Pints with Jack. Season 2, episode 14.

The Great Divorce. Chapter 9 continued. The Grumbler and the Artist.

Okay, everybody, so this is going to be a slightly different introduction because we're just carrying straight on from last week.

We're in chapter

nine of the great divorce and Lewis has just met George McDonald's. He's spoken

about the choice that people make towards heaven or hell. And he now tells Lewis a

story about a man called Sir Archibald. He says that this Sir Archibald was

interested in what he calls survival.

I've heard some different interpretations of this.

Matt, what did you think he meant when he talked about this?

Oh, my first thought and still this thought, at this point I was rushing through my skimming

a little bit more.

But my main thought was just survival of life, like just surviving, making it through.

Like very technical, very direct, very literal.

So like survivor man, like preppers.

Yeah.

Well, I have read some commentaries that make that argument.

I don't think they're actually right because McDonald says that he started off philosophical and ended up doing psychical research.

And psychical research is a kind of parapsychology.

It's a study of the psychic or the paranormal. And particularly given the time that Lewis was writing, spiritualism had received a kind of revival. So I would suggest that the survival

that he's interested in is the long-term survival, not simply in this world,

but proof of an afterlife, proof that there is existence beyond this mortal coil.

...