Nature

Miracles 2.3 & 2.4 "Nature means what happens 'of itself' or 'of its own accord': what you do not need to labour for; what you will get if you take no measures to stop it." Miracles 2.11 Nature for the Naturalist is simply one total reality he calls Nature. For the Supernaturalist believes in a Primary Thing which produced what the Naturalist calls Nature and that there might be other systems in addition to the one we call Nature. Miracles 2.12 Nature (for Lewis) is a reciprocal interlocking system of relations, spatial, temporal, causal. ROTP VIII. Nature -- title of Chapter VIII of Reflections on the Psalms, also this word features in Studies In Words. Miracles 4.2 "On the other hand, Nature is quite powerless to produce rational thought: not that she never modifies our thinking but that the moment she does so, it ceases (for that very reason) to be rational." ... "Nature can only raid reason to kill; but Reason can invade Nature to take prisoners and even to colonise." Miracles 4.13 "But from observing what happens when Nature obeys it is almost impossible not to conclude that it is her very 'nature' to be a subject." Miracles 5.10 "... we must believe that the conscience of man is not a product of Nature."

I spoke just now about the Latinity of Latin. It is more evident to us than it can have been to the Romans. The Englishness of English is audible only to those who know some other language as well. In the same way and for the same reason, only Supernaturalists really see Nature. You must go a little away from her, and then turn round, and look back. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. You must have tasted, however briefly, the pure water from beyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Nature's current. To treat her as God, or as Everything, is to lose the whole pith and pleasure of her. Come out, look back, and then you will see...this astonishing cataract of bears, babies, and bananas: this immoderate deluge of atoms, orchids, oranges, cancers, canaries, fleas, gases, tornadoes and toads. How could you ever have thought this was the ultimate reality? How could you ever have thought that it was merely a stage-set for the moral drama of men and women? She is herself. //Miracles,// chapter 8, last paragraph

//To Dom Bede May 1, 1945// I'm working at a book on Miracles at present in wh. this theme will play a large part. And here's a funny thing. To write a book on miracles, which are in a sense invasions of Nature, has made me realise Nature herself as I've never done before. You don't //see// Nature till you believe in the Supernatural: don't get the full, hot, salty tang of her except by contrast with the pure water from beyond the world. Those who mistake Nature for the All are just those who can never realise her as a //particular creature// with her own flawed, terrible, beautiful individuality. //Collected Letters,// to Dom Bede Griffiths, 1 May 1945

When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. //The Weight of Glory//, 2nd paragraph from the end

"What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument…. Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man…. No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power." //The Abolition of Man//, Chapter 3, paragraph 15

Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains. Not because they are too rank, but because they are too weak. What is a Lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed. //The Great Divorce//, chapter 11, 4th paragraph from the end

I think every natural thing which is not in itself sinful can become the servant of the spiritual life, but none is automatically so. When it is not, it becomes either just trivial (as music is to millions of people) or a dangerous idol. //Collected// //Letters//, to Mrs. R. E. Halvorson, (undated) before 2 April 1956

All other religions in the world, as far as I know them, are either nature religions, or anti-nature religions. The nature religions are those of the old, simple pagan sort that you know about. You actually got drunk in the temple of Bacchus. You actually committed fornication in the temple of Aphrodite.… The anti-nature religions are those like Hinduism and Stoicism, where men say, 'I will starve my flesh. I care not whether I live or die.' All natural things are to be set aside: the aim is Nirvana, apathy, negative spirituality. The nature religions simply affirm my natural desires. The anti-natural religions simply contradict them. The nature religions simply give a new sanction to what I already always thought about the universe in my moments of rude health and cheerful brutality. The anti-nature religions merely repeat what I always thought about it in my moods of lassitude, or delicacy, or compassion. //The Grand Miracle//, a sermon, 3rd paragraph from the end

Many people--I am one myself--would never, but for what nature does to us, have had any content to put into the words we must use in confessing our faith. Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word "glory" a meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one. I do not see how the "fear" of God could have ever meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe, if I had never seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags. And if nature had never awakened certain longings in me, huge areas of what I can now mean by the "love" of God would never, so far as I can see, have existed. //Four Loves//, chapter 2, paragraph

The pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece invented Nature. They first had the idea (a much odder one than the veil of immemorial familiarity usually allows us to realise) that the great variety of phenomena which surrounds us could all be impounded under a name and talked about as a single object. Later thinkers took over the name and the implication of unity which (like every name) it carried. But they sometimes used it to cover less than everything; hence Aristotle's Nature which covers only the sublunary. In that way, the concept of Nature unexpectedly rendered possible a clear conception of the Supernatural (Aristotle's God is as supernatural as anything could be). The object (if it is an object) called 'Nature' could be personified. And this personification could be either treated as a mere colour of rhetoric or seriously accepted as a goddess. That is why the goddess appears so late, long after the real mythopoeic state of mind has passed away. You cannot have the goddess Nature till you have the concept 'Nature', and you cannot have the concept until you have begun to abstract. //The Discarded Image//, C Statius, Claudian, paragraph 6

Yet you were not--or so it seemed to me--telling me that "Nature," or "the beauties of Nature," manifest the glory. No such abstraction as "Nature" comes into it. I was learning the far more secret doctrine that pleasures are shafts of the glory as it strikes our sensibility. As it impinges on our will or our understanding, we give it different names--goodness or truth or the like. But its mark upon our senses and mood is pleasure. //Letters to Malcolm//, chapter 16, paragraph 4

We are now as we ought to be--between the angels who are our elder brothers and the beasts who are our jesters, servants and playfellows. That Hideous Strength, chapter 6, 25th paragraph from the end

The Nature or Arch-nature of that land rejoiced to have been once more ridden, and therefore consummated, in the person of the horse. It sang:

"The Master says to our master, Come up. Share my rest and splendour till all natures that were your enemies become slaves to dance before you and backs for you to ride, and firmness for your feet to rest on.

"From beyond all place and time, out of the very Place, authority will be given you: the strengths that once opposed your will shall be obedient fire in your blood and heavenly thunder in your voice.

"Overcome us that, so overcome, we may be ourselves: we desire the beginning of your reign as we desire dawn and dew, wetness at the birth of light.

"Master, your Master has appointed you for ever: to be our King of Justice and our high Priest."

"Do ye understand all this, my Son?" said the Teacher.

"I don't know about all, Sir," said I. "Am I right in thinking the Lizard really turned into the Horse?"

"Aye. But it was killed first. Ye'll not forget that part of the story?"

"I'll try not to, Sir. But does it mean that everything--everything--that is in us can go on to the Mountains?" The Great Divorce, chapter 11, 5th to 13th paragraph from the end

Yes, after all our old conversations I can feel otherwise about the lusts of the flesh: is not desire merely a kind of sugar-plum that nature gives us to make us breed, as she does the beetles and toads so that both we and they may beget more creatures to struggle in the same net: Nature, or the common order of things, has really produced in man a sort of Frankenstein who is learning to shake her off. For man alone of all things can master his instincts. //Collected Letters,// to Arthur Greeves, 29 May 1918