The following four passages were all in print at the time Orwell wrote
_Nineteen Eighty-Four_. My guess is that he had read II, but not the
others.
I
....The hopes of international peace, like the achievement of internal
peace, depend upon the creation of an effective force of public
opinion formed upon an estimate of the rights and wrongs of disputes.
Thus it would be misleading to say that the dispute is decided by
force, without adding that force is dependent upon justice. But the
possibility of such a public opinion depends upon the possibility of a
standard of justice which is a cause, not an effect, of the wishes of
the community; and such a standard of justice seems incompatible with
the pragmatist philosophy. This philosophy, therefore, although it
begins with liberty and toleration, develops, by inherent necessity,
into the appeal to force and the arbitrament of the big battalions.
By this development it becomes equally adapted to democracy at home
and to imperialism abroad.... -- "Pragmatism" (1909)
II
The conception of science as a pursuit of truth has so entirely
disappeared from Hitler's mind that he does not even argue against it.
As we know, the theory of relativity has come to be thought bad
because it was invented by a Jew. The Inquisition rejected Galileo's
doctrine because it considered it untrue; but Hitler accepts or
rejects doctrines on political grounds, without bringing in the notion
of truth or falsehood. Poor William James, who invented this point of
view, would be horrified at the use which is made of it; but when once
the conception of objective truth is abandoned, it is clear that the
question 'what shall I believe?' is one to be settled, as I wrote in
1907, by 'the appeal to force and the arbitrament of the big
battalions', not by the methods of either theology or science....
-- "The Ancestry of Fascism" (1933)
III
I am persuaded that there is absolutely no limit to the absurdities
that can, by government action, come to be generally believed. Give
me an adequate army, with power to provide it with more pay and better
food than falls to the lot of the average man, and I will undertake,
within 30 years, to make the majority of the population believe that
two and two are three, that water freezes when it gets hot and boils
when it gets cold, or any other nonsense that might seem to serve the
interest of the state. Of course, even when these beliefs had been
generated, people would not put the kettle in the refrigerator when
they wanted it to boil. That cold makes water boil would be a Sunday
truth, sacred and mystical, to be professed in awed tones, but not to
be acted on in daily life. What would happen would be that any
verbal denial of the mystic doctrine would be made illegal, and
obstinate heretics would be "frozen" at the stake. No persons who did
not enthusiastically accept the official doctrine would be allowed to
teach or to have any position of power. Only the very highest
officials, in their cups, would whisper to each other what rubbish it
all is; then they would laugh and drink again....
-- "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" (1943)
IV
The main difference between Dr. Dewey and me is that he judges a
belief by its effects, whereas I judge it by its causes where a past
occurrence is concerned. I consider such a belief "true," or as
nearly "true" as we can make it, if it has a certain kind of relation
(sometimes very complicated) to its causes. Dr. Dewey holds that it
has "warranted assertability" -- which he substitutes for "truth" --
if it has certain kinds of effects. This divergence is connected with
a difference of outlook on the world. The past cannot be affected by
what we do, and therefore, if truth is determined by what has
happened, it is independent of present or future volitions; it
represents, in logical form, the limitations on human power. But if
truth, or rather "warranted assertability," depends upon the future,
then, in so far as it is in our power to alter the future, it is in
our power to alter what should be asserted. This enlarges the sense
of human power and freedom. Did Caesar cross the Rubicon? I should
regard an affimative answer as unalterably necessitated by a past
event. Dr. Dewey would decide whether to say yes or no by an
appraisal of future events, and there is no reason why these future
events could not be arranged by human power so as to make a negative
answer the more satisfactory. If I find the belief that Caesar
crossed the Rubicon very distasteful, I need not sit down in dull
despair; I can, if I have sufficient skill and power, arrange a social
environment in which the statement that he did not cross the Rubicon
will have "warranted assertability."
-- _A History of Western Philosophy_ (1945)
*
I is a poor match, as the last sentence quoted shows. II is also a
poor match, because of a peculiarity of National Socialism: It
combatted truth, not with a fancy definition, but with open cynicism.
"The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie
than a small one" is not a hostile description or an esoteric maxim;
it is in _Mein Kampf_. Peter Drucker wrote in 1939:
Beginning with Hitler's frank admission in his book that lying is
necessary, Nazi leaders have prided themselves publicly on their
disregard for truth and on the impossibility of their promises --
foremost among them Dr. Goebbels. Not once but several times I
have heard him say in mass meetings when the people cheered a
particularly choice lie: "Of course, you understand all this is
just propaganda"; and the masses only cheered louder.
(I think I can imagine the mood that might lead to such depravity: Is
it a lie? Then so much the greater is the power of our bullying in
nevertheless making people cheer it.) O'Brien, in contrast, is very
much concerned with truth: "All the confessions that are uttered here
are true. We make them true." IV is a light-hearted satire on that.
III describes doublethink, but "in their cups" belongs to _Animal
Farm_ rather than _Nineteen Eighty-Four_.
--
--- Joe Fineman joe_f DeleteThis @verizon.net
||: You have to know how to accept rejection and reject 
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