Lewis had a healthy suspicion of easy words like "progress."
By Art Lindsley
April 29, 2014
Some words are more slippery than they seem.
In C. S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, King Caspian encounters Gumpas, the Governor of the Lone Islands. Gumpas tells Caspian that the slave trade practiced in his domain is an "essential part of the development of the island."
"Tender as my years may be," says Caspian, "I do not see that it brings into the islands meat or bread or beer or wine or timber or cabbages or books or instruments of music or horses or armour or anything else worth having. But whether it does or not, it must be stopped."
"But that would be putting the clock back," gasps the governor. "Have you no idea of progress, of development?"
"I have seen them both in an egg," says Caspian. "We call it going bad in Narnia. This trade must stop."
Who could be against "progress" or "development"? Only someone, like Caspian, who has realized that some things progress and develop in the wrong direction. And one of the great gifts of C. S. Lewis was his well-honed suspicion of progress.
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