BNW 16

Helmholtz, John, and Bernard are brought to Mustapha Mond's study. Helmholtz is cheerful. Bernard is nervous and despairing. When Mustapha Mond enters, he shakes hands with all three men, and asks John if he likes civilization. John says no. In response, Mond quotes a line from Shakespeare. When John asks if he's read Shakespeare, he says he's one of the few men in the World State who have. He explains that Shakespeare is forbidden because they want people to consume new things, not old things. Anyway, he says, no one in the World State would understand Shakespeare. Tragedies demand social instability. And the World State has stability. John says the World State seems horrible to him. Mond cheerfully admits that actual happiness looks "squalid in comparison to the over-compensations for misery."
 When John objects to the Bokanovsky Twins and caste system, Mond tells of an experiment in which the World State filled the island of Cyprus only with Alphas. Nobody wanted to do the menial work, and pretty soon the island descended into civil war. Mond says that conditioning and the caste system make people happy with what they do. They don't even want leisure—leisure only increases the chance to think and results in misery and increased soma consumption.
 Mond admits that both art and science have been sacrificed to the cause of stability. He reveals his own past as a physicist who started experimenting too deeply in science. As a result, Mond says he was almost faced with the same fate that awaits them: being sent to an island.
 Bernard falls to his knees and begs not to be sent to an island. Mond summons men to take Bernard to a different room and calm him with soma.