Uncle Screwtape

"He knew he'd had a narrow escape and in later years was fond of talking about "that inarticilate sense for actuality which is our ultimate safeguard against the aberrations of mere logic"........You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things"

Anyone ever read this book? By the looks of the cover it used to belong to a historical relative of mine. I'm having trouble focusing my mind on it. Nothing seems to make any sense to me!!
I'm left feeling grateful that I wasn't a Victorian, having to speak like this all the time!!