The Abolition of Man

“This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.” 

This passage is a quote from The Green Book in which the authors attempt to debunk the validity of emotional reactions in written language. Lewis points out how the authors push a philosophical agenda under the pretense of teaching children how to write. 

“Another little portion of the human heritage has been quietly taken from them before they were old enough to understand.” 

The Tao, and the moral sentiments it contains, is a traditional and deeply rooted philosophy of life that must be passed on from generation to generation. For Lewis, the philosophy of The Green Book destroys this process, corrupting the minds of innocent children who are not aware of what is being done to them. 

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.” 

For Lewis, the pressing educational need is not to debunk traditional values in the interest of reason and science, but to support and encourage a healthy emotional life. Lewis bases this conviction on his experience as a teacher, during which he observed many students who, instead of being overly emotional, are spiritually and emotionally sterile. Lewis believes that teachers should seek to encourage “just sentiments” (14), because the deliberate act of starving students emotionally will lead them to become more susceptible to propaganda and phony emotional appeals. 

“Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.”

The idea, that virtue consists of training one’s loves or affections, is also expressed by Plato and St. Augustine. If a person likes the right things (and hates their opposites), he or she will perform right actions. Lewis uses this belief to reinforce his ideas about the importance of sentiment in moral formation.

“In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment.”

Lewis points out that, although reason has great importance in human life, it has limited usefulness in certain circumstances. Intense, strained situations like war require the moral support of virtuous emotions. Absent these emotions, animal passions will take over and destroy reason entirely. Thus, reason uses the sentiments to govern and guide the passions. 

“The head rules the belly through the chest.” 

This pithy account describes how the human soul works, amplifying the previous quote. Reason (the head) guides and controls the animal passions (the belly) by means of emotion and sentiment (the chest). Emotion acts as the equalizer between the cold logic of the brain and the uncontrolled passions of the body. When in proper order, all of these faculties work in harmony.

“Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.” 

This description refers to the products of modern education, the “Men without Chests.” Contrary to what these men may think, their education does not truly enhance their intellect; instead, it merely shrinks their emotional capacity. 

“We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” 

Lewis uses a metaphor to describe the processes of modern education. Modern education destroys moral emotion yet demands the social effects of emotion in the form of “drive,” “dynamism,” or “creativity.” Lewis argues that by suppressing sentiment, we are destroying the fruitful and creative parts of our nature. 

“Telling us to obey Instinct is like telling us to obey ‘people.’ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.”

Lewis asserts that instinct cannot be a source of moral authority; it is too capricious and unstable, just like people. Only the Tao has moral authority, and it must rule the instinct and passions. 

“The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves.” 

Lewis argues that all moral value is in some way derived from the Tao. Any attempt to set up a new moral system merely takes bits and pieces of the Tao and distorts them. In destroying the integrity of the Tao, we will end up destroying our own nature because we depend on the entire Tao for our moral well-being. 

“The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, or creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in.” 

Lewis compares the Tao to the primary colors, which function as a basic “toolbox” we use to make moral decisions. The Tao is a given in our lives, not something we have the power or authority to change. 

“You must not hold a pistol to the head of the Tao. Nor must we postpone obedience to a precept until its credentials have been examined. Only those who are practicing the Tao will understand it.” 

This quote emphasizes that the Tao consists of “first principles,” or basic moral building blocks. These principles cannot be proven; rather, they are the means by which we prove other things. This statement implies that we must first accept and be brought up according to the Tao in order to be able to judge or understand it. 

“Let us decide for ourselves what man is to be and make him into that.” 

Lewis claims that this statement conceptualizes the attitude of those who would destroy the Tao and build a new morality in its place. The new morality will be based on arbitrary human will without any reference to objective standards. 

“For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please.” 

Destroying the Tao will provide a pretext for some people in the future society to lord it over others, forcing them to conform to the new morality. The new morality will provide opportunities and excuses for hoarding power. 

“But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.” 

Following from the previous quote, Lewis describes his vision of future society formed according to the tenets of a new morality: a totalitarian-like state in which science will be used to control and manipulate the population. 

“Values are now mere natural phenomena. Judgements of value are to be produced in the pupil as part of the conditioning. Whatever Tao there is will be the product, not the motive, of education.”

Whereas in the past teachers educated students according to the principles of the Tao, in the new world order it will be the job of education to create values. Values will become another arbitrary thing generated by man and subject to change and manipulation. Thus, education in the classical sense will give way to conditioning and propaganda. 

“Duty itself is up for trial: it cannot also be the judge.” 

In the coming social order, moral values will no longer be the standard by which we are judged; instead, they will themselves be questioned and judged. In this way, moral values will be powerless to do the things they are supposed to do. Instead of using duty to decide how to act, those in power will arbitrarily decide if duty is an acceptable moral value. 

“Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.”

This statement is the keynote of the entire book. Man has, since the advent of modern science, striven to conquer nature. The logical final step is to conquer his own nature—to annihilate himself. By reducing himself to an object to be analyzed and manipulated—supposedly for his own benefit—man has, in fact, denied his very nature. Instead of gaining something, man has lost everything.

“From this point of view the conquest of Nature appears in a new light. We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may ‘conquer’ them. We are always conquering Nature, because ‘Nature’ is the name for what we have, to some extent, conquered.” 

Lewis believes that the idea of modern science “conquering” nature is merely a cover for a lust for power and domination. Instead of agreeing beforehand on a definition of “nature,” we first dominate nature and then define our actions as “nature” to justify our decisions. 

“A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.”

Lewis asserts that belief in objective value is liberating rather than constraining. This belief places limits on human power, making rulers subject to a higher truth. 

“Once we killed bad men: now we liquidate unsocial elements.”

Here, Lewis criticizes the corruption of language. Specifically, the phrase in question, “liquidate unsocial elements,” is a euphemism that disguises the unsavory nature of what is actually being said. For Lewis, such deception is part and parcel of the destruction of truth and the denial of human nature. 

“For wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.” 

The ethical system for which Lewis advocates in The Abolition of Man is one that takes truth as a given, then seeks to conform to the truth. This system stands in opposition to the practice of inventing “truth”. Truth is the unchanging standard to which we must conform ourselves. Attempts to conform truth to our whims and desires mark the absence of truth. 

“Such a reply springs from the fatal serialism of the modern imagination—the image of infinite unilinear progression which so haunts our minds.” 

Lewis refers to the tendency in modern thought to regard progress as inevitable. In reality, human history takes many twists and turns, and it is possible to take a wrong turn that will reverse all the progress we have made. Every new step we take is not necessarily logical and consistent; one can unwittingly take a fatal leap into the abyss.