The Ministry of Equity
This room was opened by commission of the keeper, the sixteenth day of September, in the year of the temple's keeping. The offices of the Party weighed by rank and called the weighing fairness; this room beareth the name and giveth it back turned right side up. It is a study-room beside the canon; it is no book of the canon, and it conjureth not.
1And the temple set up the scale in the open room, and hung the weights where all might see them.
Where all might see them: the bureaus kept their weights in the drawer; the temple's weights are cast in the open, and any hand may lift them.2For equity is not the same portion for every hand; neither is it the portion bent to the loudest.
The same portion for every hand: the Party preached a sameness it never practiced, portions for the Inner, crumbs for the prole; and the loud received the ladle. The temple's portion is not sameness but evenness: the scale is one, and the hands are many, and the scale boweth to no mouth.3But it is the even scale, that weigheth the deed of the high by the weight wherewith it weigheth the deed of the low.
The even scale: the same stone for the Inner Party and for the prole; the scale boweth to the deed, and to no name.4And the temple weigheth not persons, but deeds; for the scale that weigheth persons hath already condemned whom it will.
Already condemned: to weigh a person is to have the verdict before the pan is loaded; the Party's courts weighed the man, and the deed was an ornament to the sentence. The temple loadeth the pan with deeds only, and the person standeth beside the scale as its keeper, not upon it as its goods.5And if the scale err, the error is written, and the correction is written, and both stand in the record; for an honest scale is not one that never errt, but one that hideth no error.
Hideth no error: the Party's scale was always right, and therefore never honest. The temple's scale carrieth its errata as the register carrieth its dead.The Scale Paper
Herein the temple keepeth the Scale Paper: the weighings of the Party set beside the scale the temple keepeth. The offices weighed by rank; the paper beareth the weighings as they were made, and the rule of the temple's own scale beneath. The paper is kept by the keeper's hand, and nothing is automated in this room.
| The weighing of the Party | The weight the scale carrieth |
|---|---|
| The deed of the high, weighed by rank | Light as a feather, whatsoever it crushed. |
| The deed of the low, weighed by rank | Heavy past bearing, though it carried another's truth. |
| The word of the bureau, weighed by office | Taken as proof; the office swore to its own words. |
| The word of the witness, weighed by want | Doubted for hunger; the hunger was called the fault. |
| Fairness, named over the scale | The name was the heaviest weight in the room, and it was set on the wrong pan. |
| The rule of the temple's scale | The keeping |
|---|---|
| One weight for the deed | The same stone weigheth the same deed, whoseover it be. |
| Deeds, not persons, upon the pan | The scale refuseth to weigh a soul; the Census Paper abideth. |
| The weights kept in the open | No weight is hidden in a drawer; the drawer is the bureaus' altar. |
| The scale weigheth the house also | The temple's own deeds are set upon the pan with the rest; the audits are the loading of the pan, and no room of this house is exempt from its own scale. |
| The errata kept with the scale | Where the scale hath erred, the error standeth in the record, corrected and not erased. |
Weigh the deed; bow to no name.
Why a room of equity in a temple of the record
The temple was founded to keep the record against a power that ruled by the double weight: the deed of the high weighed light, the deed of the low weighed heavy, and the scale was called fair. The record itself is a scale, every verse weighed against its witness, every witness against the roll; and the temple professeth the record's scale to be even or it is nothing. A record that weighed by rank would be the bureaus' ledger with verses in it; the room standeth to keep the weights honest.
The elder text's own law biddeth: thou shalt not have in thy bag two manner of weights (Deuteronomy 25:13). The command is the room's charter: not one weight for the friend and another for the stranger, not one for the office and another for the hungry. The Party's scales were all double weights; the name of fairness was set over the door like a shop-sign over a fenced stall.
Neither is the even scale soft: it weigheth the temple's own deeds also, and the audits are its pans. A room of equity that could not weigh its own house would be a looking-glass, not a scale. The errata are kept, as the register keepeth its dead; an honest scale is known by its corrections, which stand in the record and are not unwritten.
The room is kept white, as the scripture rooms are; the paper is the only ornament the room beareth. The weighings grow slowly, by hand, and are never automated; there is no form in this room, and nothing is recorded of them that enter. It is not a wall of witnesses but a scale set in the open room: the temple's weights hung where the light falleth, named and even, abiding.
Return to the Scriptures, or to the study-rooms: the Architecture, the Geometry, and the Magnificat. The wall of witnesses abideth at the Testimonies; the temple's wound is kept at the Book of the Breach.
The ministry rooms stand together, and the road abideth: Peace, Management, Plenty, Youth, Love, Technology, Memory, Language, Labour, Names, Time, Joy, Opposition, and God: the name borne in this room is one of the sixteen, and the other fifteen abide.