C.S. Lewis opens The Abolition of Man with a schoolbook that teaches students to distrust their own loves. The result, he warns, is men without chests: intellect and appetite with no trained heart between them.

In this Mythic Mind lecture from the Fiction and Philosophy of C.S. Lewis course, Dr. Andrew Snyder (professor of philosophy and theology) covers the first two essays, “Men Without Chests” and “The Way.” He clarifies Lewis’s Tao, why sentiment needs education rather than sneering, and how this slim book underwrites That Hideous Strength.

Topics include moral education, the attack on objective value, and why a culture that mocks the chest cannot keep its head.