In Burgess's view, the liberal's optimism, his belief in the fundamental goodness and perfectability of man, derives from an ancient heresy—the Pelagian denial of Original Sin. And not surprisingly, he feels that the doctrinal bases of much of the pessimism pervading western conservative thinking can be traced to Augustine's well known refutations of Pelagian doctrine. In view of the frequency of clashes between 'Augustinians' and 'Pelagians' in Burgess's fiction, it may be worthwhile to review briefly the seminal debate.

Pelagius, a British monk who resided in Rome, Africa, and Palestine during the early decades of the fourth century, set forth doctrines concerning human potentiality which virtually denied the necessity of Divine Grace and made the Redemption a superfluous gesture. (p. 43)

It is not surprising that Grace, in its most widely accepted orthodox Christian sense, as an infusion of the Holy Spirit, did not occupy a very prominent place in his scheme of salvation. He likened it to a sail attached to a rowboat in which the only essential instruments of locomotion are the oars. The oars he likened to the human will, and while the sail may make rowing easier, the boat could move without it. (p. 44)

In Augustine's view, human nature had been vitiated and corrupted as a result of Adam's sin, and all of Adam's descendants are in a 'penal' condition wherein they are effectively prevented from choosing the path of righteousness by ignorance and the irresistible urgings of the flesh. Men may overcome this condition and lead virtuous lives only if they have been granted God's free gift of grace…. Whereas Pelagius had thought of sin as merely action, which had no permanent effect upon the sinner, Augustine saw sin as 'an abiding condition or state'. All men are spiritually enfeebled by Original Sin, but an actively sinful man increasingly paralyzes his moral nature by his deeds. (p. 45)

When the debate is viewed in broader terms, the nature of man himself emerges as the pivotal issue, and one can see that the diametrically opposed assumptions of Augustine and Pelagius could be taken as premises of diametrically opposed political philosophies as well as attitudes toward social progress as far removed as hope and despair. The Pelagian view of humanity justifies optimism and a Rousseauvian trust in la volonté générale. Indeed, if one could accept Pelagius's sanguine estimates of human potentiality, one might hope to see Heaven on earth. For surely, if men can achieve spiritual perfection and merit eternal salvation solely through the use of their natural gifts, then the solutions to all problems of relations within earthly society must be well within their grasp. They need only to be enlightened properly, and their fundamental goodness will inevitably incline them toward morally desirable social goals. The realization of a universally acceptable utopia would not depend upon the imposition of any particular social structure. Rather, humanity, if properly enlightened, could be trusted to impose upon itself a utopian social scheme. (pp. 45-6)

Burgess's view of the debate encompasses its broadest implications, and some awareness of these implications, especially within social and political spheres of western thinking, is essential to an appreciation of his social satire. In The Wanting Seed, for instance, we are shown a fascist police state of the future emerging from the ruins of a future socialist democracy, and emerging with it are eager entrepreneurs, 'rats of the Pelphase but Augustine's lions'. The full irony of this metaphor cannot be grasped simply with reference to Augustinian doctrine in its pre-Calvinist, pre-Gilded Age purity. Burgess intends to remind us of the ways in which Augustinian-Calvinist doctrines on grace, election and unregenerate human nature have molded the socio-economic ethics of Calvin's intellectual and spiritual heirs both in the Old World and the New. In this same novel and in his other proleptic nightmare, A Clockwork Orange, he also reveals some likely doctrinal developments of the future. The forces which contend for governmental mastery are labelled 'Pelagian' and 'Augustinian', but they are more obviously Rousseauvian and Hobbesian. And it is natural that their conflicting philosophies should seem to echo Leviathan, De Cive, Du Contrat Social and the Discours sur l'inégalité, rather than the treatises of Pelagius and Augustine, since both novels are set in a future in which the issue of Divine Grace and indeed theology itself are virtually forgotten matters. Augustinianism without theology becomes Hobbism, while Pelagianism even in its original form was not far removed from Romantic primitivism. In short, Burgess's satiric vision encompasses the entire debate—past, present, and future—and one may find, especially in his dystopian books, echoes of the writings of all the participants I have mentioned and a good many more. (pp. 46-7)

Clearly, [Burgess] views philosophical extremes—Pelagian, Augustinian or whatever—as avenues to moral blindness and collective insanity, but it is not merely the extremes he rejects. Any tendency to promote a generalized view of human nature is liable to be a butt of his merciless satire. His satiric implication seems to be that both Pelagius and Augustine, and their numerous philosophical heirs, have been hopelessly myopic in their analyses of the human condition. Their views of man have been determined and severely limited by preconceived notions about 'man', which leave little room for the uniqueness of individual men. True, many of Burgess's most sympathetically drawn protagonists, such as Victor Crabbe in the Malayan Trilogy, Richard Ennis in A Vision of Battlements, Paul Hussey in Honey for the Bears and the flatulent Mr. Enderby, are Pelagian liberals, but they are totally ineffectual human beings. They are believers in social progress through the liberation of beneficent human energies, but they themselves can accomplish little more than the utterance of stale leftist sentiments at inopportune moments. (p. 54)

In other words, by exalting human potentiality and discarding Divine Grace, Pelagius and his heirs have actually reduced individual human significance immeasurably. For when Divine Grace has no place, when sin in the Augustinian sense doesn't exist, when man is in need of nothing but a greater exertion of his will to improve his moral and spiritual condition, then the only significant distributors of 'grace' in any sense are the managers of the earthly communities wherein the effort must be made. And it is these managers—corporation heads, commissars, bureaucrats and others—who are most desirous of standardizing humanity, of bringing its affairs within the compass of their finite wisdoms.

The Augustinian tradition is of course even more inimical to the dignity of man, but at least it acknowledges a distinction between regenerate and unregenerate human nature. However, since present day Augustinian thinkers, like the Pelagians, have largely abandoned the traditional idea of grace, the categories 'regenerate' and 'unregenerate' have meaning only with reference to social stability. One must subordinate one's self to the social machinery, become functionally or economically significant as a part of it, in order to be of the Elect. The individual 'self', asserting its existence by purely self-determined actions is sand in the machinery of Augustinian society. In the Augustinian view, moral evil and self-assertion are so inextricably bound up with each other that they tend to be identified. (pp. 54-5)

In Burgess's view, then, the Pelagian-Augustinian debate, which manifests itself historically as a 'waltz', is symptomatic of western man's acceptance of a faulty dilemma. Presumably, sanity and vision could lead men to a rejection of both 'Pelagianism' and 'Augustinianism' and a creation of society based upon a realistic assessment of individual human potentiality. But since sanity and vision are lacking, and since the individual 'self' is viewed as a threat to social stability by both Pelagians and Augustinians, then man is left with the two bleak alternatives presented in The Wanting Seed. If he isn't, in one sense or another, 'eaten' by a military-industrial complex, he will be persuaded to castrate himself, in one way or another, for the sake of social stability. (p. 55)