The Abolition of Man

Lewis describes the emerging era of history as characterized by “Man’s conquest of himself” (75). In this new order, man considers himself not as a creature endowed with a soul, but merely as an object in nature. Lewis finds the root of this tendency in early-modern thinkers like Francis Bacon, who believed that the true object of knowledge is “to extend Man’s power to the performance of all things possible” (78). This increase in the power of man leads to a tendency to “understand a thing analytically and then dominate and use it for our own convenience” (69). For example, early scientists dug up dead bodies to mutilate them for experiments and performed experiments on live animals. These scientists had to overcome a natural human revulsion to such actions. To Lewis, the more desensitized we become to these sorts of actions, the less human we become.

In the coming social order, Lewis predicts, human beings will be led by an elite group of leaders who have divested themselves of true humanity. Because they have denied the Tao, or the source of all humane and moral values, they have become less human. As Lewis puts it, “stepping outside the Tao, the have stepped into the void” (64). They, and not the Tao, will be the source and the arbiters of moral value. 

In the final pages of the book, Lewis discusses “seeing through things” (81), a main tendency of the modern approach to reason. To “see through things” is to analyze and debunk them, to constantly question motives, and to reduce reality to the lowest common denominator. Thinkers in the modern vein do not use the rational process to arrive at knowledge of truth. Instead, they fixate on pleasure and power. As Lewis states, “To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see” (81) and reason is now used to deconstruct truth instead of to discover it.

The new social order based on this ethos will be irrational because it will exclude values like “truth and mercy and beauty” (68) that human beings need. Animal instinct and the passions of the visceral part of man will trump the superior values of morality and virtue, which are derived from the rational rules of the Tao.