Second Spring

The Rebirth of Wonder

With his unique understanding of how imagination forms the understanding, Owen Barfield in turn helped to form the literary style of The Inklings.

Barfield takes as serious truth the Johannine assertion that "In the Beginning was the Word" and he examines the implications of that truth.

It is not surprising that Barfield's thought should appeal to one like Lewis, who acknowledged that the imaginative man in him was older than the rational one.

His understanding of imagination, meaning, mind, consciousness, and participation all contributed to that rebirth of wonder that characterizes the work of The Inklings generally.

C.S. Lewis's statement that Owen Barfield could not speak on any subject without illuminating it must seem to many to verge on hyperbole. But Lewis was not lightly given to verbal extravagance on serious matters, and it was on serious matters that he found Barfield to be so illuminating. Among these were ideas on meaning and belief, science and religion, and much else. Thanks to Barfield's own substantial body of work over more than three-quarters of a century, the ideas that Lewis found illuminating are available to all. A few in particular are worth special attention from those who would like to examine Barfield's continuing relevance as well as from those interested in C.S. Lewis's development and in the outlook of the Oxford Inklings.

In a recent film documentary on Owen Barfield we singled out for presentation eight central Barfieldian concepts. They are: Thinking about Thinking, Evolution of Consciousness, the Mind, Collective Representations, Metaphor, Imagination, Participation, and Final Participation. Space prevents examining these individually here, but we can look at two areas that were especially important for Lewis in his disputations with Barfield and that are essential for understanding Barfield's thought in general. The two are the areas of meaning and belief.

When in the 1920s Lewis and Barfield discussed, debated, indeed even argued ("arguing for truth," Barfield noted, "not for victory,"), they did so chiefly on questions of knowledge. How do we know? What is the vehicle for acquiring knowledge? How is it communicated? How shared? Barfield held that knowledge was gained from our participation in the working of Mind--not the individual operation of the brain (though that is a necessary vehicle) but from universal Mind, the Mind of the Maker, if you will, the Mind of God. Barfield takes as serious truth the Johannine assertion that "In the Beginning was the Word" and he examines the implications of that truth.

Barfield, of course, did not originate the notion of a universal Mind that precedes all physical creation, but he arrived at it by his own thinking about thought rather than by acceptance of any received wisdom. Indeed, the popular received wisdom of Barfield's day, then and now, has been very much opposed to the idea of an independent universal Mind and has maintained that mind emerges from matter. It is the other way round, Barfield argued, and thus provoked his friend Lewis to a defense of the materialist and atheist position--a defense Barfield countered vigourously and thereby helped Lewis on to his movement towards faith. That was Lewis's acceptance of Subjective Idealism and the "Absolute," which Lewis thought would be his refuge and his resting place. It was to be merely a way station.

For if, as Barfield argued, mind precedes matter ("interior is anterior" is another Barfieldian way of expressing it), and if Mind is therefore the source of meaning, then the whole scientific edifice of post-Cartesian thought must be reassessed. We must stop thinking of Nature as something "out there" distinct from our perception of it and recognize that it too came from the Word. If the Word precedes the physical world and if that Word is with God and is God, what is the human mind doing when it thinks? The answer is that it is participating in universal Mind and thereby apprehending meaning. And one of the ways in which this participation takes place is through the Imagination.

Barfield believed that the imaginative faculty was not a mere adornment of the mind but a vehicle by which knowledge can be obtained. He illustrated this by speaking of the "felt change of consciousness" that one experiences in reading particular passages of poetry. This comes about especially through metaphor where two previous notions conjoin to reveal another not otherwise accessible notion--in short, a new meaning. For a time Lewis, still the strict rationalist, argued against this idea, holding that knowledge could come only through the exercise of reason. Barfield countered that reason itself could not be a product of purely physical impulses but depended upon a realm of thought that stands outside of and prior to the physical world. Otherwise reason has nothing to appeal to in order to validate itself; it is only the result of material causes, and these could lead anywhere or nowhere.

It is not surprising that Barfield's thought should appeal to one like Lewis, who acknowledged that the imaginative man in him was older than the rational one. Lewis also generously allowed that Barfield had cured him of "chronological snobbery," as Lewis put it, which is the attitude that anything that is out of date is wrong merely for that reason. The "cure" certainly helped lead the way for some brilliant Lewisian readings of the past, just as the exaltation of the Imagination helped lead the way to some brilliant Lewisian imaginative creations in fiction.

None of the foregoing is meant to suggest that Barfield created the genius of C.S. Lewis--only that Barfield was a helpful catalyst in Lewis's development. Even less can one argue that Barfield created the ideas of The Inklings broadly. But given the early and fertile character of Barfield's thought, it is certainly arguable that he was in many ways the First Inkling. His understanding of imagination, meaning, mind, consciousness, and participation all contributed to that rebirth of wonder that characterizes the work of The Inklings generally.

Beyond the Lewis and Inklings connection, Barfield's work has also proved to be stimulating for the ever-widening group of enthusiasts who read him now, from those who come upon him through his literary and philological works like History in English Words and Poetic Diction, to those who are attracted by the Anthroposophical works like Romanticism Comes of Age, to those who know him through his stunning philosophico-religious masterpiece Saving the Appearances, to name but a handful of his many writings. Barfield would seem to have been sent to bear witness in a new and arresting way to some ancient and unchanging truths: a witness to the light.

[AUTHOR ID] G.B. Tennyson is Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he teaches a course on C.S.Lewis. He is the producer, author, and narrator of the video documentary 'Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning.'