THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 2, "MAD DOG in a SILVER FOG" :: CHAPTER 5, EPISODE 7

 

EVIDENCE for the PROSECUTION!

 

Here is that letter, saved by George Orwell, penned by Aldous Huxley on occasion of the publication of "Nineteen Eighty-Four", subsequently archived:

 

TO GEORGE ORWELL (E. H . BLAIR)
 

Wrightwood, California 21 October, 1949
 

Dear Mr. Orwell,

It was very kind of you to tell your publishers to send me a copy of your book. It arrived as I was in the midst of a piece of work that required much reading and consulting of references; and since poor sight makes it necessary for me to ration my reading, I had to wait a long time before being able to embark on Nineteen Eighty-Four. Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals - the ultimate revolution? The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution - the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at the total subversion of the individual's psychology - are to be found in the Marquis deSade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf. The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and that these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occasion recently to look into the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, and have been greatly struck by the way in which, for a hundred and fifty years, the world has refused to take serious cognizance of the discoveries of Mesmer, Braid, Esdaile and the rest. Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology. Consequently there was no pure science of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government. Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud's inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism. This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years. But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects. Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large-scale biological and atomic war - in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.

Thank you once again for the book.

Yours sincerely,

Aldous Huxley

 

Orwell's reply and Huxley's personal copy, defaced by Harry Stone's angry appendix "Why not both!" scribbled in the margin, were lost in the fire on Deronda Drive. Orwell apparently failed to keep a copy of his own missive or, if he did, such has not been brought to light.

Incidentally, Egg, the mystery as to why Orwell chose 1984 as the date of his dystopic adventure is solved simply; the author simply transposed the date on which he'd completed his work (though it was not published in the United States until 1949). And, reconsidering Huxley's argument, I have to disagree on one point... one nineteenth-century polymath did include psychology and magnetism among elements of his GUT, a great GUT for the time. This was Poe, the essay "Eureka" effectively terminated his reputation and probably contributed to his decline and ignominious end unless... like Turing, perhaps, or even Harry... he was murdered for what he knew, or what powerful, yet fearful, people thought he knew. Jeff found fragments in Baltimore, Jack Moss kept a copy, of sorts, telling me in Las Vegas that Poe was the legitimate father of Einstein and Heisenberg, those sorts, and Dirty Bertie too. At my directive, Ralph and Alice have been searching for this work, elusive as the mermaids of ZORC, and have, from time to time, provided me with excerpts... one of which goes:
 

"Does not so evident a brotherhood among the atoms point to a common parentage? Does not a sympathy so omniprevalent, so Ineradicable, and so thoroughly irrespective, suggest a common paternity as its source? Does not one extreme impel the reason to the other? Does not the infinitude of division refer to the utterness of individuality? Does not the entireness of the complex hint at the perfection of the simple?...

"Their source lies in the principle, is their lost parent... they seek always -- immediately -- in all directions -- wherever it is even partially to be found; thus appeasing, in some measure, the ineradicable tendency, while on the way to its absolute satisfaction in the end."

 

TOMORROW:

"WIGGED OUT!"

Discovery of a true copy of Poe's "Eureka" is problematical (creatively edited abridgements abound) but a useful collection of Aldous Huxley's letters may be found...

At: