I have a mental map of the world, and the things in it, and how they relate. I don’t mean a geographic map, but a map of everything I know, geography included. It is by no means complete. Some areas are richly detailed, others are largely blank, and some areas of reality are missing altogether. Here and there one finds the notation, “Here there be dragons!”

I suppose this is what some would call a world-view. I prefer to think of it as a mental map, because of the property of a real map that everything has to fit together. If you leave country A, you arrive across the border in country B. If you follow a road from point X to point Y, you cross all of the countryside in between. And also like a real map, to be truly useful it has to be true. It has to help you get from here to there. It has to be all of a piece.

This being all of a piece I call intellectual integrity. One’s map forms a consistent whole. This integrity applies both to the map itself and to the process of building it—such things do not come about by accident. Alas, it is more an ideal to be aimed for than a place to be reached, but some are better at it than others.

I first discovered this sense of wholeness in the writings of C.S. Lewis. Everything he writes comes for a single, consistent point-of-view. I don’t mean to say that he presents only one point-of-view, for he doesn’t. In this way he’s like a good book or music reviewer, who reviews both works he likes and works he doesn’t like, and applies a single standard to them. You might or might not agree with his standard, but that he has one is what makes him a reliable guide. One can read the Narnia books, or the “Space Trilogy” or The Screwtape Letters, or The Great Divorce or Mere Christianity or The Abolition of Man of An Experiment in Criticism or The Discarded Image and find in them different regions of a single map.

Lewis is not the only writer to display intellectual integrity—indeed, I’d hardly presume to present any kind of authoritative list. However, I’ve recently realized the J.R.R. Tolkien is another. It’s harder to see in his work, because he is primarily a writer of stories, and moreover one who hated to let his underlying ideas show. The bones of the Mountain are essential to its shape, but it is their nature to be hidden. Nevertheless, it’s Tolkien’s integrity that gives his world its unity and enchantment.

It’s important for me to remember that just because I do not see the integrity in a writer’s work, that doesn’t mean he has none. Integrity can be hidden; and if the writer’s mental map is sufficiently different from my own I might not see his integrity even when it’s in plain sight.

What prompted me to write this post was the discovery of yet another author in whom I find this kind of integrity: Peter Kreeft. Unlike Tolkien, who wrote mostly fiction, and unlike Lewis, who wrote fiction and non-fiction in more-or-less equal amounts, Kreeft writes mostly philosophy and theology. And—what joy!—not only do all his works flow from the same source, and display a single map, it appears to be the same map, ultimately, as those of Lewis and Tolkien. Even better, Kreeft’s life work appears to be the demonstration of how his map relates to those of the great thinkers of yore, and especially to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Jesus Christ.

In Tolkien, the map is largely hidden. In Lewis it’s in full display…but Lewis’ goal was to teach by making the old and dry new and exciting, and so, although his thought was firmly rooted in the Western tradition, he doesn’t generally trace the leaves and flowers back to their roots. Kreeft, on the other hand, does—and as such he’s a guide to the thought of the ages.

Tolkien blessed my imagination; Lewis blessed my mind. Kreeft is showing me where to go next. Peace and long-life to him!

…really is indistinguishable from magic. As Mike Flynn says,

In the Middle Ages, “magic” meant employing some nature of a material body to achieve an effect without knowing the nature that achieved it. Thus, chewing willow bark would relieve a headache somehow. It was the “somehow” that made it magic. Had they known the nature of willow bark and how it influenced bodily humours, it would not have been magic. The causes would have been “manifest” (apparent) rather than “occult” (hidden). This was quite different from sorcery, although there is obvious scope for both quacks and superstition when the natures are occult. [Superstition is when the effect is falsely ascribed to the nature of the matter, such as might happen from a spurious correlation or post hoc, propter hoc reasoning.] Since then, of course, the terms “magic” and “occult” have taken on the odor of “unnatural” or “supernatural” rather than merely “unknown nature.”

The Medievals were familiar with Clarke’s Third Law. Who knew?

(H/T Mark Shea)