Page 21 (1/1)

XX

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

I note with great displeasure that the Ene, put a forcible end to your direct attacks on the patient’s chastity You ought to have known that He always does in the end, and you ought to have stopped before you reached that stage For as things are, your erous truth that these attacks don’t last forever; consequently you cannot use again what is, after all, our best weapon - the belief of ignorant hu rid of us except by yielding I suppose you’ve tried persuading hiot a report frohbourhood I should like it once, for if we can’t use his sexuality to make him unchaste we e In the ive you some hint about the type of woed to fall in love with if "falling in love" is the best we can h and ready way, of course, this question is decided for us by spirits far deeper down in the Lowerarchy than you and I It is the business of these great eneral misdirection of what h the small circle of popular artists, dressmakers, actresses and advertisers who deteruide each sex away from those members of the other hoes are most likely Thus we have now forcertain secondary characteristics of the reeable to nearly all the feht suppose As regards the ood deal At one time we have directed it to the statuesque and aristocratic type of beauty,the race to breed chiefly froal woeratedly fe, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of o with them, shall be at a pree of jazz has succeeded the age of the waltz, andteach uishable from those of boys Since this is a kind of beauty even ravate the fe old (withand less able to bear children And that is not all We have engineered a great increase in the licence which society allows to the representation of the apparent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhibition on the stage or the bathing beach It is all a fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real wohts are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and rooht to believe that it is being "frank" and "healthy" and getting back to nature As a result we arewhich does not exist -the rôle of the eye in sexualityits demands more and more impossible What follows you can easily forecast!

That is the general strategy of the moment But inside that frae your patient’s desires in one of two directions You will find, if you look carefully into any huinary women - a terrestrial and an infernal Venus, and that his desire differs qualitatively according to its object There is one type for which his desire is such as to be naturally amenable to the Enee, coloured all through with that golden light of reverence and naturalness which we detest; there is another type which he desires brutally, and desires to desire brutally, a type best used to draw hie, he would tend to treat as a slave, an idol, or an accoht involve what the Enemy calls evil, but only accidentally; the man would wish that she was not someone else’s wife and be sorry that he could not love her lawfully But in the second type, the felt evil is what he wants; it is that "tang" in the flavour which he is after In the face, it is the visible animality, or sulkiness, or craft, or cruelty which he likes, and in the body, so quite different fro he liness, but which, by our art, can be made to play on the raw nerve of his private obsession

The real use of the infernal Venus is, no doubt, as prostitute or mistress But if your man is a Christian, and if he has been well trained in nonsense about irresistible and all-excusing "Love", he can often be induced toabout You will have failed as regards fornication and solitary vice; but there are other, andaAnd, by the way, they are not only efficient, but delightful; the unhappiness produced is of a very lasting and exquisite kind,

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE