Ape and Essence
“Ends are ape-chosen; only the means are man’s.”
I love this line. It’s from Aldous Huxley’s Ape and Essence, which I’m reading now:
Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley’s lesser-known dystopian sci-fi novel published in 1948.
In Ape and Essence Huxley anticipates the central theme (or rather the central warning) of a book I just finished called, The Dying Self by Charles M. Fair. The Dying Self (1969) is as uplifting as the title suggests and is a loud reaction to the spirit of the times. However, Fair’s hypothesis is interesting, his references are encyclopedic and he uses some creative language. Some choice phrases: “gray intermediate mass”, “Man the Anxious Amorph” and “formal time zero”. Good stuff.