C. S. Lewis and The Abolition of Man
Part 3 - Cosmos or Chaos: Words Create Worlds
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”
—John 1:1, 14
Read Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien: Words Create Worlds
Read Part 2 - Richard Weaver and Ideas Have Consequences
The Abolition of Man
The idea of cultivating “unsentimental sentiment” is something C.S. Lewis also championed. In his classic work, The Abolition of Man, Lewis explores the critical role that language plays in either forming cosmos or devolving humanity into chaos.
Contemporary with Weaver, Lewis contended most specifically with logical positivism, a prevalent movement in Oxford academia at the time. Logical positivism asserts that only statements verifiable through empirical methods or logical deduction are meaningful. Under this framework, moral statements become meaningless as they cannot be empirically verified.
For example, to say, “It was wrong for you to steal that car” would only amount to “you stole a car.” To assert it was wrong is tantamount to saying, “I feel like it is wrong,” which is not a cognitive statement in the logical positivist’s view. It is only an expression of one’s feelings.
Lewis vigorously counters the impulse of this grandchild of Nominalism, arguing that logical positivism dangerously fragments reality into two irreconcilable domains: empirical facts devoid of meaning, and emotional responses devoid of truth.1 This dichotomy, Lewis maintains, creates "men without chests"—individuals incapable of coherent moral reasoning or genuine virtue, since morality requires the acknowledgment of objective values.2
Lewis takes on the language epidemic of his day by drawing attention to a seemingly innocent English textbook he calls The Green Book. Its authors are men he calls Gaius and Titius. They argue that when someone describes a waterfall as "sublime," they are merely expressing subjective feelings about the cataract rather than making objective claims about reality. Lewis rebuts this interpretation firmly, stating that such language involves objective claims about external realities, and in particular, appropriate emotional responses to those realities.
He explains, "The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration."3 In other words, it is actually the opposite. A man who calls an object sublime must, in himself, feel small or humbled, not sublime. In any event, by reducing all evaluative statements to subjective emotional states, Gaius and Titius implicitly encourage the belief that value judgments are merely personal preferences devoid of objective significance.
Next, Lewis addresses their attempt to debunk sentimental language in an advertisement for a pleasure cruise that celebrates famous historical sites. Gaius and Titius suggest the emotions these ads evoke are irrational manipulations. Lewis, however, claims a proper education will differentiate between genuine and superficial sentiments, recognizing that genuine emotional responses—what Weaver called unsentimental sentiments—such as awe and reverence, are not only virtuous, but necessary in healthy humans. The failure to inculcate the right emotions deprives students of their moral and cultural inheritance and leaves them susceptible to manipulation by less scrupulous rhetoricians, the propagandists and sophists. Lewis explains:
Gaius and Titius…see the world around them swayed by emotional propaganda—they have learned from tradition that youth is sentimental—and they conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotions. My own experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every 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 task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is not infallible protection against a soft head.4
There is no escaping the fact that human beings are created with a capacity for emotion. By first removing their ability to make objective claims, teachers produce soft-headed students who are void of discernment. By subsequently depriving them of their capacity to cultivate genuine emotions, teachers encourage hard-hearted students. By depriving them of a fortified mind and starving them of their natural sensibilities, teachers make students doubly susceptible to false sentiments and propaganda.
The repercussions of Nominalism and logical positivism extend beyond individual morality though. The semantic approach to word and language undermine societal coherence itself. Words, Lewis argues, inherently hold power because they connect humans to universal truths or objective realities, which he identifies as the Tao—a term he strategically adopts from Eastern religion to describe universal natural law.
According to Lewis, traditional (i.e., classical) education aims at harmonizing students' emotional responses with the Tao, training them to recognize and appreciate intrinsic moral truths. However, modern education, influenced by logical positivism, seeks instead to dismantle this connection. By relegating all value judgments to subjective emotional states, educators like Gaius and Titius subtly condition students to reject the existence of universal moral truths that create a cohesive society.
Accordingly, Lewis's now famous metaphor vividly underscores the tragic consequences of this educational shift in regard to language. He declares: "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."5 This potent imagery of impotence captures the essential contradiction of modern education: it simultaneously destroys the foundations of virtue while demanding its outcomes.
Before turning to Dorothy Sayers’s essay, two additional, but brief, analyses of Lewis’s confrontation of logical positivism will be worthwhile.
In the second chapter of The Abolition of Man, "The Way," Lewis commends the Tao as the necessary foundation for coherent moral discourse and education, claiming that it encompasses principles that are universally recognized across diverse cultures (i.e., justice, honor, and fidelity). Lewis insists such principles cannot be derived solely through empirical observation or logical deduction but must be accepted as axiomatic truths foundational to proper moral reasoning. He argues persuasively that "If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly, if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all."6 The logical positivists' attempts to debunk the Tao, therefore, undermine their own moral arguments, as their critiques implicitly depend on principles drawn from the Tao itself.
In the final chapter, "The Abolition of Man," Lewis predicts the ultimate consequence of abandoning the Tao: humanity’s subjection to manipulation by elites who control education, language, and thus, the moral formation of culture. Once moral language is reduced to subjective sentiment or stripped away entirely, power will inevitably shift to those who shape the language and concepts available to society. One might think of Orwell’s 1984 and be correct. Such linguistic manipulation, Lewis warns, will not liberate—as the logical positivists claim their philosophy is attempting to do—but enslave humanity by allowing a small elite to dictate moral values and societal goals arbitrarily.
In sum, like Weaver, Lewis critiques the supposed rational neutrality claimed by logical positivists. He argues that educators inevitably communicate moral and philosophical positions through their choices of language and examples (i.e., education is never neutral). The act of debunking traditional sentiments itself presupposes a normative stance—that is, certain sentiments should be discouraged because they are deemed irrational. Ergo, logical positivism, far from being neutral, subtly imposes its own moral framework on students while simultaneously discrediting others. Lewis identifies this hidden ideological agenda as particularly pernicious because it conceals its values behind a façade of scientific objectivity.
Also like Weaver, Lewis provides a prescient warning against reducing human existence to empirical and logical positivist frameworks of language. He subsequently calls for the restoration of the realist view of language, but he does so by arguing for the restoration of education’s traditional role: cultivating proper emotional responses aligned with objective moral truths embodied in natural law, the Tao.
Read Part 4 - Dorothy Sayers and The Lost Tools of Learning
Bibliography
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, n.d.
Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man: Or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.
Sayers, Dorothy. “The Lost Tools of Learning.” Escondido: Escondido Tutorial Service, n.d.
Tolkien, J. R. R., Humphrey Carpenter, and Christopher Tolkien. 2000. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
——— and Christopher Tolkien. 2006. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. London: Harper Collins.
Weaver, Richard M. Ideas Have Consequences. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
The Westminster Confession of Faith. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1996.
C. S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 20.
C. S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 26.
C. S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 3.
C. S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 13-14.
C. S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 26.
C. S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 40.