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Chapter no 2

Brave New World

Mr. Foster was left in the Decanting Room. The D.H.C. andย his students stepped into the nearest lift and were carried up to the fifth floor.

INFANTย NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIANย CONDITIONINGย ROOMS, announced the

notice board.

The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, very bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wall was a single window. Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across the floor. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom. Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble.

The nurses stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in. โ€œSet out the books,โ€ he said curtly.

In silence the nurses obeyed his command. Between the rose bowls the books were duly set outโ€”a row of nursery quartos opened invitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beast or fish or bird.

โ€œNow bring in the children.โ€

They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two, each pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden, on all its four wire-netted shelves, with eight-month-old babies, all exactly alike (a Bokanovsky Group, it was evident) and all (since their caste was Delta) dressed in khaki.

โ€œPut them down on the floor.โ€ The infants were unloaded.

โ€œNow turn them so that they can see the flowers and books.โ€

Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those

clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.

The Director rubbed his hands. โ€œExcellent!โ€ he said. โ€œIt might almost have been done on purpose.โ€

The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands reached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages of the books. The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, โ€œWatch carefully,โ€ he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.

The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever.

There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked.

Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.

The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.

โ€œAnd now,โ€ the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), โ€œnow we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock.โ€

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.

โ€œWe can electrify that whole strip of floor,โ€ bawled the Director in explanation. โ€œBut thatโ€™s enough,โ€ 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.

โ€œOffer them the flowers and the books again.โ€

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.

โ€œObserve,โ€ said the Director triumphantly, โ€œobserve.โ€

Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocksโ€”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.

โ€œTheyโ€™ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an โ€˜instinctiveโ€™ hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. Theyโ€™ll be safe from books and botany all their lives.โ€ The Director turned to his nurses. โ€œTake them away again.โ€

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 couldnโ€™t have lower-caste people wasting the Communityโ€™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 couldnโ€™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 flowersโ€”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.

โ€œAnd didnโ€™t they consume transport?โ€ asked the student. โ€œQuite a lot,โ€ the D.H.C. replied. โ€œBut nothing else.โ€

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, butย notย 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.

โ€œWe condition the masses to hate the country,โ€ concluded the Director. โ€œBut 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.โ€

โ€œI see,โ€ said the student, and was silent, lost in admiration.

There was a silence; then, clearing his throat, โ€œOnce upon a time,โ€ the Director began, โ€œwhile our Ford was still on earth, there was a little boy called Reuben Rabinovitch. Reuben was the child of Polish-speaking parents.โ€ The Director interrupted himself. โ€œYou know what Polish is, I suppose?โ€

โ€œA dead language.โ€

โ€œLike French and German,โ€ added another student, officiously showing off his learning.

โ€œAnd โ€˜parentโ€™?โ€ 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.

โ€œHuman beings used to be . . .โ€ he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. โ€œWell they used to be viviparous.โ€

โ€œQuite right.โ€ The Director nodded approvingly. โ€œAnd when the babies were decanted . . .โ€

โ€œ โ€˜Born,โ€™ โ€ came the correction.

โ€œWell, then they were the parentsโ€”I mean, not the babies, of course; the other ones.โ€ The poor boy was overwhelmed with confusion.

โ€œIn brief,โ€ the Director summed up, โ€œthe parents were the father and the mother.โ€ The smut that was really science fell with a crash into the boysโ€™ eye- avoiding silence. โ€œMother,โ€ he repeated loudly rubbing in the science; and, leaning back in his chair, โ€œThese,โ€ he said gravely, โ€œare unpleasant facts; I know it. But then most historical factsย areย unpleasant.โ€

He returned to Little Reubenโ€”to Little Reuben, in whose room, one evening, by an oversight, his father and mother (crash, crash!) happened to leave the radio turned on.

(โ€œFor 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.โ€)

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 (โ€œone of the very few whose works have been permitted to come

down to usโ€), George Bernard Shaw, who was speaking, according to a well- authenticated tradition, about his own genius. To Little Reubenโ€™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.

โ€œThe principle of sleep-teaching, or hypnopรฆdia, had been discovered.โ€ 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.

โ€œThe case of Little Reuben occurred only twenty-three years after Our Fordโ€™s first T-Model was put on the market.โ€ (Here the Director made a sign of the T on his stomach and all the students reverently followed suit.) โ€œAnd yet . . .โ€

Furiously the students scribbled.ย โ€œHypnopรฆdia, first used officially in A.F.

214. Why not before? Two reasons. (a) . . .โ€

โ€œThese early experimenters,โ€ the D.H.C. was saying, โ€œwere on the wrong track. They thought that hypnopรฆdia could be made an instrument of intellectual education . . .โ€

(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.

โ€œThe 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 . . .โ€

At breakfast the next morning, โ€œTommy,โ€ some one says, โ€œdo you know which is the longest river in Africa?โ€ A shaking of the head. โ€œBut donโ€™t you remember something that begins: The Nile is the . . .โ€

โ€œThe – Nile – is – the – longest – river – in – Africa – and – the – second – in – length – of – all – the – rivers – of – the – globe . . .โ€ The words come rushing out. โ€œAlthough – falling – short – of . . .โ€

โ€œWell now, which is the longest river in Africa?โ€ The eyes are blank. โ€œI donโ€™t know.โ€

โ€œBut the Nile, Tommy.โ€

โ€œThe – Nile – is – the – longest – river – in – Africa – and – second . . .โ€

โ€œThen which river is the longest, Tommy?โ€ Tommy burst into tears. โ€œI donโ€™t know,โ€ he howls.)

That howl, the Director made it plain, discouraged the earliest investigators. The experiments were abandoned. No further attempt was made to teach children the length of the Nile in their sleep. Quite rightly. You canโ€™t learn a science unless you know what itโ€™s all about.

โ€œWhereas, if theyโ€™d only started onย moralย education,โ€ 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. โ€œMoral education, which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational.โ€

โ€œSilence, silence,โ€ whispered a loud speaker as they stepped out at the fourteenth floor, and โ€œSilence, silence,โ€ 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. โ€œSilence, silence.โ€ 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. โ€œWhatโ€™s the lesson this afternoon?โ€ he asked.

โ€œWe had Elementary S*x for the first forty minutes,โ€ she answered. โ€œBut now itโ€™s switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness.โ€

The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy and relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing. There was a whisper under every pillow. The D.H.C. halted and, bending over one of the little beds, listened attentively.

โ€œElementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Letโ€™s have it repeated a little louder by the trumpet.โ€

At the end of the room a loud speaker projected from the wall. The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch.

โ€œ. . . all wear green,โ€ said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, โ€œand Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I donโ€™t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. Theyโ€™re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly

colour. Iโ€™mย soย glad Iโ€™m a Beta.โ€

There was a pause; then the voice began again.

โ€œAlpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because theyโ€™re so frightfully clever. Iโ€™m really awfully glad Iโ€™m a Beta, because I donโ€™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, Iย donโ€™tย want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. Theyโ€™re too stupid to be able . . .โ€

The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows.

โ€œTheyโ€™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.โ€

Roses and electric shocks, the khaki of Deltas and a whiff of asafล“tidaโ€” 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, hypnopรฆdia.

โ€œThe greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time.โ€

The students took it down in their little books. Straight from the horseโ€™s mouth.

Once more the Director touched the switch.

โ€œ. . . so frightfully clever,โ€ the soft, insinuating, indefatigable voice was saying, โ€œIโ€™m really awfully glad Iโ€™m a Beta, because . . .โ€

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.

โ€œTill at last the childโ€™s mindย isย these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestionsย isย the childโ€™s mind. And not the childโ€™s mind only. The adultโ€™s mind tooโ€”all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decidesโ€” made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions areย ourย suggestions!โ€ The Director almost shouted in his triumph. โ€œSuggestions from the State.โ€ He banged the nearest table. โ€œIt therefore follows . . .โ€

A noise made him turn around.

โ€œOh, Ford!โ€ he said in another tone, โ€œIโ€™ve gone and woken the children.โ€

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