by Mike Gray

On WND, Ellis Washington explores a sneaking suspicion that C. S. Lewis, in his work The Abolition of Man (1943), was only slightly ahead of his time:

The thesis of Lewis’ work addresses the modern attempt to completely master nature, an effort, Lewis warns, that will end in the subjection of human nature itself to total technological manipulation and exploitation, a tyranny of the minority over the masses of mankind – thus the end of conservatism, the end of liberalism … the abolition of man.

According to Lewis, modern liberalism seeks to “remove all limits to the human will” or, in the words Aristotle used to define “democracy,” to liberate man from any natural limits on his desires, allowing everyone “to live as he wants toward whatever end he happens to crave.”

. . . Lewis stresses that good education denotes moral lessons, and in an earlier age teachers taught students that there was an objective moral order, a transcendent reality, a natural law, if you will, to which students were trained to adhere, a reality that was contained in human nature itself and written into the very foundations of the universe, a reality that we had fallen from but nevertheless must always seek to obey.

In The Abolition of Man, Lewis wrote of mankind’s so-called and much-touted ‘conquest of Nature’ and concluded it to be a misnomer:

. . . 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.

It is, of course, a commonplace to complain that men have hitherto used badly, and against their fellows, the powers that science has given them, But that is not the point I am trying to make. I am not speaking of particular corruptions and abuses which an increase of moral virtue would cure: I am considering what the thing called ‘Man’s power over Nature’ must always and essentially be. No doubt, the picture could be modified by public ownership of raw materials and factories and public control of scientific research. But unless we have a world state this will still mean the power of one nation over others. And even within the world state or the nation it will mean (in principle) the power of majorities over minorities, and (in the concrete) of a government over the people. And all long-term exercises of power, especially in breeding, must mean the power of earlier generations over later ones.

The latter point is not always sufficiently emphasized, because those who write on social matters have not yet learned to imitate the physicists by always including Time among the dimensions. In order to understand fully what Man’s power over Nature, and therefore the power of some men over other men, really means, we must picture the race extended in time from the date of its emergence to that of its extinction. Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them. And if, as is almost certain, the age which had thus attained maximum power over posterity were also the age most emancipated from tradition, it would be engaged in reducing the power of its predecessors almost as drastically as that of its successors. And we must also remember that, quite apart from this, the later a generation comes—the nearer it lives to that date at which the species becomes extinct—the less power it will have in the forward direction, because its subjects will be so few. There is therefore no question of a power vested in the race as a whole steadily growing as long as the race survives. The last men, far from being the heirs of power, will be of all men most subject to the dead hand of the great planners and conditioners and will themselves exercise least power upon the future.

When mankind finally does achieve Nature’s ‘conquest,’ says Lewis, that would mean ‘the abolition of man’:

. . . I am only making clear what Man’s conquest of Nature really means and especially that final stage in the conquest, which, perhaps, is not far off. 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 then be won. We shall have ‘taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho’ and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it?

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Ellis Washington’s WND article.

The Abolition of Man available at Amazon.com.

On-line edition of The Abolition of Man.