Aldous Huxley - The Devils of Loudun

In the years leading up to the Second World War, Huxley’s work took on a more sombre tone in response to the confusion of a society which he felt to be spinning dangerously out of control. His great novels of ideas, including his most famous work Brave New World (published in 1932 this warned against the dehumanising aspects of scientific and material ‘progress’) and the pacifist novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) were accompanied by a series of wise and brilliant essays, collected in volume form under such titles as Music at Night (1931) and Ends and Means (1937).

In 1937, at the height of his fame, Huxley left Europe to live in California, working for a time as a screenwriter in Hollywood. As the West braced itself for war, Huxley came increasingly to believe that the key to solving the world’s problems lay in changing the individual through mystical enlightenment. The exploration of the inner life through mysticism and hallucinogenic drugs was to dominate his work for the rest of his life. His beliefs found expression in both fiction ( Time Must Have a Stop , 1944 and Island , 1962) and non-fiction ( The Perennial Philosophy , 1945, Grey Eminence , 1941 and the famous account of his first mescalin experience, The Doors of Perception , 1954).

Huxley died in California on 22 November 1963.

Crome Yellow

Antic Hay

Those Barren Leaves

Point Counter Point

Brave New World

Eyeless in Gaza

After Many a Summer

Time Must Have a Stop

Ape and Essence

The Genius and the Goddess

Island

Limbo

Mortal Coils

Little Mexican

Two or Three Graces

Brief Candles

The Gioconda Smile (Collected Short Stories)

Grey Eminence

Along the Road

Jesting Pilate

Beyond the Mexique Bay

Poetry and Drama

The Burning Wheel

Jonah

The Defeat of Youth

Leda

Verses and a Comedy

The Gioconda Smile

On the Margin

Proper Studies

Do What You Will

Music at Night

Texts and Pretexts

The Olive Tree

Ends and Means

The Art of Seeing

The Perennial Philosophy

Science, Liberty and Peace

Themes and Variations

The Doors of Perception

Adonis and the Alphabet

Heaven and Hell

Brave New World Revisited

Literature and Science

The Human Situation

Moksha

The Crows of Pearblossom

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN: 9781409079507

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Vintage 2005

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3

Copyright © Mrs Laura Huxley 1952

Biographical introduction copyright © David Bradshaw 1994

Aldous Huxley has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in Great Britain in 1952 by Chatto & Windus

Vintage

Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

Random House Australia (Pty) Limited 20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney New South Wales 2061, Australia

Random House New Zealand Limited 18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Random House (Pty) Limited Endulini, 5A Jubilee Road, Parktown 2193, South Africa

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

www.randomhouse.co.uk/vintage

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 09 947776 9

Papers used by Random House are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Limited, Reading, Berkshire

The following extracts are taken from H. C. Lea’s summary of conditions in the French Church after the Council of Trent. In the earlier part of our period “the influence of the Tridentine canons had been unsatisfactory. In a royal council held in 1560… Charles de Marillac, Bishop of Vienne, declared that ecclesiastical discipline was almost obsolete, and that no previous time had seen scandals so frequent, or the life of the clergy so reprehensible…. The French prelates, like the Germans, were in the habit of collecting the ‘cullagium’ from all their priests, and informing those who did not keep concubines that they might do so if they liked, but must pay the licence-money whether or no.” “It is evident from all this that the standard of ecclesiastical morals had not been raised by the efforts of the Tridentine fathers, and yet a study of the records of church discipline shows that with the increasing decency and refinement of society during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the open and cynical manifestations of licence among the clergy became gradually rarer.” The avoidance of scandal became a matter of paramount importance. If concubines were kept, they were kept “under the guise of sisters and nieces.” By a code of regulations issued in 1668 it was decreed that friars of the Order of Minims should not be excommunicated if, “when about to yield to the temptations of the flesh, or to commit theft, they prudently laid aside the monastic habit.” (Henry C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy , Chapter xxix, “The Post-Tridentine Church.”)

All this time spasmodic efforts were being made to enforce respectability. In 1624, for example, the Reverend René Sophier was found guilty of committing adultery in a church with the wife of a magistrate. The Lieutenant Criminel of le Mans condemned him to the gallows. The case was appealed to the Parlement of Paris, which sentenced him, instead, to be burnt alive.

When we are in the temple, kneeling, we shall act the part of the devout, in the manner of those who, to praise God, humbly bow themselves in the most secret corner of the Church. But when we are in bed, intertwined, we shall act the part of wantons, in the manner of those lovers who, free and frolicsome, practise a hundred fondling arts.

Thus every race on earth of men and beasts, the creatures of the sea, the herds, the birds of brilliant hue, are swept with fiery passions; love is the same for all.