Week 7_2/26/16_Nature

The word “nature” according to the Oxford Dictionary can be defined as the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the land scape and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to human creations. Lewis uses the word “nature pretty frequently in the beginning of Chapter I.  Lewis says: “Nature, and especially the less accessible parts of her, with spirits both friendly and hostile, is characteristics of the savage response”.  We can see on page two line 9, he explains the poet Lagmon who wrote a poem called “Brut”. In this poem Lagmon tells us how the air is inhabited by great many beings, some good and some bad. We immediately considered this to be absurd and thought of the people of that time to be savages for believing in such a thing. 

The second time we see the word “nature is on page three, line 7. “My second example is perhaps more interesting. Int he fourteenth-century Nlerinage de l'Homme by Guillaume Deguileville, Nature (personified),” p.3. Lewis describes the scientific studies of nature on how the earth orbits around the moon. We immediately believed this fact without observing it or having proof of it ourselves. A scientist came and made a claim that the earth orbits around the moon and boom we believed it. On page four, line 7. “The lower region of change and irregularity he called Nature (<pvcns). The upper he called Sky (ovpav6s).” Lewis discusses how apparently the universe and sky were divided into two regions. The top called “the sky” and the bottom called “nature”. Yet we believed in this assumption again without any source of proof or observation. Lewis also gives us a brief definition of nature on page four, line 14, when he says, “ Nature was made of the four elements, earth, water, fire, and air. Air, then, (and with air nature and with Nature inconstancy.” Here the word “Nature inconstancy” means nature that is changeable, not sticking to a predetermined course. And we see this in nature and the definition Lewis proposed to us. Due to human activity on earth the world doesn’t stay the same and is constantly changing.

The overall message Lewis is trying to convey is the concept of us looking at the medieval times and considering the things they believed in to be absurd or to be savage beliefs, whereas we ourselves constantly believe in many things such as what we read about nature and instantly believe it without proof or knowledge on the entire situation. I personally agree with Lewis when it comes to us judging the people in history by their beliefs and making it seem absurd when we ourselves do it repeatedly. I find it quite interesting about how the poet described nature’s air as being full of spirits of good and bad. We shouldn’t judge people on their previous beliefs because future generations are going to do the exact same while looking back at us and reading of all the things that we believe in. An example may be us believing that there is another so called “planet earth” that is much larger than the earth we live on now. We haven’t observed or proven this we just believe it because NASA told us it exists.

Citation source: Lewis, C.S. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. London: Cambridge University Press, 1964. Print.