C. S. LEWIS: What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of Human Excellence--moral, cultural, social, or intellectual.

Be Like Stalks…… https://t.co/ClL38ztqGt https://t.co/BSSu5a1WJD

— CJ the palmer worm; wife,mother, researcher. (@thepalmerworm) October 22, 2026

What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of Human Excellence--moral, cultural, social, or intellectual.  And is it not pretty to notice how Democracy (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods?  You remember how one of the Greek dictators (they called them 'tyrants' then) sent an Envoy to another dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government.  The second dictator led the envoy into a field of corn and there he snicked off with his Cane the top of every stock that rose an inch or so above the general level.  The moral was plain.  Allow no preeminence among your subjects.  Let no man live who is wiser, or better, or more famous, or even handsomer than the mass.  Cut them all down to a level; all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies.  All equals.  Thus, tyrants could practice, in a sense, 'democracy'.  But now 'democracy' can do the same work without any other tyranny than her own.  No one need now go through the field with a cane.  The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones.  The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.

The Screwtape Letters, 1942, C.S. Lewis; also includes Screwtape Proposes a Toast, C.S. Lewis, 1959.  

The Screwtape Letters, 1942: A series of fictional letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood, advising him on tempting a human being away from Christianity.

Screwtape Proposes a Toast, 1959: A separate satirical essay in which Screwtape addresses newly graduated tempters at a dinner. Lewis uses the speech to criticize modern education, democratic culture, and the manipulation of public opinion.

Why the distinction matters: Screwtape Proposes a Toast is often published alongside The Screwtape Letters in combined editions, which can make it appear to be another chapter. It was originally published separately in 1959.