The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
I picked up an old copy of C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man and re-read major sections of it. It is one of those rare books that seems to reveal something new each time you return to it.
Interestingly, my first reading missed what I now believe is Lewis' central argument.
When I first encountered his famous phrase, "Men Without Chests," I assumed he was lamenting a generation that lacked courage, grit, or conviction. That certainly describes many of the challenges facing modern culture. But after reading the book again, I think Lewis is asking a much deeper question.
He is not primarily asking why people lack courage but why anyone would admire courage in the first place?
Lewis begins by criticizing an English textbook that teaches students to reduce statements like "That is beautiful," or "That was a noble act," into nothing more than expressions of personal feeling. What appears to be a lesson in grammar quietly becomes a lesson in philosophy. If beauty is merely my preference, and courage merely my opinion, then eventually goodness itself becomes subjective.
Lewis saw something many of us still struggle to recognize - Education is never merely the transfer of information - It is always the formation of people.
Every school, every family, every church, and every culture is teaching the next generation what deserves admiration, loyalty, sacrifice, and love. The only question is whether those values are treated as objective realities to be discovered or personal preferences to be invented.
This is such a crucial question in what makes a nation flourish!
My initial instinct is to always answer with words like resilience, discipline, courage, and grit. Those qualities certainly matter. But Lewis presses us one level deeper.
Where do those virtues come from?
If a civilization teaches that honor is merely sentiment, truth merely perspective, and justice merely social convention, should it be surprised when fewer people are willing to sacrifice for truth, honor, or justice?
Why are we shocked about the loss of character while quietly dismantling the foundation upon which character is built?
Lewis calls that foundation the Tao. Because that word carries different associations today, I find it more helpful to think of it as the inherited moral order—the objective realities of truth, goodness, beauty, justice, honesty, courage, gratitude, and self-sacrifice that civilizations have recognized across history.
I have struggled on how to write about this because I think Lewis stops a bit short and I have too much Van Til in me....
But- his point is not that every culture has been equally moral or that every religion teaches the same thing. Rather, it is that human societies consistently recognize certain virtues as worthy of admiration. They may disagree about how to apply them, but they rarely deny that they exist.
The comparison that came to my mind was the laws of logic. (It is part of my "L" list- Liberty, Law, Love, Language, etc).
No civilization invented the law of non-contradiction. People discovered it because reality itself is ordered in a way that makes rational thought possible. Likewise, Lewis argues that the deepest moral truths are not invented by cultures but recognized by them. Different civilizations express them differently, but justice, honesty, courage, and faithfulness are not simply products of popular opinion.
And here is a strange thing indeed- we cannot ignore them or break them without consequences! It takes courage to stand on these virtues as true whether you accept them or not. Some in our culture think you can change words or definitions and the stain of the consequences disappear- not at ALL! If you don't believe me, find the most law free person you know and go steal their car!
I would go one step further than Lewis (but I think I know why he stays short of this step). Scripture tells us why these moral realities exist. They reflect the character of God Himself. Truth is not merely useful; God is truthful. Justice is not merely a social agreement; God is just. Faithfulness, mercy, and love are not human inventions but reflections of the One in whose image we are made. They are created within our very DNA.
This also changes the way I approach education (don't worry, I am not going on my rant about epistemology).
Our greatest challenge today is not a lack of information. We possess more information than any civilization in history. The challenge is formation.
Without virtue, information becomes power without direction.
Knowledge tells us what we can do - Wisdom tells us what we ought to do.
Character gives us the courage to try it - and we fail time and time again!
That is why I believe flourishing nations require more than economic prosperity, military strength, technological innovation, or political freedom. They require citizens who have been rightly formed about what they should love—people who have learned not merely to think well, but to love what is true, good, and beautiful.
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
A civilization does not first lose its courage - it loses its reasons for admiring courage. And when the compass is lost, no amount of information can tell us which direction leads home.
As I come to the close of this series on How Nations Flourish, I've realized that every book we've explored has been asking a similar question from a different angle.
Some approached it through history. Others literature or philosophy- even theology.
In my additional reading this summer I have found common threads as well:
Tocqueville wondered what sustains liberty long after a constitution is written.
Lewis asked how a civilization teaches the next generation to admire courage, truth, beauty, and justice.
Machen insisted that truth is not merely useful—it is either true or false, regardless of how we feel about it.
Each author illuminated a different part of the landscape, yet all of them quietly pointed beyond themselves.
As I reflected on these conversations, I found myself asking a question that I had not planned to ask when this series began.
If human flourishing depends upon objective truth, moral virtue, and the dignity of every person, where do those realities come from?
Are they simply the products of history, biology, and social agreement? Or do they point to something deeper—to an order woven into reality itself?
That question cannot be answered by political philosophy alone. It CANNOT be settled by economics, sociology, or education.
Eventually, every worldview must answer it.
As a (rather disappointing) Christian, I have tried to be transparent throughout this series about the lens through which I read these books. I have not expected every reader to share that lens, but I have hoped we could honestly consider the questions together.
The final post will not be an attempt to "add religion" to the discussion. Rather, it will explain why I believe the biblical story provides the most coherent account of everything these authors have been observing: why human beings possess inherent dignity, why truth matters, why virtue is indispensable, and why nations flourish when they honor these realities.
In many ways, the final chapter is not the end of the conversation.
It is where the conversation has been leading all along.
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