The Ethical Thought of Clive S. Lewis

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Clive S, Lewis was born in the winter of 1898 at Belfast, the son of a solicitor and a clergyman\u27s daughter. His parents had only two children, both sons, and he was the younger. His father\u27s people were Welshmen while on his mother\u27s side, descent could be traced to the first Norman invaders intermingled with old Irish strains. The mother of Lewis died when he was about nine. As a small boy, he was already of a pessimistic cast of mind and the early death of his mother further deepened his pessimism. In his words: With my mother\u27s death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. Lewis and his brother were left alone in a big house full of books while their father was at work, and this started his literary bent. At an early age he already had an active imagination to the point where he began to write stories about animals in a fanciful land, stories which he said he would like to have read if he could have obtained them. Educated at a succession of boys\u27 schools, at the same time he turned from doubt to definite atheism. At one school he attended, the matron, a devotee of spiritualism and theosophy influenced him into rejecting the doctrines of Christian orthodoxy