ABSTRACT
There are essentially at least two Aldous Huxleys. One is the societal Huxley who feels keenly the outrages of history and the deleterious distortions inflicted upon man by political, technological, and social-religious systems; this is the Huxley who looks at society, finds it wanting, and offers prescriptive cures. There is also the other Huxley who, with the weariness of Ecclesiastes, knows that the more things change the more they remain the same, that man is Sisyphus performing a futile and endless task, that involvement with society tends to yield despair, and that one’s quest therefore should be directed toward self-transcendence in an attempt to gain a unity with the Godhead. Self-realization becomes self-effacement and the problems of society are solved through a dissolution of time and place. In Huxley, as in Goethe’s Faust, there are two forces contending for supremacy: the corporeal and sentient societal self and the transcendent self seeking unity with the spirit of divinity. Huxley wants to be a part of and apart from the human predicament. In his concern for improving society he will occasionally comment on politics through characters like Midge, the Communist, and Spandrell, the nihilist (both found in Point Counter Point)—although in no way can he be called a political novelist. 1
