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Consider these words from October of 1939:
“If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secured the search would never have begun.”
Speaking upon the edge of a knife, these words were delivered to university students in Oxford, one month after Germany invaded Poland, one month after the United Kingdom declared war.
While reviewing the text this week, I began to wonder about the mind of C.S. Lewis as he prepared his speech, knowing that many in his audience would soon face war, knowing that many would never complete the education he promoted. The trenches of World War I had left an indelible mark on Lewis, visible in his later writings, clear from his letters, so what images stirred in his mind the night before he spoke?
“Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never come.”
Should you begin a task that you’re unlikely to finish? Lewis deemed that question urgent once the prospect of war lurched to the promise of war. And it’s a question that hasn’t lost its relevance.
Learning in War-Time was actually delivered as a sermon, at University Church of St Mary the Virgin, but there’s still much to discover in a secular reading of his words—even though Lewis would certainly disagree.
“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
There’s a smack to the idlers, loafers, dawdlers, to all those who forget how the clock forever ticks; it’s a smack of those perpetually with grand plans, to those waiting for the ideal moment, ready with excuses and justifications.
In paragraph after paragraph, Lewis practically screams outward to the young students—there’s not a moment to waste! For readers today, there’s a temptation to place his words in a wartime context, suitable for the spirit of his time, irrelevant for later readings. Even without obvious peril, however, the question always lingers in the background: How should you spend your time? To relegate that question to wartime is a mistake, as war only strips away the usual illusion about time, and the need to answer is forever ripe, regardless of the season.
Yet Lewis also understood that while the world burns there’s the temptation to stare at the flames, to think of nothing but the inferno, but he warned his students against this fundamentalism, even amidst catastrophe. His title, Learning in War-Time, doesn’t deny the need for war, nor the necessity of learning.
“Thus we may have a duty to rescue a drowning man, and perhaps, if we live on a dangerous coast, to learn life-saving so as to be ready for any drowning man when he turns up. It may be our duty to lose our own lives in saving him. But if anyone devoted himself to life-saving in the sense of giving it his total attention -- so that he thought and spoke of nothing else and demanded the cessation of all other human activities until everyone had learned to swim -- he would be a monomaniac. The rescue of drowning men is, then a duty worth dying for, but not worth living for.”
Most people have at least a passing familiarity with composing a few sentences for an important event—even if that’s simply a private note. With these paragraphs, my mind keeps returning to C.S. Lewis, how his eye must have examined his own words the night before, on Saturday October 21, 1939, aware that his morning audience would be composed of students, most of whom would soon be soldiers. What’s intriguing is how timeless his message appears, and how he manages to include a sliver of hope within his serious theme. Regardless of the conflict, or of the obstacle, the question always remains urgent—How should you spend your time?—while the clock continues to tick.
Who writes Desk Notes?
If you are just joining, I’m Charles Schifano, and I’m a writer and teacher. I have taught courses on writing, the English language, and narrative technique. My group lectures focus on journalism and fiction, and I present techniques from both to improve storytelling.
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