" I am taking trouble with you, Winston ", he said, " because you are worth trouble. You know perfectly well what is the matter with you. You have known it for years, though you have fought against the knowledge. You are mentally deranged. You suffer from a defective memory. You are unable to remember real events and you persuade yourself that you remember other events which never happened. Fortunately it is curable. You have never cured yourself of it, because you did not choose to. There was a small effort of the will that you were not ready to make. Even now, I am well aware, you are clinging to your disease under the impression that it is a virtue. Now we will take an example. At this moment, which power is Oceania at war with ? "
" When I was arrested, Oceania was at war with Eastasia. "
" With Eastasia. Good. And Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, has it not ? "
Winston drew in his breath. He opened his mouth to speak and then did not speak. He could not take his eyes away from the dial.
" The truth, please, Winston. Your truth. Tell me what you think you remember. "
" I remember that until only a week before I was arrested, we were not at war with Eastasia at all. We were in alliance with them. The war was against Eurasia. That had lasted for four years. Before that - "
O'Brien stopped him with a movement of the hand.
" Another example ", he said. " Some years ago you had a very serious delusion indeed. You believed that three men, three one-time Party members named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford men who were executed for treachery and sabotage after making the fullest possible confession - were not guilty of the crimes they were charged with. You believed that you had seen unmistakable documentary evidence proving that their confessions were false. There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this. "
An oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between O'Brien's fingers. For perhaps five seconds it was within the angle of Winston's vision. It was a photograph, and there was no question of its identity. It was THE photograph. It was another copy of the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford at the party function in New York, which he had chanced upon eleven years ago and promptly destroyed. For only an instant it was before his eyes, then it was out of sight again. But he had seen it, unquestionably he had seen it ! He made a desperate, agonizing effort to wrench the top half of his body free. It was impossible to move so much as a centimetre in any direction. For the moment he had even forgotten the dial. All he wanted was to hold the photograph in his fingers again, or at least to see it.
" It exists ! " he cried.
" No ", said O'Brien.
He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air ; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away from the wall.
" Ashes ", he said. " Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed. "
" But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it. "
" I do not remember it ", said O'Brien.
Winston's heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a feeling of deadly helplessness. If he could have been certain that O'Brien was lying, it would not have seemed to matter. But it was perfectly possible that O'Brien had really forgotten the photograph. And if so, then already he would have forgotten his denial of remembering it, and forgotten the act of forgetting. How could one be sure that it was simple trickery ? Perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen : that was the thought that defeated him.
O'Brien was looking down at him speculatively. More than ever he had the air of a teacher taking pains with a wayward but promising child.
" There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past ", he said. " Repeat it, if you please. "
" Who controls the past controls the future : who controls the present controls the past ", repeated Winston obediently.
" Who controls the present controls the past ", said O'Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. " Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence ? "
Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether " yes " or " no " was the answer that would save him from pain ; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one.
O'Brien smiled faintly. " You are no metaphysician, Winston ", he said. " Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space ? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening ? "
" No."
" Then where does the past exist, if at all ? "
" In records. It is written down."
" In records. And - ?
" In the mind. In human memories. "
" In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not ? "
" But how can you stop people remembering things ? " cried Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. " It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory ? You have not controlled mine ! "
O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.
" On the contrary ", he said, " you have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes : only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane."
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