"If
we are to be mothered, mother must know best. . . . In every age the men who
want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the
particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent.
They ‘cash in.’ It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will
certainly be science. . . . Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking
charge of his own destiny.’ All that can really happen is that some men will
take charge of the destiny of others. . . . The more completely we are planned
the more powerful they will be.
. . . .
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber
barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may
sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who
torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the
approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet
at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings
with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states
which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have
not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with
infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
-C. S. Lewis, from God in the Dock
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