ART, SCIENCE–you seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness," said the Savage, when they were alone.
The Savage, alone with Mond, asks if anything else beyond art and science has to be sacrificed to happiness.
“The Savage took it. "The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments," he read aloud from the title-page.. "A whole collection of pornographic old books. God in the safe and Ford on the shelves." He pointed with a laugh to his avowed library–to the shelves of books, the rack full of reading-machine bobbins and sound-track rolls.”
Mond answers, and shows the Savage old forbidden books about God, including the Bible.
"us, the modern world. 'You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.' Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.' But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?"
Mond reads from a passage written by Cardinal Newman, which argues that men move toward religion as they age, because the distractions of youth fall away.
"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They're smut. People would be shocked it …"
“The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?"
“..People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.”
Mond says that God is not compatible with machines, medicine, and universal happiness, to which the Savage responds that it's natural to believe in God. Mond disagrees. He says people were once conditioned to believe in God.
“You'd have a reason for bearing things patiently, for doing things with courage.. If you had a God, you'd have a reason for self-denial.. But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices.”
John has a belief about God that gives a reason for self-denial, chastity, and courage.
"civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism.”
Mond has they about civilization towards John’s belief.
“Quite apart from God–though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn't there something in living dangerously?"
“Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage.”
The Savage asks isn't there a value to living dangerously? Mond says yes, it's biologically important. That's why they've made V.P.S. mandatory for all citizens every month. V.P.S gives all the value of real rage and sorrow, without the inconvenience.
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.
Finally, Mond asks if the Savage is claiming the right to be unhappy, to grow old and ugly. The Savage says yes.
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