On Talking about Bicycles

Day 40

“Talking about bicycles” is the second piece of writing by C.S. Lewis that I found when I was younger, and which effected me so much that I still remember it to this day. In this piece, Lewis talked about orders of knowledge of things. He puts forward the idea that there are several levels of knowledge that one may have about things, such as riding bicycles, war, or love. He gives these four levels the names of four ages, both because in his experience you seem to grow into these levels of knowledge through experience and time, and also because to enter another Age, like the Third Age, the Jurassic Age, or the Space Age is to pass over into a whole new type of world. What was impossible becomes possible, the great powers that ruled the previous age are passed over and surpassed, and the lifeforms and modes of living that arise in each age are different. Age is, in this sense, a marker of a great change. He calls these four Ages the Unenchanted Age, the Enchanted Age, the Disenchanted Age, and the Renchanted Age. He paints a picture of these ages though his experience of bicycles.

In his Unenchanted Age of bicycles, “There was a time when a bicycles meant nothing...it was just part of the huge, meaningless background of grown-up gadgets against which life went on”. In this age, we know about a thing only in a loose sense, having never experienced it for ourselves. We might well be able to talk about it, paint a picture of it, describe it, and point it out, but there is still something that we do not know about it. A person who has never rode a bicycle can still talk about bicycles, but they know not of what they speak, no matter how confident they appear to be. They are familiar with something about bicycles, but indelibly miss something. This is seeing someone riding past on a bicycle in the rain.

In the Enchanted Age of bicycles, there “came a time when to have a bicycle, and to have learned to ride it, and to at least be spinning along on one's own, early in the morning, under trees, in and out of shadows, was like entering Paradise. That apparently effortless and frictionless gliding...that seemed to have solved the secret of life.” In the Enchanted Age, the beauty and the romance of riding a bicycle, of learning to fix it with your dad, of going by yourself about the neighborhood, is clear and apparent to you. You have learned something about riding bicycles, about the enjoyment of bicycles in the course of a life, about the purpose and reason that you care about bicycles. You can not only describe bicycles, and the riding of one, but you also have the realization of the feeling of riding a bicycle. You begin to have vision of something which you cannot totally comprehend and cannot totally explain. To say that you are glad and free when first riding a bicycle by yourself does not really get at the heart of the matter, and does not seem enough to really get across the point. Bicycling is more like poetry then any sort of work now. This is the first flush, the realization that to ride a bicycle is a sort of promise which is tangentially fulfilled, and which you only learn later has a limit. This is riding a bicycle in the rain and splashing though puddles for fun, but arriving home cold and wet.

In the Disenchanted age of bicycles, “Pedaling to and fro from school (it was one of those journeys which feel up-hill both ways) in all weathers, soon revealed the prose of cycling. The bicycle, itself, became to me what his oar is to a galley slave.” In this age we realize that play, taken too far or too seriously, becomes work. We still bike and bike for a reason, but it is no longer for pure joy. Rather, we bike to get places faster, to exercise, to save money and gas. Bicycling becomes a dull drill. Pop a tire once too often and end up walking home, or constantly worrying about locking up your bike so nobody steals it, becomes a sort of drag on your life. The bicycle is now a tool, a mechanical contrivance. When you were Unenchanted the bicycles was just another piece of machinery, and you could only describe it. When you were Enchanted, the bicycle seemed like the gateway to shining freedom. Now that you are Disenchanted, you understand the Unenchanted view, because a bicycle is now a piece of machinery, and you can describe it, as well at various types and parts, with clarity. You understand the Enchanted view, and look back fondly on the feelings and poetry of that age, yet you do not feel that yourself. The promise seems to have run to ash, and there is a slight feeling of betrayal, of loss and disappointment as you realize that which was once a joy, was once play, is now work – and, you fear, was always work. When you were a child and your parent s sent you to the store to pick up food, you hopped on your bicycles and took off like a rocket. It was a reward to leave the house, to go without supervision. Now that you are disenchanted, you see that what you were doing wasn't play, and wasn't a reward, but was rather your parents using you to get some work done. You could have walked, run, or swam and it would have all been the same, just another way to travel back and fourth. A way to get you out of the house, to make you use up some energy. You realize that the past wasn't malicious, yet also wasn't kind out of the goodness of its heart. There is a kind of melancholy depression that one feels when thinking back in this way. This is bicycling through the rain, while you hunker down and avoid the puddles, just trying to get home.

In the Renchanted age of bicycles, “..again and again, the mere fact of riding brings back a delicious whiff of memory. I remember the feelings of the second age. What's more, I see how true they were – philosophical even. ...To be sure, it is not a recipe for happiness...In that sense the second age was a mirage. But a mirage of something.” Try going back to riding a bicycle after a few years of not riding, or try riding a bicycle as fast as you can down a hill. You find a sense of joy again from riding a bicycle. It's still work, you know it is, and pushing up hills or biking instead of walking is till work and toil. However, you can regain something of the feeling of joy that you first had when riding a bicycles, the sense of freedom and of the wind in your hair. This doesn't last for long, you soon grow cold and tired, soon grow angry having to fix another tire or think with dread how long back the trip home is now that your legs hurt and your throat is parched. There are moments of fear and worry when you see glass on the street or you feel the need to bring your bike seat into the store with you, but there are also times where you see a bicycle gang of children pass by your house, and look upon them and smile. You know somewhat about the joy of riding a bicycle, as well as somewhat about the work. You know about the truth and the lies, the promises and the price of bicycle riding. You realize how the unenchanted you didn't know about the joy, the enchanted you didn't know about the price, and the disenchanted you had grown calluses and cataracts, which blinded his senses. You realize how each age was right, was true, but also how each age is wrong. This is the way to understand that bicycles riding has many aspects to it, many things and points of view about bicycle riding which are both true and false. This is riding a bike in the rain, cold, wet, and dreary, but on occasion sitting up straight and laughing your head off at the feeling of the raindrops on your face, the sound of the wind, and the flash of lighting.

Lewis also gives the example of war as something that you can pas through these ages with as well.”The unenchanted man sees (quite correctly) the waste and cruelty and sees nothing else. The enchanted man...-he's thinking of glory and battle-poetry and forlorn hopes and last stands...Then comes the disenchanted age..” The disenchanted age is of course when one passes through the fires of battle, when one sees comrades hurt or worse. When you receive bad equipment, or none at all, or when the support that you were promised never came, or was late. When you realize that you're work has achieved nothing, or made things worse, and that there was no real point to this war. When glory becomes a burden or a sad joke. You could look at the bright-eyed youngsters and weep, for the loss of their innocence. What though, of the Renchanted age? “But there is also a fourth age, though very few people in modern England talk about it..One is not in the least deceived: we remember the trenches too well. We know how much of the reality of the reality the romantic view left out. But we also know that heroism is a real thing, that all the plumes and flags and trumpets of the tradition were not there for nothing. They were an attempt to honor what is truly honorable: What was first perceived to be honorable precisely because everyone knew how horrible war is.” This is the Renchanted Age, where you know the horrors and the costs, but also know that while war is evil, there are good men who go to war. It is a terrible thing to fight in the trenches, but it is not altogether terrible to have been the man in the trenches. You wouldn't not do it again for all the money in the world, but you might, just perhaps, do it again to save a life. A merit badge marks that here was someone who did not run, but stood straight and fought back, who helped his comrades and tried to do the right thing when he didn't have to. War is perhaps only one example of this, and an example that I am not well qualified to write about. I am certainly not in the Renchanted age of war – but Lewis feels that he is. His experiences in the first world war have qualified him for this view as my experiences have not done for me. So, I try to understand what he means, and to learn from what he says.

Lewis remarks on these ages because he thinks that it is important to distinguish between them. Lewis speaks on war because he has been though war, and he speaks about bicycles because he has lived through these ages of bicycling. Yet there are thousands who have mush to say about war – or bicycles. Thousands, and yet four ages. So, when I listen to someone speak about one of these topics, or any topic at all, which age am I listening to? Each age will see the lies in the age before him, will proclaim the thoughts and vision of each of the other ages to be false, or at least incomplete. Will do so – and will go forth into a further revelation. The ages do this because they have gone through those ages as well, have experienced a life like that, and are qualified to speak on it. Yet, we are perhaps not qualified to read about it. We can make mistakes, can think that someone is deep and wise, is well-educated and well-spoken, and think that they know what they are talking about. We can trust their words and their vision – yet there may be further revelations that they do not know and do not have access to. “...are you reading a disenchanted man or only an unenchanted man? Has the writer been through the highlands, or is he simply a subhuman who is free from the love mirage as a dog is free, and free from the heroic mirage as the coward is free?” Someone who is unenchanted may talk about something in a way that seems cogent, well-argued, logical, clarifying, and revealing – and yet, he may have no real understand of what he is talking about. Just as many people confuse knowing the theory with being able to do the activity, a man who can describe the function and point out the shape of mercy, justice, or curiosity can inform you all about it, but is totally unqualified to give you any information about its value for life.

For the Unenchanted, Justice is nothing but retribution and laws, nothing but the attempt of a society to govern itself. To the Enchanted, Justice is a great attempt at being good, an attempt to make the world right, and to ensure fairness. One of the Disenchanted see's that Justice tries to set things right, but more often then not fails. That nothing can make a murder right, and that the system of Justice is, if not corrupt, seldom merciful, and seldom admits to its mistakes. Ideals fail more often then not, in comparison to reasons of convenience and inertia. Yet they don't always fail. The Renchanted understand that while all the other views were right, that sometimes Justice prevails nonetheless. He looks with pride on a man who fights a charge for ten years because it is the right thing to do, on the prosecutor who drops a case when it is clear the prisoner is innocent, and on the activist who manages to strike down an unjust law. Justice, and the dream of justice, is wounded but not dead.

We might cover many other things like this, might try and talk about how one Age or another would view a thing and how we might pass through our life learning more. About dreams that were revealed to be false, and hopes achieved after a thousand years. About failure and triumph, about life and living. This is what we do when we live, when we experience and grow. However, not all the knowledge that we achieve is by our own bare experience. We are mankind, and we tell stories. And as Emerson says, “It takes a strong mind to read well”.* For our regard of an author, Lewis has this advice: “If Disenchanted, he may have something worth hearing to say, though less than a Re-enchanted man. If Unenchanted, into the fire with his book. He is talking of what he does not understand. But the great danger we have to guard against in this age is the Unenchanted man, mistaking himself for, and mistaken by others for, the Disenchanted man.”

I first ran across “Talking about Bicycles” when I was twelve years old. I think it stuck with me because it was one of the first times that I realized that I could question the world. I mean, that I could question others, great writers and people who knew more than me about all sorts of things. I found that as I read books and newspaper articles, as I talked to people who honestly wanted to educate me about the right or the best things to do, wanted to open my eyes to reveal the truth to me about all sorts of things, from politics, to religion and rights, or about justice and war, about horrors and blessings, that I sometimes placed people in one of these categories in my mind. I've said before that placing things into categories is not the best way of learning about them, but I also feel that this placing into categories can be an effective exercise. The attempt may ultimately fail, and people as well as their views can be multi-categorically complex, but the try is nonetheless something. Keeping in mind that someone may know, may be well informed, and that their vision may be right and true – not wrong, and yet, still, not totally right either(or the other way around), has, I've found, been a reasonable way to get through life. I can believe and understand, but still question, still grow without throwing out what is worthwhile. That someone may see an aspect of a thing and be right, and that that single aspect may not be the entire shape of the thing.

*The American Scholar Address by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lewis, C. S., and Walter Hooper. “XIII Talking about Bicycles.” Essay. In Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays, 47–50. HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.