THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS & SCREWTAPE PROPOSES A TOAST (Unabridged). C. S. Lewis

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       C. S. Lewis

      THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS & SCREWTAPE PROPOSES A TOAST (Unabridged)

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      2017 OK Publishing

      ISBN 978-80-7583-011-1

Table of Contents

       The Screwtape Letters

       Screwtape Proposes a Toast

      The Screwtape Letters

       Table of Contents

       Preface

       Chapter I

       Chapter II

       Chapter III

       Chapter IV

       Chapter V

       Chapter VI

       Chapter VII

       Chapter VIII

       Chapter IX

       Chapter X

       Chapter XI

       Chapter XII

       Chapter XIII

       Chapter XIV

       Chapter XV

       Chapter XVI

       Chapter XVII

       Chapter XVIII

       Chapter XIX

       Chapter XX

       Chapter XXI

       Chapter XXII

       Chapter XXIII

       Chapter XXIV

       Chapter XXV

       Chapter XXVI

       Chapter XXVII

       Chapter XXVIII

       Chapter XXIX

       Chapter XXX

       Chapter XXXI

      Preface

       Table of Contents

      I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands.

      There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. The sort of script which is used in this book can be very easily obtained by anyone who has once learned the knack; but ill-disposed or excitable people who might make a bad use of it shall not learn it from me.

      Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar. Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle. I have made no attempt to identify any of the human beings mentioned in the letters; but I think it very unlikely that the portraits, say, of Fr. Spike or the patient’s mother, are wholly just. There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth.

      In conclusion, I ought to add that no effort has been made to clear up the chronology of the letters. Number XVII appears to have been composed before rationing became serious; but in general the diabolical method of dating seems to bear no relation to terrestrial time and I have not attempted to reproduce it. The history of the European War, except in so far as it happens now and then to impinge upon the spiritual condition of one human being, was obviously of no interest to Screwtape.

      C. S. LEWIS

      MAGDALEN COLLEGE

      July 5, 1941

      Chapter I

       Table of Contents

      My dear Wormwood,

      I note what you say about guiding your patient’s reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naïf? It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy’s clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other