Олдос Хаксли - Eyeless in Gaza

Of more significance is the practical question. Which gives a man more power to realize goodness—belief in a personal or an impersonal God? Answer: it depends. Some minds work one way, some another. Mine, as it happens, finds no need, indeed, finds it impossible to think of the world in terms of personality. Patanjali says you may believe in a personal God, or not, according to taste. The psychological results will be the same in either case.

For those whose nature demands personality as a source of energy, but who find it impossible to believe that the universe is run by a person in any sense of the word that we can possibly understand—what’s the right policy? In most cases, they reject any practice which might be called religious. But this is throwing away the baby with the bath water. The desired relationship with a personality can be historical, not ontological. A contact, not with somebody existing at present as manager of the universe, but with somebody known to have existed at some time in the past. The Imitation of Christ (or of any other historical character) is just as effective if the model be regarded as having existed there, then, as it is if the model be conceived as existing here, now. And meditation on goodness, communication with goodness, contemplation of goodness are demonstrably effective means of realizing goodness in life, even when that which is meditated on, communicated with and contemplated, is not a person, but a general mind, or even an ideal supposed to exist only in human minds. The fundamental problem is practical—to work out systems of psychological exercises for all types of men and women. Catholicism has many systems of mental prayer—Ignatian, Franciscan, Liguorian, Carmelite, and so on. Hinduism, Northern, Southern, and Zen Buddhism also have a variety of practices. There is a great work to be done here. Collecting and collating information from all these sources. Consulting books and, more important, people who have actually practised what is in the books, have had experience of teaching novices. In time, it might be possible to establish a complete and definite Ars Contemplativa . A series of techniques, adapted to every type of mind. Techniques for meditating on, communicating with and contemplating goodness. Ends in themselves and at the same time means for realizing some of that goodness in practice.

January 1st 1935

Machinery and good organization—modern inventions; and, like all blessings, have to be paid for. In many ways. One item is the general belief, encouraged by mechanical and social efficiency that progress is automatic and can be imposed from outside. We, as individuals, need do nothing about it. Liquidate undesirables, distribute enough money and goods—all will be well. It is a reversion to magic, a pandering to man’s natural sloth. Note the striking way in which this tendency runs through the whole of modern life, cropping up at every point. There seems no obvious connexion between the Webbs and the Soviets on the one hand, and Modern Catholicism on the other. But what profound subterranean resemblances? The recent Catholic revival essentially a revival of sacraments. From a Catholic point of view, this is a ‘sacramental age’. Magic power of sacraments regarded as sufficient for salvation. Mental prayer conspicuously absent. Exact analogy to the Webbs—Soviet idea of progress from without, through machinery and efficient organization. For English Catholics, sacraments are the psychological equivalents of tractors in Russia.

DR Miller dismounted at the open door, left his beast with the mozo , and stepped into the hut.

Propped up on his bed, Mark watched him enter—a small, erect figure, walking briskly, his blue eyes bright with inquiring kindness, the corners of his mouth alive with the potentialities of laughter.

‘And how are all the little patients this evening?’ Mark twisted up his pale and still emaciated face into a ferociously sardonic smile.

From the stool on which he was sitting beside the bed, Anthony shot a glance at him, and remembered the serenity of that face three weeks before, in the early morning sunshine among the pine trees. Serene and at peace. But now that life had come back to him, now that he was safely convalescent, the peace had departed, leaving him the embittered enemy of the whole world. There had been hatred in his eyes even before he was strong enough to speak. Hatred for everyone who came near him—above all for old Miller.

‘I can’t bear his perpetual twinkle,’ was what he had said to Anthony later on. ‘Nobody has a right to go about looking like the advertisement for a constipation cure.’

But the real reason for Mark’s dislike was different. He hated old Miller because of his dependence upon him, because of the unflaggingly watchful efficiency of the man’s care. Poor Mark! How acutely he suffered from having to accept a service and, still more, from being compelled by his own physical weakness to ask for it! How bitterly he resented even affection, if it were given by somebody to whom it was impossible for him to feel superior! His dislike for the doctor had been present from the first moment of his return to consciousness, had increased with every day that the old man delayed his departure in order to look after him.

‘But why don’t you get on with your journey?’ he had asked; and when the doctor answered that he was in no hurry and intended to see him safely down to the coast and even, since he himself was leaving, home through the Canal to England, had protested vehemently that his leg was practically healed, that there would be no difficulty in getting back to Puerto San Felipe, that he himself would probably be taking the northbound boat to Los Angeles.

But the doctor had remained, attending to Mark and in the intervals riding out to the neighbouring villages to treat the sick. To the convalescent this was an additional source of irritation—though why it should have annoyed him Anthony could not rightly understand. Perhaps he resented the fact that the benefactor of the Indians was not himself. Anyhow, there it was; he was never tired of baiting old Miller with those ‘little patients’ of his.

Then, a fortnight after the operation, had come the news of the ignominious failure of Don Jorge’s attempt at insurrection. He had been surprised with an insufficient guard, taken alive, summarily tried and shot with his chief lieutenant. The report added that the two men had cracked jokes together as they walked between the soldiers towards the cemetery, where their graves were already dug.

‘And he died,’ had been Mark’s comment, ‘believing that I’d taken fright at the last moment and let him down.’

The thought was like another wound to him.

‘If I hadn’t had this blasted accident … ’ he kept repeating. ‘If I’d been there to advise him … That crazy rashness of his! That was why he’d asked me to come. He mistrusted his own judgement. And here was I lying in this stinking pigsty, while the poor devil marches off to the cemetery….’ Cracking jokes, as he sniffed the cold morning air. ‘ Huele al cimintero, Don Jaime. ’ He too would have cracked his joke. Instead of which … It was just bad luck, of course, just a typical piece of providential idiocy; but providence was not there for him to vent his grievance on. Only Anthony and the doctor were there. His behaviour towards them, after the news of Don Jorge’s death, had become increasingly bitter and resentful. It was as though he regarded them as personally responsible for what had happened. Both of them, especially the doctor.

‘How’s the delicious bedside manner?’ Mark now went on, in the same derisive tone in which he had asked after the little patients.