No More Learning

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? '

'As description, yes. The programme it sets forth is non-
sense. The secret accumulation of knowledge — a gradual
spread of enlightenment — ultimately a proletarian rebel-
lion — the overthrow of the Party. You foresaw yourself that
that was what it would say. It is all nonsense. The proletar-
ians 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 mo-
ment 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



1984



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 man-
kind, 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 oth-
ers. 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 thou-
sand times better than Winston he knew what the world
was really like, in what degradation the mass of human be-
ings 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 them-
selves, 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:



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'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 oligar-
chies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All
the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cow-
ards 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 be-
ings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know
that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relin-
quishing 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 dictator-
ship. 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 bru-
tal, 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.



1984



'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 un-
derstand, 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 com-
plete, 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 impor-
tant. Already our control over matter is absolute. '

For a moment Winston ignored the dial. He made a vio-
lent 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



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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 in-
side the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is
nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation — any-
thing. 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 mil-
lions 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. '



1984



'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. '

'What are the stars? ' said O'Brien indifferently. 'They are
bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we
wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the cen-
tre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it. '

Winston made another convulsive movement. This time
he did not say anything. O'Brien continued as though an-
swering a spoken objection:

'For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When
we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we of-
ten find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round
the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of ki-
lometres away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond
us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be
near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose
our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgot-
ten doublethink? '

Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever he said,
the swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon. And yet he
knew, he KNEW, that he was in the right. The belief that
nothing exists outside your own mind — surely there must
be some way of demonstrating that it was false? Had it not
been exposed long ago as a fallacy? There was even a name
for it, which he had forgotten. A faint smile twitched the
corners of O'Brien's mouth as he looked down at him.

T told you, Winston,' he said, 'that metaphysics is not
your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is

FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 335



solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Col-
lective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing: in
fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression,' he added
in a different tone. 'The real power, the power we have to
fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over
men. ' He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air
of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does
one man assert his power over another, Winston? '

Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.

'Exactly By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough.
Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obey-
ing your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain
and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces
and putting them together again in new shapes of your own
choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we
are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonis-
tic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear
and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being
trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE
merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be
progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed
that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded
upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions ex-
cept fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything
else we shall destroy — everything. Already we are break-
ing down the habits of thought which have survived from
before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child
and parent, and between man and man, and between man
and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend

336 1984



any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and
no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at
birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be
eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the
renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our
neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loy-
alty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love,
except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, ex-
cept the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will
be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipo-
tent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no
distinction between beauty and ugliness.
There will be no
curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing
pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this,
Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power,
constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Al-
ways, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory,
the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If
you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping
on a human face — for ever. '

He paused as though he expected Winston to speak.
Winston had tried to shrink back into the surface of the bed
again. He could not say anything. His heart seemed to be
frozen. O'Brien went on:

And remember that it is for ever. The face will always
be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of so-
ciety, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and
humiliated over again. Everything that you have undergone
since you have been in our hands — all that will continue,



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and worse. The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tor-
tures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease.
It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph.
The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant:
the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism. Gold-
stein and his heresies will live for ever. Every day, at every
moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat
upon and yet they will always survive. This drama that I
have played out with you during seven years will be played
out over and over again generation after generation, always
in subtler forms. Always we shall have the heretic here at our
mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible — and
in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to
our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are pre-
paring, Winston. A world of victory after victory, triumph
after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing,
pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning, I can
see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end
you will do more than understand it. You will accept it, wel-
come it, become part of it. '

Winston had recovered himself sufficiently to speak.
'You can't! ' he said weakly.

'What do you mean by that remark, Winston? '

'You could not create such a world as you have just de-
scribed. It is a dream. It is impossible. '

'Why? '

'It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred
and cruelty. It would never endure. '

'Why not? '

338 1984



'It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would
commit suicide. '

'Nonsense. You are under the impression that hatred is
more exhausting than love. Why should it be? And if it were,
what difference would that make? Suppose that we choose
to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we quicken the
tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what
difference would it make? Can you not understand that the
death of the individual is not death? The party is immor-
tal. '

As usual, the voice had battered Winston into helpless-
ness. Moreover he was in dread that if he persisted in his
disagreement O'Brien would twist the dial again. And yet
he could not keep silent. Feebly, without arguments, with
nothing to support him except his inarticulate horror of
what O'Brien had said, he returned to the attack.

'I don't know — I don't care. Somehow you will fail. Some-
thing will defeat you. Life will defeat you. '

'We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imag-
ining that there is something called human nature which
will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But
we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. Or
perhaps you have returned to your old idea that the prole-
tarians or the slaves will arise and overthrow us. Put it out
of your mind. They are helpless, like the animals. Humanity
is the Party. The others are outside — irrelevant. '

'I don't care. In the end they will beat you. Sooner or later
they will see you for what you are, and then they will tear
you to pieces. '



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'Do you see any evidence that that is happening? Or any
reason why it should? '

'No. I believe it. I KNOW that you will fail. There is
something in the universe — I don't know, some spirit, some
principle — that you will never overcome. '

'Do you believe in God, Winston? '

'No. '

'Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us? '

'I don't know. The spirit of Man. '

'And do you consider yourself a man? '

'Yes. '

'If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your
kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand
that you are ALONE? You are outside history, you are non-
existent. ' His manner changed and he said more harshly:
And you consider yourself morally superior to us, with our
lies and our cruelty? '

'Yes, I consider myself superior. '

O'Brien did not speak. Two other voices were speaking.
After a moment Winston recognized one of them as his
own. It was a sound-track of the conversation he had had
with O'Brien, on the night when he had enrolled himself in
the Brotherhood. He heard himself promising to lie, to steal,
to forge, to murder, to encourage drug-taking and prosti-
tution, to disseminate venereal diseases, to throw vitriol
in a child's face. O'Brien made a small impatient gesture,
as though to say that the demonstration was hardly worth
making. Then he turned a switch and the voices stopped.

'Get up from that bed,' he said.



1984



The bonds had loosened themselves. Winston lowered
himself to the floor and stood up unsteadily.

'You are the last man,' said O'Brien. 'You are the guard-
ian of the human spirit. You shall see yourself as you are.
Take off your clothes. '

Winston undid the bit of string that held his overalls to-
gether. The zip fastener had long since been wrenched out of
them. He could not remember whether at any time since his
arrest he had taken off all his clothes at one time. Beneath
the overalls his body was looped with filthy yellowish rags,
just recognizable as the remnants of underclothes. As he
slid them to the ground he saw that there was a three-sided
mirror at the far end of the room. He approached it, then
stopped short. An involuntary cry had broken out of him.

'Go on,' said O'Brien. 'Stand between the wings of the
mirror. You shall see the side view as well'

He had stopped because he was frightened. A bowed,
grey- coloured, skeleton-like thing was coming towards
him. Its actual appearance was frightening, and not merely
the fact that he knew it to be himself. He moved closer to
the glass. The creature's face seemed to be protruded, be-
cause of its bent carriage. A forlorn, jailbird's face with a
nobby forehead running back into a bald scalp, a crooked
nose, and battered-looking cheekbones above which his
eyes were fierce and watchful. The cheeks were seamed, the
mouth had a drawn-in look. Certainly it was his own face,
but it seemed to him that it had changed more than he had
changed inside. The emotions it registered would be differ-
ent from the ones he felt. He had gone partially bald. For the



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first moment he had thought that he had gone grey as well,
but it was only the scalp that was grey. Except for his hands
and a circle of his face, his body was grey all over with an-
cient, ingrained dirt. Here and there under the dirt there
were the red scars of wounds, and near the ankle the vari-
cose ulcer was an inflamed mass with flakes of skin peeling
off it. But the truly frightening thing was the emaciation of
his body. The barrel of the ribs was as narrow as that of a
skeleton: the legs had shrunk so that the knees were thicker
than the thighs. He saw now what O'Brien had meant about
seeing the side view. The curvature of the spine was aston-
ishing. The thin shoulders were hunched forward so as to
make a cavity of the chest, the scraggy neck seemed to be
bending double under the weight of the skull. At a guess he
would have said that it was the body of a man of sixty, suf-
fering from some malignant disease.

'You have thought sometimes,' said O'Brien, 'that my
face — the face of a member of the Inner Party — looks old
and worn. What do you think of your own face? '

He seized Winston's shoulder and spun him round so
that he was facing him.

'Look at the condition you are in! ' he said. 'Look at this
filthy grime all over your body. Look at the dirt between
your toes. Look at that disgusting running sore on your leg.
Do you know that you stink like a goat? Probably you have
ceased to notice it. Look at your emaciation. Do you see? I
can make my thumb and forefinger meet round your bicep.
I could snap your neck like a carrot. Do you know that you
have lost twenty-five kilograms since you have been in our



1984



hands? Even your hair is coming out in handfuls. Look! ' He
plucked at Winston's head and brought away a tuft of hair.
'Open your mouth. Nine, ten, eleven teeth left. How many
had you when you came to us? And the few you have left are
dropping out of your head. Look here! '

He seized one of Winston's remaining front teeth be-
tween his powerful thumb and forefinger. A twinge of pain
shot through Winston's jaw. O'Brien had wrenched the
loose tooth out by the roots. He tossed it across the cell.

'You are rotting away' he said; 'you are falling to pieces.
What are you? A bag of filth. Now turn around and look
into that mirror again. Do you see that thing facing you?
That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity.
Now put your clothes on again. '

Winston began to dress himself with slow stiff move-
ments. Until now he had not seemed to notice how thin and
weak he was. Only one thought stirred in his mind: that he
must have been in this place longer than he had imagined.
Then suddenly as he fixed the miserable rags round himself
a feeling of pity for his ruined body overcame him. Before
he knew what he was doing he had collapsed on to a small
stool that stood beside the bed and burst into tears. He was
aware of his ugliness, his gracelessness, a bundle of bones in
filthy underclothes sitting weeping in the harsh white light:
but he could not stop himself. O'Brien laid a hand on his
shoulder, almost kindly.

'It will not last for ever,' he said. 'You can escape from it
whenever you choose. Everything depends on yourself

'You did it! ' sobbed Winston. 'You reduced me to this



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state.

'No, Winston, you reduced yourself to it. This is what you
accepted when you set yourself up against the Party. It was
all contained in that first act. Nothing has happened that
you did not foresee. '

He paused, and then went on:

'We have beaten you, Winston. We have broken you up.
You have seen what your body is like. Your mind is in the
same state. I do not think there can be much pride left in
you. You have been kicked and flogged and insulted, you
have screamed with pain, you have rolled on the floor in
your own blood and vomit. You have whimpered for mercy,
you have betrayed everybody and everything. Can you think
of a single degradation that has not happened to you? '

Winston had stopped weeping, though the tears were
still oozing out of his eyes. He looked up at O'Brien.

'I have not betrayed Julia,' he said.

O'Brien looked down at him thoughtfully. 'No,' he said;
'no; that is perfectly true. You have not betrayed Julia. '

The peculiar reverence for O'Brien, which nothing
seemed able to destroy, flooded Winston's heart again. How
intelligent, he thought, how intelligent! Never did O'Brien
fail to understand what was said to him.