1985 by Anthony Burgess Page B

based on a metaphysic, not a mere ethic. To make a political system emerge logically out of a concept of reality is, of course, as old as Plato. The tricky thing about the Ingsoc view of reality is that it is appropriate to a single mind rather than a collective one. Before the metaphysic can assume validity, a collective must learn the technique of thinking in the manner of a single mind.
    Solipsism – which derives from Latin
stilus
and
ipse
(lone self, self alone) – is a theory that posits reality as existing only in the self, or, more reasonably, states that only the self can be definitely known and verified. This means that nothing in the external world can be assumed to have independent existence. It goes further than mere idealism, which says that mind is real and matter no more than ideas, but does not necessarily reject the existence of many minds and, ultimately, the unifying mind of God. Solipsism teaches that minds other than that of the
solus ipse
cannot be proved to have existence. It does not, however, go so far as to permit temporal or spatial discontinuity within the individual mind, to deny logic, to admit contradiction or inconsistency. If the single mind is real, its memories cannot be illusions. The past is not malleable: it has trueexistence in the mind and cannot be altered by the present. Mathematical propositions have unchangeable validity, and 2 and 2 always make 4. The collective solipsism of Ingsoc will have none of this. 2 and 2 may sometimes be 4, but they are just as likely to add up to 3 or 5. This sounds like madness. But the Party teaches that madness is an attribute of the individual mind that will not merge itself into the collective one and accept its view of reality. Winston Smith holds fast to simple arithmetic as truth unassailable even by the Party, but part of his rehabilitation consists in learning how to be convinced – not merely to go through the motions of accepting – that 2 and 2 add up to whatever the Party says. Shakespeare, who foresaw most things, foresaw this:
    Â 
PETRUCHIO :
I say it is the moon.
KATHERINA :
I know it is the moon.
PETRUCHIO :
Nay then you lie; it is the blessed sun.
KATHERINA :
Then God be blest, it is the blessed sun,
 
But sun it is not, when you say it is not;
 
And the moon changes even as your mind.
 
What you will have it nam’d, even that it is,
 
And so it shall be so for Katherine.
    Â 
    The self-willed Winston Smith has to be tamed, and O’Brien is his Petruchio.
    The Party’s solipsism is far saner – or certainly far more consistent – than anything the term was traditionally held to encompass. The
solus ipse
could be said to enclose space, but time lay outside it and was one of the conditions of its existence. But logically the single mind, if it is the only reality, must contain everything, and that includes time. It also includes logic. The senses are the mere instruments that serve the self, and they are subject to error. That sensory illusions exist none will deny: how can we distinguish between illusion and reality? It is unwise to rely at all on the evidence of the senses. The self only, that non-material verifiable entity, can state what is and is not real. To confer on the self the one attribute it requires to be ultimately real – fixed, unchanging, immortal, like God – it is necessary only to make that self a collective one.
    There is something in this notion of an undying, omnipotent, omniscient, all-controlling human entity which lifts the heart ratherthan depresses it. The history of man is the tale of an arduous struggle to control his environment, and failure always comes from the limitations of the individual, whose brain grows tired, whose body decays. Exalt the collective and diminish the individual, and history will be a procession of human triumphs. Which is precisely what the history of Ingsoc is.
    If the collective is to function in the manner of a single mind,