There are a few ways I know a kindred spirit when I meet someone for the first time, and one is if they mention or quote one of my literary giants, Clive Staples Lewis—better known as C.S. Lewis.
In the height of World War II, Lewis delivered three lectures on consecutive nights, February 24–26, 1943, as part of the Riddell Memorial Lectures at the University of Durham. The series explored the relationship between religion and contemporary thought. Later that year, Oxford University Press published the lectures as the short but powerful book, The Abolition of Man: Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools.
Written more than eighty years ago, these ideas were urgent to those fighting the Axis powers in 1943. Today they carry an even stronger prophetic tone. The Abolition of Man is a profound critique of modern educational trends that threaten the human soul. Lewis argues that true education must nurture the soul by aligning it with objective reality, rather than reducing human beings to raw material for manipulation. For Lewis, the soul is the integrated person—reason, emotion, and will—oriented toward the eternal truths he calls the Tao, the universal moral law recognized across cultures.
Lewis begins by critiquing a textbook he dubs The Green Book, which teaches students that statements of value are merely subjective expressions of emotion, not reflections of objective qualities in the world. This severs education from the proper formation of the soul. By debunking sentiments as irrelevant, modern educators fail to cultivate "ordinate affections"—right emotional responses to reality. The result is what Lewis famously calls "men without chests": intellectually sharp but morally hollow.
The metaphor of the "chest" stands at the center of Lewis's vision. Drawing on ancient wisdom, he describes the human person as consisting of head (intellect), belly (appetites), and chest (magnanimity or trained sentiments). The chest serves as the vital liaison that allows reason to rule the passions rightly. Education that starves this middle element produces souls incapable of true virtue. As Lewis memorably puts it, the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.
Traditional education sought to conform the soul to reality through knowledge, self-discipline, and the cultivation of virtue. Its goal was not to invent new values but to initiate students into an existing moral order—the Tao—teaching them to love what is truly lovely and hate what is truly hateful. The new education, by contrast, seeks to conform reality to human wishes through technique, psychology, and control. It treats the human person not as a soul to be formed, but as raw material to be reshaped according to the desires of the powerful.
Lewis warns that rejecting the Tao undermines the very possibility of moral progress. A soul educated outside the Tao lacks the foundational sentiments needed to perceive ethical first principles. Without trained affections, students become intellectually clever but morally adrift—easy prey for propaganda, ideological conditioning, and the subtle manipulations of a technocratic age.
The ultimate consequence of this failure, Lewis argues, is nothing less than the abolition of man. In the book's powerful final section, he envisions a future dominated by "Conditioners"—a small elite armed with advanced science, psychology, and technology—who reshape human nature without any reference to objective value. Having stepped outside the Tao, they treat souls as mere nature to be conquered and engineered. The result is not a liberated humanity, but a race of dehumanized artefacts, hollow men produced by power for the sake of power.
We do not need to peer into a distant future to see this conditioning at work. In our own time, the Tao has been largely forgotten or dismissed as antiquated. Moral relativism, emotional manipulation, and ideological reprogramming permeate education, media, and culture. Lewis's warning, delivered over eighty years ago, now feels hauntingly prophetic.
Let us therefore humble ourselves and listen carefully to his words. Rather than continuing down the path of conquest over human nature, we must return to the ancient task of forming souls that are aligned with truth, goodness, and beauty.
After Lewis's death, his close friend Owen Barfield, author of the beloved book, The Silver Trumpet, offered this high praise for The Abolition of Man:
"It is a real triumph. There may be a piece of contemporary writing in which precision of thought, liveliness of expression and depth of meaning unite with the same felicity, but I have not come across it."
Owen Barfield
Another dear friend and colleague of Lewis was his secretary and editor, Walter Hooper. He was quoted as saying:
"If someone were to come to me and say that, with the exception of the Bible, everyone on earth was going to be required to read one and the same book, and then ask what it should be, I would with no hesitation say The Abolition of Man. It is the most perfectly reasoned defence of Natural Law (Morality) I have ever seen, or believe to exist. If any book is able to save us from future excesses of folly and evil, it is this book."
Walter Hooper
The Abolition of Man is a book I read annually before each new school year. My copy is filled with highlights, marginalia from top to bottom, and countless entries in my commonplace—and I am still not finished with it. This is a work that deserves your undivided attention. Lewis will meet you in its pages, and if you let him, he may change how you see education, the soul, and the future of humanity itself.