"In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment" wrote Lewis in The Abolition of Man. "The crudest sentiment... about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. The head roles the belly though the chest--the seat 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."

In the Abolition of Man, Lewis shows a mindset in this work. But it is founded, he argues, on a grave mistake, namely that morality is entirely the product of social necessity and conditioning, that there is no such thing as a moral absolute a

The fundamental question, turgid as it may sound, is this: does goodness or beauty originate inside the human mind or outside it? Is it a perception we create in ourselves, or something external and real we must train ourselves to know? We are used to saying "beauty lies in the eye of the beholder." But does it? Maybe it lies somewhere else entirely, and the task of life is to learn how to recognize and reproduce it.

But as Lewis chillingly observes, what begins as everyone fashioning rules to suit himself always ends with others-the select few who at any time really govern our affairs-deciding how we should behave and what we should spend our time doing. But pretend, for a moment, that this view of human beings is accurate--that we can be reduced to genetic inputs and programmed for life. In that case, genetic selection would not violate human nature; it would merely demonstrate that the traditional conservative view of human nature isn't accurate. This objection thus amounts to little more than philosophical insecurity. Ok, so say we drop the pretentious talk about the abolition of man. Cloning, genetic selection, and the like still pose some serious moral questions--right? Of course they do. But those questions aren't really new, and they don't involve issues as abstract as "human nature." Reproduction has always involved qu

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Abolition Lewis, Law Law, American Indian, Lewis Abolition, Planned Parenthood, human nature, moral codes, wrote lewis, genetic selection, goodness beauty, view human, abolition lewis,