The Abolition of Man

When people talk about “the progress of applied science,” they often refer to it as “Man’s Conquest of Nature.” In this lecture, Lewis explores in what sense humanity can be said to hold power over Nature. He begins by considering three examples: “the aeroplane, the wireless, and the contraceptive.” In reality, each of these things is something held by certain people and sold or withheld for use by others. And in the case of the first two—the plane or the radio—human beings could be said to be the subject as much as the possessor of these technologies. One can, after all, be subject to both bombs (from warplanes) and propaganda (over the airwaves).

In the matter of contraceptives, there’s a sense in which all future generations are subjects of a power already being wielded by the current generation. In such a case, humans’ power over nature is simply “a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”

Lewis does not wish to argue that increased moral virtue would cure certain abuses, but to consider what people’s “power over nature” essentially is. Although we are adept at, for instance, recognizing the exercise of power by majorities over minorities, we don’t sufficiently recognize Time as a dimension in which such exercise of power occurs. But it is true that each generation exercises power over its successors, and that later generations try to resist or modify what has gone before. This complicates the common assumption that society is steadily progressing away from tradition.

If a generation finally attains the power to manipulate future generations into exactly what it desires, then the next generation will inevitably be weaker, even though it will have inherited powerful tools from its predecessors. And the longer this goes on—the closer the human race moves toward extinction—the fewer people there will be. So it is nonsense to speak of the human race growing steadily stronger.

It makes no sense, then, to really speak of humans having power over nature. According to modern scientific planners, it always ends up meaning “the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men.”In other words, any advance by humanity inevitably involves power over other human beings. The final stage will come when, by means of things like eugenics and propaganda, humanity will have obtained full control over itself. But when humanity has won the victory of making itself whatever it desires, what has it really won?

The power of humanity to shape itself at will inevitably includes the power to modify others at will, too. While this has always been true to some degree, nowadays the technological and political power to do so have dramatically increased. In addition, in the past the attempts to mold humanity were guided by the Tao; the mold, in other words, was pre-cut. If values are just natural phenomena, however, then the Tao as a motive for education will be missing. Any value judgments will be produced by education, but will not be its foundation. When human nature has been conquered, things like conscience, for example, are at the discretion of society’s conditioners. Conditioners will impose an artificial Tao.

At first, the “conditioners” might retain some sense of the Tao as something they have a duty to preserve. It’s now up to them to decide if they wish to instill this same sense of “duty” in other people. And in time, they will view the Tao as one more natural process over which they can exert control—a tool, not an innate motive.

Lewis claims he is not assuming that the conditioners would be “bad men.” In a certain sense, they aren’t really “men” at all. This is because they have sacrificed the sense of being part of traditional humanity in order to decide for themselves what “humanity” really is. By “[s]tepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void,” and their final conquest over nature proves to be, in fact, “the abolition of man.”

Without the Tao, the only motive that remains to the conditioners is their emotional sense. When there is no longer any objective sense of “It is good,” all that remains is “I want.” This means that the conditioners are motivated only by their own pleasure. When there are no objective measures of value, then conditioners cannot value one emotional impulse over another, except by the impulses’ relative strength.

While we can’t assume that the rejection of the Tao would strip away all “benevolent” impulses, Lewis is inclined to believe that history does not show many examples of people who stepped outside of traditional moral structures and then used their power benevolently. He thinks it is more likely that the “Conditioners will hate the conditioned,” because the conditioned at least can maintain a pretense of meaning in their lives. The conditioners will lack any basis for promoting good impulses in the conditioned, but will rely instead on irrational behaviors.

So when Man achieves victory over Nature, it really means that most people are subjected to the irrational impulses of a very few. This means that, ultimately, “Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man.” In other words, when we thought we were subduing nature, we were actually being led by nature.

It turns out, then, that every conquest over Nature actually strengthens Nature’s reign. To a certain extent, this process might produce great gains. But when it reaches the point that human beings, too, are reduced to mere Nature, then the same “being who stood to gain” has become “the being who has been sacrificed.”

This process, then, is trying to have it both ways. Lewis says that this is impossible—we must either be rational spirits which are subject to the Tao, or we are raw material to be manipulated at will by select masters who are subject only to their natural impulses. The Tao alone—belief in objective value—can save us from “a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.”

While some will accuse Lewis of hereby making an attack on Science, Lewis denies this. In fact, he even believes that a cure might be found in Science. He argues that Science and Magic actually arose at the same time, born of the same impulse during the 16th and 17th centuries. What was this impulse? Both science and magic sought to “subdue reality to the wishes of men,” by means of various applied techniques. In this way, both the scientist (like Bacon) and the magician (like Faustus) have the same goal. Though the founders of modern science certainly had certain good motives, it might be that the love of power has too often exceeded the love of knowledge for its own sake.

Lewis questions whether a better approach to natural philosophy—one that explains without explaining away—is possible. Such a science would need to “conquer Nature without being at the same time conquered by her and buy knowledge at a lower cost than that of life.” Perhaps analytical understanding must always be a “basilisk” that only sees by killing.

Lewis argues that this kind of “seeing” comes at too heavy a price. The whole point of seeing through something, after all, is to see something through it. One looks through a window in order to see the street or garden beyond. Similarly, it makes no sense to try to see through first principles. A world in which everything is transparent is an invisible world; thus, seeing through everything is the same thing as not seeing at all.