In C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength Mark Studdock, a sociologist recruited by an elite circle of progressive thinkers to advance their utopian agenda, has advanced degrees and impressive credentials but suffers from the defect of a modern education. Lewis explains, “It must be remembered that in Mark’s mind hardly one rag of noble thought, either Christian or Pagan, had a secure lodging. His education had been neither scientific nor classical—merely ‘Modern.’” In other words, Mark had no awareness of the wisdom of the past called the Perennial Philosophy, no awareness of a body of knowledge with a venerable tradition, and no sense of the moral heritage of Western civilization known as the classical-Christian tradition that identified the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) and the three theological virtues (faith, hope, charity).Whereas a classical education provided many paradigms of noble thoughts consisting of high ideals, heroic virtues, and moral excellence, Mark Studdock’s modern education denies him right reason, a well-informed conscience, a sense of honor, and a keen understanding of the nature of goodness and evil. Thus Studdock belongs to a circle of elite intellectuals who reject Mother Nature’s fertility and God’s command to be fruitful and multiply as they promote barrenness and a culture of death.
Absent a classical education, Mark accepts a position in an organization of radical thinkers known as the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) committed to an agenda that is anti-life, anti-nature, anti-God, and anti-human. They despise “organic life” because of its process of death, decay, and decomposition and fantasize about metal trees and “bodiless men” who merely think with artificial intelligence independent of subjective emotions, the body, or the five senses. Because of his defective 
modern education, Studdock suffers no qualms about his affiliation with the Institute. Flattered and courted by the intellectual elite of the group, Mark has no reservations about his work as a dishonest journalist writing articles for newspapers about events before they have occurred to provide the propaganda to color the story that will serve the ideological purposes of N.I.C.E. He is instructed, “You surely don’t need to wait for a thing to happen before you tell the story of it.” Mark acts unaffected by his association with revolutionary thinkers who advocate social engineering, population control, artificial intelligence, and the elimination of all organic life. Mark, always acting neutral and indifferent, neither admires nor disapproves N.I C.E.’s agenda of eugenics: “sterilization of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding.” Lacking a clear sense of the normal, human, natural, and noble, Studdock seeks affiliation with a select circle of prestigious intellectuals for his professional ambitions.
When warned of his dangerous association with men of diabolical imagination (“You are . . . the accomplice of the worst men in the world”), Mark pleads his innocence as if he can maintain moral integrity while advancing the cause of human destruction. Even after hearing from Mr. Dimble of the Institute’s assault on Mark’s wife Jane (“You are a member of the N.I.C.E. who have already insulted, tortured, and arrested her”), Mark thinks it is some mistake, defends his moral character (“what have I ever done that you should make me responsible for every action that any N.I.C.E, official has taken”), and hesitates to blame his employer for any crimes or violations. When confronted by the urgency of the crisis and warned to leave the organization, Mark wavers: “I’d—I’d need to think that over.” Dimble cannot convince Mark of the Institute’s exploitation of his vanity and their manipulation of his wife for their diabolical purposes. When Dimble urgently pleads with Mark to dissociate immediately from N.I.C.E. for the sake of his wife’s safety and his own welfare, Mark again vacillates and keeps thinking “there must, must be some middle course.” A moral relativist by virtue of his modern education, Mark does not recognize the ugliness of evil in its modern guise of progressive thinking.
Mark’s insensibility to the magnitude of the evil N.I.C.E. is promoting, his attempts to compromise good and evil, his pose of neutrality about matters of life and death, and his assumption of incorruptible innocence in his affiliation with all the devious members of the Institute all reflect his modern education—his non-judgmental tolerance that does not acknowledge intrinsic evils and his lukewarm neutrality that does not love good and hate evil. Because he imagines he can hold a moderate position, he fails to commit to the cause of truth, justice, goodness, and honor because his education lacks even “one rag of noble thought.” Without passion or conviction, Studdock shows no moral courage. He dares not to accept the risk Dimble offers: “I’m offering you a place on the right side. I don’t know which will win.” Mark’s modern education has left him in a state of moral ambiguity. He cannot decide whether to stay or to leave the Institute. He wants to accept Dimble’s offer that promises “I am offering you a way back into the human family,” but Mark’s career lies with N.I.C.E. As he ponders his dilemma, Mark asks, “Why had his education been so ineffective?” He received an education ignorant of ancient wisdom, moral tradition, and the natural law.
Studdock’s education provided him no contact or awareness of even “one rag of noble thought, either Christian or Pagan.” If Studdock’s education had introduced him to classical works like Plato’s Gorgias, he would have acquired these noble thoughts from Socrates’ teachings like “the important thing is not to live but to live well . . . . And that to live well means the same thing as to live honourably or rightly.” He would have read “it is never right to do a wrong or return a wrong or defend one’s self against injury by retaliation.” If Studdock’s education had included a study of Greek tragedy, he would have learned of the sin of hubris, the cause of tragedy that follows when man ignores the wisdom of the Delphic oracle: “know thyself” and “nothing in excess.” Man is neither an omniscient or omnipotent god nor a wild animal but a rational being, and virtue is a “golden mean,” neither excess nor defect. The virtue of classical self-knowledge cures modern man of his intellectual conceit.
If Studdock had studied Sophocles’ play Antigone, he would have learned of the natural moral law that transcends man’s human law. He would remember Antigone’s famous words about unjust human laws that do not conform to God’s laws. When King Creon forbids any person from burying Antigone’s brother under pain of death, she disobeys the king’s decree and follows natural law, the truth that St. Thomas expressed in the phrase “mala lex, nulla lex” (a bad law is no law at all):
I did not think your edicts strong enough
To overrule the unwritten unalterable laws
Of God and heaven, you being only a man.
If Studdock had read Plato’s Gorgias, he would learn from Socrates that “it is more shameful to do wrong than to suffer wrong” and know that “as a general rule the man who does wrong is more miserable than the man who is wrong, and the man who escapes punishment more miserable than the man who receives it.” If Studdock has read Cicero’s classic On Duties, he would have learned about the great souled man: “The truth is that a lofty and noble spirit, and attitudes of courtesy, justice, and generosity, are much more in harmony with nature than are pleasure, mere living, and riches. It is the mark of the noble to despise these last, and to account them nothing as compared to the common good.” The great souled man, inspired by lofty ideals, never submits to the temptations of self interest, base pleasure, or worldly riches.
The culture of death promoted by N.I.C.E. depends upon a modern education of relativism, tolerance, and neutrality to attempt its radical cultural revolution. Without the moral norms of classical and Christian civilization shaping minds and consciences, every unimaginable monstrosity such as metal trees, bodiless men, human reproduction without conjugal unions, and a world without trees, flowers, or birds replaces all human experiences of life’s sweet goodness: the joy of simple things like sunshine, eggs, laughter, and the love of his wife and the human touches of “food and warmth, hands that caressed, voices that reassured.” Fortunately Studdock awakens from his moral and mental stupor when he accidentally discovers the “Normal”—a moment of revelation of a timeless truth denied him in his modern education, the liberating knowledge that the poison of anti-life ideologies in “a cold world” begins when men are “cut off from Earth their mother and from the Father in Heaven.” When Studdock finally commits to a side—“the Normal”– and will defend the Law of Nature (“sweet smells and bright fires with food and wine and a rich bed”), he fearlessly declares he is ready to fight with moral courage for his cause: “If the scientific point of view led away from ‘all that,’ then be damned to the scientific point of view.”
Mitchell Kalpakgian, Ph.D. has completed fifty years of teaching beginning as a teaching assistant at the University of Kansas, continuing as a professor of English at Simpson College in Iowa for thirty-one years, and recently teaching part-time at various schools and college in New Hampshire. As well as contributing to a number of publications, he has published seven books: The Marvelous in Fielding’s Novels, The Mysteries of Life in Children’s Literature, The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization, An Armenian Family Reunion (a collection of short stories), Modern Manners: The Poetry of Conduct and The Virtue of Civility, and The Virtues We Need Again. He has designed homeschooling literature courses for Seton Home School, and he also teaches online courses for Queen of Heaven Academy and part-time for Northeast Catholic College.
