The founders of modernity denied the freedom of self-mastery, the freedom under the law of nature and of God, so that they could establish this new freedom as “the ultimate or main goal” of our humanity. But as C. S. Lewis also recognized, this modern freedom only liberates man’s individual sentient nature. It does this at the cost of denying him the self-understanding of what it truly means to be free as a man. This modern freedom from the natural law, or the Tao, is necessary to make us “like masters and possessors of nature” (122). Unfortunately, it leaves us as mastered and possessed by our concrete animal nature. Natural Right: Not Human Rights For Lewis, it leaves us as “trousered apes” or “men without chests.” For Manent, it leaves us as slaves to human rights. “Once established in its exclusive legitimacy, the idea of rights tends to become an empty form in search of its matter, and everything, literally everything can become matter for this form.