"Yet these other masters tell them what to do," I say, "and fight them to make them do it. This is not the freedom you tell of."
Marvor says: "There is a difference."
I do not see this difference, and he can not tell it to me though he tries hard. But I think maybe the new masters can tell me what it is. Marvor is going to what they call a school and I also go. This is a place where masters tell things, and we must remember them. Remembering is not hard, but we must think also, and do work. It is not enough to ask a question and find an answer. It is necessary to find our own answers.
A master asks us to count, and then to do things with the numbers we use in our counting. This is called arithmetic. We must do things with the numbers every day, and if we do not the masters are not happy with us. This arithmetic is hard: it is all new. Yet if I do it right I do not find more food or a better place or any thing I want. I do not see what is the use of this arithmetic.
But the use does not matter. The master tells me a use. He says arithmetic and all of the things in the school raise the cultural level. I do not know what a cultural level is or if it is good to be raised. The masters do not care whether I know this. They make me do what they want me to do.
And it is not simple like pushing buttons and watching a machine. It is not simple like all the things I do since I am small Cadnan. It is hard, very hard, and all the time it is more hard.
Every day there is a school. Every day there is hard work. Marvor says that freedom means doing for yourself what you want and deciding right and wrong. I say freedom is bad because the masters know right and wrong and we do not. Others say with me: there are some who know the old truths and think it is better when we, too, can understand right and wrong.
But the masters say what we have is freedom. I say it is not so. The masters tell us what to do: they tell us to do arithmetic, to do all other school things, and we do not do for ourselves what we want. We do not do anything for ourselves, but always the masters tell us.
This is the same as before the fighting. It is always the same. A master is a master.
But the old masters were the best. I remember the old masters and the old work, and I want this time to come again. I want the old work, which is easy, and not this new work, which is hard. I want the old slavery, where we know right and wrong, and not the new slavery, where only the masters know and they say they cannot tell us.