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.In particular I reflected on the objections you had felt to that liquidationof the non-human inhabitants of Malacandra which was, of course, the necessary preliminary to itsoccupation by our own species.The traditional and, if I may say so, the humanitarian form in which youadvanced those objections had till then concealed from me their true strength.That strength I now beganto perceive.I began to see that my own exclusive devotion to human utility was really based on anunconscious dualism.""What do you mean?""I mean that all my life I had been making a wholly unscientific dichotomy or antithesis between Manand Nature-had conceived myself fighting for Man against his non-human environment.During myillness I plunged into Biology, and particularly into what may be called biological philosophy.Hitherto,as a physicist, I had been content to regard Life as a subject outside my scope.The conflicting views ofthose who drew a sharp line between the organic and the inorganic and those who held that what we callLife was inherent in matter from the very beginning had not interested me.Now it did.I saw almost atonce that I could admit no break, no discontinuity, in the unfolding of the cosmic process.I became aconvinced believer in emergent evolution.All is one.The stuff of mind, the unconsciously purposivedynamism, is present from the very beginning."Here he paused.Ransom had heard this sort of thing pretty often before and wondered when hiscompanion was coming to the point.When Weston resumed it was with an even deeper solemnity oftone."The majestic spectacle of this blind, inarticulate purposive-ness thrusting its way upward and everfile:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw./spaar/C.%20S.%20Lewis%20-%20Voyage%20to%20Venus.txt (44 of 115)19-2-2006 4:46:17 file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20documenten/spaar/C.%20S.%20Lewis%20-%20Voyage%20to%20Venus.txtupward in an endless unity of differentiated achievements towards an ever-increasing complexity oforganisation, towards spontaneity and spirituality, swept away all my old conception of a duty to Man assuch.Man in himself is nothing.The forward movements of Life- the growing spirituality-is everything.I say to you quite freely.Ransom, that I should have been wrong in liquidating the Malacandrians.It wasa mere prejudice that made me prefer our own race to theirs.To spread spirituality, not to spread thehuman race, is henceforth my mission.This sets the coping-stone on my career.I worked first formyself, then for science; then for humanity; but now at last for Spirit itself -I might say, borrowinglanguage which will be more familiar to you, the Holy Spirit." "Now what exactly do you mean bythat?" asked Ransom."I mean," said Weston, "that nothing now divides you and me except a few outworn theologicaltechnicalities with which organised religion has unhappily allowed itself to get incrusted.But I havepenetrated that crust.The Meaning beneath it is as true and living as ever.If you will excuse me forputting it that way, the essential truth of the religious view of life finds a remarkable witness in the factthat it enabled you, on Malacandra, to grasp, in your own mythical and imaginative fashion, a truthwhich was hidden from me.""I don't know much about what people call the religious view of life," said Ransom, wrinkling his brow."You see, I'm a Christian.And what we mean by the Holy Ghost is not a blind, inarticulatepurposiveness.""My dear Ransom," said Weston, "I understand you perfectly.I have no doubt that my phraseology willseem strange to you, and perhaps even shocking.Early and revered associations may have put it out ofyour power to recognise in this new form the very same truths which religion has so long preserved andwhich science is now at last re-discovering.But whether you can see it or not, believe me, we are talkingabout exactly the same thing.""I'm not at all sure that we are
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