The Abolition of Man, Part Two

This week, widespread rioting in Britain has blanketed the news, along with commentators asking the eternal question, “Why?”  Shaking my head over the pictures of well-dressed kids smashing store windows, I turn from the computer screen and pick up my copy of The Abolition of Man to read this, the first sentence in the second chapter: “The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.”

Oh.

The Green Book, as you’ll recall (see Part One) was a high school text sent to Lewis for his comment or recommendation.  It got a lot more comment from him than it was looking for.  The purpose of the authors was to teach young people to “see through” sentimentality and dogma and disregard traditional virtues as meaningless.  The authors call for the “subjectivizing” of values—that is, proving that any sentiments judged to be commendable, or worthwhile, for their own sake are “merely” (fatal word!) expressions of the speaker’s own biases.  But there would be no point in debunking suspect values unless you have other values in mind that are not so suspect, right?  Lewis sketches the “correct” approvals and disapprovals as indicated in The Green Book.  Approved: peace, democracy and tolerance.  Disapproved, or at least outgrown: courage, patriotism, and courtesy.

But the authors are fatally blind to the fact that without the latter, the former is impossible.  “It will be seen that comfort and security, as known to a suburban street in peace-time, are the ultimate values; [but] those things which can alone produce or spiritualize comfort and security are mocked.  [It’s as if] Man lives by bread alone, and the ultimate source of bread is the baker’s van; peace matters more than honour and can be preserved by jeering at colonels and reading newspapers.”  What they don’t see is that under all lists of Approved and Disapproved is a deeper system, and that’s what Lewis addresses in chapter two: “The Way.”

The Way goes by many names: Hindus refer to it as the Rta, to which even the gods are subject.  In western tradition it’s known as Natural Law.  For the purpose of his argument, Lewis calls it the Tao: “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.”  For the rest of the chapter he shows how modern attempts to base our preference for peace, democracy, and tolerance on some solid footing  other than Natural Law are doomed to fail.  Appeals to utility (the greatest good for the greatest number), community, and common instinct all come up short; nothing can perform the service of the Tao except the Tao itself.

In That Hideous Strength, two sets of characters stand in direct opposition to each other.  The little band at St. Anne’s have pledged their loyalty to the Director, who defers to his “Masters.”  The Masters , in their turn, are subject to the highest power, understood as the Lord Himself, originator of Natural Law. Jane’s conversation with Ransom in chapter 7 underscores this.  “I don’t think I look on marriage quite as you do . . .” to which he replies, “Child, it is not a question of you or I look on marriage but how my Masters look on it.”  Natural Law is not unyielding: when Jane’s life is threatened, she is admitted to the circle without her husband’s knowledge or consent.  But that’s in obedience to another part of the Law—to save her life–not defiance of the Law.  “Only those who are practicing the Tao can understand it” (AOM, “The Way”), including what parts supersede others.

At Belbury there’s a group of people dedicated to replacing Natural Law with a set of “new, improved” values.  Mark is one of  them, following the lead of Curry and Busby at the University; others are Steele, Crosser, and all their underlings and bureaucrats.  Their goal is “reconditioning” society to think the way the enlightened ones think.  But the enlightened don’t realize that conditioning works on them, too.  In 5-1 recall Miss Hardcastle on the subject of newspaper propaganda: “Don’t you see that the educated reader can’t stop reading the high-brow weeklies whatever they do?  He can’t.  He’s been conditioned.”  The progressives think that they’ve replaced outdated values with new ones, but they’ve actually undermined all value.  That’s why, when Filostrato waxes eloquent about sexless reproduction and metal trees (8-3), no one at the table can come up with an argument against him.  They’ve scrapped the Tao.  By selecting only the parts of it they like, they’ve weakened all of it and left themselves no firm principles to stand on.

But there’s a third group at Belbury, the “Inner Ring” whose purpose is not reforming humanity but remaking it.  They are, in ascending order of venality, Filostrato, Straik, Wither, and Frost.  (Feverstone belongs to a group of one, and Hardcastle is a special case.)  To understand them, we should look at the concluding paragraphs of “The Way”: “[Some will say,] Why must our conquest of nature stop short, in stupid reverence, before this final and toughest bit of ‘nature’ which has hitherto been called the conscience of man? . . . You say we shall have no  values at all if we step outside the Tao.  Very well: we shall probably find that we can get on quite comfortably without them . . . Let us decide for ourselves what man is to be and make him into that . . . Having mastered our environment, let us now master ourselves and choose our own destiny.”

If you say this, says Lewis, you are at least not guilty of self-contradiction, like those who suppose they can replace Natural Law with a better law.  But you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to something far worse, as we’ll see in the third quarter of THS.

Does this have anything to do with the riots in Britain?  Well . . . are we looking at a generation for whom the very concept of values has been destroyed?

On to Part Three. 

If you’re late to the party in our read-along of That Hideous Strength, go to the Introduction and follow the links.  For Emily’s series on Christ in Literature, start here.