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Copywork
About This Passage
Screwtape names a key reason Hell wants people ignorant of the past: no single age can be fooled about everything, so an age that reads other ages will catch its own blind spots in their light. Copying this sentence shows why reading old books is a defense — each era's typical errors can be corrected by another era's typical truths.
And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct Screwtape's twenty-seventh letter to Wormwood in sequence — the attack on petitionary prayer through 'false spirituality,' the rigged 'heads I win, tails you lose' argument, the analysis of the man's confusion about time and the Enemy's 'unbounded Now,' and the boast about the Historical Point of View that cuts the ages apart. Then state the single corruption you take to organize the letter.
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape's 'heads I win, tails you lose' argument treats a denied prayer and a granted prayer as equally good proof that prayer is ineffective. Is an argument that no conceivable result could count against it a strong proof or an empty one — and what test would let you tell the difference? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- In an earlier letter Screwtape's prize was getting a man to 'Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason'; here the Historical Point of View makes 'the one question he never asks' about an old statement 'whether it is true.' Reading the two letters together, is Hell's deepest aim to make people believe particular falsehoods, or to detach belief and study from the question of truth altogether — and why does the difference matter? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood, and explain why your reading is stronger.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Too many to be counted; countless.
Item 2
Relating to the body or to physical matter.
Item 3
Decided or fixed in advance, so as to be unavoidable.
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Critical Thinking
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