The Place of the Lion: Chapters 8 - 10
These chapters show wrong attitudes towards the nature of reality, and culminate with Anthony coming into the right attitude and achieving the correct relationship.
Anthony visits Richardson, and learns that when the arrogant people seek to command and control the celestial powers, they become hostile beasts, so that the lion becomes a dragon when people like Berringer and Foster seek to command it for their own self-centered purposes.
Chapter Nine begins with a description of how Damaris’s state of mind prevents her from experiencing the peace of mind that can come from a right relation to nature. Her mental preoccupation with “the relation of the Divine Perfection with creation” ironically prevents her from the sort of actually experiencing it which her father and Anthony are receiving. Her intellectual world was all that mattered to her, and getting her articles published only nourished her egotism.
When she encounters the deeply frightened Quentin and he tries to induce her to hide from the cosmic powers with which he is horrified, she flees in an indignant fury and returns to town. There in a vision she hears the words of one of Abelard’s hymns: “Truth is always in the thing; / Never in the reasoning,” but in her anger she is incapable of receiving that simple truth, which is so vital for her mental health.
When Anthony comes and learns of the situation, he, possessed by love for both her and Quentin, tries to persuade her to come to London where he feels she would be safer. She refuses, and he leaves. He joins Dr. Rockbotham in a visit to Berringer, finding him lying in a coma.
Leaving Berringer’s room, Anthony has a vision. He sees himself on the brink of a vast abyss with a strong wind threatening to blow him to his doom. Momentarily tempted to yield himself to its power, he sees a giant eagle soaring above. Inspired by its grace and power, he too soars above the abyss. Thereafter he no longer views the universals with fear, but sees them as a vital part of an harmoniously ordered universe. He can view them with calm curiosity, confident in his ability as man to govern them within himself.
Comments
“Truth is always in the thing; / Never in the reasoning,”
I have long thought that the fussiness in babies that we often attribute to "teething" is in fact a baby fussing because baby is on the brink of a cognitive leap. The way they are connecting to their body and to the world is such that learning to roll over is imminent, but they don't yet have a grasp on the idea of rolling over. I suspect that the irritation I am feeling as I try to grasp the ideas that Williams is putting forth is parallel.
A few scriptures have been coming to mind. Certainly the dominion passages in Genesis 1 & 2, but also 1 Corinthians 13: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love. . .
Williams seems to be trying to shed a clearer light on idolatry, specifically on intellectual idolatry. His background is very interesting here: he worked at Oxford but was not formally Oxford educated. As a proofreader and then editor at Oxford University Press, it seems he would have been considered "well-educated" by any standards except that of Oxford itself. By this I mean that, in the academic world, having a degree and having gone through the initiation of being a student is often the thing that allows ones thinking to be accepted or interesting to others. The degree gives one a place at the table. Perhaps his purpose in writing this book is to show how intellectual idolatry is as ugly as any other form of worshipping a part of a whole.
If I understand 1 Corinthians 13 rightly (and really, the whole bible), it is LOVE that ought to give one a place at the table. Love is both WHOLE and HOLY. It does not separate out spirit and matter, but sees things in the totality of what they actually are and honors them as such. Damaris has been mining people - living and dead - for their ideas and/or what they can do to move her toward her goal, that is being a published author whose ideas are listened to. She is hungry for/desiring a part of people, sort of canabalistic really.
Anthony's vision is a cosmic vision of the WHOLE and his part in it; he has been given the authority to accept/name things as they are, in their wholeness. His acceptance of his role brings to end any division in his being, and a greater joy and purer love are the immediate effect.