Book

The Abolition of Man

In the classic The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis, the most important Christian writer of the 20th century, sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society.

(6 total)

Characters

C. S. Lewis (6)

“And all the time — such is the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more “drive”, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or “creati…”

— C. S. Lewis, amazon.com

“We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may 'conquer' them.”

— C. S. Lewis, amazon.com

“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science a…”

— C. S. Lewis, amazon.com

“It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.”

— C. S. Lewis, amazon.com

“What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”

— C. S. Lewis, amazon.com

“What is now common to all men is a mere abstract universal, an H.C.F. [Highest Common Factor], and Man's conquest of himself means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nat…”

— C. S. Lewis, amazon.com