Lewis believes this lack of training stems from modern educators no longer believing in objective value.

The idea that objects like a beautiful waterfall intrinsically merit human responses. As a result, any expression of a human response is treated as merely a reflection of the speaker’s psychology, not as objective value.

He cites a range of traditions Platonic, Aristotelian, Christian, Hindu, and Taoist which he sums up as "the Tao," a repository of beliefs that uphold objective value. This belief in objective value is the notion that certain attitudes are genuinely true or false.