We

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

It is the form that is dictated by a profound love for humanity, mixed with pity for and hatred of those factors which are the cause of the disindividualization

Your mission is to subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets, and who are perhaps still in the primitive state of freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty will be to force them to be happy. But before we take up arms, we shall try the power of words.

To integrate the colossal, universal equation! To unbend the wild curve, to straighten it out to a tangent—to a straight line! For the OneState is a straight line, a great, divine, precise, wise line, the wisest of lines!

Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is an unfree movement. Because the deep meaning of the dance is contained in its absolute, ecstatic submission, in the ideal non-freedom. If it is true that our ancestors would abandon themselves in dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), then it means only one thing: the instinct of non-freedom has been characteristic of human nature from ancient times, and we in our life of today, we are only consciously—

Do you understand? Even the thoughts! It is because nobody is one, but one of. We are all so much alike—

not one of us has ever stepped beyond the Green Wall since the Two Hundred Years’ War.

Tables properly, the heart and pulse of the OneState!

Tables transformed each one of us, actually, into a six-wheeled steel hero of a great poem.

Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the same hour, at the same minute, we wake

up, millions of us at once. At the very same hour, millions like one, we begin our work, and millions like one, we finish it. United into a single body with a million hands, at the very same second, designated by the Tables, we carry the spoons to our mouths; at the same second we all go out to walk...

I shall be quite frank: even we have not attained the absolute, exact solution of the problem of happiness. Twice a day, from sixteen to seventeen o’clock and from twenty-one to twenty-two, our powerful united organism dissolves into separa...

I believe that sooner or later we shall somehow find a place in the general formula even for these hours. Somehow, all of the 86,400 seconds will be incorporated in the Tables of Hours.

I have had opportunity to read and hear many improbable things about those times when human beings still lived in the state of freedom, that is, in an unorganized primitive state.

The State (humanitarianism) forbade in those days the murder of one person, but it did not forbid the killing of millions slowly and by inches.

it! It didn’t enter the heads of all their Kants to build a system of scientific ethics, that is, ethics based on adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Further, is

State!) left sexual life absolutely without control? On the contrary, whenever and as much as they wanted … absolutely unscientific, like beasts! And like beasts they blindly gave birth to children! Is it not strange to understand gardening, chicken farming, fishery

and not to be able to reach the last step in this logical scale, namely, production of children—not to be able to discover such t...

Yet how could they have State logic,

since they lived in a condition of freedom like beasts, like apes, like herds?

“Love and Hunger rule the world.” Consequently, to dominate the world, man had to win a victory over hunger after paying a very high price.

Naturally, having conquered hunger (that is, algebraically speaking, having achieved the total of bodily welfare), the OneState directed its attack against the second ruler of the world, against love.

last this element also was conquered, that is, organized and put into a mathematical formula. It is already three hundred years since our great historic Lex Sexualis was promulgated: “A Number may obtain a license to use any other Number as a sexual product.”

Hence you see how the great power of logic purifies everything it happens to touch.

“It is clear,” interrupted I-330, “that to be original means to stand out among others; consequently, to be original means to violate the law of equality.

To the right and to the left as in mirrors, to the right and to the left through the glass walls I see others like myself, other rooms like my own, other clothes like my own, movements like mine, duplicated thousands of times. This invigorates me; I see myself as a part of an enormous, vigorous, united body; and what precise beauty!

“According to authentic information, traces of an organization, which still remains out of reach, have again been discovered. This organization aims at liberation from the beneficial yoke of the State.”

if human liberty is equal to zero, man does not commit any crime. That is clear. The way to rid man of criminality is to rid him of freedom.

“Oh, to the deuce with knowledge. Your much-heralded knowledge is but a form of cowardice. It is a fact! Yes, you want to encircle the infinite with a wall, and you fear to cast a glance behind the wall. Yes, sir! And if ever you should glance beyond the wall, you would be dazzled and close your eyes—yes—”

“Yes, dear mathematician, fortunately, fortunately. We are the happy arithmetical mean. As you would put it, the integration from zero to infinity, from imbeciles to Shakespeare. Do I put it right?”

But they served their nonsensical, unknown god; we serve our rational god, whom we know most thoroughly. Their god gave them nothing but eternal, torturing seeking; our god gives us absolute truth—that is, he has rid us of any kind of doubt.

Their god did not invent anything cleverer than sacrificing oneself, nobody knows what for; we bring to our god, the OneState, a quiet,

rational, carefully thought-ou...

celebration of the victory of all over one, of the sum over the individual!

The golden badge with the number already had been taken off. His hands were tied with a red ribbon. (A symbol of ancient custom. The explanation of it is that in the old days, when this sort of thing was not done in the name of the OneState, the convicted naturally considered that they had the right to resist, hence their hands were usually bound with chains.)

They dealt with the man who, his reason lost and lips like glass, stood on the steps and waited for the logical consequences of his own insane deeds.

Swift, sharp verses like an ax … They told about an unheard-of crime, about sacrilegious poems in which the Well-Doer was called … But no, I do not dare to repeat …

These flowers naturally were brought from the Botanical Museum. I, personally, am unable to see anything beautiful in flowers, or in anything else that belongs to the lower kingdom which now exists only beyond the Green Wall. Only rational and useful things are beautiful: machines, boots, formulae, food, etc.

“You know, do you not, that anyone who poisons himself with nicotine, and more particularly with alcohol, is severely treated by the OneState?”

“At night all the Numbers must sleep; sleeping at night is a duty just like working during the day. To sleep at night is necessary for the next day’s work. Not to sleep at night is criminal.”

There were two in paradise and the choice was offered to them: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. No other choice.

“limited.” The work of the highest faculty of man, judgment, is always directed toward the constant limiting of the infinite, toward the breaking up of the infinite into comfortably digestible portions, differentials.

i.e., the man capable of mistakes; ergo, the ancient god himself made a mistake.

here. No, I shall probably never again be able to fuse myself into this mechanical rhythm, nor float over this mirror-like, untroubled sea. I am to burn eternally from now on, running from place to place, seeking a

In our superficial life, every formula, every equation, corresponds to a curve or a solid. We have never seen any curve or solid corresponding to my square root of minus one. The horrifying part of the situation is that there exist such curves or solids. Unseen by us they do exist, they must, inevitably; for in mathematics, as on a screen, strange, sharp shadows appear before us. One must remember that mathematics, like death, never makes mistakes, never plays tricks.

We are brought up by the OneState; consequently we have reached the highest summits attainable by man.

(There is an ancient saying: “Shooting beans at a stone wall …”)

There are ideas of moulded clay and ideas moulded of gold, or of our precious glass. In order to know the material of which an idea is made, one needs only to let fall upon it a drop of strong acid. One of these acids was known to the ancients under the name of reductio ad absurdum.

On one side “I,”, on the other “we,” the OneState.

To assume that I may have any “right” as far as the State is concerned is like assuming that an ounce may equilibrate a ton in a scale!

The circles are at times golden, sometimes they are bloody, but all have 360 degrees. They go from o° to 10°, 20°, 200°, 360°—and then again 0°. Yes, we have returned to zero. But for a mathematically working mind it is obvious that this zero is different: it is a perfectly new zero. We started from zero to the right and came to zero on the left. Hence instead of plus zero we are at minus zero. Do you understand?