Images of the Real - Hannah Grimes

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

This is another example of Lewis’ writing about longing, and it expresses how the beauty we experience during our lifetime merely foreshadows the ultimate reality that is to come. He says that belief in these images of beauty lead to idolatry unless the objects are seen as reflections of the true source of beauty that is found in God. These images were created to remind us of the world we know of but have never been. They serve as memories of eternity past and eternity to come, and act as signifiers to point us to the real thing.