"The Abolition of Man" is a compilation of three lectures delivered by C. S. Lewis (ranked 11th on The Times' list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and generally considered one of the greatest Christian apologists of the 20th century) at the University of Durham in 1943. It is short in length but profound and cogent as his writings ever are. The following are the highlights–along with some notes of mine (in blue)–I extract from the book.
Chapter 1: Men without Chests
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He starts with his concern for children's education:
For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity.
The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments.
He surmises from Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike that there is some universal, objective value (that he calls "Tao"–the way):
It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.
The importance of "trained emotions":
Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism... for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.
A perceptive and then funny remark on "men without chests" (by "chest" he means the ability to feel, sense, and judge right from wrong) :
It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so. (The "Big Head" syndrome)
Chapter 2: The Way
He points out the self-contradiction and idiocy of a "Tao-less" universe and those who promote it after all values are debunked and the only thing left to drive civilization is human instinct:
It looks very much as if the Innovator (modern educators who want to debunk value-based education) would have to say not that we must obey Instinct, nor that it will satisfy us to do so, but that we ought to obey it.
If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.
The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in.
Chapter 3: The Abolition of Man
"Human advancement" is not an equal benefactor to all humans. It in fact gives the stronger more leverage to control the weaker ones:
Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger.
And if we let "science" run amok without value guidance:
The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself.
The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it?
The "base instinct" takes over:
When all that says 'It is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains.
If you will not obey the Tao, or else commit suicide, obedience to impulse (and therefore, in the long run, to mere 'nature') is the only course left open.
At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’ — to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners (people who eliminate values from civilizations) and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man.
Real scientific minds do not subscribe to reductionism:
It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real...The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost. Touche!
But as soon as we take the final step of reducing our own species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same.
Hence:
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.
A surprising similarity between magic and applied science is revealed when comparing them with ancient wisdom:
For the 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 solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead.
A great reminder, words of wisdom:
The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it... To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.
For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity.
The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments.
He surmises from Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike that there is some universal, objective value (that he calls "Tao"–the way):
It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.
The importance of "trained emotions":
Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism... for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.
A perceptive and then funny remark on "men without chests" (by "chest" he means the ability to feel, sense, and judge right from wrong) :
It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so. (The "Big Head" syndrome)
Chapter 2: The Way
He points out the self-contradiction and idiocy of a "Tao-less" universe and those who promote it after all values are debunked and the only thing left to drive civilization is human instinct:
It looks very much as if the Innovator (modern educators who want to debunk value-based education) would have to say not that we must obey Instinct, nor that it will satisfy us to do so, but that we ought to obey it.
If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.
The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in.
Chapter 3: The Abolition of Man
"Human advancement" is not an equal benefactor to all humans. It in fact gives the stronger more leverage to control the weaker ones:
Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger.
And if we let "science" run amok without value guidance:
The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself.
The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it?
The "base instinct" takes over:
When all that says 'It is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains.
If you will not obey the Tao, or else commit suicide, obedience to impulse (and therefore, in the long run, to mere 'nature') is the only course left open.
At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’ — to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners (people who eliminate values from civilizations) and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man.
Real scientific minds do not subscribe to reductionism:
It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real...The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost. Touche!
But as soon as we take the final step of reducing our own species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same.
Hence:
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.
A surprising similarity between magic and applied science is revealed when comparing them with ancient wisdom:
For the 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 solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead.
A great reminder, words of wisdom:
The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it... To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.
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For the whole book, go to
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else."
— Inscription on C. S. Lewis' memorial floor stone at Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey
