His real motive for fixing on sex as the method of reproduction amonghumans is only too apparent from the use He has made of it. Sex might havebeen, from our point of view, quite innocent. It might have been merely onemore mode in which a stronger self preyed upon a weaker—as it is, indeed,among the spiders where the bride concludes her nuptials by eating her groom.But in the humans the Enemy has gratuitously associated affection between theparties with sexual desire. He has also made the offspring dependent on theparents and given the parents an impulse to support it—thus producing theFamily, which is like the organism, only worse; for the members are moredistinct, yet also united in a more conscious and responsible way. The wholething, in fact, turns out to be simply one more device for dragging in Love.Now comes the joke. The Enemy described a married couple as “one flesh”.He did not lay “a happily married couple” or “a couple who married becausethey were in love”, but you can make the humans ignore that. You can also makethem forget that the man they call Paul did not confine it to married couples.Mere copulation, for him, makes “one flesh”. You can thus get the humans toaccept as rhetorical eulogies of “being in love” what were in fact plaindescriptions of the real significance of sexual intercourse. The truth is thatwherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, atranscendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyedor eternally endured. From the true statement that this transcendental relationwas intended to produce, and, if obediently entered into, too often will produce,affection and the family, humans can be made to infer the false belief that theblend of affection, fear, and desire which they call “being in love” is the onlything that makes marriage either happy or holy. The error is easy to producebecause “being in love” does very often, in Western Europe, precede marriageswhich are made in obedience to the Enemy's designs, that is, with the intentionof fidelity, fertility and good will; just as religious emotion very often, but notalways, attends conversion. In other words, the humans are to be encouraged toregard as the basis for marriage a highly-coloured and distorted version ofsomething the Enemy really promises as its result. Two advantages follow. Inthe first place, humans who have not the gift of continence can be deterred fromseeking marriage as a solution because they do not find themselves “in love”,and, thanks to us, the idea of marrying with any other motive seems to them lowand cynical. Yes, they think that. They regard the intention of loyalty to apartnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for thetransmission of life, as something lower than a storm of emotion. (Don't neglectto make your man think the marriage-service very offensive.) In the secondplace any sexual infatuation whatever, so long as it intends marriage, will be
regarded as “love”, and “love” will be held to excuse a man from all the guilt,and to protect him from all the consequences, if marrying a heathen, a fool, or awanton. But more of this in my next,Your affectionate uncleSCREWTAPE
- Page 2 and 3: The Screwtape Letters
- Page 4 and 5: MAGDALEN COLLEGEJuly 5, 1941
- Page 6 and 7: at his elbow in a moment. Before I
- Page 8 and 9: like. Keep everything hazy in his m
- Page 10 and 11: the imagined mother will ever flow
- Page 12 and 13: meant to ask Him for charity, let t
- Page 14 and 15: The Screwtape LettersMY DEAR WORMWO
- Page 16 and 17: The Screwtape LettersVIMY DEAR WORM
- Page 18 and 19: The Screwtape LettersVIIMY DEAR WOR
- Page 20 and 21: The Screwtape LettersVIIIMY DEAR WO
- Page 22 and 23: The Screwtape LettersIXMY DEAR WORM
- Page 24 and 25: Your affectionate uncleSCREWTAPE
- Page 26 and 27: I see much (indeed more than I like
- Page 28 and 29: gives rise to many incongruities: t
- Page 30 and 31: are over. A few weeks ago you had t
- Page 32 and 33: The Screwtape LettersXIIIMY DEAR WO
- Page 34 and 35: ever to act, and, in the long run,
- Page 36 and 37: threatens to become a virtue. By th
- Page 38 and 39: The Screwtape LettersXVMY DEAR WORM
- Page 40 and 41: natural phenomenon is really in our
- Page 42 and 43: conduct of the services is also adm
- Page 44 and 45: The Screwtape LettersXVIIMY DEAR WO
- Page 46 and 47: Your affectionate uncleSCREWTAPE
- Page 50 and 51: The Screwtape LettersXIXMY DEAR WOR
- Page 52 and 53: war and peace, it is, from the poin
- Page 54 and 55: the age of the waltz, and we now te
- Page 56 and 57: The Screwtape LettersXXIMY DEAR WOR
- Page 58 and 59: on the more realistic and dynamic g
- Page 60 and 61: disadvantages. Nothing is naturally
- Page 62 and 63: The Screwtape LettersXXIIIMY DEAR W
- Page 64 and 65: used as a convenience. Men or natio
- Page 66 and 67: dream how much of his conversation,
- Page 68 and 69: The Screwtape LettersXXVMY DEAR WOR
- Page 70 and 71: have the better chance to slip in a
- Page 72 and 73: are under the double blindness of m
- Page 74 and 75: The Screwtape LettersXXVIIMY DEAR W
- Page 76 and 77: been for the last ten years, and wh
- Page 78 and 79: prosperity or middle-aged adversity
- Page 80 and 81: The Screwtape LettersXXIXMY DEAR WO
- Page 82 and 83: Enemy and courage the Enemy supplie
- Page 84 and 85: endured no longer at the very momen
- Page 86 and 87: The Screwtape LettersXXXIMY DEAR, M
- Page 88: tempters like yourself the greatest
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