We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.’” Lewis takes issue with these two statements for two specific reasons: firstly, it will teach a young student, “that all sentences containing a predicate of value are statements about the emotional state of the speaker,” and secondly, “that all such statements are unimportant.” Lewis goes on to acknowledge that neither of the authors have actually stated this much in so many words, but Lewis, “is not concerned with what they desired but with the effect their book will certainly have on the schoolboy’s mind,” since Lewis has already conceded that the authors are as unaware of the harm they are causing, as the young pupil is of the harm that is subconsciously being done to him. Lewis presents his first case against the authors by quoting a section from their textbook, “‘When the man said This is sublime, he appears to be making a remark about the waterfall…Actually…he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feeling,’” which they clarify with, “‘This confusion is continuously present in language as we use it. ![]() Lewis makes sure to clarify that he does not believe the authors to be doing this out of intentional malice, “I do not want to pillory two modest practicing schoolmasters who were doing the best they knew: but I cannot be silent about what I think the actual tendency of their work.” In this view, the authors are as much a product of the greater problem they are propagating, than the root cause of it. Lewis sets up the lecture as a critical response to a pair of elementary textbook authors (referred to as Gaius and Titius), and the faulty reasoning by which the prose in their work (referred to as The Green Book) is irreparably corrupting the minds of young children with its promotion of subjectivist values. His first lecture, “Men Without Chests,” attempts to raise the reader’s consciousness to the prevailing menace that Lewis insists is eating away at the essence of humanity, and the method by which it permeates into popular thought. In his 1944 lecture compilation, The Abolition of Man, Lewis sets out to defend the reality of universal, absolute human values, against what he perceives to be the relativistic subjectivism of modern society. ![]() ![]() Lewis may very well be one of the most prolific writer’s of the 20 th Century, having gained eminence through his apologetics writings ( Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, etc.) and the popular children’s book saga The Chronicles of Narnia.
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