Personal note:
Since
C. S. Lewis points readers to this book, The Abolition of Man, in the
first chapter of his more familiar book,
Mere
Christianity,
these excerpts should help explain what Lewis meant by "Right and Wrong"
and by his many references to a "Law of Human Nature." They
show how he merged truth and behavior into a universal package of "good" values
found in all major religions.
Keep in mind, Lewis was writing this
multicultural philosophy in between some of his more "Christian"
books.
See
also C.
S. Lewis
Timeline
and
Lewis, Tolkien and
Barfield explore reincarnation and theosophy
Lewis seems to
see Chinese
Taoism as a universal ethical umbrella -- one that would include Christianity
as well as other religions. Symbolized by the
Yin Yang, the Tao would be the
supreme guide to moral and ethical values:
"The
Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the
Tao. It is the reality behind all predicates, the
abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature,
it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way the universe goes
on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge... into
space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in
imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all
activities to that great exemplar.
[page 30]
"This conception in all its
forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and
Oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply as
'the
Tao.'"
[page 31]
"...it is worth inquiry whether
there is any instinct to care for posterity or preserve the species.
I do not discover it myself.... Only people educated in a particular
way have ever had the idea 'posterity' before their minds at all. It
is difficult to assign to instinct our attitude towards and object
which exist only for reflective men.... Those of us who
accept the Tao may, perhaps, say that they ought to do
so...." [page
51]
A
contemporary of Aldous and
Julian
Huxley, Lewis may be
referring to their
evolutionary vision of a controlled society, in which the masses are
continually conditioned to behave in
pre-determined ways through increasingly sophisticated behavioral
"science."
See
Brave New World
"The final state is come when
Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and
propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology has obtained full
control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature
to surrender to Man.... We shall have
'taken the thread of life out of the hand of
Clotho' and be
henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. ...
But who, precisely, will have won it? For the power of Man to make
himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some
men to make other men what they please."
69-70
The significance
of the Tao:
"In the older systems both the
kind of man the teachers wished to produce and their motives for
producing him were prescribed by the Tao -- a
norm to which the teachers themselves were subject and from which
they claimed no liberty to departs... They handed on what they had
received: they initiated the young neophyte into the mystery of
humanity.... Judgments of value are to be produced in the pupil as
part of the conditioning. Whatever Tao there is will
be the product, not the motive of education."
71
"We do not look at trees either
as Dryads or as beautiful objects while we cut them into beams: the
first man who did so may have felt the price keenly, and the
bleeding trees in Virgil and Spenser may be far-off echoes of that
primeval sense of impiety. The stars lost their divinity as
astronomy developed, and the Dying God has no place in chemical
agriculture." 78
[referring to ancient myths in which the
sun
god died during the winter solstice]
"We reduce things to mere
Nature in order than we may 'conquer them.... Every conquest over
Nature increases her domain. The stars do not become Nature till we
can weigh and measure them; the soul does not become Nature till we
can psycho-analyze her. The wresting of power from Nature is also
the surrendering of things to Nature."79
Apparently,
the Chinese Tao replaces the
Bible as ultimate authority and guide for our lives -- and for the
common good:
Either we are rational spirit
obliged for ever to obey the absolute values of the Tao,
or else we are mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for
the pleasures of masters who must, by hypothesis, have not motive
but their own 'natural' impulses. Only the Tao proves a common human
law of action which can overarch rulers and ruled alike. A dogmatic
belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule
which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery."
81
"In the Tao
itself, as long as we remain within it, we find the concrete reality
in which to participate is to be truly human: the real common will
and common reason for humanity, alive, and growing like a tree, and
branching out, as the situation varies, into ever new beauties and
dignities of application. While we speak from within the
Tao
we can speak of Man having power over himself in a sense truly
analogous to an individual's self-control. But the moment we step
outside and retard the Tao as mere subjective product,
this possibility has disappeared." 82
"I hear rumours that Goethe's
approach to nature deserves fuller consideration -- that even
Dr. [Rudolf] Steiner
[occult founder of Waldorf Schools] may have seen something that orthodox researchers have
missed."85 [See
The Inklings:
Lewis, Tolkien and Barfield, who explored Theosophy and Reincarnation]
The last section
of the book, "Illustrations of the Tao," lists examples of "Natural
Law collected...."
"It will be noticed that writers
such as Locke and Hooker, who wrote within the Christian tradition,
are quoted side by side with the New Testament. This would, of
course, be absurd if I were trying to collect independent
testimonies to the Tao.... It is at least arguable that every
civilization we find has been derived from another civilization and,
in the last resort, from a single centre -- 'carried' like an
infectious disease or like the Apostolical succession."
91-92
This statement is
followed by 16 pages of quotes from various religions and civilizations
that illustrate the supposed reality and universality of
the Tao: Ancient Egyptian, Ancient
Jewish, Babylonian, Ancient Chinese, Hindu, Old Norse, Greek and
Roman....
More
about C. S. Lewis
| LILITH by George MacDonald |
Mere
Christianity
and
Warnings -
How mysticism & the occult are changing the Church
