The Abolition of Man

by C.S. Lewis

pons asinorum

ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.

Acceptance of false premises can lead to all manner of trouble.

the mere trousered ape who has never been able to conceive the Atlantic as anything more than so many million tons of cold salt water.

"The mere trousered ape" - so many of those it seems these days; Trumpists.

things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time.

A literary phrasing.

If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.

Or as Nietzsche said, "nothing is true, everything is permitted" - which, being itself false (i.e. something is true), cannot hold.

But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man’s mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut.

Unfortunately those with the most open, because they're empty, minds are the most vocal.

This is what we happen to like, and go on to condition men in the way most likely to produce it.

Lewis seems to have read Huxley's, "Brave New World" before writing this.

I even suggest that from Science herself the cure might come.

Cf. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his work.