Derived apparently from the ancient “uniform.”

This word has survived only as a poetic metaphor; the chemical composition of this substance is unknown to us.

Naturally, his subject was not “Religious Law,” or “God’s Law,” as the ancients called it, but the law of the One State.

From the Botanical Museum, of course. Personally, I see nothing beautiful in flowers, or in anything belonging to the primitive world long exiled beyond the Green Wall. Only the rational and useful is beautiful: machines, boots, formulas, food, and so on.

I must confess that I discovered the true reason for this smile only after many days filled to the brim with the strangest and most unexpected events.

This essay, as well as the others quoted here, may be found in A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Chicago University Press, 1970).

See The Dragon: 15 Stories by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Chicago University Press, 1976).