The Abolition of Man

by C.S. Lewis

a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.

‘Can you be righteous’, asks Traherne, ‘unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.’

give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it,

we remove the organ and demand the function.

The true doctrine might be a doctrine which if we accept we die.

A great many of those who ‘debunk’ traditional or (as they would say) ‘sentimental’ values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.

Instinct is a name for we know not what (to say that migratory birds find their way by instinct is only to say that we do not know how migratory birds find their way),

There never has been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world.

‘ideologies’, all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess.

The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour,

merely snatches at some one precept, on which the accidents of time and place happen to have riveted his attention, and then rides it to death—for no reason that he can give.

When all that says ‘it is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains.

I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.

it was born in an unhealthy neighbourhood and at an inauspicious hour. Its triumphs may have been too rapid and purchased at too high a price: reconsideration, and something like repentance, may be required.

‘I have not brought misery upon my fellows. I have not made the beginning of every day laborious in the sight of him who worked for me.’ (Ancient Egyptian. Confession of Righteous Soul.

‘He whose heart is in the smallest degree set upon goodness will dislike no one.’ (Ancient Chinese. Analects,

‘Nature urges that a man should wish human society to exist and should wish to enter it.’ (Roman. Cicero,

‘When the people have multiplied, what next should be done for them? The Master said, Enrich them. Jan Ch’iu said, When one has enriched them, what next should be done for them? The Master said, Instruct them.’ (Ancient Chinese. Analects,

‘Men were brought into existence for the sake of men that they might do one another good.’ (Roman. Cicero,

‘Man is man’s delight.’ (Old Norse. Hávamál ٤٧.)

‘What good man regards any misfortune as no concern of his?’ (Roman. Juvenal

‘Children, the old, the poor, etc. should be considered as lords of the atmosphere.’ (Hindu.

‘Regard him whom thou knowest like him whom thou knowest not.’ (Ancient Egyptian.

‘There, Thor, you got disgrace, when you beat women.’ (Old Norse.