BIRTH SELECTION VERSUS BIRTH CONTROL 39 



plete extermination of one great historic and prehistoric family code based 

 upon hundreds of thousands of years of human experience. The new code 

 is essentially nihilistic as far as all old codes are concerned, whether pagan 

 or Christian. 



In young Huxley's satire extreme modernism enters the final phase of its 

 logical consequences, from which he recoils while he satirizes. The "Brave 

 New World" opens with the chemico-mechanical reproduction of children, 

 the obsolete ideals of courtship, family and the home being eliminated as 

 well as all the romances and traditions adherent thereto : 



"I shall begin at the beginning," said the D. H. C. and the more zealous students 

 recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at the beginning. "These," he waved 

 his hand, "are the incubators." And opening an insulated door he showed them racks 

 upon racks of numbered test-tubes. "The week's supply of ova. Kept," he explained, 

 "at blood heat; whereas the male gametes," and here he opened another door, "They 

 have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heart sterilizes." Rams 

 wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs. ... He pointed. On a very slowly moving 

 band a rack-full of test-tubes was entering a large metal box, another rack-full was emerg- 

 ing. Machinery faintly purred. It took eight minutes for the tubes to go through, he 

 told them. Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much as an egg can stand. 

 A few died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided into two; most put out four buds; 

 some eight; all were returned to the incubators, where the buds began to develop; then, 

 after two days, were suddenly chilled, chilled and checked. . . . Fetilize and bokanovskify 

 — in other words, multiply by seventy-two — and you get an average of nearly eleven 

 thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred and fifty batches of identical twins, all within 

 two years of the same age. . . . "Only just eighteen months old. Over twelve thousand 

 seven hundred children already, either decanted or in embryo. And still going strong. 

 We'll beat them yet." . . . 



The Controller shrugged his shoulders. "Because it's old; that's the chief reason. 

 We haven't any use for old things here. 



"Even when they're beautiful?" 



"Particularly when they're beautiful. Beauty's attractive, and we don't want people 

 to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones." . . . 



"The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never 

 want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not 

 afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with 

 no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; 

 they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. 

 And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." . . . 



"Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to 

 comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness 

 keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't." 



The elder Huxley, as I know from delightful personal acquaintance of the 

 winter 1879-1880, was, with Charles Kingsley, one of the finest exponents 

 of religious realism versus religious hypocrisy and sentimentalism. He ad- 



