The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams (i can read book club .txt) 📕

Idea, were not those others in process of being subordinated, each by an Idea to itself? And for others still, what awaited them but thunder, earthquake, terror, chaos—the destruction of patterns and the blasting of purposes?

Unthinkingly he put out his hand to the cigarette box which Quentin had given him one Christmas; given both of them, as he had himself pointed out, in remarking on the superior nature of his own present, which had been a neat kind of pocket-book and therefore an entirely personal gift. But Quentin had maintained that the cigarette box, as being of greater good to a greater number, had been nearer to the ideal perfection of giving. “For”, he had argued, “to give to you a means by which you can give to others, is better than to give a merely private thing.”

“But”, Anthony had persisted, “in so far as you are one of those others—and likely to be the most persistent—you give to yourself and therefore altogether deprive the act of the principle of giving”; to which Quentin had retorted that he was included only as one of a number, and that the wise man would not deprive others of good because he himself might be a gainer. “Otherwise what about all martyrs, missionaries, and philanthropists?” And so the comedy had been played to its end.

The comedy—but this was no comedy; the fierceness of the Lion was no comedy, nor any of those other apparitions, unless the Lamb…The Lion and the Lamb—and a little child shall lead them. Lead them where? Even a little child was in its own mind presumably leading them somewhere. Or perhaps not, perhaps a little child would be content just to lead. The Lion and the Lamb—if this were the restored balance?

Friendship—love—had something in it at once strong and innocent, leonine and lamblike. By friendship, by love, these great Virtues became delicately known. Apart from such love and friendship they were merely destructive and helpless; man was never meant to be subjected to them, unless by the offering up of his being to “divine Philosophy.” In that very chair he had been mocked by Foster for hoping to rule the principles of creation, and he had answered that he had promised to do everything to help Damaris. How far such a profound intention sufficed to rule those principles he did not know—mo re perhaps than man normally thought. The balance in things—the Lion and the Lamb, the Serpent and the Phoenix, the Horse and the Unicorn: ideas as they were visualized and imagined—if these could be led…if…

He could not clearly understand what suggestion was being made to him. But an intense apprehension of the danger in which many besides Quentin were grew within him, a danger brought about by the disorder which had been introduced. He could not honestly say that in any sense he loved these others, unless indeed love were partly a process of willing good to them. That he was determined to do, and perhaps this willing of good meant restoration. By order man ascended; what was it that St. Francis had written? “Set Love in order, thou that lovest Me.” First for Quentin and then for all the rest.

So gradually abandoning himself to the purpose of the great Power that lived in him, he sat on. If the Eagle was to be served the Eagle must show him how to serve. In this place of friendship, among the expositions and symbols of friendship, he was filled with the intention of friendship. Quentin was not here, but here they had been received by the knowledge of good, by comparison with which only evil could be known. Friendship was one, but friends were many; the idea was one, but its epiphanies many. One winged creature—but many, many flights of birds. The sparrows in the garden outside his window—and the brown thrushes that sought in it sometimes—the blackbird and the starling—the pigeons of the Guildhall and the gulls of the Thames—the pelicans of St. James and the ridiculous penguins of the Zoo—herons in shallow waters—owls screaming by night—nightingales, skylarks, robin redbreasts—a kingfisher out beyond Maidenhead—doves and crows? ravens—the hooded falcons of pageantry—pheasants—peacocks magnificently scornful—migrating swallows of October? migrating? migrating—birds of paradise—parrots shrieking in the jungles of India—vultures tearing the bodies in the sands of Africa—flight after flight went by. He knew them in the spiritual intellect, and beheld by their fashioned material bodies the mercy which hid in matter the else overwhelming ardours; man was not yet capable of naked vision. The breach between mankind and the angelicals must be closed again; “a little child should lead them”—back. The lion should lie down with the lamb. Separately they had issued—strength divorced from innocence, fierceness from joy. They must go back together; somehow they must be called. Adam, long since—so the fable ran—standing in Eden had named the Celestials which were brought into existence before him. Their names—how should Anthony Durrant know their names, or by what title to summon again the lion and the serpent? Yet even in Anthony Durrant the nature of Adam lived. I n Adam there had been perfect balance, perfect proportion: in Anthony—?

He was lying back, very still, in his chair. His desire went inwards, through a universe of peace, and hovered, as if on aquiline pinions, over the moment when man knew and named the powers of which he was made. Vast landscapes opened beneath him; laughter rang up towards him. Among the forests he saw a great glade, and in the glade wandered a solitary lamb. It was alone—for a moment or for many years; and then from the trees there came forth a human figure and stood also in the sun. With its appearance a mighty movement everywhere began. A morning of Light was on the earth; the hippopotamus lumbered from the river, the boar charged from the forest, the great apes swung down to the ground before a figure of strength and beauty, the young and glorious archetype of humanity. A voice, crying out in song, went through the air of Eden,—a voice that swept up as the eagle, and with every call renewed its youth. All music was the scattered echo of that voice; all poetry was the approach of the fallen understanding to that unfallen meaning. All things were named—all but man himself, then the sleep fell upon the Adam, and in that first sleep he strove to utter his name, and as he strove he was divided and woke to find humanity doubled. The name of mankind was in neither voice but in both; the knowledge of the name and its utterance was in the perpetual interchange of love. Whoever denied that austere godhead, wherever and however it appeared—its presence, its .austerity, its divinity—refused the name of man.

The echo of that high spiritual mastery sounded through the inmost being of the child of Adam who lay tranced and attentive. His memory could not bear the task of holding the sounds, but it was not memory’s business. The great affair of the naming was present within him, eternal, now as much as then, and at any future hour as much as now. There floated from that singing rapture of man’s knowledge of man a last note which rose through his whole being, and as it came brought with it a cloud. “A mist went up and covered the face of the earth.” His faculties relaxed; his attention was gently released. He blinked once or twice, moved, saw, recognized, and drowsily smiled at the Landseer; then his head dropped down, and he was received, until his energies were renewed, into such a sleep as possessed our father when he awaited the discovery of himself.