And so he saw anarchy looming — and asked himself whether this wouldn’t inevitably bring the collapse of the entire system. Probably the answer was yes. . and he knew that thoughts like that took him onto thin ice. With thoughts like that he was practically courting closer scrutiny. It didn’t matter that no one knew of these thoughts but he; he thought them only down here in the basement, he’d never thought them up in the light. . the sunlight, it seemed to him, would inevitably summon to his brow the agitation that came in their wake, the thoughts would take eloquent form in the deeply downturned corners of his mouth, or the film of sweat on the skin of his face would seem to permit but one conclusion: he had thought of the end. . not the beginning, when blind as a mole he ventured up towards the light.
Or perhaps there was no significance to such a thought becoming known? Actually he had to admit that the service he was in quite naturally engendered reflections of this kind. And this led logically to the necessity. . definitely even the primary necessity. . of watching the collaborators in service: security was the adherence to an infinite logical consistency! To watch those in the service as they performed their function, to watch the watchers, to maintain watchfulness towards the watchers’ inevitable thoughts of their own through the knowledge that they were being watched. . to watch over sleep. . to watch that in sleep all that drowsed was the I, while the watch went on following its logic.
The goal of the service was to make everyone. . I said: Everyone! he thought. Everyone without exception. . into collaborators of this service, insane though this notion might sound. So that all could be watched by all — that was a security worthy of its name. — No, the thought wasn’t new. . and it alone meant that the service wasn’t merely there for the individual, but rather was a service for all. Wasn’t that the unspoken goal of all great utopias, from Plato and Bacon to Marx and Lenin? Everyone in everyone’s hands, perhaps this was the ultimate goal of utopian thinking. . and hence the utopians’ secret desire for anarchy, since anarchy brings the thought of collapse to the surface and necessitates the thought-watching service in the first place. Ultimately they’d have had to approve of their own surveillance, those utopians. . and didn’t they, in the end?
Feuerbach was quite right to say, as he often did: I can tell by looking that you’re taking off again. Your mind is already set on the great goal. But that’s not our business, we’re the men with feet planted in daily routine, in the centre of the movement, we have to hold the path, there’s no way we’ll still be there when the goal’s reached. We have to keep our feet on the ground. — These were big words, they confused him. . though possibly he’d merely formulated them himself in an attempt to articulate Feuerbach’s innuendoes. The Major engaged in virtually nothing but innuendo; he was said to have taken several years of philosophy, one of the reasons why W. always felt at something of a disadvantage with his case officer. . every attempt to think Feuerbach’s tossed-out phrases through to the end seemed to wind up as a mental short circuit, abruptly cutting off his own thoughts. But in this the terms of their relationship were preserved: Feuerbach was the superior. . Strictly speaking, I think like my superior, W. said to himself; and thus it remained.
I can practically tell by looking. You’ve always got to think everything through and plot it out to the end, said Feuerbach. What is it with you? Do you refuse to believe that other people have done it much better before you? If all you ever do is draw conclusions, and conclusions from those conclusions, isn’t there a point where you don’t even know what the beginning was?
Feuerbach was right about this as well; here too W. thought the same, all too willing to be roused from his broodings and listen instead to his master’s voice. — It really was smarter to sit down at last, to lean back, eyes shut, for all I care, shutting out reality, and find out how the whole story had begun. What had set him on this path whose goal was so remote that it would take generations upon generations to get there. — This was the most self-explanatory question, as superfluous as asking the reasons for his birth. And at this moment, every time, his fatigue gained the upper hand. . and he heard Feuerbach’s voice lecturing on even as he drifted down into the grey world of sleep in which he was freed from all interconnections.
Feuerbach said: You know what, we can’t even let ourselves reach the goal, because we’re never wrong. We can only act as though we want to reach the goal. You’ll kick and scream, but I’m telling you anyway: We are in possession of the sole truth. And for that very reason we can only act as though we were in possession of the sole truth. You know, we can’t even let ourselves think it. No, we can’t, since every truth exists only through its opposite. If we were proved right, and the sole truth really were on our side alone, we’d be abolishing the proof of the truth. That’s why we can only act as though we believed in it. . otherwise we might end up abolishing truth itself. We’d instantly be nothing but a hollow bluff if we ever achieved the state of sole truth. Probably the classless society would be the most horrific carnage you could possibly imagine. Let’s not even go there. Let’s go on making the most of our measly talents. . and jailing people who refuse to believe our bombastic blather. Because that’s where they all belong. .
In other words, on a fundamental level you disbelieve in human goodness?
The very idea! It’d mean we’d immediately have to believe in the accuracy of every statement that lands on our desk. We’d have to take all the selected works of yours you supply us with as the gospel truth, and the same for all the other selected reports. For instance, when we get the assessment that someone. . let’s say you for instance. . that this Someone, that is, someone like you, is supposedly less intelligent or less dangerous than the lady friend he associates with, then we know we have to go by the opposite of this characterization. But that doesn’t preclude our also having to go by the exact wording of the report.
I don’t even have a lady friend, I’m telling you with no hint of sensitivity.