Friday, September 13, 2013

The Lewis quote Bob was looking for

It's from The Abolition of Man.

“What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”
C.S. Lewis

3 comments:

B. Prokop said...

Thanks for finding that, Victor. All too often, I can recall some killer line, but for the life of me cannot remember when or where I heard/read it. We don't often think of Lewis as a "quote mine" (a phrase I first heard in reference to the Book of Revelation), but why should we be surprised that he is? Surely you can't spend a lifetime dedicated (at least professionally) to Great Literature without some of it rubbing off. One of my favorite things to quote from Lewis is "I wonder what they do teach them at these schools." Comes in very handy at times.

Ilíon said...

The quote is even better when one includes the context of his argument, the thesis of which might be put this way -- in the name of Freeing Man's Spirit From the Dead Hand of Religion, the humanist-cum-naturalist enslaves mankind to dead matter; in the name of Lifting Man to His Rightful Place in the Cosmos Beholden to None, the humanist-cum-naturalist makes mankind to be less than the brute beasts.

Ilíon said...

... and treatable as such.