Anthem Page #2

								

      rang again. Before we removed our garments, we stood in the great
      sleeping hall, and we raised our right arms, and we said all
      together with the three Teachers at the head:

      “We are nothing. Mankind is all. By the grace of our brothers are
      we allowed our lives. We exist through, by and for our brothers
      who are the State. Amen.”

      Then we slept. The sleeping halls were white and clean and bare
      of all things save one hundred beds.

      We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those years in the Home of
      the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us.
      It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be
      born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be
      different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to
      them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked
      upon us.

      So we fought against this curse. We tried to forget our lessons,
      but we always remembered. We tried not to understand what the
      Teachers taught, but we always understood it before the Teachers
      had spoken. We looked upon Union 5-3992, who were a pale boy with
      only half a brain, and we tried to say and do as they did, that
      we might be like them, like Union 5-3992, but somehow the
      Teachers knew that we were not. And we were lashed more often
      than all the other children.

      The Teachers were just, for they had been appointed by the
      Councils, and the Councils are the voice of all justice, for they
      are the voice of all men. And if sometimes, in the secret
      darkness of our heart, we regret that which befell us on our
      fifteenth birthday, we know that it was through our own guilt. We
      had broken a law, for we had not paid heed to the words of our
      Teachers. The Teachers had said to us all:

      “Dare not choose in your minds the work you would like to do when
      you leave the Home of the Students. You shall do that which the
      Council of Vocations shall prescribe for you. For the Council of
      Vocations knows in its great wisdom where you are needed by your
      brother men, better than you can know it in your unworthy little
      minds. And if you are not needed by your brother man, there is no
      reason for you to burden the earth with your bodies.”

      We knew this well, in the years of our childhood, but our curse
      broke our will. We were guilty and we confess it here: we were
      guilty of the great Transgression of Preference. We preferred
      some work and some lessons to the others. We did not listen well
      to the history of all the Councils elected since the Great
      Rebirth. But we loved the Science of Things. We wished to know.
      We wished to know about all the things which make the earth
      around us. We asked so many questions that the Teachers forbade
      it.

      We think that there are mysteries in the sky and under the water
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