BOOKS OF THE DAY

Ends and Means (Honor Croome) .

85i

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Science and Music (C. E. M. Joad) . .

.. 853 A.E. (J. M. Hone) .. .. 854 Von Hugel and Tyrrell (Evelyn Underhill) .. 854 The Colonial Office (Roland Vernon) .. .. 856 An Irishman's England (Derek Verschoyle) .. 858 Oxford in Transition (Ronald Lewin) .. 858 Como di Bassetto (Christopher Shawe) 86o Balzac Out of Love (Anthony Blunt) .. 862 Roof-Tops of Cambridge (R. F. Scott) .. 86z Fiction (Forrest Reid) .. 864 Current Literature .. 866

MR. HUXLEY'S TESTAMENT

By HONOR CROOME -

Eyeless in Gaza roused in many readers a sense of bewilderment and exasperation. Obscurity had succeeded clarity, the bel canto had turned to thick-voiced exhortation . . it was like seeing on some oddly reversed film a butterfly become a pupa ; a disconcerting experience. What on earth had happened ? In Ends and Means the answer is given, an answer perhaps best indicated comparatively, by the following quotation from

the penultimate chapter :• " Does the world as a whole possess the value and meaning that vce constantly attribute to certain parts of it (such as human beings and their works) and if so, what is the nature of this value and meaning ? This is a question which, a few years ago, I should not even have posed. For, like so many of my contemporaries, I took it for granted that there was no meaning. This was partly due to the fact that I shared the common belief that the scientific picture of an abstraction from reality was a true picture of reality as a whole ; partly also to other, non-intellectual reasons . . .

That is the early Huxley, the mocking virtuoso of Antic Hay, the irresponsible fantasiast of Crome Yellow, even the self- torturing analyst of Point Counterpoint. Vanity, vanity, all

is vanity ; and yet there are values, yet there is Bach, there is the Heiliger Dankesgesang. One constantly notices this juxtaposition of futilitarianism and a passionate pity, of dis- gusted accidie and a rapturous recognition of that which for a moment enables futility to be forgotten. In the later essays the balance changes. There are psychological states in which futilitarianism is truth ; there are others in which unity and meaning are truth ; and one state is as valid, as another. In Pascal, in The One and the Many, in Wordsworth and the Tropics, there emerge the general outlines of a sceptic's creed. Value lies where at the moment one may choose to find it ; in unity and in diversity, in asceticism and in voluptuous appreciation, in a mutually controlled and balanced excess of every human attribute. Now, in Eyeless in Gaza and in the present volume, the development takes two further steps. The assumption of the equal validity and value of all psychological states is discarded and the interest broadens from the individual to society. Truth is no longer relative and personal, a matter of taste to be settled between a man's own soul, intellect and senses ; it is absolute, universal, and essential to the salvation of mankind from physical and spiritual catastrophe. The One may have many names and attributes varying in time and in space, but there is a One ; human ideals may vary, but there emerges an overriding ideal—essential freedom or non-attachment :

" The ideal man is the non-attached man. Non-attached to his bodily sensations and lusts. Non-attached to his craving for power and possessions. Non-attached to the objects of these various desires- Non-attached to his anger and hatred ; non-attached to his exclusive loves . • . "

In the way of that ideal stand the seven deadly sins ; and of these the deadliest is anger. For anger leads to violence, destructive not only to the individual but, in the form of modern war, to all htunanity. It vitiates even the best of ends when it is used as a means towards them. Here is, once again, the thesis of the Encydopaidia of Pacifism, partly summarised, partly amplified. It is this theme, indeed, to which the most energy and thought appear to have gone ; and rightly, for it is the most urgent. But it does not stand alone ; it is only one of several means to an end. It forms part of a whole " practical cookery book of reform " with recipes for most aspects of social betterment. This section of the book is scrappy but stimulating. In home politics Mr. Huxley seeks decentralisation both by function and by region,

in foreign politics (apart from the supreme desideratum of non-violence) the open frontier and the open door. In Ends and Means. By Aldous Huxley. (Chatto and Windus. Es. 6d.) economic matters he favours collective 'ownership of all larger scale enterprise, the _ reduction . of inequality, and—very hesitantly, on account of its international dangers=national planning. His educational recipe is an extension of Montessori principles. He sketches a voluntary organisation to " build a working model " of the good society, avoiding the errors, of the monastic orders, of the Quakers, of Oneida and New Harmony and the like. He provides sidelights on the cinema, the population question, large-scale economic enterprise, " dirtless farming," and a dozen more points.. bne refrains from quotation only because one would never stop quoting.

Finally, in the last three chapters, he abandons recipes for a discussion of the fundamental and eternal verities ; the nature of God, the nature of belief, the nature of ethics. Mind is more than an epiphenomenon. The mystic's appre- hension of unity is as valid, in spite of the failure of others to experience it, as the musician's apprehension of sound- or the -artist's of colour. This unity, though neither anthro- pomorphic nor moral per se, has moral value since its experience requires the strenuous practice of positive virtue. Such are his conclusions ; and above all there stands the conclusion. that these, things are of the utmost practical _ importance, The tree is known by its fruits. The fruits of materialism, of anthropomorphic religion, of the separation of ideals. and of means, are: under our eyes _today and their bitter and. unwholesome taste in our mouths. All that we are is the result of what we have thought. That in the final analysis is the theme of the whole book. We must grasp our ideals, consciously and intelligently and pursue, them. only by means which are themselves compatible with the ideal. Menial sloth is as deadly a sin as any other. Again and agaib we are brought back to this necessity ; the tree is known by its fruits.

It is easy to pick individual holes in the argument here and there. The " recipes_" are sketchy to a degree. Economic and administrative difficulties are brushed aside with optimistic unconcern. - On the gospel of non-violence itself one may feel that the last word has not been said. The power of non-violence depends, in the last resort, on the underlying decency of the aggressor. But are there not aggressors impervious to its influence ? Could non-violence have done any good to the helots of ancient Sparta, to the Albigenses, to the Jews in modern- Germany ? Should the Good Samaritan allow the traveller to be beaten up before coming to his succour ? Is there no good worth defending ?

But the respect aroused by Ends and Means is independeni of complete agreement with its praetical conclusions. Its very shortcomings somehow increase that respect. It does not, as a matter of literary technique, rank anywhere near the novels and essays. Gone are the airy literary allusiveness, the delectable and flattering pyrotechnics of culture, gone the alluring ethical eclecticism, gone, except for a few rare flashes, the incisive and caustic wit. There remains a naked, almost stumbling sincerity. The futilitarian, the critic, the satirist, the connoisseur, has become a prophet in deadly earnest calling the world—egliing each individual—to repentance before it be too late ; to repentance bodily, intellectual and spiritual, and to action when repentance is complete. It is a curiously impressive personal testament, a whole more con- vincing than its constituent parts ; a book to be read, re-read and thought about. The practical advice may be faulty but the essential method is surely sound. It is this combination of intense intellectual effort, intense preoccupation with ultimate truth, and. intense emotional and artistic sincerity, which is the world's first need today.