the New Pantagruel

On Choosing Not To See

by James V. Schall, S. J.

“Purely intellectual activity cannot occur without some action by our sensitive powers, but the content of our conceptual thought is not affected by it. We can think conceptually of that which is not sensible at all, and not imaginable.”

— Mortimer Adler, “Sense,” Philosophical Dictionary

I.

ne of the most instructive passages I have ever read is that found in C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man, about the textbook writers and the waterfalls. The story goes that the English poet Coleridge records the reactions of two ordinary tourists on first seeing a particularly lovely waterfalls. One of these tourists called it “pretty,” while the other called it “sublime.” Coleridge, of course, thought the tourist calling it “sublime” was correct, while the one calling it merely “pretty” was lacking in some perception or appreciation of the reality before him. There was a note of “culpability” in Coleridge’s reaction, as if the said tourist ought to know that something more than “pretty” was before him.

Words mean things, just as paintings or drawings of things in a different way refer to things. However, we can have paintings of waterfalls that are themselves as artifacts “pretty” or “sublime.” In this latter case of the paintings or drawings, they have their own existence, outside the mind and independent of that which they depict. I suppose it is possible to have merely a “pretty” painting of what is in fact a “sublime” waterfalls or a “sublime” painting of a pretty waterfalls. But in either case, of the waterfalls itself or of the painting, what merits the word used is the reality of a thing in nature or in art.

The first thing to notice about this passage in Lewis, however, is the possibility that a real waterfalls standing before us may be in fact only “pretty” as opposed to other waterfalls that are “sublime.” It is a question of fact. “Pretty” waterfalls are both possible and do exist. I have seen them myself. Evidently, these tourists of whom Coleridge spoke were, in his estimate at least, overlooking not just an ordinary falls but something in the order of Niagara, Victoria, or Yosemite. The proper human response to what was before them thus required some description more than merely “pretty,” itself a perfectly good word that can be used to describe many existing things from ladies to flowers to music.

The contradictory of “pretty” is not “sublime” but simply “not-pretty.” “Sublime” does not deny prettiness in things but grasps the degrees of glory within things themselves. We seek to distinguish properly and name accurately what we observe, what things really are. This is the reason, or one of them, why we are given minds and, indeed, why we enjoy using them. It makes a difference how we say what we see or hear. We know that the same reality can be described by different words in different languages or even within the same language. Still, the words we use have a firmness of meaning about them such that “pretty” does not mean the same thing as “sublime.” Both good words, but different.

To make the same point in another way, in a 1954 Peanuts, Lucy has just discovered the funny curly marks on her finger tips. Charlie Brown tells her that they are “fingerprints.” As she continues to look at them in some fascination, Charlie observes, “Still studying your fingerprints, Lucy?” She replies, “Uh huh. Let’s see yours, Charlie Brown.” She carefully examines Charlie’s finger-tips. Finally, she concludes triumphantly to a dazed Charlie, “Mine are prettier!” We are amused here not because Lucy should have used the word “sublime” but because the very word “pretty” or “sublime” is not used to describe things like fingerprints. Again words have meanings that are designed to get at what is there in the waterfalls or fingerprints.

But the problem that Lewis originally presented was of another order than that of the proper use of words. Rather, he presented the problem of whether we can ever get outside of ourselves in our knowing processes. If we cannot, when we spell out its implications, it is a rather frightening prospect. It seems that the writers of English textbooks for school children explained this passage from Coleridge in quite an odd fashion. For them, the problem was not whether the waterfalls, in its own real grandeur, was “pretty” or “sublime.” Neither of these two words, in these authors’ view, referred to the waterfalls at all. They referred to the thoughts or emotions of the tourists about the said falls. These thoughts were, evidently, themselves either “pretty” or “sublime” according to the inner “feelings” the observers imposed on them.

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