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 Mátaski. 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 everytfung 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 nght 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.
Chapter Eighteen
THE DOOR was ajar; they entered.
"John!"
From the bathroom came an unpleasant and characteristic sound.
"Is there anything the matter?" Helmholtz called.
There was no answer. The unpleasant sound was repeated, twice; there was silence.
Then, with a click the bathroom door opened and, very pale, the Savage emerged.
"I say," Helmholtz exclaimed solicitously, "you do look ill, John!"
"Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?" asked Bernard.
The Savage nodded. "I ate civilization."
"What?"
"It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added, in a lower tone, "I ate my own
wickedness."
"Yes, but what exactly? … I mean, just now you were …"
"Now I am purified," said the Savage. "I drank some mustard and warm water."
The others stared at him in astonishment. "Do you mean to say that you were doing
