S9E18: Abolition – Ch. 3, Pt. 1 (“Man’s Conquest of Nature”)

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 Click here to download audio for S9E18: “The Abolition of Man – Chapter 3, Part 1”

Show Notes

Quote-of-the-Week

The modern state exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good-anyway, to do something to us or make us something. Hence the new name “leaders” for those who were once “rulers.” We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, “Mind your own business.” Our whole lives are their business.

C. S. Lewis, Is Progress Possible?

Introduction

Welcome friends to Pints With Jack! 

For the past two months we’ve been working through “The Abolition of Man” this year and today we begin the final chapter… This chapter shares its name with the book – “The Abolition of Man” – so whatever Lewis is going to tell us, it’s going to be important… and it’s probably not going to be good!

Chit Chat

  • It’s just David and Andrew today, as Matt is currently at the hospital about to meet his baby!
  • David’s work deadline was met, although now he’s in the clean-up process. He’s looking forward to life being a little less crazy… hopefully he’ll have some time to get to see the new He-Man movie whose trailer dropped last week!
  • David’s son Henry got his first gift in the mail from Jordan, from the Lesser-Known Lewis podcast. It’s a collection of C. S. Lewis essays.
  • David is also beginning to read through “Beowulf” with Marie, after interviewing Dr. Reinhart. Andrew recommended Tolkien’s essay on the tale, called “The Monsters and the Critics”.
  • Andrew is on the cusp of finishing edits for his dissertation. Hopefully by next episode, he will be the Reverend Doctor!

Toast

  • David was drinking a drink which each morning allows him to conquer his nature, particularly his natural inclination to take afternoon naps… Yorkshire Gold Tea.
  • Andrew had some Starbucks Sumatra coffee.

Today we toast a new Patreon supporter whom we met last year in Oregon, Mr. Joel Hawbaker!

Discussion

Recap

As we’ve said before, “The Abolition of Man” is quite a dense work, and we’re taking our time moving through it, so at the start of each of these episodes I want to situate us and recap how Lewis has built up the argument so far… 

  • Using an English school textbook as his springboard, Jack speaks against the philosophy of subjectivism covertly taught within its pages.
    • After giving numerous cross-cultural examples from world history Lewis affirms a doctrine of objective value which he describes as “the Tao”.
  • At the start of Chapter 2, Lewis explores how one might attempt to justify a system of values outside the Tao. 
    • Utilitarianism fails as it can’t provide personal motivation…
    • … Reason fails because you can’t get an is from an ought…
    • …and instinct fails for the same reason, further complicated by the fact that our instincts are often in conflict with each other.
  • The principles of the Tao have to be our starting premises.
    • Those who attack it are nevertheless dependent upon the Tao and can only launch an attack by cherry-picking certain parts of it.
    • Development can take place, but it must be done organically within the Tao, not externally in a surgical manner.
  • Lewis ends the chapter by pointing out that some people would wish to abandon the Tao entirely and attempt to shape mankind, not on the grounds of any imagined value, but simply because they want mankind to be a certain way… 
    • …and this idea he explores further in Chapter 3!

01. “Epigraph”

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.

Bunyan

Q. What do you make of this chapter’s epigraph?

  • This is from John Bunyan, who wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress”. Lewis wrote an essay called “The Pilgrim’s Regress”, which is a nod to this work.
    • The protagonist, Christian, is speaking to another character, Faithful.
    • Faithful is talking about another person in the story, “Adam the First”. He says he speaks well and he thought of going with him, but he saw written on his forehead, “Put off the old man with his deeds”.
      • This is alluding to Adam. St. Paul describes him in these terms in Ephesians 4:22 and 1 Corinthians 15:22. 
    • This is when Faithful replies with our opening epitaph, “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.”
      • Is this the man who should be abolished?
  • Lewis makes a clear reference to slavery in this epitaph.
    • Slavery is also present in this chapter’s (and the book’s) title: The Abolition of … Slavery.

The real theme of the lecture was not the abolition of man but the enslavement of man – the enslavement of the Conditioners, who repudiate the Tao, by their own necessarily irrational impulses; and the enslavement of all the rest by the Conditioners.

John Finnis, C. S. Lewis and Test-tube Babies

02. “Man’s conquest of Nature”

Q. Lewis begins this chapter considering the phrase “Man’s conquest of nature”. What does he mean by it?

  • He means the “progress of applied science”.
  • Lewis tells the story of a friend who was dying of tuberculosis who said that ‘Man has Nature whacked’. He regarded himself as a casualty on the winning side of that war. In other words, nature would take man out in the end.
    • Lewis says he begins with this example because he wants to make sure his readers understand he’s not disparaging all that we mean by “Man’s conquest” and the sacrifices made in its pursuit, such as the advancements in the fight against death and disease. But science has not been all beneficial.

‘Man’s conquest of Nature’ is an expression often used to describe the progress of applied science. ‘Man has Nature whacked’ said someone to a friend of mine not long ago. In their context the words had a certain tragic beauty, for the speaker was dying of tuberculosis. ‘No matter’, he said, ‘I know I’m one of the casualties. Of course there are casualties on the winning as well as on the losing side. But that doesn’t alter the fact that it is winning.’ I have chosen this story as my point of departure in order to make it clear that I do not wish to disparage all that is really beneficial in the process described as ‘Man’s conquest’, much less all the real devotion and self-sacrifice that has gone to make it possible. But having done so I must proceed to analyse this conception a little more closely. In what sense is Man the possessor of increasing power over Nature?

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (The Abolition of Man)
  • One thing we begin to notice in this chapter is that there’s so much packed in, it seems like it would have been better to split the chapter in two, so more time could be devoted to the concepts. It’s hard to track with him.
    • Maybe Lewis is giving us more credit than we deserve, and thinks we are better thinkers and better read than we are!

03. “Jack’s three examples”

Q. So, with that proviso in place, Lewis digs a little deeper and asks “In what sense is Man the possessor of increasing power over Nature?”. How does he answer?

  • Man does not have conquest over nature. Rather, some men have conquest over other men.
  • Lewis gives three examples to consider:
    • The Aeroplane
      • Conquers the air and travel
    • The Radio
      • Conquers distance and communication
    • The Contraceptive
      • Conquers our fertility
  • On the surface, these things seem to be parts of the natural world that we have subdued to our devices. Jack points out that, originally speaking, anyone can pay to use these things. The average joe can buy a plane ticket, purchase a radio, or a round of contraception.
    • However, he then says “If I pay you to carry me, I am not therefore myself a strong man”.
    • His point is that the person who really has the power isn’t the person who uses these things, but the person who supplies them: the airline, the radio and drug manufacturers. 
    • This is why he says “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”.
    • The WWII context that TAOM is being written in is clear here.
      • Aeroplanes are used for bombings, not for everyday travelers. Radios were used for news updates and/or propaganda, not entertainment and communication.
  • Lewis is not saying that these things are necessarily intrinsically bad. Being a classical Christian, he holds to the ancient teachings regarding contraception, but he himself boarded an airplane towards the end of his life, and he gave several radio addresses, including “Mere Christianity”. He’s just talking about what they do fundamentally, and who holds the power.

Q. Even then, Jack points out that the person who uses these technologies (the plane, the radio, and the contraception is “as much the patient or subject as the possessor”. Why?

  • Regarding the first two items, he says that “he is the target both for bombs and for propaganda”.
  • The case for the third is interesting…

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. By contraception simply, they are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of selective breeding, they are, without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer. 

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (The Abolition of Man)
  • These questions of controlling race and breeding were at the forefront of the contraceptive movement and WWII, with the rise of eugenics.

04. “Abusus non tollit usum?”

Q. Someone might respond with the proverb Abusus non tollit usum. Someone might read what Jack is saying and be willing to concede that mankind has misused the powers science has given them, but isn’t making that point, is he?

  • No, he’s “considering what the thing called ‘Man’s power over Nature’ must always and essentially be”.
  • Even if we had public ownership of these technologies, it’ll still mean that it’s only available to certain nations. 
  • However, even if a world state was achieved it still means the power of some over others.

And all long-term exercises of power, especially in breeding, must mean the power of earlier generations over later ones.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (The Abolition of Man)

05. “Humanity over time”

Q. Jack then focusses on that last point, namely that controlling reproduction is “the power of earlier generations over later ones”. What does he say?

  • He says that when it comes to social matters we must do what the physicists do – take time into account in our calculations!

…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. 

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (The Abolition of Man)
  • This contradicts the view which sees human progress as ever-increasing freedom from nature and human tradition.

Q. Lewis says “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”. What do you think of that?

  • If a generation ever achieves the power to truly shape its descendants, those descendants are the “patients” of that power. In other words, the patients will feel the consequences.
    • Eugenics, Contraception, Abortion

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.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (The Abolition of Man)
  • What a wonderful (and horrifyingly accurate) description of cell phones!

Q. Jack also says that power decreases as we come closer to our extinction. Why?

  • He says:

…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.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (The Abolition of Man)
  • A helpful analogy for understanding this is a ride share. The last person to receive the car will be the person with the least amount of gas, and the least distance to travel. The people closer to the beginning of the journey are the ones with the most control setting the direction you’re going.
  • Lewis asks us to imagine humanity reaching the level of necessary control in the 30th Century. This will be the generation to control all others… but even then the power will be wielded only by a subset of that generation. We wrestle control away from the fates, we determine our lives for ourselves.

Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men … There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man’s side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger. In every victory, besides being the general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows the triumphal car … …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?

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (The Abolition of Man)
  • In the ancient Greek pantheon, Clotho is one of the three goddesses of Fate. Clotho was the one who spun a human being’s “thread of life”, Lachesis gave it out, Atropos cut it off.
  • We will explore this topic even more next season when we read through “That Hideous Strength”.

06. “What different this time?”

Q. It’s noted that men have always tried to exercise power over others. What’s making this future  situation he’s describing new?

  1. Increased power

In the first place, the power will be enormously increased. Hitherto the plans of educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted and indeed, when we read them—how Plato would have every infant ‘a bastard nursed in a bureau’, and Elyot would have the boy see no men before the age of seven and, after that, no women, and how Locke wants children to have leaky shoes and no turn for poetry—we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses. But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (The Abolition of Man)
  • Conditioners of the past had very little power to exercise their theories.
    • Plato’s Republic
    • Sir Thomas Elyot
    • John Locke

2. Previous generations held to the Tao, handing on what they received, but “the conditioners have been emancipated from all that. It is one more part of Nature which they have conquered”. In other words, they’ll throw out the Tao entirely.

The second difference is even more important. In the older systems both the kind of man the teachers wished to produce and their motives for producing him were prescribed by the Tao—a norm to which the teachers themselves were subject and from which they claimed no liberty to depart. They did not cut men to some pattern they had chosen. They handed on what they had received: they initiated the young neophyte into the mystery of humanity which over-arched him and them alike. It was but old birds teaching young birds to fly. This will be changed. Values are now mere natural phenomena. Judgements of value are to be produced in the pupil as part of the conditioning. Whatever Tao there is will be the product, not the motive, of education. The conditioners have been emancipated from all that. It is one more part of Nature which they have conquered. The ultimate springs of human action are no longer, for them, something given. They have surrendered—like electricity: it is the function of the Conditioners to control, not to obey them. They know how to produce conscience and decide what kind of conscience they will produce. They themselves are outside, above. For we are assuming the last stage of Man’s struggle with Nature. The final victory has been won. Human nature has been conquered—and, of course, has conquered, in whatever sense those words may now bear.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (The Abolition of Man)
  • What happens when we step out of the Tao, and shape humanity according to our own precepts? We’ll explore that next week.

Wrap Up

Closing Thoughts

  • We’ll be spending a good amount of time in this chapter, and we’ll continue to revisit parts of it to make sure we’re tracking.

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David

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After working as a Software Engineer in England for several years, David moved to the United States in 2008, where he settled in San Diego. Then, in 2020 he married his wife, Marie, and moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin. Together they have a son, Alexander, who is adamant that Narnia should be read publication order.