Once again the sense of helplessness assailed him. He
knew, or he could imagine, the arguments which proved his own
nonexistence; but they were nonsense, they were only a play on
words. Did not the statement, 'You do not exist', contain a
logical absurdity? But what use was it to say so? His mind
shrivelled as he thought of the unanswerable, mad arguments
with which O'Brien would demolish him.
'I think I exist,' he said wearily. 'I am conscious of my
own identity. I was born and I shall die. I have arms and legs.
I occupy a particular point in space. No other solid object can
occupy the same point simultaneously. In that sense, does Big
Brother exist?'
'It is of no importance. He exists.'
'Will Big Brother ever die?'
'Of course not. How could he die? Next question.'
'Does the Brotherhood exist?'
'That, Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set
you free when we have finished with you, and if you live to be
ninety years old, still you will never learn whether the answer
to that question is Yes or No. As long as you live it will be
an unsolved riddle in your mind.'
Winston lay silent. His breast rose and fell a little
faster. He still had not asked the question that had come into
his mind the first. He had got to ask it, and yet it was as
though his tongue would not utter it. There was a trace of
amusement in O'Brien's face. Even his spectacles seemed to wear
an ironical gleam. He knows, thought Winston suddenly, he knows
what I am going to ask! At the thought the words burst out of
him:
'What is in Room 101?'
The expression on O'Brien's face did not change. He
answered drily:
'You know what is in Room 101, Winston. Everyone knows
what is in Room 101.'
He raised a finger to the man in the white coat. Evidently
the session was at an end. A needle jerked into Winston's arm.
He sank almost instantly into deep sleep.
x x x
'There are three stages in your reintegration,' said
O'Brien. 'There is learning, there is understanding, and there
is acceptance. It is time for you to enter upon the second
stage.'
As always, Winston was lying flat on his back. But of late
his bonds were looser. They still held him to the bed, but he
could move his knees a little and could turn his head from side
to side and raise his arms from the elbow. The dial, also, had
grown to be less of a terror. He could evade its pangs if he
was quick-witted enough: it was chiefly when he showed
stupidity that O'Brien pulled the lever. Sometimes they got
through a whole session without use of the dial. He could not
remember how many sessions there had been. The whole process
seemed to stretch out over a long, indefinite time -- weeks,
possibly -- and the intervals between the sessions might
sometimes have been days, sometimes only an hour or two.
'As you lie there,' said O'Brien, 'you have often wondered
you have even asked me -- why the Ministry of Love should
expend so much time and trouble on you. And when you were free
you were puzzled by what was essentially the same question. You
could grasp the mechanics of the Society you lived in, but not
its underlying motives. Do you remember writing in your diary,
"I understand how: I do not understand why"? It was when
you thought about "why" that you doubted your own sanity. You
have read the book, Goldstein's book, or parts of it, at
least. Did it tell you anything that you did not know already?'
'You have read it?' said Winston.
'I wrote it. That is to say, I collaborated in writing it.
No book is produced individually, as you know.'
'Is it true, what it says?'
'A description, yes. The programme it sets forth is
nonsense. The secret accumulation of knowledge -- a gradual
spread of enlightenment -- ultimately a proletarian rebellion
-- the overthrow of the Party. You foresaw yourself that that
was what it would say. It is all nonsense. The proletarians
will never revolt, not in a thousand years or a million. They
cannot. I do not have to tell you the reason: you know it
already. If you have ever cherished any dreams of violent
insurrection, you must abandon them. There is no way in which
the Party can be overthrown. The rule of the Party is for ever.
Make that the starting-point of your thoughts.'
He came closer to the bed. 'For ever!' he repeated. 'And
now let us get back to the question of "how" and "why". You
understand well enough how the Party maintains itself in
power. Now tell me why we cling to power. What is our motive?
Why should we want power? Go on, speak,' he added as Winston
remained silent.
Nevertheless Winston did not speak for another moment or
two. A feeling of weariness had overwhelmed him. The faint, mad
gleam of enthusiasm had come back into O'Brien's face. He knew
in advance what O'Brien would say. That the Party did not seek
power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority.
That it sought power because men in the mass were frail
cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the
truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by
others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for
mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the
great bulk of mankind, happiness was better. That the party was
the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil
that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of
others. The terrible thing, thought Winston, the terrible thing
was that when O'Brien said this he would believe it. You could
see it in his face. O'Brien knew everything. A thousand times
better than Winston he knew what the world was really like, in
what degradation the mass of human beings lived and by what
lies and barbarities the Party kept them there. He had
understood it all, weighed it all, and it made no difference:
all was justified by the ultimate purpose. What can you do,
thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent
than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then
simply persists in his lunacy?
'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he said feebly.
'You believe that human beings are not fit to govern
themselves, and therefore-'
He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot
through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up
to thirty-five.
'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!' he said. 'You should
know better than to say a thing like that.'
He pulled the lever back and continued:
'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is
this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are
not interested in the good of others ; we are interested solely
in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only
power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand
presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the
past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even
those who resembled ourselves, were- cowards and hypocrites.
The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to
us in their methods, but they never had the courage to
recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even
believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a
limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a
paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not
like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the
intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an
end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to
safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to
establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is
persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of
power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'
Winston was struck, as he had been struck before, by the
tiredness of O'Brien's face. It was strong and fleshy and
brutal, it was full of intelligence and a sort of controlled
passion before which he felt himself helpless; but it was
tired. There were pouches under the eyes, the skin sagged from
the cheekbones. O'Brien leaned over him, deliberately bringing
the worn face nearer.
'You are thinking,' he said, 'that my face is old and
tired. You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not
even able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not
understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The
weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism. Do you die
when you cut your fingernails?'
He turned away from the bed and began strolling up and
down again, one hand in his pocket.
'We are the priests of power,' he said. 'God is power. But
at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It
is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The
first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The
individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an
individual. You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery".
Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is
freedom. Alone -- free -- the human being is always defeated.
It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die,
which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make
complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity,
if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the
Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing
for you to realize is that power is power over human beings.
Over the body but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter
-- external reality, as you would call it -- is not important.
Already our control over matter is absolute.'
For a moment Winston ignored the dial. He made a violent
effort to raise himself into a sitting position, and merely
succeeded in wrenching his body painfully.
'But how can you control matter?' he burst out. 'You don't
even control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are
disease, pain, death-'
O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. 'We
control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside
the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing
that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation -- anything. I
could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I
do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must
get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of
Nature. We make the laws of Nature.'
'But you do not! You are not even masters of this planet.
What about Eurasia and Eastasia? You have not conquered them
yet.'
'Unimportant. We shall conquer them when it suits us. And
if we did not, what difference would it make? We can shut them
out of existence. Oceania is the world.'
'But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is
tiny helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions
of years the earth was uninhabited.'
'Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How
could it be older? Nothing exists except through human
consciousness.'
'But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals --
mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here
long before man was ever heard of.'
'Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not.
Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there
was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would
be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.'
'But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars !
Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of
our reach for ever.'
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