power either because they
ossified or because they grew soft. Either they became stupid and arrogant,
failed to adjust themselves to changing circumstances, and were overthrown;
or they became liberal and cowardly, made concessions when they should have
used force, and once again were overthrown. They fell, that is to say,
either through consciousness or through unconsciousness. It is the
achievement of the Party to have produced a system of thought in which both
conditions can exist simultaneously. And upon no other intellectual basis
could the dominion of the Party be made permanent. If one is to rule, and
to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For
the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility
with the Power to learn from past mistakes.
It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink
are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of
mental cheating. In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what
is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it
is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion;
the more intelligent, the less sane. One clear illustration of this is the
fact that war hysteria increases in intensity as one rises in the social
scale. Those whose attitude towards the war is most nearly rational are the
subject peoples of the disputed territories. To these people the war is
simply a continuous calamity which sweeps to and fro over their bodies like
a tidal wave. Which side is winning is a matter of complete indifference to
them. They are aware that a change of overlordship means simply that they
will be doing the same work as before for new masters who treat them in the
same man