MAN S hakespeare's King Lear tried to cast off the responsibilities of his office but retain its glory. He ended up homeless, isolated, despised, persecuted, exposed to the elements. Modern man, says C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man , is making the same mistake.
Kings have no choice but to fulfill the duties of the office they inherit.
Attempts to change these responsibilities result in abdication, a giving up of one's humanity. The Abolition of Man , originally composed as a series of three lectures delivered at the University of Durham in February 1943, is one of more than a dozen works of Christian apologetics written by Lewis. These are the apologetic works par excellence . In this brief but challenging book, Lewis examines what happens if we reject the moral law that all civilizations have to some degree taught and embodied. He argues that if we refuse to submit to it, either by asserting the authority to change it or by denying its existence altogether, we become less than human.