SCIENCE, RELIGION AND SOCIALISM 



economic means. With decrease of sexual tabus, these psychologists 

 suggest, there would be a decrease of frustration and hence of that 

 aggressiveness which finds its sublimation in religion or its outlet in 

 political activity. Thus in the society pictured by Aldous Huxley, 

 erotic play of children is encouraged rather than prevented, universal 

 but superficial sex relations are the rule, and indeed any sign of the 

 beginning of more deep and lasting affection is stamped out as being 

 anti-social. 



Perhaps only biologists really appreciated the full force of Brave 

 New World. They knew that Huxley included nothing in his book 

 but what might be considered legitimate extrapolations from already 

 existing knowledge and power. Successful experiments are even now 

 being made in the cultivation of embryos of small mammals in vitro. 

 One of the most horrible of Huxley's predictions, the production of 

 numerous workers of low-grade intelligence and precisely identical 

 genetic constitution from one egg, is theoretically quite possible. 

 Armadillos, parasitic insects, and even sea-urchins, if treated in the 

 right manner, will "bud" in this way now, and the difficulties in the 

 way of effecting it with mammalian and therefore human eggs are 

 probably purely technical. 



It is just the same in the realm of philosophy. There are already 

 among us tendencies leading in the direction of Huxley's realm of 

 Antichrist. Fascism seeks no justification other than existence and 

 force. Its philosophy is one in which there is no place for science. 

 Science ceases to be the groundwork of philosophy, and becomes 

 nothing but the mythology accompanying a technique. Divorced 

 from religion, ethics and art, as well as from philosophy, it proceeds 

 to do the will of wicked and ungodly rulers upon humanity. "The 

 scientific society in its pure form," as Bertrand Russell has said, "is 

 incompatible with the pursuit of truth, with love, with art, with 

 spontaneous delight, with every ideal that men have hitherto cherished, 

 save only possibly ascetic renunciation. It is not knowledge that is 

 the source of these dangers. Knowledge is good and ignorance is 

 evil — to this principle the lover of the world can admit no exception. 

 Nor is it power in and for itself that is the source of danger. What 

 is dangerous is power wielded for the sake of power, not power 

 wielded for the sake of genuine good." 



This train of thought leads us finally to consider on what ground 

 communism can stand as against nietszchianism or other doctrines of 

 the "superman." These may be, for all we know, perennial, if they 



73 



