In his novels and essays of the 1920s, Huxley was scathingly skeptical of religion and its “life-retreating” pious aspirants. His gods were “life, love, sex.” Religion that negated this trilogy, he scorned. He abhorred the views of Swift, Pascal, Beaudelaire, Proust, and even St. Francis of Assisi! According to Huxley, they were “life-haters.” Huxley’s earliest mentors were the passionate “life-affirmers”—Robert Burns, D. H. Lawrence, and William Blake.
