APE AND ESSENCE

154

Sebastian Barnack in the Epilogue of Time must have a Stop

defines life as a progression

from animal eternity into time, into

the strictly human world of memory
and anticipation. 1

A reversion to this animal eternity is presented by Huxley

in his Ape and Essence. Ape and Essence, the second of his

Utopian trilogy presents the society of the post world war

III America where the inhabitants have become more simian

than human. Huxley has projected the possibility of a

devastating war which leaves behind it a society that

reverts to ‘animal eternity'. Ape and Essence is a fable

and its form is cleverly contrived. Its first part called

•Tallis' dwells on the discovery of William Tallis' rejected

film script of the 'Ape and Essence'. In it Huxley's first

narrator talks and travels with Bob Briggs. Tnis part acts

as a curtain - raiser whetting the readers' curiosity for

the film script. In the film script also thera is a

narrator. The complexity of the arrangement of the mate­

rial^ is to make the novel short and fantastic. Huxley

himself declared it in a letter :

You are probably right in what you

say about the form of Ape and Essence.
And yet there was no other form, that
would do. I tried at first to write

1. Aldous Huxley, Time Must Have a Stop. The Sun Dial Press,
Garden City, New York, 1947, p. 282
 155

it ‘straight* but the material simply

wouldn't suffer itself to be expressed
at length and in realistic, verisimili-
tudinous terms. The thing had to be
short and fantastic or else it could
not be at all, 1

The Script takes us to the year 2108. In

twentieth February of that year a schooner named 'Canterbury',

approaches the coast of California. Meanwhile the third

world war conducted with nuclear and biological weapons has

done much harm to the world. A scene from the world war III
depicts two combating armies of baboons. Each army has a

captive Einstein. These two Einsteins are the last to die

and the narrator whose voice interrupts the script frequently

announces the death of twentieth century science s

Stirred by a sudden gust, the stagnant

plaguefog noiselessly advances, sends
a wreath of puscoloured vapour swirling
among the apple blossoms, then descends
to engulf the two recumbent figures, A
choking scream announces the death, by
suicide, of 20th century science. 2

The death of science by its own inventions has

been prophesied by another writer of the twentieth century.

Spengler in his The Decline of the West writes j

1. Huxley's letter quoted by Keith May in Aldous Huxley, Elek

Book Ltd., 1972, p. 177.

2. Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence. Triad Panther, Granada

Publishing I,td., 1985, p. 41.
 156

In this very century, I prophesy, the

century of scientific critical Alexan-
drianism, of the great harvests, of
the final formulations, a new element
of inwardness will arise to overthrow
the will-to-victory of science. Exacc
science must presently fall upon its
own keen sword... scientific results
are merely items of an intellectual
tradition. It constitutes the death
of a science... 1

Because of its geographic isolation New

Zealand survived the consequences of the third world war. But

these New Zealanders could not travel anywhere for more than

a century because of the radioactive condition that prevailed

in the rest of the world after the war. Huxley introduces a

scientist from these New Zealanders into a society of degene­

rate savages supposed to have grown up amid the ::uins of

Los Angeles after the world war III. The main part of Ape

and Essence deals with the scientist Dr. Poole's learning

about the society of these savages.

Los Angeles has become a ghost town with

these savages. The technology of these tribesman is pitifully

primitive, their religion is a brutal combination of orgies,

crude taboos and sadistic ritual. Belial reigns supreme in

their society. Belial's triumph is brought about by the loss of

1. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Tr. by C.F.

Atkinsion, London: Allen and Unwin Ltd., 191B, p. 424.
 157

recognition of spiritual qualities as well as by the evil

working through human race during the third world war. The

first scene that the camera exposes in this savage society

is in the graveyard. The surviving Americans are scavenging

in graveyards for clothes because there is no machinery to

produce them. Not only this. Books from the libraries
provide fuels for ovens in this society. The dreadful conse

quence of the third world war becomes evident when we learn

from the narrator that so long as the radioactivity remained

there were not even cemetries to be plundered for clothes.

The savages wear identical clothes :

There are four men ... and two young

women... all dressed identically in
shirts and trousers, of tattered
homespun. Over these rough garments
each wears a small square apron upon
which, in scarlet wool, is embroi­
dered the word 'No'. In addition to
the apron, the girl wears a round
patch over either breast and behind,
a pair of somewhat larger patches on
the seat of their trousers. 1

They carry in their dress the negative prescriptions of

their society. That their society is based on the negation

of human values comes out from the first glance at their

dresses.

1. Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence, Triad Panther, Granada

Publishing Ltd., 1985, p. 48.
 158

A little incident in this scene illustrates

that the society of these savages is a totalitarian society.
Nothing can belong to the individual. Everything goes to
the State in the name of democracy. Democracy is a miscon­
ception here. When one of the gravediggers is found to hide
vy i Ua
a ring he has taken from the corpse he is punished to have V
twenty-five lashes. This is executed in the name of
democracy :

'This is a Democracy', he says,

'We're all equal before the law.
And the Law says that everything
belongs to the proletariat - in
other words, it all goes to the
State. And what's the penalty
for robbing the State?' ...
'Twenty-five lashes' comes the
almost inaudible reply. 1

An elaborate picture of the society of the

savages comes out in Dr. Poole's meeting with the chief of
the society. When the chief comes to know that the third
world war has not affected New Zealand and that they have
trains, engines and all modern scientific conveniences he
is overjoyed. In their society they do not have any techno­
logy. The world war has destroyed everything. The chief is
overjoyed with the prospect of getting help from Dr. Poole
to regain all scientific convenience in their society. He ^
knows only of engines and war machines. He does not have

1. Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence, Triad Pather, Granada

Publishing Ltd., 1985, p. 50
 159 :-

any idea of what a botanist is. So when he learns that Dr.

Poole is a botanist who knows about plants he thinks of war-

plants. As Dr. Poole will be of no help to regain scientific

convenience in their society he is ordered to be buried alive. X

It is the custom of their society to bury unsatisfactory

people alive. But Dr. Poole is ultimately exempted from his

punishment by swearing in the name of Belial that he will help

in growing better crops.

As to the sexual activity in this society of

the savages there are restraints in some curious, fashion.

Yearly rituals are observed on Belial Eve and Belial Day. On

Belial Day women take off the 'No* patches from their dresses.

The Belial Day ceremonies provide the annual mating season.

All women conceive at about the same time and as a result,

after nine months most of the children are born at the same

time. The breeding habit of animals has been implanted on

these savages. After the third world war man has reverted to
his animal habits. Sexual activities of man have become seaso
iv. Cuj
nal lirl^e animal. As the narrator comments ;

... But now the gamma rays have

changed all that. The hereditary
pattern of man’s physical and
mental behaviour has been given
another form. Thanks to the
supreme Triumph of Modern Science,
sex has become seasonal, romance
has been swallowed up by the oest­
rus, and the female's chemical
compulsion to mate has abolished
courtship, chivalry, tenderness,
love itself.1

1. Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence. Triad Panther, Granada

Publishing Ltd., 1985. p. 107
 -: 160. s-

In this society ruled by Belial the bond of love that unites

a man and a woman is destroyed. Huxley in his earlier utopia

Brave New World also presents this idea in a highly developed

civilization. While Brave New World has presented a step

forward in civilization Ape and Essence has stepped backward.

The sexual freedom in the highly advanced civilization of

Brave New World is not accompanied by the tender emotions of

love and courtship because it is a machine-age.. The society

of Ape and Essence is also an anti-love society because it

is an age grown out of the death of science and man has

stepped back to his primitive nature.

In this society ruled by Belial there is

a method of disposing of the deformed babies. The method

shows the cruelty most fitting the animal nature of the

savages. On Purification Day the babies born deformed

because of 'gamma rays' are sacrificed. The priests of the

society do not let the deformed babies live. The heads of

the mothers of these deformed babies are shaved. It is a

mark showing that their babies have been liquidated. This

system of liquidation reminds me of similar system in Orwell's

Nineteen Eighty Four and Zamyatin's We. In their highly

developed societies, the totalitarian Governments do not allow

unsatisfactory persons to live. Hence they are liquidated.

In We the process is called 'dissociation of matter':

A spread-eagled body, all in an

ethereal glowing haze - and now,
before one's eyes, it was melting,
 161

melting, dissolving with horrifying

rapidity and then - nothing: merely
a puddle of chemically pure water
that, only a moment before had been
riotously and redly pulsing within
a heart. All this was simple, all
this was known to everyone of us:
yes, dissociation of matter: yes,
the fusion of the atoms in the
human body. 1

The society of the savages in Ape and

Essence is as totalitarian as the society of the Brave New

Worlders under thes scientific dictators. Lesson showing

the omnipotence of Belial is inculcated in the minds of the

children by the Satanic Science Practitioner. The lesson

about their duty consists in a perversion of the ideas of

civilized man :

'My duty towards my neighbour', comes

the choral answer, 'is to do my best
to prevent him from doing unto me what
I should like to do unto him; to sub­
ject myself to all my governors; to
keep ray body in absolute chastity,
except during the two weeks following
Belial Day; and to do my duty in that
state of life to which it hath pleased
Belial to condemn me. 2

Later on the Arch Vicar announces how

Belial dictates the works to be done by the inhabitants of

the society. The inhabitants are unable to act in their own

1. Eugene Zamyatin, We Tr. by B. Guilbert Guerney, ed.

Jonathan Cape, London, 1970, p. 77.

2. Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence, Triad Panther, Granada

Publishing Ltd., 1985, p. 69.
 162

self interest. All the evidences from the first world war

onward show how Belial in the hearts of the politicians and

generals and the common man has acted and led towards the

way of famine, destruction, pauperization^etc. Thus the world \

situation worsened until the Belial possesses everything and

reduces man to the condition of animals :

The old beliefs in the value of th

individual soul faded away; the ol:i
restraints lost their effectiveness;
the old compunctions and compassions
evaporated. Everything that the
Other One had ever put into people's
heads oozed out, and the resulting
vacuum was filled by the lunatic
dreams of Progress and Nationalism.
Granted the validity of those dreans,
it followed that mere people, living
here and now, were no better than
ants and bed-bugs and might be trea­
ted accordingly. And they were
treated accordingly, they most
certainly were. 1

The idea of religion is also perverted

because there is no God in this society. Belial is the head

of‘the church and its members are all possessed by him.

Instead of making the sign of cross the member:; make the sign

of horns as the mark of Belial. This idea finds its parallel

in Brave New World where the inhabitants make * T' signs on

their stomachs. 'T' is the sign of the model car of the Ford.

In the system of liquidation the deformed children in Ape and

Essence are impaled on sharp knives. The custom is to

1. Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence. Triad Pantiter, Granada

Publishing Ltd., 1985, p. 94
 163 :-

propitiate Belial by blood. The Arch-Vicar claims this

custom to be similar to that of the Christian religion :

'And yet, there's blood in your

religion too', remarks the Arch
Vicar, smiling ironically.
'Washed in the blood of the Lamb'.

It is evident that this is a preversion of Christianity in

which washing by blood is not actually done. Dr. Poole

admits that the idea of washing with blood remains only in

their hymns or in their talks but is not actually practised.

The orthodox Christian form of worship is inverted to show

that in 2108 A.D. man succumbs to evil completely as in the

past.

The individuality of the savages in Ape and Essence is denied

as is evident from the fact that they are called 'vessels*.

Women are called 'vessels of the unholy spirit'. The worship

of Belial is a terrified denial of individuality. In the

history of civilization man has gradually denied the existence

of his spirit and as a result in 2108 AD he has arrived at the

situation where he has surrendered totally to evil. The narra­

tor has earlier commented that man 'drest in a little brief

authority' has been ignorant of his 'glassy essence', that is,

his spirit. The Arch-Vicar's account of the trends of world

history shows how gradually evil occupies the human race and
establishes his reign at the eclipse of the Order of Things :

1. Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence, Triad Panther, Granada

Publishing Ltd., 1985, p. 86.
 : 164 :-

'As I read history', he ssys, 'it’s

like this. Man pitting himself
against Nature, the Ego against the
Order of Things, Belial*(a perfunc­
tory sign of the horns) 'against the
Other One. For a hundred thousand
years or so the battle's entirely
decisive. Then, three centuries ago,
almost overnight, the tide starts to
run uninterruptedly in one direction.1 2 3

Belial has won the battles because man in his vanity has

neglected his 'glassy essence' which unites him with the

Order of Things. This is a Faustian theme showing man's

servitude to Evil. Devil, being the embodiment of their ego

is worshipped as their God :

In fact, the ego has been objectified

by the surviving American as the Devil
himself and worshipped accordingly.
The priests wear horns instead of mitres
and 'May you never be impaled on His _
Horns' 'becomes a form of well-wishing'.

After Huxley another modern writer to deal with

this theme of man's inborn propensity for evil is William Golding.

In his Lord of the Files his abiding concern is the innate evil
in man. As he himself said :
3
man produces evil as the bee produces honey

Golding in his novel has portrayed the degeneration of a group

1. Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence. Triad Panther, Granada

Publishing Ltd, 1985, pp. 87-8.

2. J. Meckier, Aldous Huxley : Satire and Structure, Chatto

and Windus, London, 1969, p. 192.

3. The Sunday Statesman 1st March, 1987.

 165

of boys dropped from a wrecked aircraft on an island. They

degenerate to a superstitious barbarity and worship Beelzebub,

traditionally described as the 'Lord of the flies'. Through

their barbarity Golding'has presented the end of innocence,

the darkness of man's heart. Like Huxley's Ape and Essence

Golding's Lord of the Flies conveys the message that evil

reigns in man under the glitter of civilization.

The gruesome picture of Huxley's society

of the savages in Ape and Essence is tampered with a positive

theme that emerges with Dr. Poole, the hero, and Loola. In

the course of the annual orgy each discovers a new personal

dimension. It is something akin to oldfashioned love. Dr.

Poole becomes more human and Loola escapes the animalism of

the mating season. When Dr. Poole is asked to participate in

the orgy the Narrator utters a piece of poetry v/hich is adap­

ted from the Cardinal's words in Act V, Scene V of Duchess

of Malfi,

When I look into the fishponds in my garden,

(And not mine only, for every garden is riddled
with eel-holes and reflected moons),me thinks
I see a Thing armed with a rake that seems,
Out of the ooze, out of the immanence
Among the eels of heaven, to strike a-; me -
At Me the holy, Me divine! And yet
How tedious is a guilty conscience! How
Tedious, for that matter, an unguilty one!
What wonder if the horror of the fishponds
Draws us towards the rake? And the Thingstrikes,
 166

And I, the uneasy Person, in the mud,

or in the liquid moonlight, thankfully .
Find others than myself to have that blind
Or radiant being, i

These words from the Duchess of Mclfi are appli­

cable in a new way to the narrative. While the savages in the

future California have descended into mud^these two people Dr. j><

Poole and Loola find the eels of heaven there.

Later on Huxley has tried to restore the peace

in Ape and Essence by introducing Shelley's poetry through Dr.

Poole. Dr. Poole tries to convince Loola of her human nature

and wishes to dissuade her from allegiance to the animalism of

the society :

'They've been turned into animals ,

he goes on. 'You have n’t. You're
still a human being - a normal
human being with normal human
f eelings'.2

At this time he quotes from the volume of Shelley he rescued

from the bakery oven :

We shall become the same, we shall

be one Spirit within two frames,
oh! wherefore two? 3

1. Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence. Triad Panther, Granada

Publishing Ltd., 1985, p. 110.

2. Ibid : p. 137.

3. Ibid : p. 138.
 167

He tells Loola that making love like human beings may not
everywhere be the right thing. But in their case and in
that time it is the right thing.

The novel ends with Dr. Poole and Loola sitting beside the
grave of Tallis and Dr. Poole appreciating Shelley's Adonais.
He reads Shelley's lines about the Spirit of Divine Love that
sustains this universe. The spirit burns in all things and
pervades all things. With Shelley Dr. Poole seems to announce
that the Divine Light now shines on him and is consuming the
k^
last remaining clouds of cold morality. Then they eat eggs /

and Dr. Poole scatters eggshells over Tallis' grave. This is

a mark of disrespect on their part to their author. It may =
(SC
be that Huxley has tried to relieve his Tallis-like pessimism
in this way.

But the pessimism is so deep that it over­

shadows the (positiv^' theme that Huxley has tried to introduce
yrltlyDr. Poole Jand Loola. The dark recess of man's nature,
^ A
the animal trait in him looms large in this novel. Huxley
has presented the ghoulish elements so prominently that it
y©c>^
leaves no place for charity on his part. Thus the picture of jy
society in Ape and Essence/4ias been regarded by all as anO 1 ^
utterly depressing^ and disappointing one without a tra/ce^of

charity. Perhaps the comment of the Times Literary Supplement

y
is worth quoting in this respect i
 168

At bottom we are only beasts, so that

though we sometimes wish to behave
nobly, we never succeed in doing so..
But if this is the truth about humanity,
if we are the beastly creatures whon he
increasingly depicts, worshippers of
idols and vessels of lust, tied to our
humiliating bodies which, whenever the
spirit makes its occasional feeble rrsove-
ments in the direction of good, drag it
angrily back to rivet ever more surely
that shackles of its dependence upon it
- why be so angry with us? After all,
we are only baboons; cannot the keeper
leave the poor baboons alone to make
the best of their baboonery?
"Oh, wearisome conditions of humanity
(wrote Fulke Greviile)
Born under one lay to another bound,
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity.
Created sick commanded to be sound."
It is a pitiable plight, and if he had
a spark of charity in his composition,
Huxley would be touched by it. But no,
there is only hatred, only scorn, only
denunciation - but of the very highest
order, expressed in the most lucid prose,
expressed in fact, in the most powerfully
moving book that has appeared since the
war.1

It is true that Huxley has presented here

an extremely disappointing picture of ^apfeociety. Truly he ^

has not left room for charity on his part. But the appre­

hension that has led him to present such a depressing

picture of society reigned by evil - cannot be underesti-

mated. His vision may be brutal and nauseating but it is,

as Anthony Burgess thinks, the vision of a 'still possible

1. The Times Literary Supplement, February 19, 1949.

 169

future*. With the devastations of the second World War fresh

in his memory it is not surprising for him to present this

vision of society. Man's firmly established lordship over
Creation has endowed him with a surplus of power above his
(^limited) requirements. It is open to his choice to use this

surplus power :

Now bends he to the good, now to the

ill, with craft of art, subtle past
reach of sight; 1

And man has turned his face perversely towards the evil goal
n
of being his own enemy. His acquisition of the two-edged
superfluity of material power has thrown him into the spiri­ >
tual problem of dealing with himself. The discovery of the

titanic force of atomic energy and applying this to the

annihilation of human lives and works had brought home to the

/ 7
" .
minds of man some inkling of a tragic lesion in the affairs of

men which western men of science have already recognised. The

progressing technology has now armed (4^ perpetually reborn^ -^5^

Original Sin with a weapon powerful enough to enable a sinful

Mankind to annihilate itself. 'The wages of Sin is Death'.

The fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had brought back these dread­

ful words to our ears again and it is not surpiising for.Huxley

to present in Ape and Essence an evil - dominated society as

the possible outcome of all these experiences.

1 Sophocles, Antigone, from Sophocles' Dramas, translated by

George Young, Dent : London, Everyman's Library, 1963, p.12.