CHAPTER XXII. ‑Crome yellow

Denis, seek­ing soli­tude to over­come post-lunch lethar­gy and a pen­sive mood, retreats to his room to write, inspired by thoughts of Anne and unat­tain­able love. How­ev­er, see­ing Anne with Gom­bauld from his win­dow dis­rupts his tran­quil­i­ty, stir­ring jeal­ousy and irri­ta­tion. Descend­ing, he encoun­ters Mr. Sco­gan, who, seiz­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty for com­pa­ny, per­suades Denis to join him out­side. They observe Hen­ry Wim­bush and Mary play­ing bowls before engag­ing in con­ver­sa­tion on a walk. Mr. Sco­gan pon­tif­i­cates on san­i­ty, insan­i­ty, and the pow­er they wield in shap­ing soci­etal progress. He crit­i­cizes the inef­fec­tu­al­i­ty of rea­son alone to inspire action, con­trast­ing it with the gal­va­niz­ing force of pas­sion­ate mad­ness in lead­ers like Luther and Napoleon.

Mr. Sco­gan imag­ines a “Ratio­nal State” where intel­li­gence and mad­ness are har­nessed sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly. In this envi­sioned soci­ety, indi­vid­u­als are clas­si­fied by men­tal and tem­pera­men­tal qual­i­ties into Direc­tors (the intel­li­gentsia), Men of Faith (the pas­sion­ate­ly dri­ven), and the Herd (the gen­er­al pop­u­lace). Each class serves a spe­cif­ic func­tion, with the intel­li­gentsia gov­ern­ing, the Men of Faith act­ing as cat­a­lysts for action (under con­trol and direc­tion), and the Herd fol­low­ing. This clas­si­fi­ca­tion aims to elim­i­nate the chaot­ic influ­ence of unbri­dled mad­ness and to chan­nel human ener­gies pro­duc­tive­ly.

Denis, feel­ing alien­at­ed by this scheme, ques­tions his place with­in it, only to be humor­ous­ly dis­missed as suit­ed for “the lethal cham­ber” due to his lack of fit with any of the pro­posed class­es. Despite the jest, this con­ver­sa­tion under­scores Denis’s feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cy and dis­con­nec­tion, both in love and in the grand schemes of soci­ety.

This chap­ter thus weaves togeth­er themes of per­son­al long­ing, social cri­tique, and philo­soph­i­cal mus­ings on the dri­vers of human progress. Through Denis and Mr. Sco­gan’s dia­logue, Hux­ley explores the ten­sion between rea­son and pas­sion, ques­tion­ing the val­ue and impact of each in the advance­ment of civ­i­liza­tion.