I'm looking for the exact source of a c.s. lewis quote.  In one of his
non-fiction books or essays he makes the claim that the human mind
seems to crave small variations within large repeating patterns.  He
goes on to remark that this is exactly what we get in nature, with
earth's seasons, and this meshing of what we desire with what we get
is part of God's plan.

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Clarification of Question by natboy-ga on 30 Jul 2003 18:12 PDT

I guess a clarification is warranted. I'm as close to certain as I can
get about this being a Lewis quote.  But if I'm wrong I still need the
source for this passage, from whoever wrote it...

I haven't found your quote, even though I have almost all of Lewis's
works at hand; it's hard to search for something without being caught
up and compelled to reread everything!

I came across another quote which concerns the cravings of the mind
for knowledge and beauty. This is from Lewis's essay "Learning in
War-Time":

"I mean the pursuit of knowledge and beauty, in a sense, for their own
sake, but in a sense which does not exclude their being for God’s
sake. An appetite for these things exists in the human mind, and God
makes no appetite in vain. We can therefore pursue knowledge as such,
and beauty, as such, in the sure confidence that by so doing we are
either advancing to the vision of God ourselves or indirectly helping
others to do so."

Hope this helps, natboy.  

ron
P.S.     PinkFreud recommended C.S. Lewis to me in 2002.  Now I am
hooked !
P.P.S.   I believe The Screwtape Letters is pointedly directed at
Nietzsche and his doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence.  This is just my
amateur opinion...


C. S. Lewis has offered the way God does this and it bears hearing
because our culture worships change. It offers endless avenues to get
out of a rut and tantalite and intoxicate the senses with a seemingly
endless variety of pleasures. Each promises to be bigger and better
than the next. Lewis says it like this in The Screwtape Letters. In
this book a senior devil is telling a junior devil how to deceive and
tempt a young Christian.

"[God] has balanced the love of change in them by a love of
permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the
very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence that we
call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season is different yet
every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet
always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme."

Our culture has perverted this and wants change for it’s on sake. This
Lewis calls novelty. What happens in this scenario is that we are
never satisfied. We see habits, rituals, and the "same ole thing" as
things that stifle us as humans. Lewis points out the danger in this
and it is obvious when you think about it.

"The demand (for novelty) is valuable in vari-ous ways. In the first
place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. The pleasure of
novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law
of diminishing returns. And continued novelty costs money, so that the
desire for it spells avarice or unhappiness or both."