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“we can’t bokanovskify indefinitely.”
Ninety-six seemed to be the limit;
Hence, of course, that fruit of delayed development, the human intelligence.
But socially useless. Six-year-old men and women were too stupid to do even Epsilon work.
All conditioning aims at that: making people like their un-escapable social destiny.”
“What are you giving them?” asked Mr. Foster, making his tone very professional. “Oh, the usual typhoid and sleeping sickness.”
A special mechanism kept their containers in constant rotation. “To improve their sense of balance,” Mr.
“You can’t really do any useful intellectual conditioning till the foetuses have lost their tails.
Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It’s madness.
Ch8C6H2(NO2)8 + Hg(CNO)2
“Come, Greater Being, Social Friend, Annihilating Twelve-in-One! We long to die, for when we end, Our larger life has but begun.”
“But aren’t you shortening her life by giving her so much?” “In one sense, yes,” Dr. Shaw admitted. “But in another we’re actually lengthening it.”
“Of course,” Dr. Shaw went on, “you can’t allow people to go popping off into eternity if they’ve got any serious work to do. But as she hasn’t got any serious work…” “All the same,” John persisted, “I don’t believe it’s right.”
Upstairs in his room the Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet.
“Well, I’d rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.”
“But we’ve got vacuum cleaners here,” said Lenina in bewilderment. “It isn’t necessary.” “No, of course it isn’t necessary. But some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone. I’d like to undergo something nobly. Don’t you see?” “But if there are vacuum cleaners…” “That’s not the point.”
Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas—that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!” he repeated.
I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good—good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody’s allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn’t be added to except by special permission from the head cook. I’m the head cook now.
“But isn’t it natural to feel there’s a God?”
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.
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.
“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.’
Yes, that’s just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether
“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.”
“I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“Did you eat something that didn’t agree with you?” asked Bernard. The Savage nodded. “I ate civilization.”
“Now I am purified,” said the Savage. “I drank some mustard and warm water.”
“That’s how the Indians always purify themselves.”
Savage had chosen as his hermitage the old lighthouse which stood on the crest of the hill between Puttenham and Elstead.
He had decided to live there because the view was so beautiful, because, from his vantage point, he seemed to be looking out on to the incarnation of a divine being.
And then the solitude! Whole days passed during which he never saw a human being.
“Háni! Sons éso tse-ná!”
“Pain’s a delusion.” “Oh, is it?” said the Savage and, picking up a thick hazel switch, strode forward.
Darwin Bonaparte, the Feely Corporation’s most expert big game photographer had watched the whole proceedings. Patience and skill had been rewarded. He had spent three days sitting inside the bole of an artificial oak tree, three nights crawling on his belly through the heather, hiding microphones in gorse bushes,
