Historicism by C.S. Lewis

Included in Christian Reflections, edited by Walter Hooper (1967). First published in The Month, vol. IV (October 1950).

Lewis argues against the foolish arrogance of Historicism, a belief that man can use his rational powers to discern a grand meaning or purpose of history. Examples include the Western idea of technological progress, or evolutionary ascent, or a Hegelian advance to a more rational society. We are tempted to spin metaphysical or theological tapestries out of tidbits of experience and learning. We yearn for the big picture, but reality is a picture bigger than we're able to see. We have rejected knowledge by divine authority, which logically could give us that view, because we would rather trust ourselves.

Lewis defines history in six senses:

• Sense One - "The total content of time: past, present and future"
• Sense Two - "The total content of the past only"
• Sense Three - "So much of the past as is discoverable from surviving evidence"
• Sense Four - "So much as has been actually discovered by historians"
• Sense Five - "That portion, and that version, of the matter so discovered which has been worked up by great historical writers."
• Sense Six - "That vague, composite picture of the past which floats, rather hazily, in the mind of the ordinary educated man."

Obviously the future is hidden from us. "We ride with our backs to the engine. We have no notion what stage in the journey we have reached. Are we in Act I or Act V? Are our present diseases those of childhood or senility?"

But even the past is almost completely lost to us. "It is not a question of failing to know everything: it is a question (at least as regards quantity) of knowing next door to nothing. Each of us finds that in his own life every moment of time is completely filled...A single second of lived time contains more than can be recorded. And every second of past time has been like that for every man that ever lived."

Artifacts and texts that survive are limited and largely survive by chance, not because they are the most significant. Historians focus on the parts that seem significant to them. They bring their values to history instead of learning values from history.

Lewis also warns Christians of having too confident a belief that they understand history. God has not revealed all. We cannot presume to make the same type of judgments of contemporary events that the Prophets were given in their day.

After tearing down Historicism, Lewis teaches us about accessible history, properly understood, especially by the average man: "We all have a certain limited, but direct, access to History in Sense One. We are allowed, indeed compelled, to read it sentence by sentence, and every sentence is labelled Now...It is very limited, but it is the pure, unedited, unexpurgated text, straight from the Author's hand...Where, except in the present, can the Eternal be met?"

I imagine there are other senses of history which Lewis values but doesn't detail here. To appreciate and quote from the Aeneid, you need to understand a bit about Greece and Rome. To criticize Hegel, you need to have some idea of who he was and what he said. But Historicism takes those valuable bits of understanding and vaults into pretentious claims about ultimate knowledge.

"If I attack Historicism it is not because I intend any disrespect to primary history, the real revelation springing direct from God in every experience. It is rather because I respect this real original history too much to see with unconcern the honours due to it lavished on those fragments, copies of fragments, copies of copies of fragments, or floating reminiscences of copies of copies,which are, unhappily, confounded with it under the general name of history."

Latin phrase and quote glossary

Latin: ratio cognoscendi
English: The ground of knowledge

Latin: non sequitur
English: It does not follow

Latin: fas est et ab hoste doceri
English: One should learn even from one's enemies.
From: Metamorphoses by Ovid

Latin: prima facie

English: at first appearance

Latin: fata Jovis
English: fates of Jupiter (?)

Latin: Tantae molis erat
English: So great size

From Aeneid by Virgil. "It was such a massive task to establish the Roman race."

Latin: De Monarchia
English: Of Monarchs

A treatise by Dante on secular and religious power

Latin: De Civitate [Dei]
English: The City [of God]

A book by Augustine about the fall of Rome and the endurance of the church

Latin: in via..in patria
English: on the way...in the homeland

Latin: ad nos vix tenuis famae perlabitur aura
English: to us a slight breath of fame is scarcely derived
From Aeneid by Virgil

Latin: Caveas disputare de occultis Dei judiciis - Quando haec suggerit inimicus
English: Beware of discussing God's hidden judgments - When this enemy suggests
From The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis