overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables. "And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."
if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virture and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
"Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!"
"Sixteen thousand and twelve; in one hundred and eighty-nine batches of identicals. But of course they've done much better," he rattled on, "in some of the tropical Centres. Singapore has often produced over sixteen thousand five hundred; and Mombasa has actually touched the seventeen thousand mark.
"We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future …" He was going to say "future World controllers," but correcting himself, said "future Directors of Hatcheries,"
"The lower the caste," said Mr. Foster, "the shorter the oxygen." The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monsters.
"Consider the horse." They considered it. Mature at six; the elephant at ten. While at thirteen a man is not yet sexually mature; and is only full-grown at twenty.
If the physical development could be speeded up till it was as quick, say, as a cow's, what an enormous saving to the Community!
'But in Epsilons,' said Mr. Foster very justly, 'we don't need human intelligence.'
Mombasa, had produced individuals who were sexually mature at four and full grown at six and a half. A scientific triumph. 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 unescapable social destiny.'
Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded to discomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the time they were decanted the embryos had a horror of cold. They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miners and acetate silk spinners and steel workers.
'We condition them to thrive on heat,' concluded Mr. Foster. 'Our colleagues upstairs will teach them to love it.'
'that is the secret of happiness and virtue--liking what you've got to do.
'I'd like to show you some very interesting conditioning for Alpha-Plus Intellectuals.
NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, announced the notice board.
There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded. The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.
cock-a-doodle
They'll be safe from books and botany all their lives.'
Not so very long ago (a century or thereabouts), Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had been conditioned to like flowers--flowers in particular and wild nature in general. The idea was to make them want to be going out into the country at every available opportunity, and so compel them to consume transport.
'And didn't they consume transport?' asked the student. 'Quite a lot,' the D.H.C. replied. 'But nothing else.'
A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes; to abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport.
The problem was to find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes. It was duly found.
'We condition the masses to hate the country,' concluded the Director. 'But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric shocks.'
'Human beings used to be...' he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. 'Well, they used to be viviparous.'
'The principle of sleep-teaching, or hypnopædia, had been discovered.' The D.H.C. made an impressive pause. The principle had been discovered; but many, many years were to elapse before that principle was usefully applied.
'The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second in length of all the rivers of the globe. Although falling short of the length of the Mississippi-Missouri, the Nile is at the head
'We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes,' she answered. 'But now it's switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness.'
all wear green,' said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, 'and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides, they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.'
'Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever.
I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard.
'Strange,' mused the Director, as they turned away, 'strange to think that even in Our Ford's day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games.'
Two shrimp-brown children emerged from a neighbouring shrubbery, stared at them for a moment with large, astonished
Henry Foster and the Assistant Director of Predestination rather pointedly turned their backs on Bernard
There were those strange rumours of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the Controller's study. Bibles, poetry--Ford knew what.
'Try to imagine what "living with one's family" meant.' They tried; but obviously without the smallest success. 'And do you know what a "home" was?' They shook their heads.
three months' Pregnancy Substitute now will make all the difference to my health for the next three or four years.'
Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, everywhere a focussing of interest, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy. 'But every one belongs to every one else,'
'I really do think you ought to be careful. It's such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man. At forty, or thirty-five, it wouldn't be so bad. But at your age, Lenina!
'Of course there's no need to give him up. Have somebody else from time to time, that's all. He has other girls, doesn't he?'
'But one's got to make the effort,' she said sententiously, 'one's got to play the game. After all, every one belongs to every one else.'
And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?
Bernard's an Alpha-Plus. Besides, he asked me to go to one of the Savage Reservations with him. I've always wanted to see a Savage Reservation.'
'And then he spends most of his time by himself--alone.'
'And then so small' Fanny made a grimace; smallness was so horribly and typically low-caste. 'I think that's rather sweet,' said Lenina. 'One feels one would like to pet him. You know. Like a cat.'
Henry Foster patted the Assistant Predestinator on the shoulder. 'Every one belongs to every one else, after all.'
'We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better...'
'Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches;
'Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches; the more stitches...'
'Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can't consume much if you sit still and read books.'
'Then came the famous British Museum Massacre. Two thousand culture fans gassed with dichlorethyl sulphide.'
'There were some things called the pyramids, for example.'
'And a man called Shakespeare. You've never heard of them of course.'
'There was a thing, as I've said before, called Christianity.'
'The ethics and philosophy of under-consumption...' 'I love new clothes, I love new clothes, I love...'
'So essential when there was under-production; but in an age of machines and the fixation of nitrogen--positively a crime against society.' 'Henry Foster gave it me.'
'We have the World State now. And Ford's Day celebrations, and Community Sings, and Solidarity Services.'
'There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.'
'Like meat, like so much meat.' 'There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality.'
'Now--such is progress--the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think--or if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time should yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon; returning whence they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour and distraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl to pneumatic girl, from Electro-magnetic Golf Course to...'
The lift was crowded with men from the Alpha Changing Rooms, and Lenina's entry was greeted by many friendly nods and smiles. She
People said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma.
The malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afflicted him. Reality for Benito was always sunny. 'Pneumatic too.
Near Shepherd's Bush two thousand Beta-Minus mixed doubles were playing Riemann-surface tennis.
In the Ealing stadium a Delta gymnastic display and community sing was in progress.
To have dealings with members of the lower castes was always, for Bernard, a most distressing experience.
Bernard's physique was hardly better than that of the average Gamma. He stood eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height and was slender in proportion.
-The Hourly Radio, an upper-caste sheet, the pale-green Gamma Gazette, and, on khaki paper and in words exclusively of one syllable, The Delta Mirror. Then came the Bureaux of Propaganda by Television, by Feeling Picture, and by Synthetic Voice and Music respectively--twenty-two floors of them. Above were the research laboratories and the padded rooms in which the Sound-Track Writers and Synthetic Composers did their delicate work.
