Ends and Means

An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals

Aldous Huxley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138522831
• eBook ISBN: 9781351311823
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Contemporary intellectuals still struggle over the relationship of ends to means, especially in political discourse. Pacifism is still an important topic today, as terrorism and dictatorial states abound. Many will find solace in Ends and Means, while others will find the book only a case study of the relationship of ethics to politics.

Aldous Huxley examines common issues in a unique fashion. How can the regression in charity through which we are living, and for which each one of us is in some measure responsible, be halted and reversed? How can existing society be transformed into the ideal society described by the prophets? How can the average sensual man and the exceptional (and more dangerous) ambitious man be transformed into a non-attached being, one who can create a society significantly better than our own?

Huxley discusses the relationship between the theories and the practices of reformers and the nature of the universe. He argues that our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality help us formulate conceptions of right and wrong, not only in our private life, but also in the sphere of politics and economics. Far from being irrelevant, our philosophical beliefs are the final determining factor in our actions. This provocative classic volume, now available in paperback, will continue to stimulate discussion and thought.

XIV

Beliefs

IN THE preceding chapters I have posed and attempted to answer three questions. First: what do we want to become? Second: what are we now? Third: how do we propose to pass from our present condition to the condition we desire to reach? Of these three questions, the third has been answered methodically, in a series of more or less elaborate discussions of ways and means. The second has been answered incidentally at different stages of these discussions. The first, it will be remembered, was asked in the opening chapter and received only the briefest and most categorical answer. In what follows I propose to examine those answers—to consider the social ideals of the prophets and the personal ideals of the founders of religion in the light of what we know about the world. “All that we are, is the result of what we have thought.” Men live in accordance with their philosophy of life, their conception of the world. This is true even of the most thoughtless. It is impossible to live without a metaphysics. The choice that is given us is not between some kind of metaphysic and no metaphysic; it is always between a good metaphysic and a bad metaphysic, a metaphysic that corresponds reasonably closely with observed and inferred reality and one that doesn’t. Logically, this discussion of the nature of the world should have preceded the discussion of the practical ways and means for modifying ourselves and the society in which we live. But the arrangement that is logically most correct is not always the most convenient. For various reasons it has seemed to be expedient to reserve this discussion of first principles to the last chapters.

Let us begin by a summary, in the most general terms, of what we know about the world we live in. Science, in Meyerson’s phrase, is the reduction of diversity to identity.^* The diverse, the brute irrational fact, is given by our senses. But we are not content to accept diversity as so given. We have a hunger and thirst for explanation and, for the human mind, explanation consists in the discovery of identity behind diversity. Any theory which postulates the existence of identities behind diversities strikes us as being intrinsically plausible.

Nature seems to satisfy the mind’s craving; for, upon investigation, it turns out that identities do in fact underlie apparent diversity. But explanation in these terms is never quite complete. The facts of sensation and of irreversible change in time are irrationals which cannot be completely rationalized by reduction to identity. Science recognizes the specificity of things as well as their underlying sameness. Hegel’s mistake was to imagine that nature was wholly rational and therefore deducible a priori. It would be convenient if this were the case; but unfortunately it isn’t.

The diversity of the material world has been reduced, so far as such reduction is possible, to an ultimate identity. All matter, according to the physicist, is built up, in a limited number of patterns, out of units of energy which, in isolation, seem to possess none of the qualities ordinarily associated with matter in the mass. Between a billion sub-atomic units and one sub-atomic unit there is a difference, not only of quantity, but also of quality. The natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, biology, are concerned with matter as built up into varying degrees of patterned complexity. The specificity of things, immediately perceived by our senses, is found to be correlated with the number and the arrangement of ultimate units of energy.

The material universe is pictured by science as composed of a diversity of patterns of a single substance. Common-sense arbitrarily selects certain packets of patterned energy-units and regards them as separate, individual existents. This proceeding would seem to be entirely unjustifiable. So-called separate, individual existents are dependent upon one another for their very being. They are inter-connected by a network of relationships—electro-magnetic, gravitational, chemical and, in the case of sentient beings, mental. That network gives them their being and reality. An individual existent is nothing except in so far as it is a part of a larger whole. In other words, it is not an individual existent. The things we ordinarily call objects or individuals—a tree, a man, a table—are not “concrete realities,” as the romantic anti-intellectuals would have us believe. They are abstractions from a reality that consists, as systematic investigation reveals, of a network of relations between the interdependent parts of an incalculably greater whole. A man, for example, is what he is only in virtue of his relationship with the surrounding universe. His entire existence is conditioned by his neighbourhood to the earth, with its powerful gravitational field; radiations of many kinds make him dependent on distant heavenly bodies; he is the locus of a continuous process of chemical exchange; mentally, he is related to and conditioned by the minds of his contemporaries and predecessors. The common-sense claim that we live among, and ourselves are, independent existents is based upon ignorance. In present circumstances, however, those who insist on talking of men and women as though they were “concrete” independent existents can excuse themselves on the ground that such a description, though incorrect, is less misleading than that of the political theorists who consider that human beings should be sacrificed to such entities as “the nation,” “the state,” “the party,” “the destiny of the race” and so on. The truth is that there are many different levels of abstraction from reality. The entities with which political theory deals belong to a higher order of abstraction than do the separate, individual existents of common sense— are more remote, that is to say, from concrete reality, which consists of the interdependent parts of a totality. The monstrous evils which arise when remote abstractions, like “nation” and “state” are regarded as realities more concrete and of greater significance than human beings may be remedied, in some measure, by the insistence on the relative concreteness of individual men and women. But this last doctrine is itself the source of very great evils, which cannot be remedied until we recognize, and choose to act upon, the truth that the “individual” is also an abstraction from reality. Separate, individual existents are illusions of common sense. Scientific investigation reveals (and these findings, as we shall see later on, are confirmed by the direct intuition of the trained mystic and contemplative) that concrete reality consists of the interdependent parts of a totality and that independent existents are merely abstractions from that reality.

Recent scientific investigations have made it clear that the world of sense experience and of common sense is only a small part of the world as a whole. It is small for two reasons: first, because we are confined to a particular point in space and have scarcely any knowledge by direct acquaintance and little knowledge even by inference of the conditions prevailing in distant parts of the universe; second, because the organs by means of which we establish direct communication with the outside world are incapable of apprehending the whole of reality. This second limitation is of more significance than the first. Even if we were able to make voyages of exploration through inter-stellar space, we should still be incapable of seeing electro-magnetic vibrations shorter than those we now perceive as violet or longer than those of which we are conscious as red. We should still be unable actually to see or feel even so large an object as a molecule. The shortest instant of time perceptible to us would still be a large fraction of a second. We should still be stone deaf to all sounds above a certain pitch. We should still be without the faculties that enable migrating birds to find their way. And so on. Every animal species inhabits a home-made universe, hollowed out of the real world by means of its organs of perception and its intellectual faculties. In man’s case the intellectual faculties are so highly developed that he is able, unlike the other animals, to infer the existence of the larger world enclosing his private universe. He cannot see beyond the violet; but he knows by inference that ultra-violet radiations exist and he is even able to make practical use of these radiations, which sense and common sense assure him do not exist. The universe in which we do our daily living is the product of our limitations. We ourselves have made it, selecting it (because we wished to or were incapable of doing otherwise) from a total reality much larger than, and qualitatively different from, the universe of common-sense. To this most important of fundamental scientific discoveries I shall have occasion to return, in another context, later on.

So much for the scientific picture of the material world. The scientific picture of mind is unfortunately much less clearly outlined. Indeed, there is no single scientific picture of mind; there are several irreconcilably different pictures. Some scientific investigators insist that mind is merely an epiphenomenon of matter; that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile; that the very notion of consciousness can be discarded altogether and that all mental activity can be explained in terms of conditioned reflexes; that the mind is nothing but an instrument, forged during the course of evolution, for securing food, sexual satisfaction and the conditions of physical survival. Others, on the contrary, argue that the phenomena investigated by science are to a considerable extent constructs of the investigating consciousness; that mind cannot be determined by a “matter” which is itself in part a creation of mind; that mind is a fundamental reality in the universe and is consequently able to pass valid judgments about the nature of the world; that the laws of thought are also laws of things. Which of these two parties is in the right? In this context one fact emerges as highly significant. All men of science, whatever their views, consistently act as though they believed in the ability of the human intellect, using the method of logic, to make true judgments about the nature of the world. Such is the behaviour even of the Behaviourist. But, according to his own theory, the Behaviourist (like the other disparagers of mind) has no right to behave in this way. If mind is merely an epiphenomenon of matter, if consciousness is completely determined by physical motions, if the intellect is only a machine for securing food and sexual pleasure, then there is absolutely no reason for supposing that any theory produced by this instrument can have universal validity. If Behaviourism, for example, is correct, there is no reason for supposing that the mind can make any kind of valid judgment about the world. But among judgments about the world figures the theory of Behaviourism. Therefore, if Behaviourism is correct, there is no reason for attaching the slightest importance to the opinions, among others, of Behaviourists. In other words, if Behaviourism is correct, it is probable that Behaviourism is incorrect.

All who advance theories of mind containing the words “nothing but,” tend to involve themselves in this kind of contradiction. The very fact that they formulate theories which they believe to have general validity, the very fact that, having studied a few phenomena (which are anyhow not phenomena but “epiphenomena,” facts of consciousness), they should feel themselves justified in making inductions about all phenomena past, present and future, constitutes in itself a sufficient denial of the validity of “nothing-but” judgments concerning the nature of the mind. All science is based upon an act of faith—faith in the validity of the mind’s logical processes, faith in the ultimate explicability of the world, faith that the laws of thought are laws of things. In practice, I repeat, if not always in theory, such conceptions are fundamental to all scientific activity. For the rest, scientists are opportunists. They will pass from a common-sense view of the world to advanced idealist theories, making use of one or the other according to the field of study in which they are at work. Unfortunately, few scientists in these days of specialization are ever called upon to work in more than one small field of study. Hence there is a tendency on the part of individual specialists to accept as true particular theories which are in fact only temporarily convenient. It is highly unfortunate that so few scientists are ever taught anything about the metaphysical foundations of science.

Recent research in medicine, in experimental psychology and in what is still called parapsychology has thrown some light on the nature of mind and its position in the world. During the last forty years the conviction has steadily grown among medical men that very many cases of disease, organic as well as functional, are directly caused by mental states. The body becomes ill because the mind controlling it either secretly wants to make it ill, or else because it is in such a state of agitation that it cannot prevent the body from sickening. Whatever its physical nature, resistance to disease is unquestionably correlated with the psychological condition of the patient.^* That even so grossly “physical” a complaint as dental caries may be due to mental causes was maintained in a paper read before the American Dental Congress in 1937. The author pointed out that children living on a perfectly satisfactory diet may still suffer from dental decay. In such cases, investigation generally shows that the child’s life at home or at school is in some way unsatisfactory. The teeth decay because their owner is under mental strain.

Mind not only makes sick, it also cures. An optimistic patient has more chance of getting well than a patient who is worried and unhappy. The recorded instances of faith healing include cases in which even organic diseases were cured almost instantaneously.

Experimenters in hypnotism have shown that it is possible to raise a blister by merely telling a deeply hypnotized subject that he is being burnt. The metal which touches the skin is cold; but the subject feels pain and displays all the physical symptoms of a burn. Conversely, hypnotism can be used to produce anesthesia, even in major operations. Thus, in the late ’forties of last century, James Esdaile performed over two hundred operations upon patients anesthetized by means of hypnosis. Esdaile’s surgical technique was pre-Listerian; nevertheless, the mortality among his hypnotized patients was extremely low.

Systematic researches designed to demonstrate the existence of telepathy have been conducted at intervals during the last fifty years. Of these the most recent and the most considerable are those which Professor Rhine has been carrying out at Duke University in North Carolina. Rhine’s work, which has been successfully repeated by several other investigators, leaves no doubt as to the existence of telepathy and clairvoyance and very little doubt as to the existence of pre-vision. In his presidential address delivered before the Society for Psychical Research in 1936 Professor C. D. Broad discusses the problems raised by telepathy. How does telepathy work? That it is not a physical process akin to radio transmission is obvious; for the strength of the messages does not diminish with distance. After discussing various other alternatives Professor Broad concludes that it is probably necessary to postulate the existence of some kind of purely mental medium, in which individual minds are bathed, as in a kind of non-physical ether. If there is such a thing as pre-vision, we must presume that this mental medium has its existence outside time. It would seem, then, that mind, or at any rate something of a mental nature—a “psychic factor,” within a psychic medium—exists independently of the body and of the spatial and temporal conditions of bodily life.

I have considered the scientific picture of the material world and the scientific pictures of mind. It is now time to consider the scientific picture of the history of this mental-material conglomerate. The only part of the universe with which we have direct acquaintance is this planet. It is also the only part of the universe in which we can study life and consciousness. How far are we justified in drawing inferences about the general nature of things from the inferences previously drawn from the rather scanty evidence about the history of life on this planet? It is hard indeed to say. We have seen that matter on the earth seems to be built up from the same energy-units as constitute matter in remote parts of the universe and that the laws of thought are laws of things, not only here, but, to all appearances, also there. This being so, to generalize from our inferences regarding the nature of our planetary history would seem to be a process that is at any rate not completely illegitimate. Meanwhile, however, we have to discover what the nature of that history is.

I am not qualified to discuss the methods of evolution, nor, in the present context, does there seem to be any good reason for embarking upon such a discussion. For our particular purposes, the results of evolution are more significant than the mechanism by which those results were achieved. In regard to this mechanism, the evidence available seems to point to the conclusion that mutation, hybridism, retardation of growth and foetalization (which are themselves the products of mutation), and natural selection are sufficient to account for evolutionary change and that it is unnecessary to invoke such concepts as orthogenesis or the inheritance of acquired characters. Lamarckism has often been supported by those who are anxious to vindicate the pre-eminence of mind in the world. But, as Haldane has pointed out, these crusaders are really doing a disservice to their cause. If characters acquired as the result of more or less intelligently directed effort are inherited, then we should expect evolution to be a rapid process. But in fact it is extremely slow. If evolution is due to “cunning” rather than “luck,” then the cunning must be of a pretty feeble kind; for it has brought life a relatively short way in a very long time. In fact, the evidence for Lamarckism is extremely inadequate. (Neither Lamarckism nor the orthogenetics theory seems to be compatible with the fact that most mutations are demonstrably deleterious.) Mind, as we know, can affect the body profoundly and in a great variety of ways. But, as a matter of empirical fact, this power of affecting the body is limited. To modify the arrangement of the genes must be numbered, it would seem, among the things it cannot do.

There is only one other point in regard to the mechanism of selection about which I need speak in the present context. Competition, when it exists, is of two kinds: between members of different species (interspecific) and between members of the same species (intra-specific). Intra-specific selection is commoner among abundant species than among species with a small membership and plays a more important part in their evolution. Many of the results of natural selection are demonstrably deleterious and this is found to be the case above all where the selection has been brought about by intra-specific competition. For example, intraspecific competition leads to an excessively precise adaptation to a given set of circumstances—in other words to excessive specialization which, as we shall see later on, is always inimical to genuine biological progress. Haldane regards all intra-specific competition as being, on the whole, biologically evil. Competition between adults of the same species tends to “render the species as a whole less successful in coping with its environment.… The special adaptation favoured by intra-specific competitions divert a certain amount of energy from other functions.” Man has now little to fear from competition with other species. His worst enemies outside his own species are insects and bacteria; and even with these he has been, and doubtless will continue to be, able to deal successfully. For man, competition is now predominantly intra-specific. A dispassionate analysis of the circumstances in which the human race now lives makes it clear that most of this intra-specific competition is not imposed by any kind of biological necessity, but is entirely gratuitous and voluntary. In other words, we are wantonly and deliberately pursuing a policy which we need not pursue and which we have the best scientific reasons for supposing to be disastrous to the species as a whole. We are using our intelligence to adapt ourselves more and more effectively to the modern conditions of intra-specific competition. We are doing our best to develop a militaristic “hypertely,” to become, in other words, dangerously specialized in the art of killing our fellows.

Evolution has resulted in the world as we know it today. Is there any reason for regarding this world as superior to the world of earlier geological epochs? In other words, can evolution be regarded as a genuine progress? These questions can be answered, with perfect justification, in the affirmative. Certain properties, which it is impossible not to regard as valuable, have been developed in the course of evolution. The lower forms of life persist more or less unchanged; but among the higher forms there has been a definite trend towards greater control and greater independence of the physical environment. Beings belonging to the highest forms of life have increased their capacity for self-regulation, have created an internal environment capable of remaining stable throughout very great changes in the outer world, have equipped themselves with elaborate machinery for picking up knowledge of the outer world, as well as of the inner, and have developed a wonderfully effective instrument for dealing with that knowledge. Evolutionary progress is of two kinds: general, allround progress and one-sided progress in a particular direction. This last leads to specialization. From the evidence provided by the study of fossils and living forms, we are justified in inferring that any living form which has gone in for one-sided progress thereby makes it impossible for itself to ac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION
• I GOALS, ROADS AND CONTEMPORARY STARTING POINT
• II THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION
• III EFFICACY AND LIMITATIONS OF LARGE-SCALE SOCIAL REFORM
• IV SOCIAL REFORM AND VIOLENCE
• V THE PLANNED SOCIETY
• VI NATURE OF THE MODERN STATE
• VII CENTRALIZATION AND DECENTRALIZATION
• VIII DECENTRALIZATION AND SELF-GOVERNMENT
• IX WAR
• X INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
• XI INEQUALITY
• XII EDUCATION
• XIII RELIGIOUS PRACTICES
• XIV BELIEFS
• XV ETHICS
• INDEX