By Veritas Libertatis
In February 1943 the University of Durham would be the first to receive what would become C.S Lewis’ signature book, The Abolition of Man. Delivered as a lecture with three parts, The Abolition of Man broke through conventional thought on education and challenged the methods of teaching. Intercollegiate Studies Institute called it “a deeply prophetic book whose message is more urgent today than ever.”1 In the first chapter, Men Without Chests, C.S Lewis lays the foundation for his argument about the paramount link between the mind and heart.
At the very beginning of The Abolition of Man, C.S Lewis argues that the modern education system is degrading emotion by making it subjective. Using the famous story of two tourists at a waterfall, he establishes that there are some things that should invoke certain feelings of awe and wonder within us. A waterfall is sublime, and if it does not make us feel that way something is wrong with us, not the waterfall. Lewis observed that modern educators were intentionally or unintentionally teaching “that all emotions aroused by local association are in themselves contrary to reason and contemptible” (p. 9). The end result of such methods installs within a young person two things: first that their emotions carry no particle of value, and second that if two people have different and opposite emotional reactions to the same thing, then both their feelings are justified even though they are contradictory. The heart of a young individual who learns to undervalue emotion will be thwarted on their spiritual and intellectual path towards truth.
Aristotle said: “The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful.”2 Lewis says that such an education is received by laying next to the inaccurate and poor emotion a just and correct feeling. One of C.S Lewis’s most famous quotes occurs when he describes the role of an educator to “irrigate deserts” (p.14) of vulgarity instead of tearing down jungles of “weak excess of sensibility” (p. 13). Interestingly enough, Lewis never accuses modern education of teaching youth to love what is ugly and hate the good. Instead, they attempt to belittle emotion and remove the heart from the educational process.
C.S Lewis continues his argument by explaining the relation between the heart and mind in education: “emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but cannot feel it” (p. 19). Education is, therefore, the union of the heart and mind in order to sculpt a complete and whole individual. Aristotle said, “The aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.”3 Reason tells us what we ought to like and dislike, while our heart does the actual liking or disliking. It is the educator’s responsibility to train both the mind and heart. When training is done only on the mind, we get what Lewis calls “Men without Chests” (p. 25).
Seventy-nine years ago, C.S Lewis spoke on an issue he believed to be of paramount importance, the creation of “Men without Chests.” C.S Lewis observed that while “Men without Chests” are considered Intellectuals, he could not disagree more. “Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so” (p. 25). With many years inside this system of education, we can see the creation of “Men without Chests” increase in abundance. The evidence is all around us, or even with us.
“No emotion is, in itself a judgement; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But as they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it” (p. 19).
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Bibliography:
“Aristotle Quote.” A-Z Quotes, www.azquotes.com/quote/1344612. Accessed 12 Mar. 2022.
“Top 10 C. S. Lewis Books You Should Read, How Colleges Went Woke, and Why Peter Thiel Says Competition Is for Losers.” Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 29 Apr. 2021, isi.org/intercollegiate-review/top-10-c-s-_lewis-books/?gclid=CjwKCAiAg6yRBhBNEiwAeVyL0Gn3QzyHXJMsAY4nVE-epmw_ZJqPtkrvZ_74XhInOwduMfuOGnbJ2RoCiEIQAvD_BwE. Accessed 12 Mar. 2022
Lewis, C S. The Abolition of Man, Or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. New York, Harperone, 2008.
