ABSTRACT

Mr. Huxley has been born too late. Seventy years ago, the great powers of his mind would have been anchored to some mighty certitude, or to some equally mighty scientific denial of a certitude. To-day he searches heaven and earth for a Commandment, but searches in vain: and the lack of it reduces him, metaphorically speaking, to a man standing beside a midden, shuddering and holding his nose. For some years now Mr. Huxley has stood and shuddered. The obvious solution, to run away from the midden, is not possible for him. The mere knowledge of its existence must poison the whole landscape; and when it is apparent that, for him, the midden is the human body and its processes, his difficulty seems insuperable. Brave New World is the converse of Mr. Huxley's old theorem. Disgusted with the world of to-day, he imagines a scientifically perfected world in the dim future, and finds it equally unpleasant. In this new world children are of course born in labora­ tories, decanted, graded, and 'conditioned' so as to be suited for a particular status and vocation in the body politic and to be satisfied with it. Morality and convention, though stronger than ever, have changed their tune, and under the new motto 'Everyone belongs to everyone else', the height of immorality is to desire one man or one woman exclusively. 'Hypnopaedic' education-suggestion during sleep-standardizes all emotional reactions. To follow Mr. Huxley's erudite imagination through all the details of 'feelie' palaces, labora­ tories, helicopter excursions, etc., is a stimulating experience. There is no living writer, with the possible exception of Mr. Wells, who could have brought to the task such knowledge, such skill in the use of words, and such a savage sense of the ludicrous. The story which animates this