"Well now," I said, "your whole national culture is so elaborately perfect, from the standpoint of its basic principles, that it is certainly well worth studying by any student of sociology or politics or economics; yet we foreigners find ourselves hampered at many points whenever we wish to get into contact with certain kinds of facts. For instance, we may wish to find out what are the ideas, the current thoughts and feelings, of the various groups, and even individuals, who make up society. We cannot go and live with people and converse freely with them. I have not been able to understand why your Government takes such precautions to keep secret, as it were, facts which in any other country are as open as the day." "That is not at all difficult to answer by anyone who really understands the principles of our Culture, and I am surprised that none of the conductors who have instructed you have explained it--that is, if you have asked them," he answered. "You have been hampered, you say. Yes, but you have been assisted too. You have been shown things in a way that would be impossible in most other countries within such a short time. Our Government has paid great attention to the instruction of foreigners. Instead of leaving them to gather all sorts of erroneous impressions, it provides them with authentic information. If, on the other hand, there are things which it does not wish foreigners to know, it takes care, and quite rightly, that they shall not obtain the information by any illicit means. For instance, if you were foolish enough to attempt to obtain information about our military affairs, you would find yourself against a blank wall; and, if I may say so, you might hurt your head against the wall. But then there are matters which, without being secret, cannot well be investigated by the individual inquirer. Take such a thing as the current thought of any particular class or group. Only a trained and well-equipped social-psychologist is capable of making such an inquiry. The liability to error is tremendous. All the books written by travellers reveal this. We do not wish to be exploited by casual and irresponsible travellers. We provide opportunities, under proper conditions, for expert investigators; but very few are willing to comply with the conditions. Besides, our Culture, like all the finest products of the human intellect, is a very delicate thing. When we have carefully educated our people in the Meccanian spirit we are not prepared to expose them to the insidious influences of irresponsible busybodies. Every Meccanian is valuable in our eyes, and just as we protect him from infection in the shape of physical disease, so we protect him from the more insidious but not less injurious influence of foreign ideas. You will find plenty of philosophical justification for that policy in the writings of Plato and Aristotle--two philosophers who are studied in all the foreign universities but whose systems of thought are