The Place of the Lion: Chapters 11 - 13

  As the chapter head tells us, the narrative begins to focus its attention upon Damaris’s conversion.  We are shown hr mental absorption with a completely abstract understanding of human experience–she is preoccupied with composing a graph of human thought.  As a  result she has a thorough-going contempt for the actual experience of people, and even wants to rid herself of her father when he seems to be ailing.

Suddenly the archetypal Strength or Energy that gives things form and structure withdraws from the neighboring buildings, causing them to collapse.  Damaris reacts not with alarm but complacency; then a stench arises, driving her to a downstairs window where she is confronted with an appallingly huge and terrible flying creature.  For the first time in her life she feels the need for somebody to be with her, and she cries out for Anthony and her father. Her father appears but he, absorbed in his vision of beauty, calmly spurns her.  Then the house itself disappears, and she finds herself in a mire.  

Standing in a swampy pool, she has a vision of Abelard, but he was like a vile corpse, overshadowed by the pterdactyl, emitting the vile odor.  All about her was vile corruption.  Then Anthony appears, calling her name; a stately eagle is on his shoulders, and his eyes are filled with love.  Anthony sternly but lovingly explains her error, and she begins to repent.  He begins to speak of Quentin, and she realizes that she ought to go and look for him.  

Williams is underscoring the importance of a loving concern for others as the hallmark of spiritual maturity.  Anthony epitomizes the ideal: he is motivated by love.  This is largely why the stately eagle accompanies him.  His love for Damaris is primarily a sincere concern for her well-being, which requires her thinking properly concerning all of life: her studies, her aspirations, and her attitudes toward others. 

As Williams studies the history of Christianity, he sees  two primary  ways of approaching God, and they are diametrically opposed: The Way of Affirmation, and the Way of Negation.  The first sees God mysteriously present in all images and affairs of life; the second attempts to block out of one’s thinking all temporal things.  In Chapter Twelve the description of Richardson’s attitudes epitomizes the latter, the Way of Negation:

He abstracted himself continually from sense and from thought, attempting always a return to an interior nothingness where that which is itself no thing might communicate its sole essential being.

As Richardson stands outside and observes a morning service in a little chapel, he is granted a vision of a unicorn, which symbolizess the total body of true Christian believers.  As the chapter progresses, Richardson meets people who depict various attitudes towards experiencing God.

Foster, whose mistaken thinking prompts him to attempt approaching God by making sacrifices, is corrected by Richardson: “there’s only one sacrifice, and the God of gods makes it, not you.”  An aged lady, leaving the chapel service, asks Richardson if he is saved, and she attempts to be kind to Foster.  Richardson ponders her approach: “After all, the old lady had wanted to be kind, even if she reduced indescribable complexities of experience to an epigram.”  It is loving actions that matter most in the Christian life. 

As Richardson confronts Miss Wilmot in her subtle and ego-centric attempts to control other lives for her own gain, she turns into a snake and dies.

Man was meant to be, Williams explains, “the balance and pattern of all the Ideas.”  Those who “deliberately abandoned themselves to their own desires instead of the passion for truth, for reality,” such as Berringer and Wilmot, are destroyed.  Williams is saying that man is to hold dominion over all of life by having a proper regard for it. That part of the town of Smetham that “was not largely used by man and that had not received into it . . . part of his more intimate life” collapses: it’s strength or cohering force–symbolized by the lion–was withdrawn.   So much of the town is consumed in fire, and many of the people are reduced to their animal natures.

It is active participation and the proper exercise of dominion–exemplified by Anthony’s attitudes–his love that would help others, such as Damaris and Quentin, for their own good–that saves society.  Such active love is“stronger than the lion and subtler then the serpent and more lovely than butterflies, something perhaps that held even the Ideas in their places . . . .”    

DOES WHAT WILLIAMS IS SAYING ABOUT PEOPLE’S RELATIONSHIP TO LIFE MAKE SENSE?  IS IT HELPFUL?