Better to reign in Hell than serve in heaven?

Or, the Devil is an ass.

Aug 06, 2024

I’ve been revisiting Milton’s Paradise Lost and C.S. Lewis’s A Preface to Paradise Lost, which is the best introduction to Milton’s epic that I’ve ever seen or heard tell of. Perhaps the most brilliant chapter in Lewis’s book is the chapter on Satan.

William Blake famously remarked that Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it,” the idea being that the freedom-loving Milton couldn’t help but make the free-spirited Satan the most interesting character in his poem. And it must be admitted that Satan makes some grand-sounding speeches that college sophomores (and fans of Ayn Rand) find compelling. When he wakes up in Hell after being cast out of Heaven, for instance, he shows no back-down but instead celebrates his own autonomy in this new realm where he finally will get to be the undisputed boss:

Farewell happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n…
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.

That’s pretty hot stuff. As long as you don’t think too hard about it. Because when you think about it, you realize that the idea that it’s better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven is utter insanity and the source of all the misery that ever was. Furthermore, when you consider the fact that every speech Satan makes in this 10,000-line poem is just another version of “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,” he begins to seem less grand and more of a bore.

Lewis surely had Milton’s Satan in mind when he was writing The Magician’s Nephew. Jadis boasts that she is “The last queen, but queen of the world.” She is the last queen because she had spoken the Deplorable Word and killed everyone in her world. She is a queen with no subjects, but at least she isn’t subject to any other queen. The absurdity sounds like the logic of a joke—except, again, this is the kind of absurdity that has given rise to every misery that ever was.

“Mere Christianity commits every Christian to believing that ‘the Devil is (in the long run) an ass,’” writes Lewis. Satan rebels not because he has suffered any actual injury, but because he feels “a sense of injured merit.” That is to say, his pride was hurt. Lewis writes,

No one had in fact done anything to Satan; he was not hungry, nor over-tasked, nor removed from his place, nor shunned, nor hated—he only thought himself impaired. In the midst of a world of light and love of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige.

Satan speaks of his sense of injured merit as if it were grand and noble. But Lewis points out that the sense of injured merit

is a well known state of mind which we can all study in domestic animals, children, film-stars, politicians, or minor poets; and perhaps nearer home. Many critics have a curious partiality for it in literature, but I don know know that any one admires it in life. When it appears, unable to hurt, in a jealous dog or a spoiled child, it is usually laughed at. When it appears armed with the force of millions on the political stage, it escapes ridicule only by being more mischievous.

The Devil is an ass. Unfortunately, we’re asses too. We’re all in danger of being of the Devil’s party without knowing it, when we confuse self-aggrandizement and the pursuit of power with the pursuit of happiness. Lewis again:

To admire Satan, then, is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, or wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography. Yet the choice is possible. Hardly a day passes without some slight movement toward it in each one of of us. That is what makes Paradise Lost so serious a poem. The thing is possible, and the exposure of it is resented. Where Paradise Lost is not loved, it is deeply hated.

This conversation about Paradise Lost will continue this afternoon (1pm Central) and tomorrow evening (7pm Central). I’ll be teaching two sessions of Paradise Lost in 90 Minutes (it’s the same class twice, not a two-part class). If you’re already a member of The Habit Membership, the class is free, included in your subscription, and you don’t need to register. If you’re not a member, you’re welcome too. Registration is $15.

Virtual Writing Rooms on Monday Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday
Today: Paradise Lost in 90 Minutes (1pm Central)
Tonight: Book Club—Dorothy and Jack (7pm Central)
Wednesday Evening: Paradise Lost in 90 Minutes (7pm Central)

There's a place for you in this vibrant community of writers. Find out more about The Habit Membership here.

Joel Miller Gets a Lot Done.

I have known Joel Miller for nearly twenty years. It was Joel who convinced me to write The Terrible Speed of Mercy, my biography of Flannery O’Connor, when he was an editor at Thomas Nelson. These days, Joel is Chief Product Officer at Full Focus–and, more to the point for our purposes, he is working on a book on the history of the book. He also runs a twice-a-week Substack newsletter called Miller’s Book Review. I commend it to you. In this episode, Joel and I discuss Joel's journey toward publication—and how Joel gets so much reading and writing done while holding down a full-time job and raising a family.