianity. 806 00:50:14,494 --> 00:50:18,199 On the other hand, those writers who did not suffer religion 807 00:50:18,234 --> 00:50:21,135 and with whom my sympathies ought to have been complete: 808 00:50:21,170 --> 00:50:26,139 Shaw, Wells, Gibbon, Voltaire, seemed thin, tinny. 809 00:50:26,175 --> 00:50:29,036 Oh, they were all entertaining, especially Gibbon, 810 00:50:29,072 --> 00:50:30,239 but hardly more. 811 00:50:30,275 --> 00:50:32,240 The roughness and density of life 812 00:50:32,275 --> 00:50:34,745 did not appear in their books. 813 00:50:35,548 --> 00:50:38,612 I concluded that those with untrained philosophic minds 814 00:50:38,681 --> 00:50:41,050 could come near the notion of an absolute being 815 00:50:41,085 --> 00:50:43,056 by believing in a God. 816 00:50:43,091 --> 00:50:45,287 And I distinguished my belief very sharply 817 00:50:45,323 --> 00:50:47,125 from the God of popular religion. 818 00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:49,158 Oh there was no possibility of being 819 00:50:49,226 --> 00:50:50,891 in a personal relation with him. 820 00:50:50,927 --> 00:50:55,099 I could no more meet him than Hamlet could meet Shakespeare. 821 00:50:55,135 --> 00:50:57,164 And I did not call him God, either. 822 00:50:57,200 --> 00:50:59,006 I called him Spirit. 823 00:50:59,041 --> 00:51:01,901 One must fight for one's remaining comforts. 824 00:51:04,112 --> 00:51:06,475 About this time one of my fellow tutors, 825 00:51:06,510 --> 00:51:08,644 the hardest boiled atheist I'd ever known, 826 00:51:08,713 --> 00:51:12,153 sat in my rooms other side of the fireplace and remarked 827 00:51:12,188 --> 00:51:16,084 "The evidence for the historicity of the gospels, 828 00:51:16,119 --> 00:51:17,520 surprisingly good. 829 00:51:17,589 --> 00:51:21,128 Rum thing, all that mythology about the dying god. 830 00:51:21,164 --> 00:51:24,858 Rum thing, looks as if it really happened once." 831 00:51:25,799 --> 00:51:26,697 I was shattered. 832 00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:29,463 If he the cynic of cynics, who's never since 833 00:51:29,499 --> 00:51:31,369 shown any interest in Christianity 834 00:51:31,438 --> 00:51:34,575 were not as I still would have thought him, safe, 835 00:51:34,610 --> 00:51:36,474 where can I turn? 836 00:51:41,047 --> 00:51:42,744 Before God closed in on me 837 00:51:43,614 --> 00:51:46,516 I was in fact offered a moment of free choice. 838 00:51:46,552 --> 00:51:49,121 I was sitting on a bus going up Headington Hills 839 00:51:49,156 --> 00:51:50,890 thinking I was wearing a suit of armor, 840 00:51:50,925 --> 00:51:53,060 trying to keep something out. 841 00:51:53,095 --> 00:51:56,494 I could unbuckle the armor or, keep it on. 842 00:51:57,195 --> 00:51:58,826 The choice felt momentous. 843 00:52:00,802 --> 00:52:01,829 I chose to unbuckle. 844 00:52:03,171 --> 00:52:05,565 Did not seem impossible to do the opposite. 845 00:52:05,634 --> 00:52:07,901 The initiative did not lie with me. 846 00:52:10,772 --> 00:52:12,672 If Hamlet and Shakespeare could ever meet, 847 00:52:12,708 --> 00:52:14,674 it would have to be Shakespeares doing, 848 00:52:14,709 --> 00:52:17,614 he could write himself into the play. 849 00:52:21,584 --> 00:52:24,487 What I called Spirit began to show 850 00:52:24,522 --> 00:52:27,423 an alarming tendency to become personal. 851 00:52:27,492 --> 00:52:30,490 Into my mind, crept a horrible novelty. 852 00:52:30,525 --> 00:52:32,197 I really believed something. 853 00:52:32,233 --> 00:52:34,266 And now that I had blundered into that 854 00:52:34,335 --> 00:52:37,103 I knew I could play at philosophy no longer. 855 00:52:37,171 --> 00:52:39,773 It was time something should be done. 856 00:52:39,809 --> 00:52:42,407 The absolute had arrived. 857 00:52:42,442 --> 00:52:45,278 Making a nuisance of itself, issuing a command. 858 00:52:45,314 --> 00:52:48,248 All my acts and desires were to be brought in line 859 00:52:48,283 --> 00:52:51,417 with this absolute spirit that I now believed. 860 00:52:55,189 --> 00:52:57,957 For the first time I examined myself 861 00:52:57,993 --> 00:53:00,492 with a serious practical purpose. 862 00:53:01,490 --> 00:53:04,661 What I found appalled me. 863 00:53:05,860 --> 00:53:09,630 Depth after depth of pride, self admiration, 864 00:53:09,698 --> 00:53:12,832 a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, 865 00:53:12,868 --> 00:53:17,305 a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatred. 866 00:53:17,340 --> 00:53:19,412 Oh, my name is legion. 867 00:53:20,779 --> 00:53:24,648 Amiable agnostics talk cheerfully of man's search for God, 868 00:53:24,683 --> 00:53:27,550 may as well talk of the mouse's search for the cat. 869 00:53:27,586 --> 00:53:29,922 All I ever wanted was not be interfered with, 870 00:53:29,957 --> 00:53:32,257 to call my soul my own. 871 00:53:32,292 --> 00:53:35,626 Keep out, private. This is my business. 872 00:53:35,662 --> 00:53:39,124 But no one talked glibly of the comforts of religion. 873 00:53:39,193 --> 00:53:42,729 Is it a small thing to give yourself blindly to a guide 874 00:53:42,764 --> 00:53:44,435 when his own showing may very well 875 00:53:44,471 --> 00:53:47,238 be leading you to poverty, ridicule, death? 876 00:53:47,274 --> 00:53:49,504 Oh, I knew I would not allow myself 877 00:53:49,573 --> 00:53:52,010 to do anything intolerably painful. 878 00:53:52,045 --> 00:53:53,341 I would be reasonable. 879 00:53:53,376 --> 00:53:55,712 Would it be reasonable? 880 00:53:57,920 --> 00:53:59,485 No assurance was offered. 881 00:54:00,317 --> 00:54:01,718 It was all or nothing. 882 00:54:03,623 --> 00:54:07,328 As the dry bones shook in Ezekiel's dreadful valley, 883 00:54:08,362 --> 00:54:11,690 the absolute spirit began to stir and heave 884 00:54:11,725 --> 00:54:13,961 and throw off its grave clothes. 885 00:54:15,035 --> 00:54:19,736 He said, "I am the Lord. 886 00:54:21,403 --> 00:54:22,838 I am that I am. 887 00:54:25,042 --> 00:54:25,973 I am." 888 00:54:34,951 --> 00:54:37,820 You must picture me alone in my room at Magdalen, 889 00:54:39,824 --> 00:54:43,194 night after night, feeling whenever my mind lifted, 890 00:54:43,229 --> 00:54:45,396 even for a second, from my work, 891 00:54:45,431 --> 00:54:49,400 the steady unrelenting approach of him 892 00:54:49,469 --> 00:54:52,934 whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. 893 00:54:56,710 --> 00:55:00,777 That which I greatly feared had at last come found me. 894 00:55:04,351 --> 00:55:09,588 In the Trinity term, 1929, I gave in. 895 00:55:12,390 --> 00:55:14,821 And admitted that God is God. 896 00:55:14,856 --> 00:55:17,662 Knelt and prayed perhaps that night, 897 00:55:17,697 --> 00:55:22,634 the most dejected, reluctant convert in all England. 898 00:55:32,445 --> 00:55:34,281 I did not then see the divine love 899 00:55:34,316 --> 00:55:36,912 that would accept a prodigal on such terms. 900 00:55:37,778 --> 00:55:39,615 Kicking, struggling, resentful, 901 00:55:39,650 --> 00:55:41,516 darting his eyes in every direction, 902 00:55:41,551 --> 00:55:43,820 looking for a chance to escape. 903 00:55:45,154 --> 00:55:48,495 The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of man. 904 00:55:50,692 --> 00:55:54,061 His compulsion is my liberation. 905 00:56:11,884 --> 00:56:14,653 You must understand that the conversion I just described 906 00:56:14,689 --> 00:56:18,257 was only to theism, pure and simple, not Christianity. 907 00:56:18,293 --> 00:56:20,052 I knew nothing of the incarnation, 908 00:56:20,088 --> 00:56:22,789 the God to whom I surrendered was not human. 909 00:56:22,825 --> 00:56:25,164 I had no belief in an after life. 910 00:56:25,232 --> 00:56:26,863 That to me, felt like a bribe. 911 00:56:28,734 --> 00:56:30,630 My argument against God was that the universe 912 00:56:30,665 --> 00:56:32,198 was so cruel and unjust, 913 00:56:32,233 --> 00:56:35,635 but where had I got this notion of cruel and unjust? 914 00:56:35,670 --> 00:56:36,838 I call a line crooked 915 00:56:36,906 --> 00:56:38,905 because I have some idea of a straight line. 916 00:56:38,941 --> 00:56:40,907 What was I comparing the universe with, 917 00:56:40,942 --> 00:56:43,514 when I called it cruel and unjust. 918 00:56:43,549 --> 00:56:45,847 If the whole universe has no meaning, 919 00:56:45,915 --> 00:56:49,047 I should never have known it has no meaning. 920 00:56:49,083 --> 00:56:51,522 All of my reasonable mind was convinced 921 00:56:51,557 --> 00:56:53,687 that the universe cannot explain itself, 922 00:56:53,755 --> 00:56:55,358 that God is behind the universe, 923 00:56:55,393 --> 00:56:56,661 that he has purposes. 924 00:56:56,696 --> 00:56:59,862 And is to be obeyed simply because he is God. 925 00:56:59,931 --> 00:57:02,701 I suppose my religion was like that of the Jews. 926 00:57:07,340 --> 00:57:09,508 As soon as I became a theist, 927 00:57:09,544 --> 00:57:12,211 I started attending my parish church on Sunday. 928 00:57:12,246 --> 00:57:13,775 College chapel during the week. 929 00:57:13,810 --> 00:57:15,878 Not because I believed in Christianity, 930 00:57:15,947 --> 00:57:19,713 but because I thought one should fly one's flag. 931 00:57:27,395 --> 00:57:29,596 Church was an unattractive affair. 932 00:57:31,963 --> 00:57:34,993 I like clergy as I like bears, but I have no more wish 933 00:57:35,029 --> 00:57:37,164 to be in church as to be in a zoo. 934 00:57:40,972 --> 00:57:45,579 Church to me meant ugly architecture, bleed music, 935 00:57:45,647 --> 00:57:50,617 bad poetry, hymns are extremely disagreeable to me. 936 00:57:53,986 --> 00:57:58,751 And the botheration of it all, the crowds, the notices, 937 00:57:58,820 --> 00:58:01,562 the perpetual organizing. 938 00:58:03,995 --> 00:58:06,292 - Before our final prayer, a quick announcement, 939 00:58:06,327 --> 00:58:09,895 if you would like to join Edith on the flower rota, 940 00:58:09,930 --> 00:58:11,771 she's desperate for volunteers, 941 00:58:11,806 --> 00:58:15,403 do please speak to her at the back by the font afterwards. 942 00:58:15,438 --> 00:58:16,709 Let us pray. 943 00:58:17,678 --> 00:58:20,778 Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee oh Lord 944 00:58:20,814 --> 00:58:24,777 and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils 945 00:58:24,813 --> 00:58:26,884 and dangers of this night, 946 00:58:26,919 --> 00:58:31,823 for the love of Thy only son, our savior Jesus Christ. 947 00:58:33,092 --> 00:58:33,957 Amen. 948 00:58:44,671 --> 00:58:47,540 - My new conviction in a higher being 949 00:58:47,575 --> 00:58:50,440 did not exactly make me a paid-up member 950 00:58:50,476 --> 00:58:51,942 in the Church of England. 951 00:58:53,479 --> 00:58:56,414 But now that I believed in God, 952 00:58:56,449 --> 00:58:58,649 I wanted to know more of him, 953 00:58:58,684 --> 00:59:01,788 from any source, pagan or Christian. 954 00:59:01,823 --> 00:59:05,052 The question was no longer to find the one true religion 955 00:59:05,088 --> 00:59:09,322 among many, but where had the thing grown up. 956 00:59:10,466 --> 00:59:13,662 Paganism was the childhood of religion. 957 00:59:13,697 --> 00:59:15,933 Where had it reached maturity? 958 00:59:17,035 --> 00:59:21,267 As for the materialists, their view was out of court. 959 00:59:21,303 --> 00:59:25,006 If reason is only the accidental result of atoms 960 00:59:25,074 --> 00:59:28,974 colliding in skulls, I could see no reason 961 00:59:29,009 --> 00:59:30,849 to believe that one accident 962 00:59:30,884 --> 00:59:34,050 should give the correct account for all other accidents. 963 00:59:37,858 --> 00:59:40,218 My allegiance was now with the mass of humanity 964 00:59:40,254 --> 00:59:44,225 who danced, sang and prayed, worshiped. 965 00:59:46,633 --> 00:59:48,696 There isn't really an infinite variety 966 00:59:48,731 --> 00:59:50,162 of religions you know. 967 00:59:50,231 --> 00:59:52,866 To me, the only ones worth considering 968 00:59:52,901 --> 00:59:55,236 are Christianity and Hinduism. 969 00:59:55,271 --> 00:59:58,305 Islam is only the greatest of the Christian heresies. 970 00:59:58,340 --> 01:00:01,679 Buddhism's only the greatest of the Hindu heresies. 971 01:00:01,715 --> 01:00:04,151 All that is best in Judaism and Plato 972 01:00:04,186 --> 01:00:06,046 survives in Christianity 973 01:00:06,115 --> 01:00:09,416 and Hinduism bears no historical claim. 974 01:00:09,451 --> 01:00:12,285 That had been put into my head by that hard-boiled atheist, 975 01:00:12,321 --> 01:00:16,694 who said, "All that mythology about a dying God 976 01:00:16,729 --> 01:00:19,997 looks as if it really happened once." 977 01:00:21,298 --> 01:00:26,338 One day Tolkien and I took a stroll on Addison's walk. 978 01:00:26,373 --> 01:00:27,739 As we talked, I said. 979 01:00:27,808 --> 01:00:31,908 - Tollers, I have, with considerable resistance, 980 01:00:31,944 --> 01:00:37,179 come to believe in God, but not Christianity. 981 01:00:37,613 --> 01:00:38,916 - Oh Jack. 982 01:00:38,952 --> 01:00:41,016 - I cannot believe something I do not understand. 983 01:00:41,051 --> 01:00:42,515 How can the life and death of someone else, 984 01:00:42,550 --> 01:00:46,387 whoever he was, 2000 years ago, help us in the here and now. 985 01:00:46,422 --> 01:00:49,763 - When you meet a God sacrificing himself in a pagan story 986 01:00:49,798 --> 01:00:53,328 like Dionysus, Balder, Osiris or even in a fairy tale, 987 01:00:53,363 --> 01:00:56,935 you like it very much and are mysteriously moved by it. 988 01:00:56,970 --> 01:00:59,935 Provided you meet it anywhere except in the gospels. 989 01:00:59,970 --> 01:01:01,608 Well the story of Christ is a myth, 990 01:01:01,676 --> 01:01:03,371 working on us in the same way as other myths, 991 01:01:03,406 --> 01:01:06,813 with one tremendous difference in that it really happened. 992 01:01:10,182 --> 01:01:15,185 - Suddenly a rush of wind interrupted us, startling me. 993 01:01:15,220 --> 01:01:19,588 So many leaves fell to the ground I thought it was raining. 994 01:01:19,623 --> 01:01:20,519 I held my breath. 995 01:01:21,522 --> 01:01:23,861 - Come on, Jack. You're too slow to catch a cold. 996 01:01:23,896 --> 01:01:25,627 You know Dyson hates sitting on those steps 997 01:01:25,696 --> 01:01:27,097 waiting to be let in. 998 01:01:34,403 --> 01:01:37,343 - I don't know if Tollers remembered that moment. 999 01:01:37,379 --> 01:01:40,240 I did. His words hit home. 1000 01:01:40,276 --> 01:01:43,916 No matter how unwilling, I was beginning to move. 1001 01:01:57,996 --> 01:02:00,966 Tollers and I talked deep into the night. 1002 01:02:01,765 --> 01:02:04,469 Hugo Dyson joined us. 1003 01:02:04,504 --> 01:02:07,506 - Beef. Sensational pie. 1004 01:02:07,541 --> 01:02:09,206 - You make a mess with that. 1005 01:02:09,942 --> 01:02:12,373 Now this stuff will put hairs on your chest. 1006 01:02:13,446 --> 01:02:14,842 - Here she is. 1007 01:02:14,877 --> 01:02:16,311 Make space would you. 1008 01:02:17,383 --> 01:02:18,379 There we go. 1009 01:02:20,183 --> 01:02:22,454 - Look, I may be prepared to accept Jesus 1010 01:02:22,490 --> 01:02:24,482 as a great moral teacher, 1011 01:02:24,551 --> 01:02:26,688 but I simply cannot accept his claim to be God. 1012 01:02:26,724 --> 01:02:28,190 - Oh, come on Jack. 1013 01:02:28,259 --> 01:02:30,861 How could a mere man be called a great moral teacher 1014 01:02:30,930 --> 01:02:32,758 and say the sort of things Jesus said? 1015 01:02:32,794 --> 01:02:34,400 - Such as? 1016 01:02:34,469 --> 01:02:36,000 - That he always existed. 1017 01:02:36,035 --> 01:02:37,770 - That he was coming again to judge the world. 1018 01:02:37,805 --> 01:02:40,973 - Such men are judged frauds, lunatics. 1019 01:02:42,543 --> 01:02:44,306 - In spite of my resistance, 1020 01:02:44,341 --> 01:02:47,512 they convinced me that nothing else in all literature 1021 01:02:47,548 --> 01:02:49,379 is just like the gospels. 1022 01:02:50,048 --> 01:02:52,280 Myths are like it in one way with its stories 1023 01:02:52,315 --> 01:02:54,984 of the miraculous, histories like it in another 1024 01:02:55,019 --> 01:02:57,820 with its attention to minute details, 1025 01:02:57,855 --> 01:03:01,123 but nothing is simply like it. 1026 01:03:01,158 --> 01:03:05,261 And no person is like the person depicted. 1027 01:03:06,028 --> 01:03:07,061 - I'm sure there are many people 1028 01:03:07,130 --> 01:03:08,996 who believe themselves to be God. 1029 01:03:09,031 --> 01:03:11,570 Our hospitals are full of them. 1030 01:03:11,638 --> 01:03:13,839 - Oh, come on Jack be serious. 1031 01:03:13,875 --> 01:03:15,904 No great moral teacher has ever made that claim 1032 01:03:15,972 --> 01:03:17,444 except Jesus, and you know it. 1033 01:03:17,512 --> 01:03:20,038 - And he went on and on and on. 1034 01:03:20,074 --> 01:03:21,244 - What do you mean? 1035 01:03:22,517 --> 01:03:24,179 - Well, claiming to forgive sins 1036 01:03:24,214 --> 01:03:25,880 and that he himself is the injured party 1037 01:03:25,915 --> 01:03:27,216 in every transgression. 1038 01:03:27,252 --> 01:03:30,351 Look, in anyone else this would be thought silly. 1039 01:03:30,387 --> 01:03:32,690 - Suppose you told me that two of your colleagues 1040 01:03:32,725 --> 01:03:33,825 had lost you a top professorship 1041 01:03:33,860 --> 01:03:36,356 by telling lies about your character. 1042 01:03:36,391 --> 01:03:41,195 And I replied "Freely forgive them both." 1043 01:03:41,231 --> 01:03:42,765 Would you not think this sheer lunacy? 1044 01:03:42,834 --> 01:03:43,934 - It would be sheer lunacy. 1045 01:03:44,002 --> 01:03:46,171 - Yet, even those who opposed Jesus 1046 01:03:46,206 --> 01:03:49,938 admitted that he expressed moral truth of depth and purity 1047 01:03:50,006 --> 01:03:52,939 full of wisdom and shrewdness. 1048 01:03:53,008 --> 01:03:55,342 - Wisdom and shrewdness. 1049 01:03:55,377 --> 01:03:57,548 You make him sound like Solomon the great. 1050 01:03:57,583 --> 01:03:58,785 - On the contrary, 1051 01:03:58,820 --> 01:04:00,217 history repeatedly calls him humble and meek. 1052 01:04:00,252 --> 01:04:02,748 - Not that you want to notice that of course Jack. 1053 01:04:02,784 --> 01:04:04,684 Humility and meekness are the last things one would ascribe 1054 01:04:04,719 --> 01:04:08,126 to someone who makes claims worthy of being a megalomaniac. 1055 01:04:12,231 --> 01:04:15,865 - The Great Knock taught me to shame inconsistency. 1056 01:04:15,900 --> 01:04:17,703 If Jesus' statements are false. 1057 01:04:17,739 --> 01:04:19,739 Christianity is of no importance. 1058 01:04:19,775 --> 01:04:23,536 If true, it is of infinite importance, 1059 01:04:23,572 --> 01:04:28,014 but one thing it cannot be is moderately important. 1060 01:04:29,848 --> 01:04:32,351 - So what are you saying? 1061 01:04:33,187 --> 01:04:38,220 - Simply that either this man was, and is, the son of God 1062 01:04:38,289 --> 01:04:42,028 or else he is a liar, a lunatic or a fraud, 1063 01:04:43,027 --> 01:04:44,324 but all this patronizing nonsense 1064 01:04:44,393 --> 01:04:46,230 about him being some great moral teacher, 1065 01:04:46,265 --> 01:04:50,135 it's not an option to us, nor was it intended to be. 1066 01:04:52,101 --> 01:04:53,972 - I felt a resistance to this 1067 01:04:54,008 --> 01:04:57,636 almost as strong as my resistance to theism. 1068 01:04:57,671 --> 01:05:00,912 Every step from the absolute to spirit to God 1069 01:05:00,947 --> 01:05:04,017 was a step toward the more concrete. 1070 01:05:04,085 --> 01:05:08,613 And now to accept the incarnation that God became man 1071 01:05:08,648 --> 01:05:11,550 was a further step in the same direction. 1072 01:05:11,586 --> 01:05:15,028 Oh, this too was something I had not wanted. 1073 01:05:19,164 --> 01:05:22,029 I remember very well when, but hardly how, 1074 01:05:22,098 --> 01:05:24,631 the final step was taken. 1075 01:05:24,666 --> 01:05:27,601 I was being driven by my brother Warnie to Whipsnade Zoo 1076 01:05:27,636 --> 01:05:30,675 in the sidecar of a motorcycle one Sunday morning 1077 01:05:30,710 --> 01:05:32,639 in the autumn of 1931. 1078 01:05:33,474 --> 01:05:35,881 When we set out, I did not believe 1079 01:05:35,916 --> 01:05:38,882 that Jesus Christ is the son of God. 1080 01:05:38,917 --> 01:05:41,552 When we reached the zoo, I did, 1081 01:05:42,388 --> 01:05:46,587 I had not spent the journey in thought, or great emotion. 1082 01:05:47,490 --> 01:05:50,223 It was more like a man who, after a long sleep, 1083 01:05:50,259 --> 01:05:55,497 has become aware he is now awake. 1084 01:06:01,736 --> 01:06:06,445 My conversion shed new light on my search for joy. 1085 01:06:07,248 --> 01:06:11,083 The overwhelming longings that emerged from "Phantastes" 1086 01:06:11,152 --> 01:06:15,148 and my brother's toy garden were merely signposts 1087 01:06:15,183 --> 01:06:17,382 to what I truly desired. 1088 01:06:17,417 --> 01:06:20,025 They were not the thing itself. 1089 01:06:20,061 --> 01:06:23,425 I concluded that if I find in myself a desire 1090 01:06:23,461 --> 01:06:27,497 that no experience in this world could satisfy, 1091 01:06:27,533 --> 01:06:32,600 the most probable explanation, I was made for another world. 1092 01:06:34,669 --> 01:06:37,704 At present we're on the outside of that world, 1093 01:06:38,944 --> 01:06:40,773 the wrong side of the door. 1094 01:06:42,050 --> 01:06:45,483 We cannot mingle with the splendors we see, 1095 01:06:46,352 --> 01:06:49,582 but all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling 1096 01:06:49,618 --> 01:06:53,893 with the rumor that it will not always be so. 1097 01:06:53,928 --> 01:06:58,164 One day, God willing, we shall get in. 1098 01:07:02,168 --> 01:07:05,798 Meanwhile, the cross comes before the crown 1099 01:07:07,104 --> 01:07:09,736 and tomorrow is another morning. 1100 01:07:11,312 --> 01:07:14,807 A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of this world, 1101 01:07:16,009 --> 01:07:20,780 and we have been invited to follow our great captain inside. 1102 01:07:23,355 --> 01:07:28,194 Following him is of course the essential point. 1103 01:07:39,571 --> 01:07:44,343 - That Christmas, I took the short walk to my parish church. 1104 01:07:45,013 --> 01:07:48,478 That walk marked the end of one journey 1105 01:07:49,179 --> 01:07:51,448 and the beginning of another. 1106 01:08:03,097 --> 01:08:05,965 - As I looked around, I thought not only 1107 01:08:06,000 --> 01:08:08,631 of my own potential glory hereafter, 1108 01:08:09,334 --> 01:08:12,403 but also that of my neighbor's glory. 1109 01:08:14,002 --> 01:08:17,802 It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods 1110 01:08:17,838 --> 01:08:20,344 and goddesses, to remember that the dullest, 1111 01:08:20,379 --> 01:08:24,313 most uninteresting person you meet may one day 1112 01:08:24,348 --> 01:08:26,945 be a creature that if you saw it now, 1113 01:08:26,980 --> 01:08:30,685 you would be strongly tempted to fall down and worship 1114 01:08:30,720 --> 01:08:35,157 or else a horror or a corruption such as you now meet, 1115 01:08:35,192 --> 01:08:38,429 if at all, only in a nightmare. 1116 01:08:40,530 --> 01:08:42,761 All day long, we are helping each other 1117 01:08:42,797 --> 01:08:47,405 to one or the other of these two destinations. 1118 01:08:48,574 --> 01:08:51,407 It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities 1119 01:08:51,442 --> 01:08:54,841 that I should now conduct all my dealings. 1120 01:08:58,611 --> 01:09:00,979 There are no ordinary people. 1121 01:09:02,417 --> 01:09:04,850 I've never met a mere mortal. 1122 01:09:04,886 --> 01:09:10,091 Nations, cultures, civilizations, these are mortal. 1123 01:09:10,593 --> 01:09:13,927 Their life is to ours as that of a gnat. 1124 01:09:14,697 --> 01:09:18,199 It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, 1125 01:09:18,234 --> 01:09:23,273 marry, snub, exploit. 1126 01:09:23,375 --> 01:09:27,946 The weight or burden of my neighbors glory 1127 01:09:27,981 --> 01:09:30,549 should be laid daily on my back. 1128 01:09:31,219 --> 01:09:36,454 A load so heavy, only humility can carry it. 1129 01:09:38,192 --> 01:09:41,888 And the backs of the proud will be broken. 1130 01:10:36,284 --> 01:10:39,952 - Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. 1131 01:10:39,987 --> 01:10:42,784 Therefore let us keep the feast. 1132 01:10:57,171 --> 01:11:00,032 The body of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1133 01:11:02,607 --> 01:11:05,972 - Unlike my first communion, 17 years earlier. 1134 01:11:07,144 --> 01:11:08,678 I now believed. 1135 01:11:24,361 --> 01:11:26,130 - Okay. Thanks very much. 1136 01:11:26,165 --> 01:11:27,931 That's a cut there. Thank you. 1137 01:11:28,000 --> 01:11:29,228 Thank you Max. 1138 01:11:29,297 --> 01:11:30,462 - Thank you.