Yoritomo shrugged slightly. "Perhaps you would. But it would not be the
asset you think. Look at it soberly, my friend.
"The most difficult teaching job in the universe is the attempt to teach
an organism something it already knows. True? Yes. If a man already knows
the shape of the Earth, it will do you no good to attempt to teach him. If
he _knows_ that the Earth is flat, your contention that it is round will
make no impression whatever. He _knows_, you see. He _knows_.
"Now. Imagine a race with a perfect memory--one which does not fade. A
memory in which each bit of data is as bright and fresh as the moment it
was imprinted, and as readily available as the data stored in a robot's
mind. It is, in effect, a robotic memory.
"If you put false data into the memory bank of a computer--such as telling
it that the square of two is five--you cannot correct the error simply by
telling it that the square of two is four. You must first remove the
erroneous data, not so?
"Very good. Then let us look at the Nipe race, wherever it was spawned in
this universe. Let us look at their race a long time back--when they first
became _Nipe sapiens_. Back when they first developed a true language.
Each child, as it is born or hatched or budded--whatever it is they do--is
taught as rapidly as possible all the things it must know to survive. And
once it is taught a thing, it _knows_. And if it is taught a falsehood,
then it cannot be taught the truth."
"Wouldn't cold reality force a change?" Stanton asked.
"Ah. In some cases, yes. In most, no. Look: Suppose a primordial Nipe runs
across a tiger--or whatever passes for a tiger on their planet. He has
never seen a tiger before, so he does not see that this particular tiger
is old, ill, and weak. He hits it on the head, and it drops dead. He takes
it home for the family to feed on.
"'How did you kill it, Papa?'"
"'I walked up to it, bashed it on the noggin, and it died. That is the way
to kill tigers.'"
Yoritomo smiled. "It is also a good way to kill Nipes. Eh?" He took the
towel and wiped Stanton's brow again.
[Illustration]
"The error," he continued, "was made when Papa Nipe generalized from _one_
tiger to _all_ tigers. If tigers were rare, this bit of lore might be
passed on for many generations. Those who learned that most tigers are
_not_ conquered by walking up to them and hitting them on the noggin
undoubtedly died before they could pass this bit of information on. Then,
one day, a Nipe survived the ordeal. His mind now contained conflicting
information, which must be resolved. He _knows_ that tigers are killed in
this way. He also _knows_ that this one did not die. Plainly, then, _this_
one is not a tiger. Ha! He has the solution!
"What does he tell his children? Why, first he tells them how tigers are
killed. Then he warns them that there is an animal that looks _just like_
a tiger, but is _not_ a tiger. One should not make the mistake of thinking
it _is_ a tiger or one will get badly hurt. Since the only way to tell the
true tiger from the false is to hit it, and since that test may prove
fatal to the Nipe who tries it, it follows that one is better off if one
avoids all animals that look like tigers. You see?"
"Yeah," said Stanton. "Some snarks are boojums."
"Exactly! Thank you for that allusion. I must remember to use it in my
report."
"It seems to me to follow," Stanton said musingly, "that there would be
some things that they'd never learn the truth about, once they'd gotten a
wrong idea in their heads."
"Ah! Indeed. It is precisely that which led me to formulate my theory in
the first place. How else to explain the fact that the Nipe, for all his
technical knowledge, is still in the ancient ritual-taboo stage of
development?"
"A savage?"
Yoritomo smiled. "As to his savagery, I think no one on Earth would
disagree. But they are not the same thing. What I do mean is that the Nipe
is undoubtedly the most superstitious and bigoted being on the face of
this planet."