The Problem of Pain - By C. S. Lewis Page 0,2

In what follows it must be understood that I am not primarily arguing the truth of Christianity but describing it's origin - a task, in my view, necessary if we are to put the problem of pain in it's right setting.

In all developed religion we find three strands or elements, and in Christianity one more. The first of these is what Professor Otto calls the experience of the Numinous. Those who have not met this term may be introduced to it by the following device. Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told 'There is a ghost in the next room', and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is 'uncanny' rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply 'There is a mighty spirit in the room', and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking - a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it - an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare's words 'Under it my genius is rebuked'. This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous.

Now nothing is more certain than that man, from a very early period, began to believe that the universe was haunted by spirit's. Professor Otto perhaps assumes too easily that from the very first such spirit's were regarded with numinous awe. This is impossible to prove for the very good reason that utterances expressing awe of the Numinous and utterances expressing mere fear of danger may use identical language - as we can still say that we are 'afraid' of a ghost or 'afraid' of a rise in prices. It is therefore theoretically possible that there was a time when men regarded these spirit's simply as dangerous and felt towards them just as they felt towards tigers. What is certain is that now, at any rate, the numinous experience exists and that if we start from ourselves we can trace it a long way back.

A modern example may be found (if we are not too proud to seek it there) in The Wind in the Willows where Rat and Mole approach Pan on the island.

'"Rat," he found breath to whisper, shaking, "Are you afraid?" "Afraid?" murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. "Afraid? of Him? O, never, never. And yet - and yet - O Mole, I am afraid."'

Going back about a century we find copious examples in Wordsworth - perhaps the finest being that passage in the first book of the Prelude where he describes his experience while rowing on the lake in the stolen boat. Going back further we get a very pure and strong example in Malory,2 when Galahad 'began to tremble right hard when the deadly (= mortal) flesh began to behold the spiritual things'. At the beginning of our era it finds expression in the Apocalypse where the writer fell at the feet of the risen Christ 'as one dead'. In Pagan literature we find Ovid's picture of the dark grove on the Aventine of which you would say at a glance numen inest3 - the place is haunted, or there is a Presence here; and Virgil gives us the palace of Latinus 'awful (horrendum) with woods and sanctity (religione) of elder days'.4 A Greek fragment attributed, but improbably, to Aeschylus, tells us of earth, sea, and mountain shaking beneath the 'dread eye of their Master'.5 And far further back Ezekiel tells us of the 'rings' in his Theophany that 'they were so high that they were dreadful':6 and Jacob, rising from sleep, says 'How dreadful is this place!'7

We do not know how far back in human history this feeling goes. The earliest men almost certainly believed in things which would excite the feeling in us if we believed in them, and it seems therefore probable that numinous