My Name is Ben Faxon. I am a freshman and I am excited to begin my journey at Bucknell University. My intended majors are Biology and Environmental Science. I have recently read the first two chapters of The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. The chapters discuss, in Lewis’s view, the problems with modern intellectuals and what can be done to remedy the issues. In the first chapter, Lewis criticizes two authors/professors whose identities he masks by calling them Gaius and Titius. Chapter two discusses an imaginary innovator, that Lewis uses to signify the importance of evidence and that certain human instincts are more important than others. Because of the current issues that people in Lewis’s time were experiencing, The Abolition of Man was written to inspire Lewis’s readers to change the way they think.
The majority of The Abolition of Man is centered around Lewis’s belief of “the Tao.” The Tao is ancient “conception in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike…” (Lewis 18). Basically, the Tao is the belief that, to humans, some things are true, while others are false. Gaius and Titius, as well as many professors in Lewis’s eyes, dismiss this idea, creating “Men without Chests.” Right after his discussion of the Tao, Lewis proposes the theory of “Men without Chests,” which symbolizes the presence of people who lack, due to education from those like Gaius and Titius, emotions that align with critical ideas and thoughts. Lewis claims that the heads of the Men without Chests “are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so” (Lewis 25). Lewis means that Men without Chests are just as smart as other intellectuals, but lack the knowledge and emotion to truly understand the Tao.