C.S. Lewis once told a group of college students that if they concentrated less on jockeying for status and more on working and loving sincerely, they would find themselves members of the world’s most unintentionally exclusive club: a society of true friends. The “secrecy” of this “Inner Ring” “is accidental...for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like.”
Of course Lewis’s own band of brothers, the Inklings, became internationally legendary. Readers of Narnia and Lord of the Rings can almost feel like they have shared in the warm confidence of those evenings Lewis spent with Tolkien over beer at the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford. In a sense, they have.
But Lewis spoke truly when he said the Inklings met together for the joy of it, not to be famous. The proof is that quite a few of them weren’t. One little-known Inkling in particular might have been the most penetrating philosopher among them. Discovering his work is like stumbling through a secret doorway and finding a kindred spirit on the other side.