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Copywork
About This Passage
Here Screwtape names the subtle poison in a counterfeit humility. He does not ask the man to believe something false about his talents (they may well be overrated); he asks him to value the believing itself for some reason other than its being true. Copying this passage shows a writer how an argument can isolate the precise corruption — not a wrong opinion, but the willingness to prize an opinion 'for some quality other than truth' — that turns a budding virtue into dishonesty.
Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. No doubt they are in fact less valuable than he believes, but that i...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, retell Screwtape's fourteenth letter to Wormwood in sequence. What does he say humility really is, and how can you tell that the direction of the man's attention, not his estimate of his talents, is the true issue?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape labours to 'conceal from the patient the true end of Humility,' wanting him to see it as 'a low opinion of his own talents' rather than as 'self-forgetfulness.' Is humility better understood as thinking little of your gifts or as forgetting yourself altogether — and why does the letter teach one rather than the other? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- Screwtape's subtlest trick is to make the man 'value an opinion for some quality other than truth.' Why does building humility on this 'introduc[e] an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue'? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to develop your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Firm decisions to do or not do something.
Item 2
Never ending; continuing forever.
Item 3
A gift or natural supply granted to someone.
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Critical Thinking
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