“Because our world is not the same as Othello's world. Christianity without tears–that's what soma is.” You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren't any temptations to resist. There's no such thing as a divided allegiance you're so conditioned that you can't help doing what you ought to do. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended–there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. "My dear young friend," said Mustapha Mond, "civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. “But God's the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?” ’The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.’ But there aren’t any losses for us to compensate religious sentiment is superfluous. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. ’You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity independence won’t take you safely to the end.’ Well, we’ve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. “One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn’t dream about was this” (he waved his hand), “us, the modern world. Yes, we inevitably turn to God for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.”’ Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light turns naturally and inevitably for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false-a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age and a horrible disease it is. “Take this, for example,” he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: “’A man grows old he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. “Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages.
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