The Material of Ideas

Zero Crag

Discharge—this is the most fitting definition. Now I see that it was precisely like an electrical discharge. The pulse of my recent days had grown ever drier, ever faster, ever more tense; the poles came ever closer—a dry crackling—another millimeter: explosion, then—silence.

Everything in me is very quiet and empty now, as in a house when everyone is gone and you are lying alone, sick, and hearing with utmost clarity the sharp, metallic ticking of your thoughts.

Perhaps this “discharge” has cured me finally of my tormenting “soul,” and I’ve become again like all of us. At least, I can now visualize without any pain O on the steps of the Cube; I can see her in the Gas Bell. And if she names me there, in the Operational Section, it does not matter: in my last moment I shall piously and gratefully kiss the punishing hand of the Benefactor. Suffering punishment is my right in relation to the One State, and I will not yield this right. We, the numbers of our State, should not, must not give up this right—the only, and therefore the most precious, right that we possess.

My thoughts tick quietly, with metallic clarity. An unseen aero carries me off into the blue heights of my beloved abstractions. And there, in the purest, most rarefied air, I see my idea of “right” burst with the snap of a pneumatic tire. And I see clearly that it is merely a throwback to one of the absurd prejudices of the ancients—their notion of “rights.”

There are clay ideas, and there are ideas forever carved of gold or of our precious glass. And, in order to determine the material of which an idea is made, it is enough to pour upon it a single drop of strong acid. One of these acids was known to the ancients too: reductio ad finem. I believe this is what they called it. But they were afraid of this poison, they preferred to see even a day heaven, even a toy heaven, rather than blue nothing. But we, thanks to the Benefactor, are adults, we need no toys.

Well, then, suppose a drop of acid is applied to the idea of “rights.” Even among the ancients, the most mature among them knew that the source of right is might, that right is a function of power. And so, we have the scales: on one side, a grain, on the other a ton; on one side “I,” on the other “We,” the One State. Is it not clear, then, that to assume that the “I” can have some “rights” in relation to the State is exactly like assuming that a gram can balance the scale against the ton? Hence, the division: rights to the ton, duties to the gram. And the natural path from nonentity to greatness is to forget that you are a gram and feel yourself instead a millionth of a ton.

You, pink-cheeked, full-bodied Venusians, and you, Uranians, sooty as blacksmiths, I hear your murmur of objections in my blue silence. But you must learn to understand: everything great is simple; only the four rules of arithmetic are eternal and immutable. And only an ethic built on the four rules can be great, immutable, and eternal. This is the ultimate wisdom, the summit of the pyramid, which people, flushed with perspiration, kicking and gasping, have been climbing for centuries. And from this summit, all that is below, in the depths, where the residual something surviving in us from our savage ancestors still stirs like a heap of miserable worms, is alike. From this summit all these are alike: the unlawful mother—O; the murderer; the madman who dared to fling his verses into the face of the One State. And the judgment meted out to them is alike: untimely death. This is that divine justice the stone-house people had dreamed of in the rosy, naive light of the dawn of history. Their “God” punished blasphemy against the Holy Church as sternly as murder.

You, Uranians, as austere and dark as the ancient Spaniards who had the wisdom to burn offenders in blazing pyres, you are silent; I think you are on my side. But I hear the pink Venusians muttering something about torture, executions, a return to barbarian times. My dear friends, I pity you: you are incapable of philosophic-mathematical thought.

Human history ascends in circles, like an aero. The circles differ—some are golden, some bloody. But all are equally divided into three hundred and sixty degrees. And the movement is from zero-onward, to ten, twenty, two hundred, three hundred and sixty degrees—back to zero. Yes, we have returned to zero—yes. But to my mathematical mind it is clear that this zero is altogether different, altogether new. We started from zero to the right, we have returned to it from the left. Hence, instead of plus zero, we have minus zero. Do you understand?

I envisage this Zero as an enormous, silent, narrow, knife-sharp crag. In fierce, shaggy darkness, holding our breath, we set out from the black night side of Zero Crag. For ages we, the Colum-buses, have sailed and sailed; we have circled the entire earth. And, at long last, hurrah! The burst of a salute, and everyone aloft the masts: before us is a different, hitherto unknown side of Zero Crag, illumined by the northern lights of the One State— a pale blue mass, sparks, rainbows, suns, hundreds of suns, billions of rainbows…

What if we are but a knife’s breadth away from the other, the black side of the crag? The knife is the strongest, the most immortal, the most brilliant of man’s creations. The knife has been a guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; along the knife’s edge is the road of paradoxes—the only road worthy of a fearless mind.

Twenty-first Entry

TOPICS:

An Author’s Duty

The Ice Swells