First and Second Things

Shortly after publication of the book that was both to make him famous and to become something of an albatross around his neck (he once wrote that his science fiction book Perelandra was worth 20 Screwtape Letters), C.S. Lewis wrote a piece for Time and Tide – a high-brow magazine of the day, in which a large number of his pieces, including some poetry, were first published.

"First and second things", as the article is called, is actually more than a title for a 5-page essay; it is a theme that runs through everything Lewis wrote. By "valuing too highly a real but subordinate good", he argues, we invariably lose that good. It is only when we put first things first that we that we can get second things – "thrown in", as it were.

Lewis uses a couple of examples to carry home his point before putting his "law of first and second things" into words:

"The woman who makes the dog the centre of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping. The man who makes alcohol his chief good loses not only his job but his palate and all power of enjoying the earlier (and only pleasurable) levels of intoxication … every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made."