"We make men without chests, and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."
-C. S. Lewis, The Abolition Of Man
Last night I started reading C. S. Lewis's book The Abolition Of Man, and I read this phrase "men without chests". Now, I've heard that phrase used many times, but now that I've actually read the chapter, Lewis meant something slightly different than I always thought, having not read the book before.
If I were to summarize the argument, it would be that there is an intrinsic quality in certain things - things in nature, things in literature, things in life itself - that requires a certain response from humans, and that quality is not given to the thing by our feelings, but is inherent within it. Mountains don't make us feel majestic, they are majestic. Babies don't make us feel precious feelings, they are themselves precious. A noble act isn't noble because it makes us feel noble feelings, it is inherently noble in a mysterious way. It is proper and right that we feel those things, but our feelings are not what give those things their admirable qualities - our feelings are just the correct response to them.
If a man walked by a gorgeous mountain view and had no ability to recognize the awe-inspiring quality of it in his own feelings - something would be a little wrong with that man. As Lewis says, his head and belly aren't connecting. He has no chest.
A man without a chest is a man who does not or cannot feel about certain things the way he ought. He can't recognize the good and true, the beautiful things in this world for what they are. His values are askew and his right feelings taught out of him. I would say that he can't see things the way God intended and created him to see them, because I believe God himself intended us to see glimpses of His character in the deeper feelings that certain things should inspire, and our God-given conscience is what tells us when we are not feeling about things as we should.
"Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it - believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit our approval or disapproval, our reverence, or our contempt." -Lewis
And that "taught out of him" part was particularly interesting to me. Lewis gave the example of an elementary textbook in which a story is told about two visitors viewing a beautiful waterfall. One declares that it is pretty, and one says "That is sublime"! The authors point out to the student that the waterfall itself isn't sublime, it is just giving the man sublime feelings. You can see the whiff of postmodernism and relativism here, can't you? Lewis spend the rest of the chapter arguing that no, the value of the waterfall does not lie in the man's feelings - there is something intrinsically sublime in the waterfall that rightly produced those feelings in the man, and by not teaching the child that fact, the textbook writers were training him that there is no deeper meaning in anything than our subjective feelings.
That whole example was frightening in that it is so easy to subtly undermine a person's better inclinations through their education. A person who is well-educated in the fullest sense is someone who has been taught how to feel about things as he ought to feel. A well-educated person likes certain things because he recognizes they are things worthy of being liked, because he has been taught from a young age what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is noble and what is base, what is true and what is false. People don't come to these proper views of things by their own feelings - they come to it by being carefully trained in the better things from a young age.
The implications for parents and educators, and especially those parents who take on the whole education of their children themselves, is obvious. We must show them the beautiful things, and help them absorb them into their soul. We must teach them what is right and noble, through all the means we can find, especially through the word of God, so that they can recognize the wrong and cowardly and sinful for what it is. We must give them true things to aspire to, to innoculate them against what is false. We must train them in righteousness through the word of God, so that they are thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:16-17). If that is not part of our homeschool or educational plan as parents, we are in danger of producing people without chests and crippling our children against fully living life as they could.
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Obviously C. S. Lewis says it better than me and this is his concept, so if you are interested in this idea at all, I highly recommend picking up a copy of The Abolition Of Man - even just the first chapter is worth it. I am going to be reading through The Abolition Of Man this month, and may have more posts coming about what I learn if you'd like to join me! I also saw that there is going to be a webinar from one of my favorite homeschool bloggers discussing it that I am considering purchasing as well!
That is really fascinating!!! So many times I've exclaimed over a majestic mountain or stunning sunset and wondered how other people were looking at the same mountain or sunset and were not feeling anything close to what I was feeling.
I truly DO believe it is the mountain itself that's majestic so HOW can two people look at it and only one sees/feels it?
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