Anthem/Chapter 12

It was when I read the first of the books
I found in my house that I saw the word
"I." And when I understood this word,
the book fell from my hands, and I wept,
I who had never known tears. I wept in
deliverance and in pity for all mankind.
I understood the blessed thing which I
had called my curse. I understood why the
best in me had been my sins and my transgressions;
and why I had never felt guilt in my sins.
I understood that centuries of chains
and lashes will not kill the spirit of
man nor the sense of truth within him.
I read many books for many days. Then I called
the Golden One, and I told her
what I had read and what I had learned.
She looked at me and the first words she
spoke were:
"I love you."
Then I said:
"My dearest one, it is not proper for
men to be without names. There was a
time when each man had a name of his
own to distinguish him from all other men.
So let us choose our names. I have read of
a man who lived many thousands of years
ago, and of all the names in these books,
his is the one I wish to bear. He took the
light of the gods and he brought it to men,
and he taught men to be gods. And he suffered
for his deed as all bearers of light
must suffer. His name was Prometheus."
"It shall be your name," said the Golden One.
"And I have read of a goddess," I said,
"who was the mother of the earth and of
all the gods. Her name was Gaea. Let this
be your name, my Golden One, for you
are to be the mother of a new kind of gods."
"It shall be my name," said the Golden One.
Now I look ahead. My future is clear
before me. The Saint of the pyre had seen
the future when he chose me as his heir,
as the heir of all the saints and all the
martyrs who came before him and who
died for the same cause, for the same word,
no matter what name they gave to their
cause and their truth.
I shall live here, in my own house.
I shall take my food from the earth
by the toil of my own hands. I shall
learn many secrets from my books.
Through the years ahead, I shall rebuild
the achievements of the past,
and open the way to carry them further,
the achievements which are open to me,
but closed forever to my brothers,
for their minds are shackled to the
weakest and dullest ones among them.
I have learned that my power of the sky
was known to men long ago; they called
it Electricity. It was the power that
moved their greatest inventions. It lit
this house with light which came from
those globes of glass on the walls.
I have found the engine which produced this light.
I shall learn how to repair it and how to
make it work again. I shall learn how to
use the wires which carry this power.
Then I shall build a barrier of wires around
my home, and across the paths which lead
to my home; a barrier light as a cobweb, more
impassable than a wall of granite; a barrier
my brothers will never be able to cross.
For they have nothing to fight me with,
save the brute force of their numbers.
I have my mind.
Then here, on this mountaintop, with
the world below me and nothing above me
but the sun, I shall live my own truth.
Gaea is pregnant with my child. Our son
will be raised as a man. He will be taught
to say "I" and to bear the pride of it. He
will be taught to walk straight and on his
own feet. He will be taught reverence for
his own spirit.
When I shall have read all the books
and learned my new way, when my home
will be ready and my earth tilled,
I shall steal one day, for the last time,
into the cursed City of my birth. I shall call to me
my friend who has no name save International 4-8818,
and all those like him, Fraternity 2-5503,
who cries without reason, and Solidarity 9-6347
who calls for help in the night, and a few others.
I shall call to me all the men and the women
whose spirit has not been killed within them
and who suffer under the yoke of their brothers.
They will follow me and I shall lead them to my fortress.
And here, in this uncharted wilderness, I and they,
my chosen friends, my fellow-builders, shall write
the first chapter in the new history of man.
These are the things before me.
And as I stand here at the door of glory,
I look behind me for the last time.
I look upon the history of men, which
I have learned from the books, and I wonder.
It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it
was the spirit of man's freedom.
But what is freedom? Freedom from what?
There is nothing to take a man's freedom away
from him, save other men. To be free,
a man must be free of his brothers.
That is freedom. That and nothing else.
At first, man was enslaved by the gods.
But he broke their chains. Then he was
enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains.
He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin,
by his race. But he broke their chains.
He declared to all his brothers that
a man has rights which neither god nor
king nor other men can take away from him,
no matter what their number, for his is
the right of man, and there is no right
on earth above this right. And he stood on
the threshold of the freedom for which the
blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled.
But then he gave up all he had won,
and fell lower than his savage beginning.
What brought it to pass? What disaster took
their reason away from men? What whip
lashed them to their knees in shame and
submission? The worship of the word
"We."
When men accepted that worship,
the structure of centuries collaped
about them, the structure whose every beam
had come from the thought of some one man,
each in his day down the ages, from the depth
of some one spirit, such spirit as existed
but for its own sake. Those men who survived
those eager to obey, eager to live for one
another, since they had nothing else to
vindicate them--those men could neither carry
on, nor preserve what they had received.
Thus did all thought, all science,
all wisdom perish on earth. Thus did men--
men with nothing to offer save their great number--
lost the steel towers, the flying ships,
the power wires, all the things they had
not created and could never keep. Perhaps,
later, some men had been born with the
mind and the courage to recover these
things which were lost; perhaps these men
came before the Councils of Scholars.
They were answered as I have been answered--
and for the same reasons.
But I still wonder how it was possible,
in those graceless years of transition,
long ago, that men did not see whither they
were going, and went on, in blindness and
cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it
is hard for me to conceive how men who
knew the word "I" could give it up and
not know what they lost. But such has been
the story, for I have lived in the City of
the damned, and I know what horror men
permitted to be brought upon them.
Perhaps, in those days, there were a few
among men, a few of clear sight and clean
soul, who refused to surrender that word.
What agony must have been theirs before
that which they saw coming and could not
stop! Perhaps they cried out in protest and
in warning. But men paid no heed to their
warning. And they, these few, fought a
hopeless battle, and they perished with
their banners smeared by their own blood.
And they chose to perish, for they knew.
To them, I send my salute across the centuries,
and my pity.
Theirs is the banner in my hand. And I wish
I had the power to tell them that the despair
of their hearts was not to be final,
and their night was not without hope.
For the battle they lost can never be lost.
For that which they died to save can never perish.
Through all the darkness, through
all the shame of which men are capable,
the spirit of man will remain alive on this
earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken.
It may wear chains, but it will break through.
And man will go on. Man, not men.
Here on this mountain, I and my sons
and my chosen friends shall build our new
land and our fort. And it will become as
the heart of the earth, lost and hidden at
first, but beating, beating louder each day.
And word of it will reach every corner
of the earth. And the roads of the world
will become as veins which will carry the
best of the world's blood to my threshold.
And all my brothers, and the Councils of
my brothers, will hear of it, but they will
be impotent against me. And the day will
come when I shall break all the chains of
the earth, and raze the cities of the enslaved,
and my home will become the capital of a
world where each man will be free to exist
for his own sake.
For the coming of that day shall I fight,
I and my sons and my chosen friends.
For the freedom of Man. For his rights.
For his life. For his honor.
And here, over the portals of my fort,
I shall cut in the stone the word which is
to be my beacon and my banner. The word
which will not die, should we all perish in
battle. The word which can never die on
this earth, for it is the heart of it and the
meaning and the glory.
The sacred word:
EGO
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