Screwtape outlines a fundamental deception:
Men are not angered /by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury.
And the sense of injury depends on the feeling //that a legitimate claim has been denied.
The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make,
the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered.
Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion /so easily as to find a tract of time //which he reckoned
on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him.
It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward /to a quiet evening),
or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend),
that throw him out of gear.
Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it.
They anger him /because he regards his time /as his own and feels that it is being stolen.
You must therefore zealously guard in his mind [the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’].
Let him have the feeling //that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours.
Let him feel /as a grievous tax [that portion of this property //which he has to make over /to his employers],
and /as a generous donation [that further portion //which he allows to religious duties].
* 동사와 목적 사이에 낀 전치사구 ; /as a grievous tax, /as a generous donation
* make over ; transfer the possession of something to someone.
* this property = twenty-four hours
But [what he must never be permitted to doubt] is that [the total //from which these deductions have been made] was, in some mysterious sense, [his own personal birthright].
* 주어인 의문사절 [what he must never be permitted to doubt
* 보어인 that절 주어 [the total //from which these deductions have been made], 보 [his own personal birthright]
* 마귀는 24 시간이 우리가 타고난 권리라는 것에 대한 의심을 하지 못하게 하는데 실상 시간은 하나님 것이다
From The Screwtape Letters
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis