The Thought of Aldous Huxley M
The Thought of Aldous Huxley M. M. Kirkwood University of Toronto Quarterly, Volume 6, Number 2, January 1937, pp. 189-198 (Article) Published by University of Toronto Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/549974 [ Access provided at 12 Oct 2020 10:12 GMT from USP-Universidade de São Paulo ] THE THOUGHT OF ALDOUS HUXLEY M. M . KIRKWOOD N an article which appeared in the London Mercury of January, 1933, G. K. Chesterton placed Huxley I among the young moderns whom he attacked as "witty, brilliant and fashionable bankrupts." This view of Huxley in particular has been a common one, for brilliance and wit animate whatever he writes, and, having written for a world that wanted to be amused, he has become fashionable. Mr. Chester to ~' understood him merely to mock, as one having no religious belief and seeing no purpose in the world or in the will. Whether this be a real aspe.ct of his work or not, readers have not found it easy to resist a writer who remarks in connection wi th one of his characters that "no chameleon can live with comfort on a tartan," and who concludes his descrip tion of his own agonie,s during a first ride on an elephant with the comment, "I returned full of admiration for Hannibal. He crossed the Alps on an elephant." Numerous quips by Huxley include the statement that "Puritans like to wear the fig-leaf over the mouth," while in a serious essay on the evolution of theologies, he uses the astonishing figure, "Men's religious life works on the principle of a hot-water system." Huxley's voca bulary is no less en tertaining than his figures of coml?arison, and we find ourselves stimulated if not always illuminated by "minusculous" and "callipygous," "wamblingly" and "bombinating," "geodesic" and "mixo Iydian." It is as if the creator of "brillig" and "slithy toves" had come to life again, challenging us to under stand as well as to enjoy him.
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