In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis described the human mind as three concentric circles which he labeled fantasy, intellect, and will. Lewis was speaking at this point specifically of virtues and as such it is important to note that what falls into fantasy should probably not be called knowledge but is more like a vague shadow of knowledge; an example of fantastic sin might be resentment for wartime enemies that the thinker has never met and an example of fantastic virtue might be prayers for the soul of a person to whom the thinker never shows the faintest hints of compassion in daily interactions. As we approach intellect we must simultaneously consider will for it is only by contrasting the two that we can really identify either. This contrast is exemplified by two claims: one by Paul that we do things which we know are wrong and one by Socrates that evil is the result of ignorance. At first glance these statements seems contradictory but in reality they are both equally true claims about different experiences of knowledge. Paul is describing knowledge experienced only in the intellect while Socrates is perfectly correct on the subject of knowledge experienced in the will, knowledge which can at that point be recognized as “wisdom.” The situation Paul describes is one where we have knowledge intellectually but have failed to incorporate that knowledge into our will or heart as Lewis says it is also called in the Bible. Such a person may have access to a clear and definite truth but when he is pushed to his limit he will forsake it and follow the lies that have been instilled in his heart. On the other hand, one who has incorporated truth into his will is a person whose habits and emotional reactions on relevant matters are centered around that truth. Often, knowledge that exists only in the intellect will only be examined or acted upon as a distant theory which is disconnected from the life of the thinker. The movement from intellect to will is one which will be initiated usually by introspection on behalf of the speaker but this in itself is not enough; knowledge within the intellect may be positioned to be now father from and now closer to the will but the actual change is not a gradual one and is instead marked by a distinct barrier which must be breached. (I might add here the very important observation that I am not my will. Though I am nowhere near qualified to say precisely what the self is, I can confidently say that it is distinct from what I have described. I am aware of false knowledge in the will of which I disapprove based on knowledge in my will of the rudimentary nature of goodness and more detailed knowledge that is struggling to escape my intellect and I am faced with the choice of what ideas are to be encouraged and which are to be tossed out.) This may be a difficult concept to grasp at first in its fully defined state but it is nonetheless one which we use everyday; I may know intellectually that I should not procrastinate on a given assignment but I still put it off because I do not know the same in my will or in a Bible study you ask a fellow participant if he is saying what he really believes or what he knows he should (even and especially if he knows intellectually that this is not just an earthly “should”) believe. In reading the Word you should observe that this is called not only “the heart” but also “the heart of hearts.”
To understand these three areas, consider the example of love. For someone who has never had a serious relationship, love may reside in the circle of fantasy. In this case, he will probably think of it as some undefinable emotional state (it should be noted here that whenever something is described as being innately “undefinable”, as opposed to simply being something we lack the faculties or information to define, the subject resides in the circle of fantasy; all truths have a definite nature, regardless of whether or not we can grasp it, and even in the case of things which define all other things we can understand their nature by understanding what they define) onto which he projects all his sorrows and desires.
A man whose knowledge of love resides primarily in his intellect (love is something that we all need in order to live healthy, fulfilling lives and therefore we all have some knowledge of it in our will) may think of it in any number of ways but in all likelihood he will think of it in a cynical manner. He will talk about the ways in which love affects a person’s behavior, ramble endlessly on concerning the different ways in which it is expressed, ponder the benefits and difficulties it generates for the affected parties, and assert vigorously his belief in the rationality or irrationality (probably the latter) of the subject. However, so long as his will-knowledge of love is at a minimum, the concept will not produce any strong emotion in him; the only thing about it that will in any way excite him will be the act of analyzing and arguing about it.
By contrast, the man who understand love in the deepest part of his being will approach it in an entirely different spirit. This man has been directly acquainted with his subject (has met it in battle, drank of it as of a fine wine, and lain awake at night absorbed in contemplation of it) and he knows it best because of the experience. For this man, love is a reality which has a distinct role in his life and if his understanding of it were changed by logical speculation or experience i life would change. The man will have fantasies about love and they will still be vaporous, practically waiting to be disassembled by reality, but they will be false only in that they will be scenarios which are not actually happening. He will still have an intellectual understanding of love but it will be more accurate than anyone whose will-knowledge of love is out of touch with his intellectual knowledge of it and, more importantly, it will have real meaning to him.
It is not wrong to have fantasies and intellectual knowledge, they are part of the way in which we are made to function, but the intellect is meant to grow out of the will and our fantasies are meant to be expressions of our creativity based on knowledge from the other two circles; when this natural state is abandoned our correspondence with Reason is disrupted and we are left unable to live prosperously. The thing about intellect in separation from the will is that it can discuss only appearances whereas the will is concerned with the essences or, as Plato would have said, forms of its subjects. In conjunction with the will it can make statements about forms but all insight must originate with the will. In fact, since the forms (the most important of them being Beauty, Reason, Being, and Love, all of which in turn stem from Goodness) are the foundations everything that exists, all knowledge must originate with the insights of the will.
In the will, all knowledge either emerges from experience or is inborn and is thus possessed by us simply by virtue of being human. When it comes down to it, the core of all our knowledge is inborn either through emotional demands, our capacity for knowledge of various subjects, or through basic and unquestioned assumptions. If we lack the ability to understand images, for instance, no amount of experience will ever make them intelligible to us. Thus we see that experience does not ever provide us with any genuinely new information but rather refines what intuition has already taught us. It allows us to realize less fundamental truths such as the dangers of procrastination, to use my above example, and it helps to bring the three circles into the proper order. If a man’s only will-knowledge of love comes from intuition, the most honest approach he can take to it intellectually would be to suspend judgment and if he could not do that (which would probably be the case) he might very well fail to make the connection between his will-knowledge of love with the intellectual theory he is forming altogether. If this man were then to experience love, however, the blurred edges of the form he has always been aware of would come into focus, the connection between form and appearance would become obvious, his ability to understand and analyze that appearance would grow exponentially, and his knowledge of that appearance would become something relevant to his life.
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