[Tarkus]

draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and
then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process
to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to
induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the
act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word
'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.
The instructress had called them to attention again. 'And now let's
see which of us can touch our toes!' she said enthusiastically. 'Right over
from the hips, please, comrades. One-two! One-two!...'
Winston loathed this exercise, which sent shooting pains all the way
from his heels to his buttocks and often ended by bringing on another
coughing fit. The half-pleasant quality went out of his meditations. The
past, he reflected, had not merely been altered, it had been actually
destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when
there existed no record outside your own memory? He tried to remember in
what year he ha