‘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. ‘Hypnopædia, 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 hypnopædia 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 bursts into tears. ‘I don’t know,’ 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 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.