BOOKS OF THE DAY
Advice from the Mountain
MR. HUXLEY'S pamphlet is apt, able and a little irritating. It is apt because of its theme ; it is able because of Mr. Huxley's powers of putting an argument in brief and simple English ; it may be irritating for several reasons Mr Huxley begins with a text from Tolstoy, and puts his case before he has written twenty lines. Science and technology have made notable advances in the last fifty years, but so far they have mainly served to reduce liberty and destroy peace by putting increased and irresponsible power in the hands of a small number of people, the oligarchs of modern society. The machine-gun and the bomber have equipped Governments with irresistible means of coercing their subjects. The radio, the news- paper and the cinema give the ruling political and economic groups an undreamt-of power over opinion. Modern methods of industrial mass production and distribution reinforce the same tendency towards the concentrating power. All this is familiar enough, but Mr. Huxley adds some new items to the accusation. Rapid techno- logical progress, he points out, by creating social and economic insecurity leads to a troubled world in which many are prepared to exchange freedom for protection, to barter liberty for a security guaranteed by those groups whose power already threatens to destroy self-government and individual responsibility. Lastly, Mr. Huxley pokes his umbrella at the planners, who attempt to apply to social and human problems the methods designed for the laboratory, and so establish a regime marked by restraint, regimentation and the denial of individual rights. These unhappy results are not the inevitable fruit of scientific progress. They are the consequences of the way in which scientific discoveries have hitherto been applied so that they have strengthened and increased the concentration of power in the hands of the economic monopolists (whether capitalist or Socialist) and the political bosses. The moral for Mr. Huxley is clear : the scientists must see that their discoveries are applied in a different way in future. An examination of the effects of scientific discovery on the prospects of peace leads Mr. Huxley to the same conclusion. The devastation of war is the result of applied science put to the service of nationalism. And the remedy once again is to control the ends to which the disinterested work of the scientist is put. Mr. Huxley has little faith in the politicians and their plans for the international control of scientific work. He puts -more hope in the possibility of the scientists taking a hand in politics and securing the application ortheir skill to humane and reasonable ends. The first step is to set .up an international organisation of scientific workers. Their programme ? To make the politicians discuss real questions : HOw are ppople to get enough to eat ?—and not : Who shall bully whom ? With a touch that is reminiscent of the Old Adam who wrote Brave New World, Mr. Huxley throws off half a dozen more suggestions to end with ex- ploiting the sub-arctic and desert regions to -produce sufficient food for all, or harnessing solar power to replace sources of power like
petroleum and uranium whose natural distribution is uneven and so politically dangerous.
All this Mr. Huxley packs into sixty pages, not one of which is dull and difficult. Perhaps it is carping criticism to mention the trace of irritation it left with one reader. Some may be irritated by Mr. Huxley's refusal to be bound by that conspiracy of optimism which agrees to see disaster only in the failure of the next conference —never of the last. Others may be irritated by the sketchy character of the proposals Mr. Huxley puts forward, although nobody has thought of better. My own feeling of irritation, however, springs, not from what Mr. Huxley says or fails to say, but from the manner in which he says it. Towards the end I began to suspect that Mr. Huxley, while he thinks that the world is in a mess, somehow feels that he is not involved. In such circumstances the role of the dis- interested philosopher, passing down hints—however well-meant- from the Mountain of Withdrawal, is not one which earns much gratitude. For this reason, while I admire Mr. Huxley's skill and lucidity in presenting his case' I should find it more convincing if he would drop that occasional air of condescension and admit that it is as much his mess as ours. ALAN BULLOCK.
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