May 23, 2025

# The Depths of Being: Mr. Bultitude and the Pool Beneath Thought

C.S. Lewis’s portrayal of Mr. Bultitude, the bear in That Hideous Strength, reaches its symbolic and philosophical peak in the following passage:

“Sometimes there returns to us from infancy the memory of a nameless delight or terror, unattached to any delightful or dreadful thing, a potent adjective floating in a nounless void, a pure quality. At such moments we have experience of the shallows of that pool. But fathoms deeper than any memory can take us, right down in the central warmth and dimness, the bear lived all its life.”

# Nameless Qualities and Nounless Voids

This haunting image of a “potent adjective floating in a nounless void” captures a core Lewisian insight: there exist preconceptual, prelinguistic experiences of pure qualia—emotional tones that are not yet anchored to a story or name.

Lewis evokes what he elsewhere called Sehnsucht, a piercing, unfulfilled longing—the kind that signals the realer Real beneath ordinary perception. These moments are not errors of memory; they are fissures in the veil.

# The Bear Who Lives Deeper

“Fathoms deeper than any memory can take us…”

Mr. Bultitude’s existence takes place not in the narrative shallows of remembered experience, but in the central warmth and dimness—a symbolic image of primal consciousness. It is not the dimness of ignorance but the dimness of depth, the warmth of something original and unbroken.

Lewis implies that such creatures dwell closer to the unfallen order of things. Mr. Bultitude does not live by abstraction or interpretation. He simply is. And his being is sufficient.

# Philosophical and Theological Implications

1. A Critique of Disembodied Knowing
   In modernity, to know is often to analyze. But for Lewis, true knowledge begins in union, not control.

2. Sacramental Animal Consciousness
   Mr. Bultitude stands not as a beast but as a living relic of Logres—the mythic kingdom within Britain. His presence is sacramental, charged with the grace of remembered harmony between spirit and matter.

3. Prelapsarian Peace
   The bear embodies an innocence untouched by the Fall, a creaturely wisdom without speech. In contrast to the corrupted minds at the N.I.C.E., his unspoken presence is a form of truth without argument.

# Toward the Eschaton^[1]

Lewis’s mythic imagination always points toward restoration. Mr. Bultitude’s survival is more than narrative convenience—it is eschatological witness. In the world to come, lion and lamb, bear and man, shall dwell in peace.

# In Conclusion

The inner life of Mr. Bultitude is a mystery of depth. He is a symbol of that within us which never left Eden, that which still pulses below thought. Lewis invites us to remember that not all knowing comes through reason—some of it comes by being near the center, where it is warm, and deep, and dim.