Олдос Хаксли - Eyeless in Gaza

‘Yes, it is.’

‘F–five against one.’

‘But you don’t know what he was doing.’

‘I d–don’t c–c–c … don’t mind.’

‘You would care, if you knew,’ said Staithes; and proceeded to tell him what Goggler had been doing—as dirtily as he knew how.

Brian dropped his eyes and his cheeks went suddenly very red. To have to listen to smut always made him feel miserable—miserable and at the same time ashamed of himself.

‘Look at old Horse–Face blushing!’ called Partridge; and they all laughed—none more derisively than Anthony. For Anthony had had time to feel ashamed of his shame; time to refuse to think about that hole in Lollingdon churchyard; time, too, to find himself all of a sudden almost hating old Horse–Face. ‘For being so disgustingly pi,’ he would have said, if somebody had asked him to explain his hatred. But the real reason was deeper, obscurer. If he hated Horse–Face, it was because Horse–Face was so extraordinarily decent; because Horse–Face had the courage of convictions which Anthony felt should also be his convictions—which, indeed, would be his convictions if only he could bring himself to have the courage of them. It was just because he liked Horse–Face so much that he now hated him. Or, rather, because there were so many reasons why he should like him—so few reasons, on the contrary, why Horse–Face should return the liking. Horse–Face was rich with all sorts of fine qualities that he himself either lacked completely or else, which was worse, possessed, but somehow was incapable of manifesting. That sudden derisive burst of laughter was the expression of a kind of envious resentment against a superiority which he loved and admired. Indeed, the love and the admiration in some sort produced the resentment and the envy—produced, but ordinarily kept them below the surface in an unconscious abeyance, from which, however, some crisis like the present would suddenly call them.

‘You should have seen him,’ concluded Staithes. Now that he felt in a better humour he laughed—he could afford to laugh.

‘In his truss,’ Anthony added, in a tone of sickened contempt. Goggler’s rupture was an aggravation of the offence.

‘Yes, in his beastly old truss!’ Staithes confirmed approvingly. There was no doubt about it; combined as it was with the spectacles and the timidity, that truss made the throwing of slippers not only inevitable, but right, a moral duty.

‘He’s disgusting,’ Anthony went on, warming pleasantly to his righteous indignation.

For the first time since Staithes had started on his description of Goggler’s activities Brian looked up. ‘B–but w–why is he more disgusting than anyone else?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘A–after all,’ he went on, and the blood came rushing back into his cheeks as he spoke, ‘he i–isn’t the … the o–only one.’

There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence. Of course he wasn’t the only one. But he was the only one, they were all thinking, who had a truss, and goggles, and a vest that was too short for him; the only one who did it in broad daylight and let himself be caught at it. There was a difference.

Staithes counter–attacked on another front. ‘Sermon by the Reverend Horse–Face!’ he said jeeringly, and at once recovered the initiative, the position of superiority. ‘Gosh!’ he added in another tone, ‘it’s late. We must buck up.’

FROM A.B.’S DIARY

CONDITIONED reflex. What a lot of satisfaction I got out of old Pavlov when first I read him. The ultimate debunking of all human pretensions. We were all dogs and bitches together. Bow–wow, sniff the lamp–post, lift the leg, bury the bone. No nonsense about free will, goodness, truth, and all the rest. Each age has its psychological revolutionaries. La Mettrie, Hume, Condillac, and finally the Marquis de Sade, latest and most sweeping of the eighteenth–century debunkers. Perhaps, indeed, the ultimate and absolute revolutionary. But few have the courage to follow the revolutionary argument to Sade’s conclusions. Meanwhile, science did not stand still. Dix–huitième debunking, apart from Sade, proved inadequate. The nineteenth century had to begin again. Marx and the Darwinians. Who are still with us—Marx obsessively so. Meanwhile the twentieth century has produced yet another lot of debunkers—Freud and, when he began to flag, Pavlov and the Behaviourists. Conditioned reflex:—it seemed, I remember, to put the lid on everything. Whereas actually, of course, it merely restated the doctrine of free will. For if reflexes can be conditioned, then, obviously, they can be re–conditioned. Learning to use the self properly, when one has been using it badly—what is it but reconditioning one’s reflexes?

Lunched with my father. More cheerful than I’ve seen him recently, but old and, oddly, rather enjoying it. Making much of getting out of his chair with difficulty, of climbing very slowly up the stairs. A way, I suppose, of increasing his sense of importance. Perhaps also a way of commanding sympathy whenever he happens to want it. Baby cries so that mother shall come and make a fuss of him. It goes on from the cradle to the grave. Miller says of old age that it’s largely a bad habit. Use conditions function. Walk about as if you were a martyr to rheumatism and you’ll impose such violent muscular strains upon yourself that a martyr to rheumatism you’ll really be. Behave like an old man and your body will function like an old man’s, you’ll think and feel as an old man. The lean and slippered pantaloon—literally a part that one plays. If you refuse to play it and learn how to act on your refusal, you won’t become a pantaloon. I suspect this is largely true. Anyhow, my father is playing his present part with gusto. One of the great advantages of being old, provided that one’s economic position is reasonably secure and one’s health not too bad, is that one can afford to be serene. The grave is near, one has made a habit of not feeling anything very strongly; it’s easy, therefore, to take the God’s–eye view of things. My father took it about peace, for example. Yes, men were mad, he agreed; there would be another war quite soon—about 1940, he thought. (A date, significantly, when he was practically certain to be dead!) Much worse than the last war, yes; and would probably destroy the civilization of Western Europe. But did it really matter so much? Civilization would go on in other continents, would build itself up anew in the devastated areas. Our time scale was all wrong. We should think of ourselves, not as living in the thirties of the twentieth–century, but as at a point between two ice ages. And he ended up by quoting Goethe— alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis . All which is doubtless quite true, but not the whole truth. Query: how to combine belief that the world is to a great extent illusory with belief that it is none the less essential to improve the illusion? How to be simultaneously dispassionate and not indifferent, serene like an old man and active like a young one?

‘THESE vile horse–flies!’ Helen rubbed the reddening spot on her arm. Anthony made no comment. She looked at him for a little in silence. ‘What a lot of ribs you’ve got!’ she said at last.

‘Schizothyme physique,’ he answered from behind the arm with which he was shielding his face from the light. ‘That’s why I’m here. Predestined by the angle of my ribs.’

‘Predestined to what?’

‘To sociology; and in the intervals to this.’ He raised his hand, made a little circular gesture and let it fall again on the mattress.

‘But what’s “this”?’ she insisted.