Anthem Page #16

Anthem is a dystopian fiction novella by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand, written in 1937 and first published in 1938 in the United Kingdom. The story takes place at an unspecified future date when mankind has entered another Dark Age.

• Science fiction

								

      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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