Last weekend, all eyes turned to Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia–“Mr. Jefferson’s university”–where violent right-wingers faced off against violent left-wingers. A similar clash occurred in Seattle that same day, an event completely overshadowed by the Charlottesville ugliness, and Portland saw more of the same the weekend before. Shaking my head over the videos of people yelling and swinging at each other, I turn from the computer screen and pick up my copy of The Abolition of Man to read this, the first sentence in the second chapter: “The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.”
Oh.
The Green Book, as you’ll recall (see The Abolition of Man, Part One) was a high school text sent to Lewis for his comment or recommendation. It got a lot more comment from him than it was looking for. The purpose of the authors was to teach young people to “see through” sentimentality and dogma and disregard traditional virtues as meaningless. The authors call for the “subjectivizing” of values—that is, proving that any sentiments judged to be commendable, or worthwhile, for their own sake are “merely” (fatal word!) expressions of the speaker’s own biases. But there would be no point in debunking suspect values unless you have other values in mind that are not so suspect, right? Lewis sketches the “correct” approvals and disapprovals as indicated in The Green Book. Approved: peace, democracy and tolerance. Disapproved, or at least outgrown: courage, patriotism, and courtesy.
(We have our own lists of approved and disapproved. One such system is derisively called “Political Correctness.”)
But the authors are fatally blind to the fact that without the latter (i.e., courage, patriotism, and courtesy), the former is impossible.
“It will be seen that comfort and security, as known to a suburban street in peace-time, are the ultimate values; [but] those things which can alone produce or spiritualize comfort and security are mocked. [It’s as if] Man lives by bread alone, and the ultimate source of bread is the baker’s van; peace matters more than honour and can be preserved by jeering at colonels and reading newspapers.”
What they don’t see is that under all lists of Approved and Disapproved is a deeper system, and that’s what Lewis addresses in Part Two of The Abolition of Man: “The Way.”
The Way goes by many names: Hindus refer to it as the Rta, to which even the gods are subject. In Western tradition it’s known as Natural Law. For the purpose of his argument, Lewis calls it the Tao: “It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.”
We all believe this, don’t we? For all our talk of relativism and finding our own truth, everyone has some sense of absolute right and wrong. Political discourse these days is nothing if not moral: to one side, the other side is not merely mistaken but nefarious or downright evil. I have to say, I see this kind of militant morality more on the left than on the right, and could it be because the left (much more than the right) has explicitly rejected Natural Law for a new improved system?
For the rest of “The Way,” Lewis shows how modern attempts to base our preference for peace, democracy, and tolerance on some solid footing other than Natural Law are doomed to fail. Appeals to utility (the greatest good for the greatest number), community, and common instinct all come up short, as he shows after close examination of each one. Nothing can perform the service of the Tao except the Tao itself. When we ditch it, what’s the last resort, our ultimate appeal?
Power. That’s what the street fights in our cities are all about–who has it, who wants it, who ends up with it.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
In That Hideous Strength, two sets of characters stand in direct opposition to each other. The little band at St. Anne’s have pledged their loyalty to the Director, who defers to his “Masters.” The Masters, in their turn, are subject to the highest power, understood as the Lord Himself, originator of Natural Law.
Jane’s conversation with Ransom in chapter 7 underscores this. “I don’t think I look on marriage quite as you do,” she says, in her best “sensible” mode. To which he replies, “Child, it is not a question of how you or I look on marriage but how my Masters look on it.” Natural Law is not merciless or unyielding: when Jane’s life is threatened, she is admitted to the circle without her husband’s knowledge or consent. That is not in defiance of the Law, but rather obedience to another part of the Law—to save her very life. “Only those who are practicing the Tao can understand it” (AoM, “The Way”), including what parts supersede others.
At Belbury there’s a group of “progressives” dedicated to replacing Natural Law with a set of “new, improved” values.* Mark is one of them, following the lead of Curry and Busby at the University; others are Steele, Crosser, and all their underlings and bureaucrats. Their goal is “reconditioning” society to think the way they do. But they don’t realize that conditioning works on them, too. Recall Miss Hardcastle in Chapter 5.1 on the subject of newspaper propaganda: “Don’t you see that the educated reader can’t stop reading the high-brow weeklies whatever they do? He can’t. He’s been conditioned.”
The progressives think that they’ve replaced outdated values with new ones, but they’ve actually undermined all value. That’s why, when Filostrato waxes eloquent about sexless reproduction and metal trees (Chapter 8.3), no one at the table can come up with an argument against him. They’ve scrapped the Tao. By selecting only the parts of it they like, they’ve weakened all of it and left themselves no firm principles to stand on.
But there’s a third group at Belbury, the “Inner Ring” whose purpose is not reforming humanity but 
remaking it. ** They are, in ascending order of venality, Filostrato, Straik, Wither, and Frost. (Feverstone belongs to a group of one, and Hardcastle is a special case.) To understand them, we should look at Lewis’s conclusion at the end of “The Way”:
[Some will say,] Why must our conquest of nature stop short, in stupid reverence, before this final and toughest bit of ‘nature’ which has hitherto been called the conscience of man? . . . You say we shall have no values at all if we step outside the Tao. Very well: we shall probably find that we can get on quite comfortably without them . . . Let us decide for ourselves what man is to be and make him into that . . . Having mastered our environment, let us now master ourselves and choose our own destiny.
If you say this, says Lewis, you are at least not guilty of self-contradiction, like those who suppose they can replace Natural Law with a better law. But you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to something far worse, as we’ll see in the third quarter of That Hideous Strength.
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* This is exactly the progressive agenda in the US today: the old values led to slavery, discrimination, and oppression. Therefore, we must rebuild on new values stressing tolerance for everyone, except everyone who disagrees with us.
**Today we call it transhumanism. Lewis did not foresee the rise of Silicon Valley and eager young tech moguls like Sergy Brin and Elon Musk. Their faith is in technology, not the dark forces of magic, but will they end up in the same place?