The Pilgrim's Regress by C. S. Lewis Read Free Book Online

which had cast the shadow, and now it looked more like a man than before.
    â€˜Mr. Englightenment,’ said John at last. ‘Is it really you?’
    â€˜Why should it not be?’ said the guard.
    â€˜You looked so different when I met you before.’
    â€˜We have never met before.’
    â€˜What? Did you not meet me at the inn on the borders of Puritania and drive me five miles in your pony trap?’
    â€˜Oh, that ?’ said the other. ‘That must have been my father, old Mr. Enlightenment. He is a vain and ignorant old man, almost a Puritanian, and we never mention him in the family. I am Sigismund Enlightenment and I have long since quarrelled with my father.’
    They went on in silence for a bit. Then Sigismund spoke again.
    â€˜It may save trouble if I tell you at once the best reason for not trying to escape: namely, that there is nowhere to escape to.’
    â€˜How do you know there is no such place as my Island?’
    â€˜Do you wish very much that there was?’
    â€˜I do.’
    â€˜Have you never before imagined anything to be true because you greatly wished for it?’
    John thought for a little, and then he said ‘Yes.’
    â€˜And your Island is like an imagination—isn’t it?’
    â€˜I suppose so.’
    â€˜It is just the sort of thing you would imagine merely through wanting it—the whole thing is very suspicious. But answer me another question. Have you ever—ever once yet—had a vision of the Island that did not end in brown girls?’
    â€˜I don’t know that I have. But they weren’t what I wanted.’
    â€˜No. What you wanted was to have them, and with them, the satisfaction of feeling that you were good. Hence the Island.’
    â€˜You mean—’
    â€˜The Island was the pretence that you put up to conceal your own lusts from yourself.’
    â€˜All the same—I was disappointed when it ended like that.’
    â€˜Yes. You were disappointed at finding that you could not have it both ways. But you lost no time in having it the way you could: you did not reject the brown girls.’
    They went on in silence for a time and always the mountain with its odd shape grew bigger in front of them; and now they were in its shadow. Then John spoke again, half in his sleep, for he was very tired.
    â€˜After all, it isn’t only my Island. I might go back—back East and try the mountains.’
    â€˜The mountains do not exist.’
    â€˜How do you know?’
    â€˜Have you ever been there? Have you ever seen them except at night or in a blaze of sunrise?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜And your ancestors must have enjoyed thinking that when their leases were out they would go up to the mountains and live in the Landlord’s castle—It is a more cheerful prospect than going—nowhere.’
    â€˜I suppose so.’
    â€˜It is clearly one more of the things people wish to believe.’
    â€˜But do we never do anything else? Are all the things I see at this moment there only because I wish to see them?’
    â€˜Most of them,’ said Sigismund. ‘For example—you would like that thing in front of us to be a mountain; that is why you think it is a mountain.’
    â€˜Why?’ cried John. ‘What is it?’
    And then in my nightmare I thought John became like a terrified child and put his hands over his eyes not to see the giant; but young Mr. Enlightenment tore his hands away and forced his face round and made him see the Spirit of the Age where it sat like one of the stone giants, the size of a mountain, with its eyes shut. Then Mr. Enlightenment opened a little door among the rocks and flung John into a pit made in the side of a hill, just opposite the giant, so that the giant could look into it through its gratings.
    â€˜He will open his eyes presently,’ said Mr. Enlightenment. Then he locked the door and left John in prison.

VIII
    Parrot