C. S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society.
“And all the time--such is the tragi-comedy of our situation--we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive,' or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity.' In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.”
“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.”
It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.Highlighted by 166 Kindle customers
The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.Highlighted by 156 Kindle customers
In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.Highlighted by 145 Kindle customers
The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.Highlighted by 144 Kindle customers
The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in.Highlighted by 136 Kindle customers
Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.12Highlighted by 130 Kindle customers
Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.Highlighted by 125 Kindle customers
A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.Highlighted by 122 Kindle customers
If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.Highlighted by 104 Kindle customers
When all that says ‘it is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains.Highlighted by 91 Kindle customers
1. Men Without Chests
2. The Way
3. The Abolition of Man
Appendix--Illustrations of the Tao
Notes
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