No one /looking at world history /without some preconception /in favor of progress could find in it a steady up gradient.
* Gradient ; An ascending or descending part; an incline. · A rate of inclination; a slope.
There is often progress within a given field over a limited period.
A school of pottery or painting, a moral effort in a particular direction, a practical art like sanitation or shipbuilding,
may continuously improve over a number of years.
If this process could spread to all departments of life and continue indefinitely,
there would be “progress” of the sort () our fathers believed in.
But it never seems to do so.
Either it is interrupted (by barbarian irruption or the even less resistible infiltration of modern industrialism) or else,
more mysteriously, it decays.
[The idea //which here shuts out the Second Coming from our minds,
the idea of the world slowly ripening to perfection,
is a myth, not a generalization from experience.
And it is a myth //which distracts us from our real duties and our real interest.
It is our attempt to guess the plot of a drama //in which we are the characters.
But how can the characters in a play guess the plot?
We are not the playwright, we are not the producers, we are not even the audience.
We are on the stage.
[To play well the scenes //in which we are “on”] concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes //that follow it.
* 역사라는 드라마를 쓰거나 주관하는 장본인도 아니고
역사라는 대 서사시의 지극히 미세한 한 점에서 한 역할을 잠시 하다가
역사적 기록이란 출생/사망기록 말고는 더도 없이 홀연히 사라지는 한 ordinary 凡人 범인이
혹시 신문에 나왔다 해도 그 신문 쓰레기장 갔거나 재활용되면 흔적 없이 사라질 기사의 주인공일 뿐이고
다음 세대는 기억하지도 못할 존재부재의 亡子 망자일 운명인데
그런 인간이 자기보다 수백억만배 큰 세계나 우주의 역사를 논하는 것은 실로 기상천외한 덩키호테 짓에 불과하다
From The World's Last Night
Compiled in The Business of Heaven
The World's Night. Copyright © 1952, 1955, 1958, 1959, 1960 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" copyright © 1959 by Helen Joy Lewis. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. The Business of Heaven. Editing of this collection and preface by Walter Hooper. Copyright © 1984 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.