BRAVE NEW WORLD
by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
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Chapter Seventeen
ART, SCIENCE?you seem to have paid a fairly high
price for your happiness," said the Savage, when they were alone.
"Anything else?"
"Well, religion, of course," replied the Controller. "There used to
be something called God?before the Nine Years' War. But I was
forgetting; you know all about God, I suppose."
"Well ?" The Savage hesitated. He would have liked to say something
about solitude, about night, about the mesa lying pale under the moon,
about the precipice, the plunge into shadowy darkness, about death. He
would have liked to speak; but there were no words. Not even in
Shakespeare.
The Controller, meanwhile, had crossed to the other side of the room
and was unlocking a large safe set into the wall between the
bookshelves. The heavy door swung open. Rummaging in the darkness
within, "It's a subject," he said, "that has always had a great interest
for me." He pulled out a thick black volume. "You've never read this,
for example."
The Savage took it. "The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New
Testaments," he read aloud from the title-page.
"Nor this." It was a small book and had lost its cover.
"The Imitation of Christ."
"Nor this." He handed out another volume.
"The Varieties of Religious Experience. By William James."
"And I've got plenty more," Mustapha Mond continued, resuming his
seat. "A whole collection of pornographic old books. God in the safe and
Ford on the shelves." He pointed with a laugh to his avowed library?to
the shelves of books, the rack full of reading-machine bobbins and
sound-track rolls.
"But if you know about God, why don't you tell them?" asked the
Savage indignantly. "Why don't you give them these books about God?"
"For the same reason as we don't give them Othello: they're
old; they're about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now."
"But God doesn't change."
"Men do, though."
"What difference does that make?"
"All the difference in the world," said Mustapha Mond. He got up
again and walked to the safe. "There was a man called Cardinal Newman,"
he said. "A cardinal," he exclaimed parenthetically, "was a kind of
Arch-Community-Songster."
"'I Pandulph, of fair Milan, cardinal.' I've read about them in
Shakespeare."
"Of course you have. Well, as I was saying, there was a man called
Cardinal Newman. Ah, here's the book." He pulled it out. "And while I'm
about it I'll take this one too. It's by a man called Maine de Biran. He
was a philosopher, if you know what that was."
"A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and
earth," said the Savage promptly.
"Quite so. I'll read you one of the things he did dream of in
a moment. Meanwhile, listen to what this old Arch-Community-Songster
said." He opened the book at the place marked by a slip of paper and
began to read. "'We are not our own any more than what we possess is our
own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We
are not our own masters. We are God's property. Is it not our happiness
thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider
that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and
prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they
suppose, their own way?to depend on no one?to have to think of nothing
out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment,
continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of
another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that
independence was not made for man?that it is an unnatural state?will do
for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end ?'" Mustapha
Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned
over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and in his deep voice
once more began to read: "'A man grows old; he feels in himself that
radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which
accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself
merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing
condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an
illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age;
and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and
of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they
advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction
that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious
sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the
passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and
less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less
obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be
absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels,
sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and
inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its
life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal
existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from
without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something
that will never play us false?a reality, an absolute and everlasting
truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is
of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it,
that it makes up to us for all our other losses.'" Mustapha Mond shut
the book and leaned back in his chair. "One of the numerous things in
heaven and earth that these philosophers didn't dream about was this"
(he waved his hand), "us, the modern world. 'You can only be independent
of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take
you safely to the end.' Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right
up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of
God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.'
But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is
superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful
desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for
distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very
last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to
delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of
something immovable, when there is the social order?"
"Then you think there is no God?"
"No, I think there quite probably is one."
"Then why? ?"
Mustapha Mond checked him. "But he manifests himself in different
ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the
being that's described in these books. Now ?"
"How does he manifest himself now?" asked the Savage.
"Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't
there at all."
"That's your fault."
"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with
machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make
your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and
happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe.
They're smut. People would be shocked it ?"
The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel
there's a God?"
"You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with
zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another
of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the
finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one
believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been
conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes
for other bad reasons?that's philosophy. People believe in God because
they've been conditioned to.
"But all the same," insisted the Savage, "it is natural to believe
in God when you're alone?quite alone, in the night, thinking about death
?"
"But people never are alone now," said Mustapha Mond. "We make them
hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible
for them ever to have it."
The Savage nodded gloomily. At Malpais he had suffered because they
had shut him out from the communal activities of the pueblo, in
civilized London he was suffering because he could never escape from
those communal activities, never be quietly alone.
"Do you remember that bit in King Lear?" said the Savage at
last. "'The gods are just and of our pleasant vices make instruments to
plague us; the dark and vicious place where thee he got cost him his
eyes,' and Edmund answers?you remember, he's wounded, he's dying?'Thou
hast spoken right; 'tis true. The wheel has come full circle; I am
here.' What about that now? Doesn't there seem to be a God managing
things, punishing, rewarding?"
"Well, does there?" questioned the Controller in his turn. "You can
indulge in any number of pleasant vices with a freemartin and run no
risks of having your eyes put out by your son's mistress. 'The wheel has
come full circle; I am here.' But where would Edmund be nowadays?
Sitting in a pneumatic chair, with his arm round a girl's waist, sucking
away at his sex-hormone chewing-gum and looking at the feelies. The gods
are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last
resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue
from men."
"Are you sure?" asked the Savage. "Are you quite sure that the
Edmund in that pneumatic chair hasn't been just as heavily punished as
the Edmund who's wounded and bleeding to death? The gods are just.
Haven't they used his pleasant vices as an instrument to degrade him?"
"Degrade him from what position? As a happy, hard-working,
goods-consuming citizen he's perfect. Of course, if you choose some
other standard than ours, then perhaps you might say he was degraded.
But you've got to stick to one set of postulates. You can't play
Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal
Bumble-puppy."
"But value dwells not in particular will," said the Savage. "It
holds his estimate and dignity as well wherein 'tis precious of itself
as in the prizer."
"Come, come," protested Mustapha Mond, "that's going rather far,
isn't it?"
"If you allowed yourselves to think of God, you wouldn't allow
yourselves to be degraded by pleasant vices. You'd have a reason for
bearing things patiently, for doing things with courage. I've seen it
with the Indians."
"l'm sure you have," said Mustapha Mond. "But then we aren't
Indians. There isn't any need for a civilized man to bear anything
that's seriously unpleasant. And as for doing things?Ford forbid that he
should get the idea into his head. It would upset the whole social order
if men started doing things on their own."
"What about self-denial, then? If you had a God, you'd have a reason
for self-denial."
"But industrial civilization is only possible when there's no
self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene
and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning."
"You'd have a reason for chastity!" said the Savage, blushing a
little as he spoke the words.
"But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And
passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end
of civilization. You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of
pleasant vices."
"But God's the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic. If
you had a God ?"
"My dear young friend," said Mustapha Mond, "civilization has
absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of
political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours,
nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have
got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there
are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are
temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or
defended?there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But
there aren't any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent
you from loving any one too much. There's no such thing as a divided
allegiance; you're so conditioned that you can't help doing what you
ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so
many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really
aren't any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance,
anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always
soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always
soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to
make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only
accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard
moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and
there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half
your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears?that's what
soma is."
"But the tears are necessary. Don't you remember what Othello said?
'If after every tempest came such calms, may the winds blow till they
have wakened death.' There's a story one of the old Indians used to tell
us, about the Girl of Má´ˇski. The young men who wanted to marry her had
to do a morning's hoeing in her garden. It seemed easy; but there were
flies and mosquitoes, magic ones. Most of the young men simply couldn't
stand the biting and stinging. But the one that could?he got the girl."
"Charming! But in civilized countries," said the Controller, "you
can have girls without hoeing for them, and there aren't any flies or
mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid of them all centuries ago."
The Savage nodded, frowning. "You got rid of them. Yes, that's just
like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to
put up with it. Whether 'tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles
and by opposing end them ? But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor
oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy."
He was suddenly silent, thinking of his mother. In her room on the
thirty-seventh floor, Linda had floated in a sea of singing lights and
perfumed caresses?floated away, out of space, out of time, out of the
prison of her memories, her habits, her aged and bloated body. And
Tomakin, ex-Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Tomakin was still
on holiday?on holiday from humiliation and pain, in a world where he
could not hear those words, that derisive laughter, could not see that
hideous face, feel those moist and flabby arms round his neck, in a
beautiful world ?
"What you need," the Savage went on, "is something with tears
for a change. Nothing costs enough here."
("Twelve and a half million dollars," Henry Foster had protested
when the Savage told him that. "Twelve and a half million?that's what
the new Conditioning Centre cost. Not a cent less.")
"Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and
danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn't there something in that?" he
asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. "Quite apart from God?though of
course God would be a reason for it. Isn't there something in living
dangerously?"
"There's a great deal in it," the Controller replied. "Men and women
must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time."
"What?" questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.
"It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we've made
the V.P.S. treatments compulsory."
"V.P.S.?"
"Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the
whole system with adrenin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of
fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being
murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences."
"But I like the inconveniences."
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things
comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real
danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be
unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right
to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the
right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat;
the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of
what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be
tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.
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