THE ENLIGHTENMENT
5-41
Let us make a fresh start: Presumably most of us exist through
the Enlightenment-not only because, without it, one of our fore–
bears would have been burned as a heretic or a witch before pro–
ducing offspring, but also because hygiene has kept alive the chain
of generations of which we are the last link. It is to be hoped that
in Germany- after twelve years of relapse- we appreciate the fact
that we can no longer be dragged out of bed at dawn, and tortured,
and executed-and no questions asked: we owe that to the En–
lightenment. Whoever defends human rights against the dictators
or against the power-urges of bureaucrats, defends a part of the En–
lightenment.
But it is also a result of the Enlightenment if human beings are
generated in test-tubes. We "can" do that today because we "know"
how to go about it, we have been enlightened concerning the pro–
cess of generation. Men can be bred; the fact is rich in prospects.
A man's character can be changed by chemical, electrical, or physi–
cal influences-at least for the worse. The buried secrets of his
earliest childhood can be dragged from him, perhaps to help him,
perhaps to destroy him. Knowledge is power, total enlightenment is .
total power. In the type of prophetic books of which 1984 is an
example, this "possibility for evil" which inheres in enlightenment
is made strikingly evident: total enlightenment at the service of an
anti-enlightenment will-ta-power.
But can "Big Brother" be fought except through enlighten–
ment again? Not through enlightenment alone, to be sure. But,
among other things, is not a constant, active enlightenment necessary
to keep us from being taken in by the power and the temptation of
evil, to enable us to resist even its beginnings?
Yet the opposite of the picture drawn by 1984--a total en–
lightenment which should serve humanity-is, for many of us, a
frightening vision too: a perfect world (made of "glass and con–
crete" ), with total hygiene, totally planned, directed toward the
greatest possible happiness of the greatest number- as harmonious
as a choir of angels, and as sterile as a well-conducted baby-clinic.
It
cannot
work, this completely enlightened world, say the wise–
and rightly; and in so far as it worked, it would work at the cost of
the human heart, of its freedom, its imagination, its profundities.
Furthermore, this enlightened world would be in constant danger of
