Chapter XVI.

by Aldous Huxley

　　The ladies had left the room and the port was circulating. Mr.Scogan filled his glass, passed on the decanter, and, leaningback in his chair, looked about him for a moment in silence. Theconversation rippled idly round him, but he disregarded it; hewas smiling at some private joke. Gombauld noticed his smile."What's amusing you?" he asked."I was just looking at you all, sitting round this table," saidMr. Scogan."Are we as comic as all that?""Not at all," Mr. Scogan answered politely. "I was merely amusedby my own speculations.""And what were they?""The idlest, the most academic of speculations. I was looking atyou one by one and trying to imagine which of the first sixCaesars you would each resemble, if you were given theopportunity of behaving like a Caesar. The Caesars are one of mytouchstones," Mr. Scogan explained. "They are charactersfunctioning, so to speak, in the void. They are human beingsdeveloped to their logical conclusions. Hence their unequalledvalue as a touchstone, a standard. When I meet someone for thefirst time, I ask myself this question: Given the Caesareanenvironment, which of the Caesars would this person resemble--Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero? I takeeach trait of character, each mental and emotional bias, eachlittle oddity, and magnify them a thousand times. The resultingimage gives me his Caesarean formula.""And which of the Caesars do you resemble?" asked Gombauld."I am potentially all of them," Mr. Scogan replied, "all--withthe possible exception of Claudius, who was much too stupid to bea development of anything in my character. The seeds of Julius'scourage and compelling energy, of Augustus's prudence, of thelibidinousness and cruelty of Tiberius, of Caligula's folly, ofNero's artistic genius and enormous vanity, are all within me.Given the opportunities, I might have been something fabulous.But circumstances were against me. I was born and brought up ina country rectory; I passed my youth doing a great deal ofutterly senseless hard work for a very little money. The resultis that now, in middle age, I am the poor thing that I am. Butperhaps it is as well. Perhaps, too, it's as well that Denishasn't been permitted to flower into a little Nero, and that Ivorremains only potentially a Caligula. Yes, it's better so, nodoubt. But it would have been more amusing, as a spectacle, ifthey had had the chance to develop, untrammelled, the full horrorof their potentialities. It would have been pleasant andinteresting to watch their tics and foibles and little vicesswelling and burgeoning and blossoming into enormous andfantastic flowers of cruelty and pride and lewdness and avarice.The Caesarean environment makes the Caesar, as the special foodand the queenly cell make the queen bee. We differ from the beesin so far that, given the proper food, they can be sure of makinga queen every time. With us there is no such certainty; out ofevery ten men placed in the Caesarean environment one will betemperamentally good, or intelligent, or great. The rest willblossom into Caesars; he will not. Seventy and eighty years agosimple-minded people, reading of the exploits of the Bourbons inSouth Italy, cried out in amazement: To think that such thingsshould be happening in the nineteenth century! And a few yearssince we too were astonished to find that in our still moreastonishing twentieth century, unhappy blackamoors on the Congoand the Amazon were being treated as English serfs were treatedin the time of Stephen. To-day we are no longer surprised atthese things. The Black and Tans harry Ireland, the Polesmaltreat the Silesians, the bold Fascisti slaughter their poorercountrymen: we take it all for granted. Since the war we wonderat nothing. We have created a Caesarean environment and a hostof little Caesars has sprung up. What could be more natural?"Mr. Scogan drank off what was left of his port and refilled theglass.At this very moment," he went on, "the most frightful horrors aretaking place in every corner of the world. People are beingcrushed, slashed, disembowelled, mangled; their dead bodies rotand their eyes decay with the rest. Screams of pain and fear gopulsing through the air at the rate of eleven hundred feet persecond. After travelling for three seconds they are perfectlyinaudible. These are distressing facts; but do we enjoy life anythe less because of them? Most certainly we do not. We feelsympathy, no doubt; we represent to ourselves imaginatively thesufferings of nations and individuals and we deplore them. But,after all, what are sympathy and imagination? Precious little,unless the person for whom we feel sympathy happens to be closelyinvolved in our affections; and even then they don't go very far.And a good thing too; for if one had an imagination vivid enoughand a sympathy sufficiently sensitive really to comprehend and tofeel the sufferings of other people, one would never have amoment's peace of mind. A really sympathetic race would not somuch as know the meaning of happiness. But luckily, as I'vealready said, we aren't a sympathetic race. At the beginning ofthe war I used to think I really suffered, through imaginationand sympathy, with those who physically suffered. But after amonth or two I had to admit that, honestly, I didn't. And yet Ithink I have a more vivid imagination than most. One is alwaysalone in suffering; the fact is depressing when one happens to bethe sufferer, but it makes pleasure possible for the rest of theworld."There was a pause. Henry Wimbush pushed back his chair."I think perhaps we ought to go and join the ladies," he said."So do I," said Ivor, jumping up with alacrity. He turned to Mr.Scogan. "Fortunately," he said, "we can share our pleasures. Weare not always condemned to be happy alone."