We have had enough, once and for all, of Hedonism
– the gloomy philosophy //which says that Pleasure is the only good.
But we have hardly yet begun [what may be called Hedonics, the science or philosophy of Pleasure.
And I submit that [the first step in Hedonics] is [to knock the Jailer down and keep the keys henceforward in our own possession].
* The jailer is the inner impulse that urges us to reject simple and seemingly trivial joys when they are offered us.
He has dominated our minds for thirty years or so,
and specially in the field of literature and literary criticism.
He is a sham realist.
He accuses all myth and fantasy and romance of wishful thinking;
[the way to silence him] is [to be more realist than he]
—to lay our ears closer to the murmur of life as it actually flows through us at every moment
and to discover there all that quivering and wonder and (in a sense) infinity //which [the literature //that he calls realistic] omits.
For [the story //which gives us the experience /most like the experiences of living]
is not necessarily the story //whose events are most like those in a biography or a newspaper.
From Present Concerns
Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays. Copyright © 1986 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.