by
C.S. Lewis(1)
What an excellent book. The book is direct, easy to understand, and incisive. Lewis takes a very, very important issue and goes right to the heart of it. He examines the false belief that value is assigned by the self, rather than belonging to the nature of things. He begins with an example.
Two people look at a waterfall. One calls it "pretty," the other "sublime." Why the difference? The difference seems obvious, different people assign different values to the same thing. From this, the conclusion can be drawn that value exists only in the self, in the subject which grants value to external objects. In other words, the value of things is mere sentiment, a feeling assigned to external objects by observers. This view may be called the sentiment theory of value, and Lewis contrasts it with what he calls "traditional morality."
By "traditional morality" Lewis means norms for behavior that we have inherited from the past and that apply to all members of society. According to these norms, certain acts are good, others bad. Nevertheless, if the source of value lies in the self, then morality is determined by the self as well. Just as the self assigns value to a waterfall, it can also assign value, whether something is good or bad, to a particular course of action. This implies that the self is free to create its own right and wrong without reference to traditional norms. Of course, a person could choose to respect traditional values. But that decision would be a decision of the self, and not something a person intrinsically must do regardless of their feelings in the matter. In either case, the self determines right and wrong. From this perspective, all things are lawful for those who know that they are "truly free." That would by the sentiment theory of value carried to its logical conclusion.
Lewis then calls attention to the fact that the sentiment theory of value is often used by its proponents to debunk traditional morality. The debunkers, however, are not value free. They wake up in the morning like the rest of us, and once awake, they act. By the mere act of acting they espouse certain values. But whatever values they espouse, these will fall under the same ax that they would lay to the trunk of traditional morality. If traditional values are to be debunked, then all values should be debunked. Logically, the debunkers should believe nothing. They should be pure Pyrrhonian skeptics. But they are not. They are only skeptical about traditional values. Their own are seemingly exempt.
Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people's values: about the values current in their own set they are not nearly sceptical enough.(2)
If the debunkers were consistent, if they could think through to the end, they will surely recognize that all thought and action must have its starting point, its original premises. Lewis calls this set of first ethical premises the Tao. The norms of the Tao are essentially the same, regardless of time, place, or culture. In his appendix, Lewis gives illustrations of the Tao, taken from cultures all over the world. Without this universal norm, there can be no starting place for any morality whatsoever.
This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained.(3)
But what happens to those who ignore the Tao, who claim to live as if moral value is mere sentiment and nothing more? Lewis calls such persons "men without chests." Such people are torn between two irreconcilable realities. On the one hand there is the world of valueless objects, dead facts received in the mind by sense impressions and recalled by memory. On the other hand, there are raw instincts, wants, and desires emerging out of the belly. Between the two lies the heart. In a real person the heart is educated. It receives the Tao, is nurtured in it, and by it, directs the instincts and desires in light of the facts received by the intellect. But without the Tao, there is no heart, a person without a chest. Here is Lewis,
As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the "spirited element." The head rules the belly through the chest the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest Magnanimity Sentiment these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal. The operation of The Green Book and its kind is to produce what may be called Men without Chests(4)
What happens to a society governed by dead facts and raw desire? If values are mere sentiment, if they are arbitrarily created by the self, then there must be a core self, a value free center capable of receiving and expressing any number of alternative value systems. From there, it is but a short jump to believing that this malleable self can be made over, retooled by the right set of genetic, social, or economic conditions to take the "right" shape. As this assumption becomes widespread, there will be no lack of social engineers who seek to remake the individual and society along new lines. The result is always the same the destruction of humanity by programming designed to save it. One need only think back a bit, the Nazi and communist experiments come to mind.
Of course, it must be said that the partisans of the traditional morality promote their views as well. It might even be said that they "impose" their universal code. But there is a critical difference between themselves and the social engineers. For the social engineers, human beings are infinitely plastic and can be shaped accordingly. For a traditionalist, there is a substantial human self which cannot be violated. The essence of that form is found in the Tao. As a result, the traditionalist will seek to nurture the self that already exists, rather than create a new self along new lines. For the social engineers, however, human beings can be kneaded and shaped into any form whatsoever without regard to their intrinsic humanity. Their vision leads to the Third Reich. The traditional vision leads to the Bill of Rights, the conception that all human beings have an essential nature that must be protected against infringement of any kind.
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 no motive but their own "natural" impulses. Only the Tao provides a common human law of action which can over arch rulers and ruled alike.(5)
Lewis even envisions a world where future generations would be genetically altered to have specific feelings of value and not others. This brave new world is not here yet, but certainly the requisite science is advancing rapidly. And once the science is in place, there will be those who urge us to genetically modify future generations for their own benefit. In fact, such people are already among us. The Harvard trained sociobiologist E.O. Wilson sees it coming and he favors it. In his view, feelings of value evolved in order to motivate survival behaviors. These motivators are located in the brain, primarily the limbic system, and once that can be genetically altered, we "must consciously choose among the alternative emotional guides we have inherited."
At this point let me state in briefest terms the basis of the second dilemma, while I defer its supporting argument to the next chapter: innate censors and motivators exist in the brain that deeply and unconsciously affect our ethical premises; from these roots, morality evolved as instinct. If that perception is correct, science may soon be in a position to investigate the very origin and meaning of human values, from which all ethical pronouncements and much of political practice flow.(6)
Success [the capacity to genetically alter the motivators] will generate the second dilemma, which can be stated as follows: Which of the censors and motivators should be obeyed and which ones might better by curtailed or sublimated? These guides are the very core of our humanity. They and not belief in spiritual apartness distinguish us from electronic computers. At some time in the future we will have to decide how human we wish to remain in the ultimate biological sense because we must consciously choose among the alternative emotional guides we have inherited. To chart our destiny means that we must shift from automatic control based on our biological properties to precise steering based on biological knowledge.(7) This idea of modifying future generations is not new. It is old, and it has taken many forms. In Lewis' day, two movements were especially prominent, Nazism and Communism. The Nazis were banking on a purified gene pool, the Communists thought a new relation to the means of production would produce the requisite social being. Everyone knows that these experiments led straight to the horror chambers. But the governing assumption, the belief that we humans can create value, permeates our society. It is the doctrine of "free choice," the belief that every individual has the right to choose his or her value system apart from the Tao. When this concept is carried to its logical conclusion, it produces what Lewis calls the "abolition of man."
The process which, if not checked, will abolish Man, goes on apace among Communists and Democrates no less than among Fascists. The methods may (at first) differ in brutality. But many a mild eyed scientist in pince nez, many a popular dramatist, many an amateur philosopher in our midst, means in the long run just the same as the Nazi rulers of Germany. Traditional values are to be 'debunked' and mankind to be cut out into some fresh shape at the will (which must by hypothesis, be an arbitrary will) of some lucky people in one lucky generation which has learned how to do it.(8)
Some Theological Considerations
There has never, in my mind, been a credible philosophical or logical argument against pure Pyrrhonian skepticism in regards to subject, object, and value. For all we know, values are assigned by the self and external reality may be little more than a bare skeleton given flesh and dress by the additions of our minds. Since we can never escape the self and view ourselves and external objects from some third point outside both, we cannot objectively discover whether value is in the mind, in the objects themselves, or in some combination of the two.
There are, of course, those who believe they really know the origin of value. E.O. Wilson claims that value is created materially through DNA encoding. In that view, matter creates value. The same could be said for psychogenic drugs. They change the mind's perception of value by changing the material composition of the brain. But none of this proves that matter, DNA, the material brain, are prior to mind or value. There could be a universal mind which uses drugs or DNA to change particular manifestations of its values by changing a given brain or genetic code. Mind could be prior to matter rather than vice versa. We do not know.
A similar conundrum applies to theology. In the encounter with the divine, are God's properties created by the self or revealed to the self? This, to my mind, is the fundamental question of contemporary theology, the difference between Schleiermacher and Barth. The same applies to hermeneutics. Does Scripture narrate God's words and deeds, or are these so called divine words and deeds simply creations of the biblical people as they perceived the Sublime? Apart from faith, there is no way to settle the matter, just as we cannot determine whether mind is prior to matter or conversely. It seems absurd to me, however, to attribute to the self properties manifestly apparent in God. In actual practice, we don't do this with other realities, the objects all around us.
When I was thirteen, my younger brother and I were in the basement knocking out the wall to build another. I had been having some doubts about the Genesis story of creation, as well as status of things (like God) that presumably could not be experienced. I asked my brother what would happen to us if we no longer believed in God. He replied that it wouldn't be a problem, for if we didn't believe in God, then for all practical purposes God would not exist. If one assumes that God's properties are creations of the self, then it seems only logical to assume that God is a creation of the self as well. Why hold back? If we want to follow Schleiermacher, why not follow Freud and consider God an illusion?
Theologically, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, the Counselor who truthfully witnesses to the Son in whom the character of the Father is accurately made manifest. When that is assumed, the properties of God are not created by the self, but received by the self through the revelation of the Son made subjectively real by the work of the Holy Spirit. These are faith statements. They express orthodoxy. They cannot be proved. For all we know, Jesus Christ may have lied when he spoke of God, and even if he spoke the Truth, the Spirit could lead us astray in receiving his words. Faith does not believe this. Faith claims we know aright. And if we or the devil lead ourselves astray, there is the faith that God will progressively correct past errors. Faith is required. Just as we cannot step outside ourselves and discover whether how much of reality lies in the things themselves or in the mind, we cannot step outside ourselves in relation to God to see if we have imagined him or perceived him aright.
The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that the unknown God has objective properties which are accurately given in the Son, and these qualities are truthfully realized in the self through the work of Spirit. This triune structure, however, can be applied to knowing in general. The other, the unknown thing, is revealed in its objective properties that appear before us, and from there, we rightly receive it in the mind. We do not create its value, its properties, its essence. They are given by the thing itself, and more or less accurately received in the mind and heart. By faith, we believe that we have seen aright, and although we know at times we have been mistaken, we assume that further investigation will reveal what lies before us with greater accuracy. That is how we live, by faith, and virtually everyone does so regardless of their philosophical opinions. And if we believe otherwise and accept the sentiment theory of value, that is held in faith as well.
Hume saw aspects of this quite clearly. He knew that it could never be proved that the self actually perceived objects as they are in themselves. Nevertheless, in his view, nature insists that we take the real world as it is, regardless of how clever a philosopher may be in proving that we cannot trust our sense impressions. Here is how he describes the matter.
But a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have an constant influence on the mind: or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally and steadily to prevail. All discourse, all action would immediately cease; and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence. It is true; so fatal an event is very little to be dreaded. Nature is always too strong for principle. And though a Pyrrhonian may throw himself or others into a momentary amazement and confusion by his profound reasonings; the first and most trivial event in life will put to flight all his doubts and scruples, and leave him the same, in every point of action and speculation, with the philosophers of every other sect, or with those who never concerned themselves in any philosophical researches. When he awakes from his dream, he will be the first to join in the laugh against himself, and to confess, that all his objections are mere amusement, and can have no other tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind, who must act and reason and believe; though they are not able, by their most diligent enquiry, to satisfy themselves concerning the foundation of these operations, to remove the objections, which may be raised against them.(9)
But Hume lived in a time quite different from our own. His was a world profoundly shaped by a Christian legacy, a legacy now in the process of disintegration. Contrary to his opinion, it wasn't nature that assured the veracity of the external world. Rather, it was given through faith in the Christian God. Prior to Christianity, Hume's remote pagan ancestors lived in a world which could be changed in an instant. By sorcery or the whim of the gods, human beings could suddenly be transformed into a bird, a wave, or a puff of smoke.(10) But Christianity changed all that. Because God was one, because God was true, reality and the self were unified, perception was accurate, and reality was really out there, pretty much the way we thought it was. And part of reality was value, the good, the true, and the beautiful, guaranteed in their substantial nature by a beneficent God who grounded all things.
We don't live there anymore. We live in a pagan universe in which the link between subject and object has been severed, or more accurately, the object is simply seen as the work of the subject. Examples are legion. The "Yaqui Way of Knowledge" is as good example as any.(11) There, the shaman Don Juan, by means of the ancient art of peyote, assumes the forms of living animals, travels through time and space, and enters the unknown beyond ordinary perception. These inner journeys are quite real. In fact, they are the real world. Or, to put it another way, the so called "real world" of everyday experience is simply one of many alternative worlds, all more or less realized by the mind.
From there, it is but a short jump, in fact, the jump is already made, to a belief in the occult, to psychic powers, self realization, demythologizing, deconstruction, Jonestown and social and self programming of any and every sort. And if one thinks these things belong only to the fringe, it must be remembered that a goodly portion of our national life is governed by the belief that value can be assigned to products by relentless advertising, that politics is image, policy spin doctors, and character, public relations.
God created us, and when we damage ourselves by violating the external Tao, we can only be saved by something external as well. In other words, we cannot save or recreate ourselves. The ultimate consequence of self creation is the destruction of society and the slaughter of millions. God lets these things happen, but it is not his perfect will. There is a way out to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and avoid any and every alternative natural and supernatural reality but one: the revelation of the saving life of Jesus Christ known in the power of the Spirit. And there is a corollary, the thorough going rejection of the sentiment theory of value.
Endnotes
1. Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man. New York: MacMillian Company, 1957.
2. Lewis, p. 18.
3. Lewis, p. 28.
4. Lewis, pp. 15 6.
5. Lewis, pp. 46.
6. Wilson, Edward O. On Human Nature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978, p. 5.
7. Wilson, Edward O. On Human Nature, p. 6.
8. Lewis, p. 48.
9. Hume, David. Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning Principles of Morals. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902, p. 160.
10. See for example, Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization. New York: Doubleday, 1995, pp. 133.
11. Casteneda, Carlos. The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
March, 2002
