The Role of Schools in Our Problems

 

A Review of C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man

Years ago when I first picked up C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man, I read a bit of the first chapter and liked what I read. But as with some of Lewis’ other works, it gets a bit dense at times. This is not The Chronicles of Narnia. So I put it down. The book remained on my shelf for some time I heard it mentioned for the seventh or eighth time by Christian educators. So I decided to read it all the way through, no matter how dense it was. My reading was thoroughly rewarded. It is a fascinating look at the world of education through the eyes of a twentieth century prophet.

The book was written in 1944, with World War Two ongoing. The three lectures that make up the book describe how modern textbooks and teachers insidiously drain the eternal forms of truth, goodness, and beauty from every part of life. This hollowing out of standards supposedly “frees” us to follow our natural instincts, but that freedom is actually a method of enslaving us to the whims of the broader society and its leaders. What those leaders do with their “slaves” in the name of “man’s power over nature” is attempt to forge a society with themselves in complete power. In other words, he explains how the rules of our world try to take over societies through the side door of coercion, rather than the front door of force.

The first chapter, “Men Without Chests,” traces a small, seemingly innocent statement in elementary English textbooks to its significant effects. He takes a book used in the 1940’s and demonstrates how the authors reduce a waterfall, something of beauty, to a mere feeling of beauty. Lewis shows how the change from the objective (“This is sublime.”) to the subjective (“I have sublime feelings.”) teaches students that things in nature don’t have meaning in themselves; they only give us particular feelings. Regarding this menial change, Lewis says, “[the student] has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are at stake. It is not a theory they put his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.”

Over time the very ideas of truth, goodness, and beauty that resonate in man’s soul at are hollowed out. He becomes cynical for he is taught to consider all these as feelings that have no meaning outside of the chemical reactions they may stir. The authors reduce the good in life to an empty shell. They destroy wonder, leaving children hungry and deprived of the things that nourish their souls. This leaves them weakened to the point that they have no power to order their passions, which to them are other feelings just like the good ones. This lack of order turns yields “men without chests (hearts),” unable to determine right from wrong and good from evil.

The second chapter, “The Way,” explains how textbooks and teachers have actually become social conditioners, those who far from denigrating values, seek to inculcate their own values in students. This happens even if it is unwittingly. Those who remove the meaning of objective truth and value in nature contradict themselves. They are seeking to establish their own standard, one as old as the first temptation in the garden: the offer to decide for themselves what is good and evil.

Relativism is an old offer. The standard presented to students is to follow their own feelings or instincts, which is nothing more than man’s sinful nature. Then they work to mitigate the natural consequences of following that nature through forms of science. Lewis takes aim specifically at contraception and eugenics, which he considers two bullets in the same gun. Both reduce the consequences of our sexual union and attempt to shape the population in the order society desires it. They do this under the guise of “progress,” but in fact are pursuing conquest. The powers that be are more than glad to limit consequences and encourage man to follow his own instincts. It means fewer and fewer independent minds for the powers to deal with.

The last chapter, “The Abolition of Man” is the clearest, most significant of the entire book. Here Professor Lewis takes aim at the idea of conquering nature.

“What we call Man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by…Man is as much the patient or subject as the possessor, since he is the target both for bombs and for propaganda. And as regards contraceptives, there is a paradoxical, negative sense in which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive…what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”

This is not to say Lewis was totally against contraception, but he did see what its advent mean for society at large. His larger concern is that the idea of controlling nature is actually some men controlling others. All of these things naturally proceed from the emptying of eternal standards, which Lewis calls the Tao¸ but we would call those standards natural law. This leads to his statement which gives the title of the chapter, “Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of man.”

Chillingly, he tells of how these nice, modern educators will usher in the type of society only dreamed of by some villains. “But many a mild-eyed scientist in pince-nez, many a popular dramatist, many an amateur philosopher in our midst, means in the long run just the same as the Nazi rulers of Germany.”

Lewis later wrote a series of novels that illustrate the principles found in The Abolition of Man, known as The Space Trilogy. It demonstrates what happens when the principles expressed in this book are carried out. He is no less than prophetic in his warning of oncoming danger, as the horrors of abortion, euthanasia, genetic modification of children, and the modern “tolerance police” show.

As a public school teacher, I can verify that what Professor Lewis discusses in the books is, in fact, taught in school. The textbooks are full of information designed to dull children’s senses to the wonder of the past and the beauty of God’s creation, order, and logic. Modern schools form technologically-minded, white-collar assembly line workers. People who go in, do what they’re told, say what they must, and leave to do it all again the next day. The only difference in what Lewis talked about and society today is that there are many more tools of coercion than there were eighty years ago.

While it is hard to judge which C.S. Lewis book is the best, this one is excellent. Though difficult to wade through in spots, it is necessary reading to understand the problems in which we live today. If you want to know why we are in the particular shape we’re in, The Abolition of Man is a great place to start.