The alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons, one of
which is subsidiary and, so to speak, precautionary. The subsidiary
reason is that the Party member, like the proletarian, tolerates
present-day conditions partly because he has no standards of
comparison. He must be cut off from the past, just as he must be
cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to
believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average
level of material comfort is constantly rising. But by far the more
important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to
safeguard the infallibility of the Party. It is not merely that
speeches, statistics, and records of every kind must be constantly
brought up to date in order to show that the predictions of the
Party were in all cases right. It is also that no change in doctrine or
in political alignment can ever be admitted. For to change one’s
mind, or even one’s policy, is a confession of weakness. If, for
example, Eurasia or Eastasia (whichever it may be) is the enemy
today, then that country must always have been the enemy. And if
the facts say otherwise then the facts must be altered. Thus history
is continuously rewritten. This day-to-day falsification of the past,
carried out by the Ministry of Truth, is as necessary to the stability
of the regime as the work of repression and espionage carried out
by the Ministry of Love.
The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past
events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in
written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the
records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full control of the minds of its
members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to
make it. It also follows that though the past is alterable, it never
has been altered in any specific instance. For when it has been
recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then this
new version IS the past, and no different past can ever have
existed. This holds good even when, as often happens, the same
event has to be altered out of recognition several times in the
course of a year. At all times the Party is in possession of absolute
truth, and clearly the absolute can never have been different from
what it is now. It will be seen that the control of the past depends
above all on the training of memory. To make sure that all written
records agree with the orthodoxy of the moment is merely a
mechanical act. But it is also necessary to REMEMBER that events
happened in the desired manner. And if it is necessary to rearrange
one’s memories or to tamper with written records, then it is
necessary to FORGET that one has done so. The trick of doing this
can be learned like any other mental technique. It is learned by the
majority of Party members, and certainly by all who are intelligent
as well as orthodox. In Oldspeak it is called, quite frankly, ‘reality
control’. In Newspeak it is called DOUBLETHINK, though
DOUBLETHINK comprises much else as well.
DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two
contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting
both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his
memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing
tricks with reality; but by the exercise of DOUBLETHINK he also
satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be
conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision,
but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. DOUBLETHINK lies at the very heart
of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious
deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with
complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing
in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then,
when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for
just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality
and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies —
all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word
DOUBLETHINK it is necessary to exercise DOUBLETHINK. For by
using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a
fresh act of DOUBLETHINK one erases this knowledge; and so on
indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.
Ultimately it is by means of DOUBLETHINK that the Party has
been able — and may, for all we know, continue to be able for
thousands of years — to arrest the course of history.
All past oligarchies have fallen from power either because they
ossified or because they grew soft. Either they became stupid and
arrogant, failed to adjust themselves to changing circumstances,
and were overthrown; or they became liberal and cowardly, made
concessions when they should have used force, and once again
were overthrown. They fell, that is to say, either through
consciousness or through unconsciousness. It is the achievement
of the Party to have produced a system of thought in which both
conditions can exist simultaneously. And upon no other
intellectual basis could the dominion of the Party be made
permanent. If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be
able to dislocate the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership is
to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with the Power to
learn from past mistakes. It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of
DOUBLETHINK are those who invented DOUBLETHINK and
know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our society,
those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also
those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general,
the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more
intelligent, the less sane. One clear illustration of this is the fact
that war hysteria increases in intensity as one rises in the social
scale. Those whose attitude towards the war is most nearly rational
are the subject peoples of the disputed territories. To these people
the war is simply a continuous calamity which sweeps to and fro
over their bodies like a tidal wave. Which side is winning is a
matter of complete indifference to them. They are aware that a
change of overlordship means simply that they will be doing the
same work as before for new masters who treat them in the same
manner as the old ones. The slightly more favoured workers whom
we call ‘the proles’ are only intermittently conscious of the war.
When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and
hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting
for long periods that the war is happening. It is in the ranks of the
Party, and above all of the Inner Party, that the true war
enthusiasm is found. World-conquest is believed in most firmly by
those who know it to be impossible. This peculiar linking-together
of opposites — knowledge with ignorance, cynicism with fanaticism
— is one of the chief distinguishing marks of Oceanic society. The
official ideology abounds with contradictions even when there is no
practical reason for them. Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every
principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it
chooses to do this in the name of Socialism. It preaches a contempt
for the working class unexampled for centuries past, and it dresses
its members in a uniform which was at one time peculiar to manual workers and was adopted for that reason. It systematically
undermines the solidarity of the family, and it calls its leader by a
name which is a direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty.
Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed
exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts.
The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of
Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry
of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental,
nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate
exercises in DOUBLETHINK. For it is only by reconciling
contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely. In no other
way could the ancient cycle be broken. If human equality is to be
for ever averted — if the High, as we have called them, are to keep
their places permanently — then the prevailing mental condition
must be controlled insanity.
But there is one question which until this moment we have
almost ignored. It is; WHY should human equality be averted?
Supposing that the mechanics of the process have been rightly
described, what is the motive for this huge, accurately planned
effort to freeze history at a particular moment of time?
Here we reach the central secret. As we have seen. the
mystique of the Party, and above all of the Inner Party, depends
upon DOUBLETHINK But deeper than this lies the original motive,
the never-questioned instinct that first led to the seizure of power
and brought DOUBLETHINK, the Thought Police, continuous
warfare, and all the other necessary paraphernalia into existence
afterwards. This motive really consists . . .
Winston became aware of silence, as one becomes aware of a
new sound. It seemed to him that Julia had been very still for some
time past. She was lying on her side, naked from the waist upwards, with her cheek pillowed on her hand and one dark lock
tumbling across her eyes. Her breast rose and fell slowly and
regularly.
‘Julia.’
No answer.
‘Julia, are you awake?’
No answer. She was asleep. He shut the book, put it carefully
on the floor, lay down, and pulled the coverlet over both of them.
He had still, he reflected, not learned the ultimate secret. He
understood HOW; he did not understand WHY. Chapter I, like
Chapter III, had not actually told him anything that he did not
know, it had merely systematized the knowledge that he possessed
already. But after reading it he knew better than before that he was
not mad. Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make
you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung
to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad. A
yellow beam from the sinking sun slanted in through the window
and fell across the pillow. He shut his eyes. The sun on his face and
the girl’s smooth body touching his own gave him a strong, sleepy,
confident feeling. He was safe, everything was all right. He fell
asleep murmuring ‘Sanity is not statistical,’ with the feeling that
this remark contained in it a profound wisdom.