Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [16]
‘The living being does not form an exception to the great natural harmony which makes things adapt themselves to one another; it breaks no concord; it is neither in contradiction to, nor struggling against, general cosmic forces. Far from that, it is a member of the universal concert of things, and the life of the animal, for example, is only a fragment of the total life of the universe.’
He read the words, idly first, then more carefully, then several times with a strained attention. ‘The life of the animal is only a fragment of the total life of the universe.’ Then what about suicide? A fragment of the universe would be destroying itself? No, not destroying; it couldn’t destroy itself even if it tried. It would be changing its mode of existence. Changing…. Bits of animals and plants became human beings. What was one day a sheep’s hind leg and leaves of spinach was the next part of the hand that wrote, the brain that conceived the slow movement of the Jupiter Symphony. And another day had come when thirty-six years of pleasures, pains, hungers, loves, thoughts, music, together with infinite unrealized potentialities of melody and harmony had manured an unknown corner of a Viennese cemetery, to be transformed into grass and dandelions, which in their turn had been transformed into sheep, whose hind legs had in their turn been transformed into other musicians, whose bodies in their turn … It was all obvious, but to Lord Edward an apocalypse. Suddenly and for the first time he realized his solidarity with the world. The realization was extraordinarily exciting; he rose from his chair and began to walk agitatedly up and down the room. His thoughts were confused, but the muddle was bright and violent, not dim, not foggily languid as at ordinary times. ‘Perhaps when I was at Vienna last year, I actually consumed a piece of Mozart’s substance. It might have been in a Wiener Schnitzel, or a sausage, or even a glass of beer. Communion, physical communion. And that wonderful performance of The Magic Flute—another sort of communion, or perhaps the same, really. Transubstantiation, cannibalism, chemistry. It comes down to chemistry in the end, of course. Legs of mutton and spinach … all chemistry. Hydrogen, oxygen … What are the other things? God, how infuriating, how infuriating not to know! All those years at Eton. Latin verses. What the devil was the good? En! distenta ferunt perpingues ubera vaccae. Why didn’t they teach me anything sensible? “A member of the universal concert of things.” It’s all like music; harmonies and counterpoint and modulations. But you’ve got to be trained to listen. Chinese music… we can’t make head or tail of it. The universal concert—that’s Chinese music for me, thanks to Eton. Glycogenic function of the liver… it might be in Bantu, so far as I’m concerned. What a humiliation! But I can learn, I will learn, I will…’
Lord Edward was filled with an extraordinary exultation; he had never felt so happy in his life before.
That evening he told his father that he was not going to stand for Parliament. Still agitated by the morning’s revelations of Parnellism, the old gentleman was furious. Lord Edward was entirely unmoved; his mind was made up. The next day he advertised for a tutor. In the spring of the following year he was in Berlin working under Du Bois Reymond.
Forty years had passed since then. The studies of osmosis, which had indirectly given him a wife, had also given him a reputation. His work on assimilation and growth was celebrated. But what he regarded as the real task of his life—the great theoretical treatise on physical biology—was still unfinished. ‘The life of the animal is only a fragment of the total life of the universe.’ Claude Bernard’s words had been his lifelong theme as well