Island - Aldous Huxley [82]
“And if Acton himself didn’t behave in that way,” said Dr. Robert, “it was merely because he happened to be virtuous and intelligent. There was nothing in his theories to restrain a delinquent Muscle Man or an untreated Peter Pan from trampling on anyone he could get his feet on. That was Acton’s fatal weakness. As a political theorist he was altogether admirable. As a practical psychologist he was almost nonexistent. He seems to have thought that the power problem could be solved by good social arrangements, supplemented, of course, by sound morality and a spot of revealed religion. But the power problem has its roots in anatomy and biochemistry and temperament. Power has to be curbed on the legal and political levels; that’s obvious. But it’s also obvious that there must be prevention on the individual level. On the level of instinct and emotion, on the level of the glands and the viscera, the muscles and the blood. If I can ever find the time, I’d like to write a little book on human physiology in relation to ethics, religion, politics and law.”
“Law,” Will echoed. “I was just going to ask you about law. Are you absolutely swordless and punishmentless? Or do you still need judges and policemen?”
“We still need them,” said Dr. Robert. “But we don’t need nearly so many of them as you do. In the first place, thanks to preventive medicine and preventive education, we don’t commit many crimes. And in the second place, most of the few crimes that are committed are dealt with by the criminal’s MAC. Group therapy within a community that has assumed group responsibility for the delinquent. And in difficult cases the group therapy is supplemented by medical treatment and a course of moksha-medicine experiences, directed by somebody with an exceptional degree of insight.”
“So where do the judges come in?”
“The judge listens to the evidence, decides whether the accused person is innocent or guilty, and if he’s guilty, remands him to his MAC and, where it seems advisable, to the local panel of medical and mycomystical experts. At stated intervals the experts and the MAC report back to the judge. When the reports are satisfactory, the case is closed.”
“And if they’re never satisfactory?”
“In the long run,” said Dr. Robert, “they always are.”
There was a silence.
“Did you ever do any rock climbing?” Vijaya suddenly asked.
Will laughed. “How do you think I came by my game leg?”
“That was forced climbing. Did you ever climb for fun?”
“Enough,” said Will, “to convince me that I wasn’t much good at it.”
Vijaya glanced at Murugan. “What about you, while you were in Switzerland?”
The boy blushed deeply and shook his head. “You can’t do any of those things,” he muttered, “if you have a tendency to TB.”
“What a pity!” said Vijaya. “It would have been so good for you.”
Will asked, “Do people do a lot of climbing in these mountains?”
“Climbing’s an integral part of the school curriculum.”
“For everybody?”
“A little for everybody. With more advanced rock work for the full-blown Muscle People—that’s about one in twelve of the boys and one in twenty-seven of the girls. We shall soon be seeing some youngsters tackling their first post-elementary climb.”
The green tunnel widened, brightened, and suddenly they were out of the dripping forest on a wide shelf of almost level ground, walled in on three sides by red rocks that towered up two thousand feet and more into a succession of jagged crests and isolated pinnacles.