Reverend Brian McGreevy continues his series, Not as Unwise but as Wise: Reflections from C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength on Living Christianly in a Post-Christian World. This is available as a podcast on iTunes.
Unpacking Chapter 3, “The Abolition of Man”
Following a review of Lewis’s argument in the first two chapters,this week we delved into the eponymous third chapter, where Lewis expounds how what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over others with Nature as its instrument:
“Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will indeed be won–but who precisely will have won it? For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means…the power of some men to make other men what they please.”
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Summary below adapted from Rev. Dr. Michael Ward in After Humanity
- Following the Check-up in Ch. 1 and the Diagnosis in Ch. 2, we now have the Prognosis in this chapter. “In closing the coffin lid on objective value, humanity has opened Pandora’s box. We no longer find the solutions to the problems of life in knowledge self-discipline and virtue but increasingly in willpower, technological control, and surgical alteration of nature to suit our own convenience.”
- The effects of this development will be far worse on the vast majority of people, while elite minorities in politics, education, medicine, and related fields will hold positions of influence and will admit no moral constraints on their behavior.
- These elite manipulators (Lewis calls them ”Conditioners”) have ceased to be Human by stepping completely outside the Tao. “Self-conditioned to be morally blind, these formerly human beings will pass on their blindness to any children whom they raise and any pupils whom they educate.”
- “Lewis’s argument has moved from cynics casually debunking Objective Value, to ideologues offering a hollow epistemological basis for moral judgments, to Nietzschean voluntarists asserting their will to power: ‘The process which, if not checked, will abolish Man goes on apace among Communists and Democrats no less than among Fascists. The methods may (at first) differ in brutality. 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: ‘Traditional values are to be debunked’ and mankind to be cut out into some fresh shape..’”
- “The grouping of Communism and Fascism with Democracy is telling. The malaise that Lewis would diagnose is not peculiar to totalitarian dictatorships and there is no room for complacency even in stable, tolerant, democratic England. …Lewis implores his readers to remember that there are progressions in which the last step is incommensurable with the others. The [only] solution is dogmatic belief in objective value, for this is a belief necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery…Lewis could not be clearer about the peril he foresees nor about the antidote he prescribes. What is less clear is whether he sees any real hope that his cautions will be listened to and acted upon.”
Elements of Lewis’s argument
“It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave.”
John Bunyan
What does Man’s power over Nature really mean? With the airplane, the wireless, and contraceptives, it means that you have to pay to have access to these things, which are under the control of other men. “Any or all of these three things can be withheld from some men by other men—by those who sell, or those who allow the sales, or those who own the sources of production, or those who make the goods. 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. [For the airplane and the wireless,] Man is as much the patient or subject as the possessor, since he is the target both for bombs and for propaganda.[For contraceptives] all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive. [Thus,] what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over others with Nature as its instrument… 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. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will indeed be won–but who precisely will have won it? For the power of Man to make himself what hepleases means…the power of some men to make other men what they please.”
“New” education “…The man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall at last get a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.” Now educators freed from the Tao can inculcate judgments of value in the pupil as part of the conditioning, to choose what kind of artificial Tao they will, for their own good reasons, produce in the human race…The Conditioners are not men in the old sense, but they are men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what “Humanity” shall henceforth mean.
Raw Material? “If man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere Nature, in the person of his de-humanized Conditioners… 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.”
The Final Frontier “To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind [into the abyss]. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”
The worst parochialism that scientists often invoke in interpreting their history is the notion that progress in knowledge arises from victory in battle between science and religion, with religion defined as unthinking allegiance to dogma and obedience to authority, and science as objective searching for truth.—attributed to Stephen Jay Gould
Practices of Hope and of Wisdom
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4:8-9
1. Read John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
Pilgrim’s Progress, written by John Bunyan in 1678, is one of the most famous and influential books ever published in English. It was reprinted in colonial America in 1681 and swept through the colonies, the most popular book other than the Bible and one that had a major impact on Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and other writers in the struggle for Independence. It tells the story of Christian and his difficult pilgrimage through life to reach the Celestial City. The word pilgrim (from the Latin peregrinus) means a traveler (literally one who has come from afar) who is usually on a journey to a holy place. Typically, this is a physical journey (often on foot) to some place of special significance to the adherent of a particular religious belief system.
2. Meditate on Psalm 73
Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.
Psalm 73
But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment.Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth. Therefore his people turn back to them, and find no fault in them. And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?”
Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.
All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.
If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed the generation of your children. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.
Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors! Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.
When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart,I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.
Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.
3. Listen to the version of “All People that on Earth Do Dwell”
This was commissioned for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. I would invite you to meditate on the words and what they say about what it means to be human.
All people that on earth do dwell,
All People That On Earth Do Dwell
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.
Him serve with fear, His praise forth tell;
Come ye before Him and rejoice.
The Lord, ye know, is God indeed;
Without our aid He did us make;
We are His folk, He doth us feed,
And for His sheep He doth us take.
O enter then His gates with praise;
Approach with joy His courts unto;
Praise, laud, and bless His Name always,
For it is seemly so to do.
For why? the Lord our God is good;
His mercy is for ever sure;
His truth at all times firmly stood,
And shall from age to age endure.
To Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
The God Whom Heaven and earth adore,
From men and from the angel host
Be praise and glory evermore.
