A darker ignorance: C. S. Lewis and the nature of the fall

In this way Lewis demonstrates that the Prohibition was not a permanent ban on anything of value: knowledge, life, or anything else. Nor did it impose stasis. Rather, it is the beginning of a process. One of the most original and fascinating aspects of Perelandra especially is its exploring the question "what would have happened if Eve had said no?" As John S. Tanner puts it, "Perelandra envisions the prospect of progress without a fall" (131). In this Lewis is once again following Milton's lead. Milton's Raphael describes for Adam the possibility of growth that is available to humankind as long as "ye be found obedient" (PL 5.501):

   [...] time may come when men
   With Angels may participate, and [...]
   [....]
   Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
   Improv'd by tract of time, and wing'd ascend
   Ethereal, as wee, or may at choice
   Here or in Heav'nly Paradises dwell. (5.493-500)

Lewis cites this same passage in discussing one of the many points of agreement between Milton and Augustine: "If there had been no Fall, the human race after multiplying to its full numbers would have been promoted to angelic status (De Civ. Dei, XIV, 10). Milton agrees" (Preface 68).

Instead of a permanent barrier, then, the Prohibition and the resisted temptation present something more like a crossroads, from which two roads lead to the same desired good knowledge, mother's health, a settled home--but in very different ways. As the Lady puts it, Ransom arrived "'at that day when the time of our being young drew to its end, and from it we must now go up or go down, into corruption or into perfection'" (208). Development of some kind would necessarily follow; the issue is of what kind. And though the Perelandrian prohibition and temptation did not mention "the knowledge of good and evil" at all, the King makes it clear that, on Venus as on Earth, knowledge follows from either choice, "from the event," in Milton's terms. The unfallen do not continue ignorant of good and evil; quite the opposite: through their obedience they have acquired knowledge superior to what they would have gained had they disobeyed, and indeed superior to what humans on fallen Earth have. The King explains,

"We know these things now. [....] We have learned of evil, though not as the Evil One wished us to learn. We have learned better than that, and know it more, for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking. There is an ignorance of evil that comes from being young: there is a darker ignorance that comes from doing it, as men by sleeping lose the knowledge of sleep. You are more ignorant of evil in Thulcandra now than in the days before your Lord and Lady began to do it. But Maleldil has brought us out of the one ignorance, and we have not entered the other." (209)

Once again a passage of Milton's lies behind Lewis's: Adam himself makes it clear that there is something impaired about the knowledge that he and Eve have gained by their disobedient choice: