'And imaginative literature suppresses the fact. Propagates an enormous lie about the nature of men and women.'
‘Rightly, no doubt. Because if human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves. But meanwhile, I really can’t be bothered to read any more imaginative literature. Lies don’t interest me. However poetically they may be expressed. They’re just a bore.’
Agreed with Mark that imaginative literature wasn’t doing its duty. That it was essential to know everything—and to know it, not merely through scientific textbooks, but also in a form that would have power to bring the facts home to the whole mind, not merely to the intellect.
- Aldous Huxley "Eyeless in Gaza" (1936)
