This is the only motive of the mercenary Devine, but Weston's plan is to open a new age of space colonization to ensure the eternal survival of the human race, an idea borrowed from Stapledon's Last and First Men.
The seeming humanitarianism of Weston's scheme is corrupted by his contemptuous and colonialist attitude towards all other forms of life, including the humane and intelligent Malacandrans.
In Perelandra, the sudden arrival of Weston's spaceship on Venus is a great surprise to the self-doubting Ransom, who himself has been sent by an oyarsa to counter a mysterious threat.
Weston has undergone a philosophical conversion since his near-death in returning from Mars: he considers his former devotion to the human race as "a mere prejudice", and now wishes to spread "Spirit ... the blind, inarticulate purposiveness" which drives emergent evolution.
Indeed, Weston calls Ransom to join him, since "nothing now divides you and me except a few outworn theological technicalities with which organised religion has unhappily allowed itself to get incrusted.
The extremity of its evil had passed beyond all struggle into some state which bore a horrible similarity to innocence.The evil spirit possessing Weston works to corrupt the newly created race, subtly tempting the Lady of Perelandra (the new Eve) into disobeying the commands of Maleldil (God), while Ransom pleads with her to resist the Un-man (Ransom's name for the possessed Weston).
In an interlude, Weston's consciousness appears to resurface, dismaying Ransom with the confused horror of Hell: [Death] is the real universe.... That’s what it all means.... That’s why it’s so important to live as long as you can.
They take your head off...and you can't even look back on what life was like...because you know it never did mean anything even from the beginning.However, it is impossible to distinguish whether anything he says is Weston or the Devil working through him.
Ransom, having carved a monument to the great physicist into the wall outside the caverns, makes his way up to a mountaintop, to meet the grateful Lady and the King of the new planet.
In a passing comment in That Hideous Strength, it is said that Great Britain has produced both heroes and villains, that for every King Arthur, there is a traitor Mordred, for every Sydney (the Renaissance poet), there is a Cecil Rhodes.
In "Perelandra", Weston mentions his liking of the book of which Rhodes said "it made me who I am”: Winwood Reade's The Martyrdom of Man, which expounded the ideology of secular humanism.
[2] The choice of the name "Weston" might be more than accidental, considering that in his speech in Out of the Silent Planet he presents himself very much as the proponent of "Western Civilization" in its most expansionist and aggressive mode.