Quote 1
"In the end," said Mustapha Mond, "the Controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but infinitely surer methods of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning and hypnopædia…" (3.184)
Rock smashes scissors, scissors cut paper, paper covers rock, and science beats force. The question is, is there a difference between control by "force" and control by "science?" Can "science" be seen as just another—if more sophisticated—form of violence?
Quote 2
"That's because we don't allow them to be like that. We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium. We don't permit their magnesium-calcium ratio to fall below what it was at thirty. We give them transfusion of young blood. We keep their metabolism permanently stimulated. So, of course, they don't look like that. Partly," he added, "because most of them die long before they reach this old creature's age. Youth almost unimpaired till sixty, and then, crack! the end." (7.22)
In eliminating the aging process, science has destroyed a very basic element of the human experience. Mustapha comments that old age is dangerous for the community—not because of physical frailty, but because of mental prowess. Sadly, Lenina is too caught up in the former to acknowledge the latter during her visit to Malpais.
Quote 3
It's the same with agriculture. We could synthesize every morsel of food, if we wanted to. But we don't. We prefer to keep a third of the population on the land. For their own sakes – because it takes longer to get food out of the land than out of a factory. Besides, we have our stability to think of. We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. That's another reason why we're so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science."
[…]
"Yes," Mustapha Mond was saying, "that's another item in the cost of stability. It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled." (16.51-3)
The World Controllers clearly recognize the threats to their power and to their ability to control. But to "muzzle" science would seem an impossible task. Or not… what does Brave New World argue? Can science be contained?
Quote 4
"Because, finally, I preferred this," the Controller answered. "I was given the choice: to be sent to an island, where I could have got on with my pure science, or to be taken on to the Controllers' Council with the prospect of succeeding in due course to an actual Controllership. I chose this and let the science go." After a little silence, "Sometimes," he added, "I rather regret the science. Happiness is a hard master—particularly other people's happiness. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth." […] I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. It has given us the stablest equilibrium in history. […] But we can't allow science to undo its own good work. That's why we so carefully limit the scope of its researches […]. We don't allow it to deal with any but the most immediate problems of the moment. All other enquiries are most sedulously discouraged." (16.65)
What is it about Mustapha's character that allows him to make the sacrifices he's made? His choice seems irrational—for a top-notch physicist to put a collar on science is baffling. Does Huxley adequately justify his behavior?
Quote 5
It's curious," he went on after a little pause, "to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific research was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods." (16.65)
Why does Mustapha find conflict between "truth and beauty" and "comfort and happiness"? The distinction he draws between them is false, as is the distinction drawn between "dangerous science" and "helpful science." Comfort stems from technology, which stems from invention, which comes from curiosity and probably discontent to begin with. Science for the sake of knowledge leads to science for practical purposes, and the very act of striving for truth and beauty is where happiness resides. This is why men like Bernard, Helmholtz, and John are so unhappy in this world of comfort—they're not striving for truth and beauty.
Quote 6
"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe." (17.28)
Mustapha says God is incompatible with science—but why? He himself is a scientist and says that he believes in God. It's likely that he means man's conception of God, not God himself. According to Mustapha, man can't believe in God and be happy, perhaps because the implications are too weighty. (Implications like divine justice, judgment, morality.)
Quote 7
"Think of water under pressure in a pipe." They thought of it. "I pierce it once," said the Controller. "What a jet!"
He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling little fountains.
[…]
Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable? (3.94-9)
Here begins the connection between mother-child love and sexual love. In the eyes of Mustapha, both are condemnable because they lead to emotions, which lead to instability. But this Freudian stuff will have much larger implications in the novel, especially when it comes to John and Linda. Stay tuned. (And admire how sneakily Huxley got us thinking in that direction right off the bat.)
Quote 8
"[…] chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices." (17.45)
Mustapha claims that promiscuity is necessary to avoid feelings of unfulfilled desire. John will later establish that such feelings are part of being a human. It follows, then, that in creating "lasting civilization," the World Controllers have destroyed humanity. If this is true, what they're running isn't exactly a "civilization" at all.
Quote 9
"Stability," said the Controller, "stability. No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability." His voice was a trumpet. Listening they felt larger, warmer. (3.105)
Mustapha's voice becomes an important part of his character, both here and later in Chapter 17 when he has his philosophical discussion with John. Check out his "Character Analysis" for more info and to read about our suggestion that words = control in Brave New World.
Quote 10
"The Nine Years' War, the great Economic Collapse. There was a choice between World Control and destruction. Between stability and…"
[…]
"Liberalism, of course, was dead of anthrax, but all the same you couldn't do things by force."
[…]
"Government's an affair of sitting, not hitting. You rule with the brains and the buttocks, never with the fists." (3.164-170)
Mustapha draws a line between violence and non-physical control, but is there really a difference? He argues that one is more effective, but is one more acceptable than the other?
Quote 11
Mustapha Mond shook hands with all three of them; but it was to the Savage that he addressed himself. "So you don't much like civilization, Mr. Savage," he said.
The Savage looked at him. He had been prepared to lie, to bluster, to remain sullenly unresponsive; but, reassured by the good-humoured intelligence of the Controller's face, he decided to tell the truth, straightforwardly. "No." He shook his head. (16.6-7)
It is a testament to John's self-control that he doesn't lie to Mustapha, but it also speaks to Mustapha's use of his own power over others. Mustapha makes it clear, right from the start, that his only desire is to speak calmly.
Quote 12
"But how useful! I see you don't like our Bokanovsky Groups; but, I assure you, they're the foundation on which everything else is built. They're the gyroscope that stabilizes the rocket plane of state on its unswerving course." The deep voice thrillingly vibrated; the gesticulating hand implied all space and the onrush of the irresistible machine. Mustapha Mond's oratory was almost up to synthetic standards. (16.39)
At this moment, Mustapha's voice is likened to that of a machine—but that is because he is simply regurgitating the mechanical theories of the World State. Later, in his conversation alone with John, Mustapha becomes more human in his message.
Quote 13
"It's lucky," he added, after a pause, "that there are such a lot of islands in the world. I don't know what we should do without them." (16.67)
This is an important quote, because it reminds us of the fundamental failures of the attempt to subjugate and dehumanize. Mustapha freely admits that there are many people whom the Controllers cannot control. But he doesn't seem to recognize the next logical conclusion—that the system isn't working, and that individuality prevails.
Quote 14
Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers.
"Fortunate boys!" said the Controller. "No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy—to preserve you, so far as that is possible, from having emotions at all." (3.115-6)
The Controller misses a key point here—that the consummation is made better by the waiting.
Quote 15
"Has any of you been compelled to live through a long time-interval between the consciousness of a desire and its fulfillment?"
[…]
"I once had to wait nearly four weeks before a girl I wanted would let me have her."
"And you felt a strong emotion in consequence?"
"Horrible!"
"Horrible; precisely," said the Controller. (3.132-8)
This passage raises the question, what happens to "happiness" when it is challenged, when it is earned?
Quote 16
"Well," he resumed at last, "the next day there was a search. But we couldn't find her. She must have fallen into a gully somewhere; or been eaten by a mountain lion. Ford knows. Anyhow it was horrible. It upset me very much at the time. More than it ought to have done, I dare say. Because, after all, it's the sort of accident that might have happened to any one; and, of course, the social body persists although the component cells may change." But this sleep-taught consolation did not seem to be very effective. Shaking his head, "I actually dream about it sometimes," the Director went on in a low voice. "Dream of being woken up by that peal of thunder and finding her gone; dream of searching and searching for her under the trees." He lapsed into the silence of reminiscence. (6.2.8)
Mustapha's prediction that emotional attachments inevitably cause suffering is very true here: the Director obviously had some sort of attachment to Linda (made evident by his defensive outburst in the next paragraph denying as much), and he suffered immensely at her disappearance.
Quote 17
"You all remember," said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, "you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk. History," he repeated slowly, "is bunk."
He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk—and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk—and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom – all were gone. Whisk—the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk… (3.40-1)
Notice that abstract ideas like "passion" are whisked away along with literature and history. In this novel, literature is a reflection of the range of human emotions—which is exactly what makes it dangerous to a society where the only feeling permitted is a sort of passive contentedness.
Quote 18
"Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears and sometimes voices."
The Savage's face lit up with a sudden pleasure. "Have you read it too?" he asked. "I thought nobody knew about that book here, in England."
"Almost nobody. I'm one of the very few. It's prohibited, you see." (16.10-2)
This Shakespeare connection is a hint that these two men (Mustapha and John) have more in common than we might first suspect.
Quote 19
"Sleep teaching was actually prohibited in England. There was something called liberalism. Parliament, if you know what that was, passed a law against it. The records survive. Speeches about liberty of the subject. Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole." (3.138)
Mustapha describes this liberalist sentiment with ridicule—why would anyone want to be inefficient and miserable? But this is exactly the freedom John will later claim—the freedom to be unhappy.
Quote 20
"Almost nobody. I'm one of the very few. It's prohibited, you see. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them. With impunity, Mr. Marx," he added, turning to Bernard. "Which I'm afraid you can't do." (16.12)
In his view, Mustapha has ultimate freedom in this World—he can break whatever rules he wants. But is Mustapha really free? How can he be when, according to him, he "serves happiness," a "difficult master"?