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somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a ‘real’ world
where ‘real’ things happened. But how could there be such a
world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through
our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever
happens in all minds, truly happens.
He had no difficulty in disposing of the fallacy, and he
was in no danger of succumbing to it. He realized, never-
theless, that it ought never to have occurred to him. The
mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous
thought presented itself. The process should be automatic,
instinctive. CRIMESTOP, they called it in Newspeak.
He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He pre-
sented himself with propositions—’the Party says the earth
is flat’, ‘the party says that ice is heavier than water’—and
trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the ar-
guments that contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed
great powers of reasoning and improvisation. The arith-
metical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement
as ‘two and two make five’ were beyond his intellectual
grasp. It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability
at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and
at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors.
Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult
to attain.
All the while, with one part of his mind, he wondered
how soon they would shoot him. ‘Everything depends on
yourself,’ O’Brien had said; but he knew that there was no
conscious act by which he could bring it nearer. It might
be ten minutes hence, or ten years. They might keep him