Page 20 (1/1)

XIX

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

I have been thinking very hard about the question in your last letter If, as I have clearly shown, all selves are by their very nature in competition, and therefore the Enemy’s idea of Love is a contradiction in ter that He really loves the human vermin and really desires their freedom and continued existence? I hope, my dear boy, you have not shown my letters to anyone Not that it matters of course Anyone would see that the appearance of heresy into which I have fallen is purely accidental By the way, I hope you understood, too, that soob were purely jocular I really have the highest respect for hi you from the authorities were not seriously meant You can trustunder lock and key

The truth is I slipped bythat the Enemy really loves the hu, they are distinct froood cannot be His All His talk about Loveelse - Heso much trouble about them The reason one comes to talk as if He really had this impossible Love is our utter failure to out that real motive What does He stand to make out of them? That is the insoluble question I do not see that it can do any harm to tell you that this very problem was a chief cause of Our Father’s quarrel with the Enemy When the creation of e, the Enemy freely confessed that he foresaw a certain episode about a cross, Our Father very naturally sought an interview and asked for an explanation The Eneave no reply except to produce the cock-and-bull story about disinterested love which He has been circulating ever since This Our Father naturally could not accept He iave Him every opportunity He admitted that he felt a real anxiety to know the secret; the Enemy replied "I ith all e in the interview that Our Father’s disgust at such an unprovoked lack of confidence caused him to remove himself an infinite distance froiven rise to the ridiculous enemy story that he was forcibly thrown out of Heaven Since then, we have begun to see why our Oppressor was so secretive His throne depends on the secret Members of His faction have frequently admitted that if ever we came to understand what He means by Love, the ould be over and we should re-enter Heaven And there lies the great task We know that He cannot really love: nobody can: it doesn’t make sense If we could only find out what He is really up to! Hypothesis after hypothesis has been tried, and still we can’t find out Yet we must never lose hope; more and more complicated theories, fuller and fuller collections of data, richer rewards for researchers who ress, more and more terrible punishments for those who fail - all this, pursued and accelerated to the very end of time, cannot, surely, fail to succeed

You complain thatin love as a desirable state for a human or not But really, Wormwood, that is the sort of question one expects them to ask! Leave them to discuss whether "Love", or patriotism, or celibacy, or candles on altars, or teetotalisood" or "bad" Can’t you see there’s no answer? Nothing iven state of iven circumstances, to move a particular patient at particular moment nearer to the Ene to ood" or "bad" If he is an arrogant man with a contempt for the body really based on delicacy but mistaken by hi what ainst love Instil into hi asceticism and then, when you have separated his sexuality froh in on him with it in some much more brutal and cynical forullible man, feed him on minor poets and fifth-rate novelists of the old school until you have made him believe that "Love" is both irresistible and somehow intrinsically rant you, in producing casual unchastity; but it is an incoic adulteries, ending, if all goes well, inthat, it can be used to steer the patient into a useful h the Ene wohbourhood ould render the Christian life intensely difficult to him if only you could persuade him to marry one of them Please send et it quite clear in your ownin love is not, in itself, necessarily favourable either to us or to the other side It is si to exploit Like s which hue and youth, or war and peace, it is, from the point of view of the spiritual life, mainly raw material,

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE