Abolition of man homework #3

Rossi, 1

Michael Rossi
October 19, 2009
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition
Select two quotations that you think are the most important from the section of the text "The Abolition of Man." Then summarize his argument in one paragraph.

Quote one: “Man’s conquest of himself means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nations are at present laboring to produce” (Lewis 75).

Quote two: “But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away” (Lewis 81).


In Lewis’s final section of his book he speaks of how humanity’s misperception of conquest will lead to their demise. According to Lewis humanity has in fact conquered nature, but in doing so itself: “At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’- to their irrational impulses’ (Lewis 67). As the glare of our conquest shines outward, mother nature reveals that we are only conquering what has been permitted for us to conquer by other men. We as a people must except this as a basis for not even our questions will be valid if humanity cannot clearly see this one, objective basis.