He had been born in 1894 into a scientific family Aldous s grandfather was T. Ends and Means As a successful novelist and a prolific literary journalist, Aldous Huxley contributed extensively to popularizing and critiquing modern biological science and technology. It was simultaneously a satire on contemporary culture, a prediction of biological advances, a commentary on the social roles of science and scientists, and a plan for reforming society. This neglected aspect of his early scientific and political thinking must be taken into account when unpacking the multiple and perhaps conflicting meanings of Brave New World. For Huxley at this time in his life and in this social context, eugenics was not a nightmare prospect but rather the best hope for designing a better world if used in the right ways by the right people. 3 His writing, including his dystopian novel Brave New World, reflected public anxieties about the supposedly degenerating hereditary quality of the population and how this decline would affect England s economic and political future. Huxley s interest in eugenics was more than a brief flirtation, as suggested by one recent biographer on the contrary, his ongoing support for so-called race betterment was typical of left-leaning British intellectuals in the interwar period. He further pondered the problem of dysgenics and democracy in several published essays dating from the late 1920s and early 1930s, with titles such as What Is Happening to Our Population? and Are We Growing Stupider? 2 He defended the eugenic policies of encouraging higher birthrates among the intellectual classes and sterilizing the lower-class unfit, which he believed would improve the inherited mental abilities of future generations and lead to responsible citizenship. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press s Rights and Permissions Web site: DOI: /tphĢ 106 THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN In this letter and in the novel, Huxley linked intelligence, eugenics, and politics. ISSN:, electronic ISSN by The Regents of the University of California and the National Council on Public History. Quoted in David Bradshaw, Introduction, The Hidden Huxley: Contempt and Compassion for the Masses (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), xx.
Glyn Roberts Papers, National Library of Wales. The imbecility of the 99.5% is appalling but after all, what else can you expect? 1 1. The important thing, it seems to me, is not to attack the 99.5%.but to try to see that the 0.5% survives, keeps its quality up to the highest possible level, and, if possible, dominates the rest. Key words: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, eugenics, democracy, social uses of science Aldous Huxley, writing shortly after the 1932 publication of Brave New World, despaired about the real-world significance of one of his novel s principal themes: About 99.5% of the entire population of the planet are as stupid and philistine.as the great masses of the English. His brave new world can therefore be understood as a serious design for social reform, as well as a commentary about the social uses of scientific knowledge. He felt that his role as an artist and public intellectual was to formulate an evolving outlook on urgent social, scientific, and moral issues. Today his novel is best known as satirical and predictive, but an additional interpretation emerges from Huxley s nonfiction writings in which the liberal humanist expressed some surprising opinions about eugenics, citizenship, and meritocracy. 1 Designing a Brave New World: Eugenics, Politics, and Fiction Joanne Woiak Abstract: Aldous Huxley composed Brave New World in the context of the Depression and the eugenics movement in Britain.
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