Lewis’s third essay names the endgame: when “man’s conquest of nature” becomes a few conditioners remaking everyone else, humanity abolishes itself. Power without the Tao is not progress. It is patients of power wearing the mask of freedom.

In this Mythic Mind lecture from the Fiction and Philosophy of C.S. Lewis course, Dr. Andrew Snyder (professor of philosophy and theology) finishes The Abolition of Man: eugenics and scientific education as predestination, existence-before-essence as a false anthropology, and why That Hideous Strength needs this slim book as its spine.

Topics include the conditioner class, nature reduced to raw material, and why a culture that rejects objective value cannot keep “man” as anything but a temporary slogan.