He would have liked to speak but there were no words. 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. Mustapha Mond – “…you know all about God, I suppose.”
But like John (the Savage) in his ensuing argument with Mustapha Mond in BNW, he too is left despondent about how to argue God’s place in the society: He saw the potential value of the arts, education, government, love, nature, and science as ways to a better life, but he criticized those who regarded these means as ends in themselves. It could be said he was an agnostic, but it may be more accurate to describe him as a sceptic. Huxley’s comments on religion in his numerous works have drawn much criticism basically because his attempts to reconcile religion with philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, and government were difficult to grasp. The previous extract examined a worldview I argued was congruous with what the new ethics movement seemingly has in store for us. This week’s excerpt comes from the same philosophical argument John and Mustapha Mond were having the last time we visited this book, but this time the topic is the role of God in the ‘controlled’ society. This week in Wednesday’s literature piece we continue our exploration of one the 20th Century’s great Dystopian novels Brave New World (BNW).
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