He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The
screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something
desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave
utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to
the tug of unseen wires.
"We can electrify that whole strip of floor," bawled the Director in explanation. "But
that's enough," he signalled to the nurse.
The explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died down
from tone to tone into silence. The stiffly twitching bodies relaxed, and what had
become the sob and yelp of infant maniacs broadened out once more into a normal
howl of ordinary terror.
"Offer them the flowers and the books again."
The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those
gaily-coloured images of pussy and cock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black sheep,
the infants shrank away in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly increased.
"Observe," said the Director triumphantly, "observe."
Books and loud noises, fiowers and electric shocks–already in the infant mind these
couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same
or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is
powerless to put asunder.
"They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an 'instinctive' hatred of
books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They'll be safe from books
and botany all their lives." The Director turned to his nurses. "Take them away
again."
Still yelling, the khaki babies were loaded on to their dumb-waiters and wheeled
out, leaving behind them the smell of sour milk and a most welcome silence.
One of the students held up his hand; and though he could see quite well why you
couldn't have lower-cast people wasting the Community's time over books, and that
there was always the risk of their reading something which might undesirably
decondition one of their reflexes, yet … well, he couldn't understand about the
flowers. Why go to the trouble of making it psychologically impossible for Deltas to
like flowers?
Patiently the D.H.C. explained. If the children were made to scream at the sight of a
rose, that was on grounds of high economic policy. Not so very long ago (a century
or thereabouts), Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had been conditioned to like
flowers–flowers in particular and wild nature in general. The idea was to make them
want to be going out into the country at every available opportunity, and so compel
them to consume transport.
"And didn't they consume transport?" asked the student.
"Quite a lot," the D.H.C. replied. "But nothing else."
Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are
gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the
love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes; to abolish the love of nature,
but not the tendency to consume transport. For of course it was essential that they
should keep on going to the country, even though they hated it. The problem was
to find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere
affection for primroses and landscapes. It was duly found.
"We condition the masses to hate the country," concluded the Director. "But
simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we
see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that
they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric
shocks."
"I see," said the student, and was silent, lost in admiration.
There was a silence; then, clearing his throat, "Once upon a time," the Director
began, "while our Ford was still on earth, there was a little boy called Reuben
Rabinovitch. Reuben was the child of Polish-speaking parents."
The Director interrupted himself. "You know what Polish is, I suppose?"
"A dead language."
"Like French and German," added another student, officiously showing off his
learning.
"And 'parent'?" questioned the D.H.C.
There was an uneasy silence. Several of the boys blushed. They had not yet learned
to draw the significant but often very fine distinction between smut and pure science.
One, at last, had the courage to raise a hand.
"Human beings used to be …" he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. "Well,
they used to be viviparous."
"Quite right." The Director nodded approvingly.
"And when the babies were decanted …"
"'Born,'" came the correction.
"Well, then they were the parents–I mean, not the babies, of course; the other
ones." The poor boy was overwhelmed with confusion.
"In brief," the Director summed up, "the parents were the father and the mother."
The smut that was really science fell with a crash into the boys' eye-avoiding silence.
"Mother," he repeated loudly rubbing in the science; and, leaning back in his chair,
"These," he said gravely, "are unpleasant facts; I know it. But then most historical
facts are unpleasant."
He returned to Little Reuben–to Little Reuben, in whose room, one evening, by an
oversight, his father and mother (crash, crash!) happened to leave the radio turned
on.
("For you must remember that in those days of gross viviparous reproduction,
children were always brought up by their parents and not in State Conditioning
Centres.")
While the child was asleep, a broadcast programme from London suddenly started
to come through; and the next morning, to the astonishment of his crash and crash
(the more daring of the boys ventured to grin at one another), Little Reuben woke
up repeating word for word a long lecture by that curious old writer ("one of the very
few whose works have been permitted to come down to us"), George Bernard Shaw,
who was speaking, according to a well-authenticated tradition, about his own genius.
To Little Reuben's wink and snigger, this lecture was, of course, perfectly
incomprehensible and, imagining that their child had suddenly gone mad, they sent
for a doctor. He, fortunately, understood English, recognized the discourse as that
which Shaw had broadcasted the previous evening, realized the significance of what
had happened, and sent a letter to the medical press about it.
"The principle of sleep-teaching, or hypnop?dia, had been discovered." The D.H.C.
made an impressive pause.
The principle had been discovered; but many, many years were to elapse before
that principle was usefully applied.
"The case of Little Reuben occurred only twenty-three years after Our Ford's first
T-Model was put on the market." (Here the Director made a sign of the T on his
stomach and all the students reverently followed suit.) "And yet …"
Furiously the students scribbled. "Hypnop?dia, first used officially in A.F. 214. Why not
before? Two reasons. (a) …"
"These early experimenters," the D.H.C. was saying, "were on the wrong track. They
thought that hypnop?dia could be made an instrument of intellectual education …"
(A small boy asleep on his right side, the right arm stuck out, the right hand
hanging limp over the edge of the bed. Through a round grating in the side of a
box a voice speaks softly.
"The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second in length of all the rivers of
the globe. Although falling short of the length of the Mississippi-Missouri, the Nile is
at the head of all rivers as regards the length of its basin, which extends through 35
degrees of latitude …"
At breakfast the next morning, "Tommy," some one says, "do you know which is the
longest river in Africa?" A shaking of the head. "But don't you remember something
that begins: The Nile is the …"
"The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and - the - second - in - length -
of - all - the - rivers - of - the - globe …" The words come rushing out. "Although -
falling - short - of …"
"Well now, which is the longest river in Africa?"
The eyes are blank. "I don't know."
"But the Nile, Tommy."
"The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and - second …"
"Then which river is the longest, Tommy?"
Tommy burst into tears. "I don't know," he howls.)
That howl, the Director made it plain, discouraged the earliest invesfigators. The
experiments were abandoned. No further attempt was made to teach children the
length of the Nile in their sleep. Quite rightly. You can't learn a science unless you
know what it's all about.
"Whereas, if they'd only started on moral education," said the Director, leading the
way towards the door. The students followed him, desperately scribbling as they
walked and all the way up in the lift. "Moral education, which ought never, in any
circumstances, to be rational."
"Silence, silence," whispered a loud speaker as they stepped out at the fourteenth
floor, and "Silence, silence," the trumpet mouths indefatigably repeated at intervals
down every corridor. The students and even the Director himself rose automatically
to the tips of their toes. They were Alphas, of course, but even Alphas have been
well conditioned. "Silence, silence." All the air of the fourteenth floor was sibilant with
the categorical imperative.
Fifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door which the Director cautiously opened.
They stepped over the threshold into the twilight of a shuttered dormitory. Eighty
cots stood in a row against the wall. There was a sound of light regular breathing
and a continuous murmur, as of very faint voices remotely whispering.
A nurse rose as they entered and came to attention before the Director.
"What's the lesson this afternoon?" he asked.
"We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes," she answered. "But now it's
switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness."
The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy and relaxed with sleep,
eighty little boys and girls lay seftly hreathing. There was a whisper under every
pillow. The D.H.C. halted and, bending over one of the little beds, listened
attentively.
"Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let's have it repeated a little louder
by the trumpet."
At the end of the room a loud speaker projected from the wall. The Director walked
up to it and pressed a switch.
"… all wear green," said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a
sentence, "and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta
children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write.
Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."
There was a pause; then the voice began again.
"Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they're so
frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard.
And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid.
They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with
Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able …"
The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its thin ghost
continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows.
"They'll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again
on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundred and twenty times three times a
week for thirty months. After which they go on to a more advanced lesson."
Roses and electric shocks, the khaki of Deltas and a whiff of asafoetida–wedded
indissolubly before the child can speak. But wordless conditioning is crude and
wholesale; cannot bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more
complex courses of behaviour. For that there must be words, but words without
reason. In brief, hypnop?dia.
"The greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time."
The students took it down in their little books. Straight from the horse's mouth.
Once more the Director touched the switch.
"… so frightfully clever," the soft, insinuating, indefatigable voice was saying, "I'm
really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because …"
Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the
hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust,
incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet
blob.
"Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is
the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too–all his life
long. The mind that judges and desires and decides–made up of these
suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!" The Director almost
shouted in his triumph. "Suggestions from the State." He banged the nearest table.
"It therefore follows …"
A noise made him turn round.
"Oh, Ford!" he said in another tone, "I've gone and woken the children."
Chapter Three
OUTSIDE, in the garden, it was playtime. Naked in the warm June sunshine, six or
seven hundred little boys and girls were running with shrill yells over the lawns, or
playing ball games, or squatting silently in twos and threes among the flowering
shrubs. The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a
cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees. The air was drowsy with the
murmur of bees and helicopters.
