p printing and cheap books that the spread of education in
my own country has been largely due."

"Undoubtedly. The question of course is whether the spread of
education--or rather what you mean by education--is in any way
desirable. It seemed to us that one might as well admit children and
fools under no supervision to a menagerie of wild beasts and provide
them with the keys of the cages. We respect letters. We consider it a
dishonour to letters that books should be cheap or easily obtainable.
Here it costs a first-class being more to read one manuscript from the
library of the Central Office than it would cost you in your own country
for a year's subscription to King Mudie."

I informed him that Mudie was not a king and that I did not know how he
had got the idea. He accepted the correction as he always accepted every
correction, with considerable irritation.

"It seems to me," he continued, "that you use the word education in a
very narrow sense. I myself should say that the whole of our
second-class beings were educated. Each is trained to the work that he
has to do. We have for instance a group of them who are familiar with
the ordinary process of plant culture. They can dig, they can prune,
they can plant. They have the education for which they are fitted. They
are not versed in those extraordinary modifications which can be
produced in plants by chemical changes caused artificially in the nature
of the sap. That branch is naturally reserved for beings of the first
class. They are taught how to weave and how to make the garments which
we all wear. They are taught how to clean our houses in the quickest,
most silent and most effective manner. Briefly, they do any work which
their intelligence and judgment entitle them to do. Beyond that we do
not go. We do not give them knowledge which would be dangerous to them
and to us. When you return home, my friend, if ever you do return home,
preach to your poor benighted people the inequality of man and the
advisability of restricting all really important knowledge to the higher
grade."

One day while we were chatting about indifferent subjects he mentioned
quite casually that he had been cross-speaking the Central Office and
that he found that MZ04 had died that morning.

"I am sorry to hear it," I said. "For after all he received me
kindly--fed me and clothed me. When is the funeral?"

"Funeral?" said the Professor. "We have no funerals. The body of MZ04
went into