Aldous Huxley has outgrown his merely rationalistic stage and begun to express mystical ideas. This is a most gratifying advance. But he has fallen into the common error which makes the quietist ideal the supreme ideal. He may try to refute this activist outlook as being mystical heresy. He may even write a whole book, such as Grey Eminence, to show the misfortunes brought on his country by a French mystic leaving his monastic retreat to meddle in State affairs. But Huxley's effort has been a vain one. It is just as easy to write another book showing the good fortune brought to her country by Joan of Arc, also a French mystic, through meddling in State affairs. In this matter, I would rather accept Plato's teaching, that true knowledge compels to action. And Plato's philosophy was surely a mystical one. But there are two facts which refute Huxley. First, there is no such thing as inaction. No man in his senses will spend every day every year in contemplation alone. He has to get up and do something, even if it be only eating his dinner. A life of continuous meditation, without any interruption, would be impossible and undesirable, impracticable and unbalanced. Everywhere in Nature we see striving and activity. For man to attempt to refrain from both (as if he really could!) in the name of an exaggerated unbalanced and perverted surrender to God is to misunderstand God's--that is, Nature's--working. Second, the refusal to act is itself a kind of action; the real available choice is only between one kind and another, between good action and bad action. Walking about in the monastic cell is as active a deed as walking about in the statesman's chamber. But whether we take a short or a long view of the matter it is a mistake to regard the worldly life as necessarily materialistic and sordid. Men may make it so or they may ennoble it. The evil or the good is in their thought of it, that is, in themselves. The notion that the quest of the Divine must necessarily lead to denying the social and despising the historical belongs only to an unripened and imperfect mysticism. The fact is that no mystical experience and no metaphysical idea can complete our duty towards life. They are no substitute for right conduct.
-- Notebooks Category 14: The Arts in Culture > Chapter 4 : Reflections On Specific Arts > # 48
