Island

by Aldous Huxley

“And the principle,” said Mrs Narayan, “is explicitly taught as well as progressively applied. In the lower forms we do the teaching in terms of analogies with familiar animals. Cats like to be by themselves. Sheep like being together. Martens are fierce and can’t be tamed. Guinea-pigs are gentle and friendly. Are you a cat person or a sheep person, a guinea-pig person or a marten person? Talk about it in animal parables, and even very small children can understand the fact of human diversity and the need for mutual forbearance, mutual forgiveness.” “And later on,” said Mr Menon, “when they come to read the Gita, we tell them about the link between constitution and religion. Sheep-people and guinea-pig-people love ritual and public ceremonies and revivalistic emotion; their temperamental preferences can be directed into the Way of Devotion. Cat-people like to be alone, and their private broodings can become the Way of Self-Knowledge. Marten-people want to do things, and the problem is how to transform their driving aggressiveness into the Way of Disinterested Action.”