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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Other Essays

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Extremely hard to find The New American Library Signet Books mass market paperback, P2450, original cover price 60 cents. Inside "First Printing, March, 1964"

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

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About the author

Aldous Huxley

941 books13.6k followers
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia, respectively.

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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
Profile Image for Sunny.
874 reviews54 followers
April 17, 2017
What a fascinating little series of essays written in 1952. I love books that take my mind on little trips (no pun) and to different directions that I just would not have gone before. I picked up Huxley again as I’ve been reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf at the same time and some of the topics they talk about in the books cross over at times. Huxley wrote essays on topics such as knowledge and understanding, the desert, Ozymandias the failed utopia, liberty quality and machinery, censorship and spoken literature, canned fish  and the masses, the mother, the alphabet, the miracle in Lebanon, Famagusta / paphos, faith taste and history, doodles in a dictionary by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, untouchables in India, cleanliness, and a really weird last chapter on coitus reservatus! wtf! Here are some of my best bits from the book:
• “Most of us are inveterate end gainers. We are so anxious to achieve some particular end that we never pay attention to the psychological means whereby that end is to be gained.” – How true is that about society today!
• Huxley talks about that inner atavistic intelligence in all of us which is almost knowledge agnostic in a way. He asks us to trust that gut instinct and that truth in us all. “If I get out of my not-selves light, I shall be illuminated. If I stop anxiously cogito-ing I shall give myself a chance of being cogitor-ed by a committee of indwelling intelligences that can deal with my problems a great deal better than I can.”
• “A tachistoscope – a magic lantern fitter with a shutter that permits the projection of images for a period ranging from a tenth to a thousandth of a second or less. Most training is done with exposures of one hundredth of a second. This is essentially a method for bypassing the bad habits acquired by the conscious self. In ordinary seeing we are hardly ever directly aware of our immediate impressions. For these immediate impressions are more or less profoundly modified by a mind that does most of its thinking in terms of words. Every perception is promptly conceptualized and generalized so that we do not see the particular thing or event in its naked immediacy; we see only the objective illustration of some generic notion, only the concretion of an abstract word. Our ordinary habits of perception cause us to see the world as Platonists. The tachistocope transforms us into nominalists and impressionists."
• “Like everyone else I am functioning only at a fraction of my potential”.
• “If I would know myself I must know my environment; for as a body, I am part of the environment, a natural object among other natural objects and as a mind, I consist to a great extent of my own immediate reactions to the environment and of my secondary reactions to those primary reactions.” Hence the reason why it's important to foster and create an environment that drives learning by itself.
• “Descarte's primal certainty, “I think therefore I am” turns out on closer examination, to be a most dubious proposition. In actual fact is it I who do the thinking? Would it not be truer to say “thoughts come into existence and sometimes I am aware of them”?”
• “Be aware impartially, realistically, without judging, without reacting in terms of remembered words to your present cognitive reactions. If you do this the memory will be emptied, knowledge and pseudo knoelwgde will be relegated to their proper place and you will have understanding - in other words you will be in direct contact with reality at every instant.”
• “In a completely home-made environment such as is provided by any great metropolis, it is hard to remain sane as it is in a completely natural environment such as the desert or the forest. O solitude where are they charms? But O multitude where are thine?”
• “Taken too seriously symbols have motivated and justified all the horrors of recorded history. On every level from a personal to the international the letter kills." Wordology more than ideology is the biggest killer mankind has been witness to.
• “In this universally educated population vast numbers never read, or read only the most rudimentary kinds of sub literature and Neanderthal journalism” – totally agree with this!
• “Make the best of mankind’s literature of wisdom available on cheap slow playing records (podcasts in today’s vernacular?). Do the same, in each principle language or the best poetry written in that language. Also perhaps for a few of the best novels, plays biographies and memoirs. Encourage manufacturers to turn out phonographs equipped to play these recordings and at the same time arrange for distribution at cost of the simple planetary gears, by means of which conventionally turntables can be used to slow playing disks. 5 or 10 millions spent in this way would, I am convinced, do incomparably more good than hundreds of millions spent on endowing new universities or enlarging those that already exist” – again totally agree with this. If everyone read the 100 greatest pieces of literature in the world the war of the worlds would stop within a few decades for good.
• “For as sir Charles Darwin and many others before him have pointed out we are like drunken sailors and like the irresponsible heirs of a millionaire uncle. At an ever accelerating rate we are now squandering the capital of metallic ores and fossil fuels accumulated in the earth’s crust during hundreds of millions of years. How long can this spending spree go on?”
• “Dead human beings give birth to flies and worms; alive they generate works and live. Moreover consider the plants, consider the trees. They bring forth flowers and leaves and fruits. But what do you bring forth human? Nits, live, vermin. Trees and plans exude oil, wine, balm and you? – spittle, snot, urine, ordure … we who shrink from touching even with the tips of our fingers a gob of phlegm or a lump of dung, how is it that we crave for the embraces of this mere bag of night soil?”
• “The essential act of thought is symbolisation. Our minds transform experiences into signs. If these sings adequately represent the experiences to which they refer and if we are careful to manipulate them according to the rules of a many valued logic we can deepen our understanding of experience and thereby achieve some control of the world and our destiny.”
• “Today xmas is a major factor in our capitalist economy. A season of mere good cheer has been converted by the steady application of propaganda into a long drawn buying spree in the course of which everyone is under compulsion to exchange gifts with everyone else to the immense enrichment of merchants and manufacturers.” – No arguments there.
• “In English for example the notion of good is rendered by the four letters g-o-o-d. In Chinese the same idea is represented by a combination of a sign for “woman” with the sign for a “child” … but the sign for woman plus the phonogram for fang means “hinder”. Woman plus child equals good. But this good has its price; for a man who has a wife and children has given hostages to fortune. The good of one context is the hindrance of another.”
Profile Image for Laura.
465 reviews42 followers
February 12, 2025
A random collection of Huxley's thoughts and reflections on various topics and experiences. Originally published in 1952, Huxley's anxieties have current counterparts: the squandering of finite resources and corresponding effects on the environment, overpopulation, loss of empathy, general superficiality, failings of the American education system, oppression at the hands of tyrants, and so on. "We live in a world where ignorance of science and its methods is the surest, shortest road to national disaster." hmmmm....

This was a niche and quirky read.
Profile Image for RJ Siano.
39 reviews
August 5, 2024
Aldous Huxley is an excellent writer of prose and is clearly very well read in his chosen ramblings. I appreciate his genuine curiosity about the human species and his choice of offbeat topics that people of his time and social class were mostly not engaged in.

Having said that, I find his work zany, intense and an odd balance of frightening and entertaining. I’m glad to have experienced his consciousness through essays instead of conversation.
Profile Image for RK Byers.
Author 10 books65 followers
February 13, 2012
it's tough to rate this book aside from saying that it should be read. and why'd he save his best piece of writing for the appendix?
Profile Image for Robyn Lowrie.
48 reviews
December 26, 2024
My Father-in-law recently recommended a lecture by the Philosopher Dr. Peter Keefts on “The 10 Books That Every Person Should Read Before They Die” (by the end of his lecture, there were twenty-six). One of the authors Keefts highlighted was Aldous Huxley, a twentieth century English writer and philosopher, and “one of the most important social thinkers, critics, and creative writers of our time”(Rogers, 290). Keefts recommends Huxley’s Brave New World as a must-read. However, since I had recently acquired a compilation of Huxley’s essays, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, I will be referencing this classic work in my blog post.

Tomorrow is a materialistic, naturalistic, or behavioristic outlook of the human spirit which Huxley sees as distinct from the body; “for, in comparison, the capacity of the spirit is limitless and subject to profound modification; the spirit is the result of all experience” (Tomorrow, “The Education of an Amphibian”, 2). Huxley basis his views on “modern psychology” (mid-century!) to the individual sense of oneness. The capacity of the spirit gives a oneness to the obvious diversity within the individual man.

I must admit that his first essay in Tomorrow, “The Education of an Amphibian”, is very dense, way over my head, and I even had to consult my daughter who is a Clinical Psychologist to help me weed through the “psychology-speak” to understand his basic concepts. I was quickly fascinated by Huxley’s idea of the “not-self” made up of “habits, conditional reflexes, impulses repressed but still obscurely active, the not-self of buried-alive reactions to remote events and forgotten words, the not-self of fossil infancy and festering remains of a past that refuses to die”(10). Huxley claims that this “not-self” is the region of the subconscious with which psychiatry mainly deals.

The next level of the not-self in “The Education” is that of entelechy, the vegetative soul in charge of the body. When we wish to walk, it actually does the walk; it controls our breathing, heartbeat, digestion, health, etc.

The third level is the not-self where we derive our inspiration and insights. It is responsible for every enhancement of wisdom, every sudden accession of vital or intellectual power, what Jung refers to as the “Archetypes”—man’s perennial conflicts and ubiquitous problems. The fourth level comes through the world of visionary experience, including Heaven and Hell; this leads to the next level of the Holy Spirit, the Atman-Brahman, the Clear Light, Suchness (10).

Bien sûr, there is the “self”, which can affect and be affected by its association with the not-selves. Huxley explains that our conscious self often responds inappropriately to circumstances and, in the process, fills the not-self with fears, greed, hates and wrong judgments. This would be what we as Christians refer to as “sin”. When this process happens, the not-self reacts upon the conscious self and forces it to behave even more inappropriately. Therefore, the self and the not-self are in constant war with each other.

The last three not-selves constitute the very essence of our being. The ego and the not-self can poison one another; they can “eclipse the inner light”(11). The ego will set up an opaque screen between our conscious self and the transcendental not-self.

Now for the good news! “Health is a state of harmony between conscious self, personal not-self and vegetative soul”(11). How can we learn to place the resources of our consciousness at the disposal of the unconscious? According to Huxley, it is through relaxation! (keep in mind that this was written following a very stressful time in World History, about five years following the end of WWII—see my post on how this time changed the philosophy and writing of Jean-Paul Sartre who lived through the Paris Occupation POST

Huxley gives several techniques for systematic relaxation. By letting go of the muscles which are subject to the will which will release some of the tensions in regions of the body beyond our voluntary control, the conscious ego and the personal subconscious can be induced to stop interfering with the action of the not-selves associated with them. In addition, it is vital to establish the closest possible working partnership between conscious will and autonomic nervous system.

This is the “aim of the psychiatrist” then, according to Huxley, is to teach the (statistically) abnormal to adjust themselves to the behavior patterns of a society composed of the (statistically) normal. Huxley also recommends meditation or to “take hold of the not-thought which lies in thought”. The same is true today, seventy years later. How can we see into no-thingness? The “non-thinker” makes use of words and notions but is careful to not take them too seriously; he is on guard against condemnation and odious comparisons which language forces upon its users (28). Yes, still applicable. As the Scriptures state “Judge not lest you be judged”.

In addition, another way to relax and release tension is for the not-mind to have the capability of non-verbally not-thinking in response to an immediate experience. “One should go into each interest as it arises and not merely concentrate on one idea, one interest…a constant and intense self-awareness, free from preconceptions, comparisons, and condemnations—‘clarity’”(30).

Whew, much ado about nothing-ness! Or everything? These are just some of the highlights of Huxley’s short essay, “The Education of an Amphibian”. “Knowledge and Understanding” will be examined next.

Works Cited

Huxley, Aldous. (1952). Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. New York: Harper & Bros.

Rogers, Winfield H. Aldous Huxley’s Humanism . The Sewanee Review , Jul. – Sep., 1935, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1935), pp. 262- 272 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27535168

Profile Image for Ketutar Jensen.
1,084 reviews23 followers
March 13, 2023
Uh. I think I thought he was someone else. I read this because it has the same name as the book of the month for the "Everyone has read this but me" group. I thought it was an interesting coincidence.

I find Aldous Huxley extremely boring. Sorry. I said I wouldn't use that word, but - there it is. Maybe these essays might have been more exciting 60 years ago - it's hard to believe we have lived in the 21st century for over two decades... right now it reminds me of one of my dad's boyhood books, about science and future and stuff like that, written in the 40s. They thought we'd have underwater tubes to transport people from Europe to USA. I think I'd like that. Glass tubes with glass ceiling train cars, so that one can look at the masses of water above... and then they could be making catastrophe movies about the tube cracking...
Profile Image for Cub Jones.
25 reviews3 followers
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January 28, 2023
A jack of all subjects, master of maybe none but, to a degree, prose. He strikes me as a dilettante sometimes writing with a bit too much confidence, but a number of essays I still found highly amusing and even somewhat illuminating. My eyes patiently glaze over and go into stasis when he talks about anti-communism and the then new but still racist and wrongheaded talking point of overpopulation, but perk up again when he talks about the history of religious, mystical and philosophical thought or music/art criticism, and when he writes with broader scope. I'm less impressed with his depth than with this playful, flowing and trippy scope.
41 reviews
March 31, 2018
A very enjoyable book full of great ideas and observations.
Profile Image for Richard.
83 reviews4 followers
May 27, 2012
I have nothing but respect for the depth of Huxley's thought, however if you only read one book of Huxley's non-fictional essays, I would still prefer Brave New World Revisited. That said, it is unlikely you are in a hypothetical situation that would require such a dilemma, so I recommend to read both. His explanation of his assertion that all humans are amphibians is back up thoroughly, and is a timeless essay. While some other essays may be somewhat dated, the threats he saw that have not come into effect may have only been postponed as they are still relevant today. Also, his essay "Hyperion to a Satyr" (my personal favorite) helps us see how things are the way they are on the topic of his essay in a way that we have forgotten over time due to our technological progress. So in that instance, at least, we benefit from the timing of the essay in a way that we could not have gotten from a current writer, a timestamp that gives us insight into history and the present simultaneously.
Profile Image for Dixie.
Author 2 books18 followers
March 11, 2016
Always intelligent and often challenging. Topics all over the place, from the destruction of nature to 16th century madrigal music. Not the easiest read and not a book I would read again, but a very interesting mind to get a glimpse into.
25 reviews1 follower
October 29, 2016
Although I found myself strongly disagreeing with roughly half his theses (mostly due to the semi-mystical refrain) and enthusiastically agreeing with the other half, the writing was delightful throughout.
Author 1 book18 followers
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March 26, 2010
tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by Aldous Huxley (1964)
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews

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