The Human Situation: Lectures at Santa Barbara, 1959, by Aldous Huxley, edited by Piero Ferrucci (Flamingo, paperback).
reviewed by Nick Camerota
BLOOD WILL TELL, says the old folk wisdom. Back in 1902, even the socialist H.G. Wells believed it. (In Anticipations, he held that the less advanced races, those “swarms of black, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people,” who believe the world to be a charity institution, “will have to go.”)
But this idea seems to have been washed away by the rising tide of color and by the present, unreasoning insistence that all men are somehow “equal.” However, a brief look at the Huxley family shows us there is more truth than poetry in the old saying.
Aldous Huxley’s great uncle was Matthew Arnold. Huxley’s grandfather, Thomas H., was a friend and champion of Charles Darwin. Huxley’s father, Leonard, was a noted writer and editor. And Aldous’ brother, Julian, the distinguished biologist, is also far from retarded.
Wells, a student of T.H. Huxley, saw a strong physical resemblance between Aldous and his grandfather. The similarities seem to extend to qualities of intellect and character, since neither of them was afraid to express unpopular ideas.
