The Abolition of Man

Lewis declares that elementary school textbooks are a good barometer of the state of education. As an example, he cites a recently published English composition book for elementary school children. Lewis refers to the book as The Green Book and its authors as “Gaius” and “Titius” because he does not want to hurt reputations, but at the same time, he feels compelled to point out what he views as the harmful philosophy inherent in the work.

Lewis quotes a passage from the book in which the authors allude to a story about the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge endorsed the view that a waterfall is sublime and rejected with disgust the view that it is merely pretty. Gaius and Titius take the opposite side to Coleridge; they claim that someone who says a waterfall is sublime is “not making a remark about the waterfall” but making “a remark about his own feelings” (2). Gaius and Titius use Coleridge’s observation as an example of bad writing which students should avoid.

For Lewis, this “momentous little paragraph” (3) reveals the authors’ hidden philosophical agenda. Lewis argues that the qualities people ascribe to things are not merely projections of their own feelings. To say that the waterfall is sublime is not to say “I have sublime feelings about the waterfall” but rather to say “I have feelings of awe which are caused by the waterfall.” The passage from The Green Book to which Lewis refers is dangerous because it leads children to believe that “all sentences containing a predicate of value are statements about the emotional state of the speaker,” and, furthermore, that “all such statements are unimportant” (4). Lewis stresses that the authors may not have intended to convey this message, but that it will nevertheless have dangerous consequences on children’s thinking as they grow up.

Other passages also come under Lewis’s scrutiny. One excerpt from The Green Book criticizes a mawkish advertisement for a Caribbean cruise, and in another book, “Orbilius” attempts to debunk sentimentality about animals. Lewis agrees with the criticisms on a literary level, but he faults the authors for not presenting their examples alongside examples of good writing on the same subject. Instead, their criticism seems to imply that all sentiments about travel or about animals are irrational and to be avoided.

Again, Lewis sees their general disapproval of emotional writing as a dangerous message to convey to youngsters, because the general tendency of modern thought is to repress legitimate emotions and cultural associations in the interest of scientific rationalism. The Green Book does not accomplish its goal of teaching children how to write well in English; instead, “another little portion of the human heritage has been quietly taken from them before they were old enough to understand” (11). The authors go beyond their competence as English teachers in order to push a philosophical agenda that is unfair to the parents and teachers who buy the book expecting only grammar instruction.

Lewis contrasts the point of view of the authors of The Green Book with an older philosophy of education that views the training of the affections or sentiments as the basis for morality. According to this philosophy, the child needs to be taught which things are likable and desirable and which are hateful and repugnant. Ancient systems of ethics base themselves on the idea of inherent moral value, such as the Chinese philosophy of the Tao, or the governing principle of the universe and human behavior. Such a view suggests that objects in the world have inherent qualities and could merit our approval or disapproval. In contrast, the modern view advocated by The Green Book produces “Men without Chests” (25)—people who are indifferent to sentiment and thus cut off from morality.