RETREAT FROM PROCRESS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26616, 12 November 1947, Page 2

RETREAT FROM PROCRESS

ALDOUS HUXLEY’S PHILOSOPHY Science, Liberty, and Peace, by Aldocs Huxley. Chatto and Windus (per Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd-). 5s 3d.

This book opens with a quotation from Tolstoy which, since it gives the key of the book, is worth quoting: “ If the arrangement of society is bad (as ours is) and a small number of people have power over 4he majority and oppress it, every victory over Nature will inevitably serve only to increase that power and that oppression. This is what is actually happening.” The purpose of this book is to point out how that process has developed and how the advances of science and technology have gone hand in hand with increasing centralisation of power, that is, with increasing tyranny of the few over the many. Its further purpose is to point out how and by what means these tendencies may be resisted and possibly reversed. The writing, it need hardly be said, is clear, crystal clear, and the argument lucid and convincing. What is more, Mr Huxley has the supreme gift of making his readers sit up and say, “ Why did I never think of that? How obviously true/* Only a writer of the first rank can achieve that response with certainty and persistence. Readers of Mr Huxley’s works would not expect him to treat the subject of man’s relation to society without relating it to universal ends, and this he does. He puts it this way: “Now it seems pretty obvious that man’s psychological. to say nothing of his spiritual, needs cannot be xulnllea unless, first, he has a fair measure of personal independence and personal responsibility within and towards a self-governing group, unless, secondly, his work possesses a certain aesthetic value and human significance, and unless, in the third place, he is related to his natural environment in some organic, rooted, and symbiotic way. With these statements few will disagree They are sound psychology. But he then points out that these conditions are all lacking in the lives of probably the vast majority of modern men, arid that the reason for this sta+e of things is the progressive application of pure science in centralising production, distribution, finance, and government, often without any economic justification at all. He then proceeds to attack both the postulates and the achievement of science, with arguments of no mean order. He sees little hope in the opening up of the Arctic areas as granaries and stock-piles of the world, since they will only become natural monopolies of great Powers, to be used for the further bludgeoning of the smaller. His remedy is more radical. He demands that, except in the limited field where mass production is economic, science should devote itself to improving local self-sufficiency, and reducing, instead of increasing man’s dependence on other parts of the world. Readers of “After Many a Summer ” will remember the theories of the mystical Mr Propter in that book. Here, fullyfledged, are the propositions the author was there giving their first trial flight. Even a world-government he considers the wrong solution, and merely a further and worse centralisation of government. His answer for the world is a retreat of each nation as far as possible within its own boundaries. For those who agree as to that aim, his argument is undoubtedly convincing. It has, however, little hope of making impression on the people who at present sway the destinies of the world. For them, man’s aim is to support his nation in its expansion, or survival. His personal aim is of little importance. Therefore this essay will be unlikely to influence either policy or progress. But it may have its effect on the minds of many thoughtful men. And if it does, it may ultimately affect, even if only slightly, the course of world events. P. H. W. N.