In Mere Christianity (1953) C. S. Lewis’s discusses the objective ethical norm to which people appeal and by which they expect others to abide. He identifies it as the Natural Law, well known to the ancient Stoics as already elaborated in my article on Marcus Aurelius, but then Lewis asserts that although everyone knows about such a law, everyone breaks it. He further asserts that something or somebody is behind this basic law, for it could not have created itself. In fact this obvious principle of behavior is not created by humans, albeit it often inspires them to pattern their own positive laws on it in order to wisely govern their societies and polities. Natural law is for humans to obey. Different people use different labels for this law -- traditional morality, moral law, the knowledge of right and wrong, virtue, the Way. They can all be placed under the heading of Natural Law.

According to Lewis, we learn more about God from Natural Law than from the universe in general, just as we discover more about people by listening to their conversations than by looking at the houses they build. Natural Law shows that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness. However, Natural Law gives no grounds for assuming that God is soft or indulgent. Natural law obliges us to do the straight thing regardless of the pain, danger or difficulty involved. Natural Law is hard -- “as hard as nails.”

In Lewis’s first chronicle of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), the lion Asian predicts this hardness of God’s love by promising to save Edmund from the results of treachery. He says: “All shall be done. But it may be harder than you think.” When he and the wicked White Witch discuss her claim on Edmund’s life, she refers to the law of that universe as the “Deep Magic.” Aslan would never consider going against the Deep Magic; instead, he gives himself to die in Edmund’s place, and the next morning comes back to life. He explains to Susan that though the Witch knows the Deep Magic, there is a far deeper magic that she does not know. This deeper magic says that when a willing victim is killed in place of a traitor, death itself begins working backwards. The deepest magic works toward life and goodness.

In Narnia, as in this world, if an absolute goodness does not govern the universe, all our efforts and hopes are doomed. But if the universe is ruled by perfect goodness, Lewis says, we fall short of that goodness all the time; we are not good enough to consider ourselves allies of perfect goodness. In Narnia, Edmund falls so far short of goodness that he finally realizes, with a shock of despair, his need for forgiveness. At the end of Mere Christianity’s chapter titled “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe,” Lewis claims that until people repent and want forgiveness, Christianity will not make sense. Christianity explains how God can be the impersonal mind behind the Natural Law and also be a person. With all the brilliance of their natural philosophy, neither Plato nor Aristotle arrived at this insight about God—that since we cannot meet the demands of the law because of an original misstep which continues in the race, God actually became a human being to save us from our failure. The ancient Greek and Romans misguidedly believed that reason and pure rationality and logic was sufficient unto itself. Chesterton puts it thus: “Rome could do no more,” by which he means that unaided reason, as valuable as it is, could only go so far and no more.

But let’s examine a bit more closely the modern world. Lewis was deeply concerned that many people in the modern world are imperceptibly losing their belief in Natural Law. He spoke about this in the Riddell Memorial Lectures at the University of Durham, published in 1947 as The Abolition of Man. Lewis claims in Abolition that until quite recent times everyone believed that objects could merit our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt, that some emotional reactions were assumed to be more appropriate than others. This concept is vividly represented in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Lewis notes that Aristotle believed that the aim of education and the essence of ethics are to make pupils like and dislike what they ought. Moreover, according to Plato, we need to learn to feel pleasure for the pleasant, liking for the likable, disgust for the disgusting, and hatred for the hateful. In early Hindu teaching righteousness and correctness corresponded to knowing truth and reality. Psalm 119 says the law is “true.” The Hebrew word used for truth here is “emeth,” meaning intrinsic validity, rock-bottom reality, and a firmness and dependability as solid as nature. This meaning is reflected in the final book of Narnia, The Last Battle (1956), in which Lewis introduces a young man named Emeth who had grown up in an oppressive country where people worship an evil god named Tash. Despite his upbringing, Emeth is an honorable and honest man who seeks to do good. He dies worshiping Tash but finds himself in Asian’s presence. He responds with reverence and delight. Everything he thought he was doing for Tash was counted as service to Aslan instead. Because he liked the likable and hated the hateful, Emeth was Aslan’s friend long before he knew Aslan.

Lewis was alarmed by the number of people who deny the objectivity of the Natural Law and thus deny the permanence of certain basic values. In fact, Lewis’s analysis shows that if Natural Law is sentimental, all value is sentimental. No propositions like “our society is in danger of extinction” can give an adequate basis for a value system; no observations of instinct such as I want to prolong my life” give any substance to a value system. Why is our society valuable? Why is my life worth preserving? Why should human being have inalienable rights? Only the Natural Law -- asserting that human life has value -- gives a basis for a coherent value system. The modern world is proud of its skepticism toward all values but “if nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved,” Lewis claims. “If nothing is obligatory for its own sake, then all conceptions of value crumble. No values are independent of Natural Law. Anything judged to be good is such because of values in the Natural Law. The concept of goodness springs, from no other source.

According to Lewis, there never has been and never will be a radically new value or value system. The human mind can no more invent a new value than create a new primary color, but only those living by the Law know its spirit well enough to interpret it successfully. People who live outside Natural Law have no grounds for criticizing it, or anything else. A few who reject Natural Law intend to take the next logical step as well: living without any values, disbelieving all values, and choosing to live governed only by whims and fancies. The more reflective of those call themselves existentialists and create their own personal values as they move along.

Lewis’s poem “The Country of the Blind,” published in Punch in 1951, presents an image of these people. He imagines life as a misfit with eyes in a country of eyeless people who no longer believe vision ever existed. This poem tells of “hard” light shining on a whole nation of eyeless people who are unaware of their handicap. Blindness developed gradually through many centuries. At some transitional stage a few citizens still have eyes and vision after most people are blind. The blind are normal and up-to-date; ironically, they consider themselves “enlightened” and think that they have a push-button technological, rationalistic solution to a materialistic world governed by chance and mere impersonal mechanical laws. They use the same words their ancestors had used, but no longer know their concrete meaning. They still speak of light, meaning abstract rational thought. If a person with sight tries to describe the gray dawn or the stars or the green-sloped sea waves or the color of a lady’s cheek, the blind majority insist that they understand the feeling the sighted one expresses poetically in metaphor. There is no way to explain the facts to them. The blind who worship science and their own rationality ridicule the sighted one for taking figures of speech literally and concocting a myth about a sense perception no one has ever really had. If one thinks this is a far-fetched illustration, Lewis concludes, one need only try talking to famous people today about the truths of Natural Law which used to stand huge, awesome and clear to the inner eye. Lewis dubs them “the Controllers.”

One of those famous people is B. F. Skinner, who answers in Beyond Freedom and Dignity that the abolition of the inner person and traditional morality is necessary so that science can prevent the abolition of the human race. Lewis had already exclaimed in Abolition, “The preservation of the species? -- But why should the species be preserved?” Skinner does not provide an answer, but embraces Lewis’s devious scientific “Controllers” who aim to change and dehumanize the human race to fulfill their purposes more efficiently. Lewis satirizes this kind of progress in his poem “Evolutionary Hymn,” which appeared in the Cambridge Review in 1957. Using Longfellow’s popular hymn stanza pattern from “Psalm of Life,” Lewis exclaims: What do we care about wrong or justice, joy or sorrow, so long as our posterity survives? The old norms of good and evil are outmoded. It matters not if our posterity turns out to be hairy, squashy or crustacean, tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless. “Goodness = what comes next.” The poem concludes that our progeny may be far from pleasant by present standards; but that is inconsequential if they survive.

Lewis has often been unfairly accused of attacking science. In fact, he gives us an admirable scientist, Bill Hingest in That Hideous Strength (1945). Significantly, the supposed scientists who direct the NICE have Hingest murdered. For Lewis the enemy is not true science, fueled by a love of truth, but that applied science whose practitioners are motivated by a love of power. In Lewis’s opinion technological developments called steps in humankind’s conquest of nature actually just give certain people power over others. That trend begins in modern philosophy with Descartes’ dictum “I think therefore I am.” Discarding Natural Law can only increase the danger that some people will control others. Only Natural Law provides human standards that overarch rulers and ruled alike. Lewis even claims in Abolition that ‘‘dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.”

The Magician’s Nephew (1955), the tale of Narnia’s creation, portrays two characters, Jadis and Uncle Andrew Ketterly, who exemplify the Controllers. Both claimed to be above Natural Law; they have “a high and lonely destiny.” Jadis is a monarch and Uncle Andrew is a magician, but both typify modern science gone wrong. Each believes that common rules are fine for common people, but that singularly great people must be free -- to experiment without limits in search of knowledge, and to seize power and wealth. The result is cruelty and destruction. In contrast, the sages of old, the likes of Marcus Aurelius or Seneca sought to conform the soul to reality, and the result was knowledge, self-discipline and virtue. Two examples from Lewis’s verse illustrate this traditional wisdom. The 1956 poem “After Aristotle” praises virtue, describing Greeks who gladly toiled in search of virtue as their most valuable treasure. They would willingly die, or live in hard labor, for virtue’s beauty. Virtue powerfully touched the heart and gave unfading fruit, making those who love it strong. A second example is “On a Theme from Nicolas of Cusa,” published in the Times Literary Supplement in 1955. The first stanza notes how physical foods are transformed by our bodies when we assimilate them. In the second Lewis suggests that when we assimilate goodness and truth they are not transformed, but we are.

Abolition ends with Lewis’s admonition to pause before relegating Natural Law to no more than another accident of human history in a wholly material universe governed by chance and accident, for to “explain away” this transcendent reality  explains away all explanations and to “see through” the Natural Law is the same as not seeing at all. Indeed, if the blind lead the blind, the final destination is dubious at best.