on. these examples made it possible for a librarian of genius to discover the fu
ndamental law of the library. this thinker observed that all the books, no matte
r how diverse they might be, are made up of the same elements, the space, the pe
riod, the comma, the twenty two letters of the alphabet. he also alleged a fact 
which travelers have confirmed, in the vast library there are no two identical b
ooks. from these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the library is to
tal and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty od
d orthographical symbols, a number which, though extremely vast, is not infinite
, everything, the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels autobi
ographies, the faithful catalogues of the library, thousands and thousands of fa
lse catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demons
tration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the gnostic gospel of basilides, t
he commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, t
he true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the
 interpolations of every book in all books. when it was proclaimed that the libr
ary contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. 
all men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. ther
e was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some
 hexagon. the universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimite
d dimensions of hope. at that time a great deal was said about the vindications,
 books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every m
an in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. thousands of t
he greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways, urg
ed on by the vain intention of finding their vindication. these pilgrims dispute
d in the narrow corridors, proferred dark curses, strangled each other on the di
vine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death c
ast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote regions. others went 
mad... the vindications exist, i have seen two which refer to persons of the fut
ure, to persons who are perhaps not imaginary, but the searchers did not remembe
r that the possibility of a mans finding his vindication, or some treacherous va
riation thereof, can be computed as zero. at that time it was also hoped that a 
clarification of humanitys basic mysteries the origin of the library and of time
 might be found. it is verisimilar that these grave mysteries could be explained
 in words, if the language of philosophers is not sufficient, the multiform libr
ary will have produced the unprecedented language required, with its vocabularie
s and grammars. for four centuries now men have exhausted the hexagons... there 
are official searchers, inquisitors. i have seen them in the performance of thei
r function, they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys. they speak o
f a broken stairway which almost killed them. they talk with the librarian of ga
lleries and stairs. sometimes they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through i