They thought that hypnopaedia could be made an instrument of intellectual education…”
(A small boy asleep on his right side. 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…”
At breakfast the next morning, “Tommy,” someone 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 cries.)
That discouraged the earliest investigators. The experiments were abandoned. No further attempt was made to teach children the length of the Nile in their sleep. 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. “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. 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.
Fifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door which the Director cautiously opened. Eighty cots stood in a row against the wall. There was a sound of light regular breathing and a continuous murmur.
A nurse rose as they entered and came to 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.”
Eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing. There was a whisper under every pillow. The D.H.C. stopped 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 was a speaker. 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. 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. 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 clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. 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.
“They’ll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. After that they go on to a more advanced lesson.”
Once more the Director touched the switch.
“… so clever,” the soft voice was saying, “I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because…”
“Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the suggestions are the child’s mind. And the adult’s mind too-all his life long. These are 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 woken the children.”
Chapter Three
Outside, in the garden, it was playtime. Six or seven hundred of naked 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 air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters.
“That’s a charming little group,” said the Director, pointing.
In a little grassy bay two children, a little boy of about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older, were playing, very gravely and with all the focused attention of scientists intent on a labour of discovery, a rudimentary sexual game.
From a neighbouring shrubbery emerged a nurse, leading by the hand a small boy, who cried as he went. An anxious-looking little girl followed them.
“What’s the matter?” asked the Director.
The nurse shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing much,” she answered. “This little boy seems rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play. I’d noticed it once or twice before. And now again today. He started yelling just now…”
“I didn’t mean to hurt him or anything. Honestly,” said the anxious-looking little girl.
“Of course you didn’t, dear,” said the nurse reassuringly. She turned back to the Director. “I’m taking him to see the Assistant Superintendent of Psychology. Just to see if anything’s at all abnormal.”
“Quite right,” said the Director. “Take him. You stay here, little girl,” he added, as the nurse and the boy walked away. “What’s your name?”
“Polly Trotsky.”
“Run away now and see if you can find some other little boy to play with.”
The child scampered off into the bushes and was lost to sight[15].
The Director turned to his students. “What I’m going to tell you now,” he said, “may sound incredible. But then, when you’re not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do.”
He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!); and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.
An astonished look appeared on the faces of his listeners. They could not believe it.
“Even adolescents,” the D.H.C. was saying, “even adolescents like yourselves…”
“Not
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