But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light turns naturally and inevitably for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false-a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age and a horrible disease it is. “Take this, for example,” he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: “‘A man grows old he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man-that it is an unnatural state-will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end …'” Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way-to depend on no one-to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. ‘”We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. Meanwhile, listen to what this old Arch-Community-Songster said.” He opened the book at the place marked by a slip of paper and began to read. I’ll read you one of the things he did dream of in a moment. “A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth,” said the Savage promptly. He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.” “And while I’m about it I’ll take this one too.
Well, as I was saying, there was a man called Cardinal Newman. “A cardinal,” he exclaimed parenthetically, “was a kind of Arch-Community-Songster.”
“There was a man called Cardinal Newman,” he said.
“All the difference in the world,” said Mustapha Mond. “Why don’t you give them these books about God?” “For the same reason as we don’t give them Othello: they’re old they’re about God hundreds of years ago. “But if you know about God, why don’t you tell them?” asked the Savage indignantly.
Chapter 18 brave new world pdf full#
God in the safe and Ford on the shelves.” He pointed with a laugh to his avowed library-to the shelves of books, the rack full of reading-machine bobbins and sound-track rolls. “A whole collection of pornographic old books. “And I’ve got plenty more,” Mustapha Mond continued, resuming his seat. “Nor this.” He handed out another volume. “Nor this.” It was a small book and had lost its cover.
“ The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments ,‘ he read aloud from the title-page. Rummaging in the darkness within, “It’s a subject,” he said, “that has always had a great interest for me.” He pulled out a thick black volume. The Controller, meanwhile, had crossed to the other side of the room and was unlocking a large safe set into the wall between the bookshelves. 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. But I was forgetting you know all about God, I suppose.” “There used to be something called God-before the Nine Years’ War. “Well, religion, of course,” replied the Controller. ART, SCIENCE-you seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness,” said the Savage, when they were alone.
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