quotd - Huxley is my Hero

"'It's the disease of modern man. I call it Jesus's diseases on the analogy of Bright's disease. Or rather Jesus's and Newton's disease; for the scientists are as much responsible as the Christians. So are the big business men, for that matter. It's Jesus's and Newton's and Henry Ford's disease. Between them, the three have pretty much killed us. Ripped the life out of our bodies and stuffed us with hatred...

'Jesus and the scientists are vivisecting us...'

'But it isn't the same,' the other [the same as in the preceeding paragraph] went on. 'It's just Christianity turned inside out. The ascetic contempt for the body expressed in a different way. Contempt and hatred. That was what I was saying just now. You hate yourselves, you hate life. Your only other alternatives are promiscuity or asceticism. Two forms of death. Why, the Christians themselves understood phallism a great deal better than this godless generation. What's that phrase in the marriage service? "With my body I thee worship." Worshipping with the body--that's the genuine phallism. And if you imagine it has anything to do with the unimpassioned civilized promiscuity of our advanced young people, you're very much mistaken indeed.'"

--Aldous Huxley, selections from Chapter 10 of Point Counter Point. What other author let's his/her ideas flow so freely in such an irreverent dialetical format, without being bogged down by plot? Aha! None.