The Solidarity Services are a form of religious mass for the people of the State. They make absolutely clear that Huxley is trying to show the perversion of religion that would occur in a society in which individuality is evil and submission to the State is the religion. At BernardÆs Solidarity Service the people chant ôI drink to my annihilationö as they take the drug soma (Huxley, 62). They are completely submitting themselves to their roles in the State as they sing ôFord, we are twelve; oh, make us one, Like drops within the Social River; Oh, make us now together run As swiftly as they shining Flivverö (Huxley, 63). Just as people today sign hymns in Church submitting themselves to GodÆs will, so the people of the State are submitting themselves to the StateÆs will. The soma and the music lets them reach a form of religious fervor tha

Thus, Bernard is thought ôpeculiarö because he feels his ôseparateness.ö In the State, that feeling of individuality, of not being part of the ôGreater Beingö torments Bernard because he believes it makes him ôisolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead satietyö (Huxley 66). Natural things, too, are ôhorribleö in the World State. Bernard hovers his helicopter over the waves because the visible forces of nature make him feel ôas though I were more me . . . not so completely a part of something elseö (Huxley 69). But Lenina wants to turn on the radio; for her such talk is simply ôhorribleö (Huxley 69). As one literary scholar notes, Lenina is the norm, conditioned only to be comfortable among scientific, mechanical things (Cockshott 257). Nature, uncontrollable and apt to induce natural feelings of solitude and individuality, can only be ôhorrible.ö

Cockshott, Gerald. Studies in Aldous Huxley, Volume 2. Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistick und Amerikanistik, 1980.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited. New York: Harper Row, 1960.

This incompatibility between God and universal happiness is another of the issues Huxley addresses through the use of his World State. Generally, science has no interest in the individual. Rather, science is concerned with large, evolutionary trends. In the same