No More Learning

I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness--a real
thorough-going illness. For man's everyday needs, it would have been
quite enough to have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or
a quarter of the amount which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of
our unhappy nineteenth century, especially one who has the fatal
ill-luck to inhabit Petersburg, the most theoretical and intentional
town on the whole terrestrial globe. (There are intentional and
unintentional towns. ) It would have been quite enough, for instance, to
have the consciousness by which all so-called direct persons and men of
action live. I bet you think I am writing all this from affectation, to
be witty at the expense of men of action; and what is more, that from
ill-bred affectation, I am clanking a sword like my officer. But,
gentlemen, whoever can pride himself on his diseases and even swagger
over them?

Though, after all, every one does do that; people do pride themselves on
their diseases, and I do, may be, more than any one. We will not dispute
it; my contention was absurd. But yet I am firmly persuaded that a great
deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a
disease. I stick to that. Let us leave that, too, for a minute. Tell me
this: why does it happen that at the very, yes, at the very moments when
I am most capable of feeling every refinement of all that is "good and
beautiful," as they used to say at one time, it would, as though of
design, happen to me not only to feel but to do such ugly things, such
that. . . . Well, in short, actions that all, perhaps, commit; but which,
as though purposely, occurred to me at the very time when I was most
conscious that they ought not to be committed. The more conscious I was
of goodness and of all that was "good and beautiful," the more deeply I
sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether. But
the chief point was that all this was, as it were, not accidental in me,
but as though it were bound to be so. It was as though it were my most
normal condition, and not in the least disease or depravity, so that at
last all desire in me to struggle against this depravity passed. It
ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was
perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what
agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same
with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a
secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the
point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in
returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely
conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that
what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing,
gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the
bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at
last--into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment!
I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know
for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the
enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one's own
degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last
barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that
there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different
man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into
something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you
did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality
there was nothing for you to change into.

And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in
accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and
with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that
consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely
nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness,
that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any
consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realize that he
actually is a scoundrel. But enough. . . . Ech, I have talked a lot of
nonsense, but what have I explained? How is enjoyment in this to be
explained? But I will explain it. I will get to the bottom of it! That
is why I have taken up my pen. . . .

I, for instance, have a great deal of _amour propre_. I am as suspicious
and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf. But upon my word I
sometimes have had moments when if I had happened to be slapped in the
face I should, perhaps, have been positively glad of it. I say, in
earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover even in that
a peculiar sort of enjoyment--the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but
in despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is
very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position. And when
one is slapped in the face--why then the consciousness of being rubbed
into a pulp would positively overwhelm one. The worst of it is, look at
it which way one will, it still turns out that I was always the most to
blame in everything. And what is most humiliating of all, to blame for
no fault of my own but, so to say, through the laws of nature. In the
first place, to blame because I am cleverer than any of the people
surrounding me. (I have always considered myself cleverer than any of
the people surrounding me, and sometimes, would you believe it, have
been positively ashamed of it. At any rate, I have all my life, as it
were, turned my eyes away and never could look people straight in the
face. ) To blame, finally, because even if I had had magnanimity, I
should only have had more suffering from the sense of its uselessness. I
should certainly have never been able to do anything from being
magnanimous--neither to forgive, for my assailant would perhaps have
slapped me from the laws of nature, and one cannot forgive the laws of
nature; nor to forget, for even if it were owing to the laws of nature,
it is insulting all the same. Finally, even if I had wanted to be
anything but magnanimous, had desired on the contrary to revenge myself
on my assailant, I could not have revenged myself on any one for
anything because I should certainly never have made up my mind to do
anything, even if I had been able to. Why should I not have made up my
mind? About that in particular I want to say a few words.


III

With people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up for
themselves in general, how is it done? Why, when they are possessed, let
us suppose, by the feeling of revenge, then for the time there is
nothing else but that feeling left in their whole being. Such a
gentleman simply dashes straight for his object like an infuriated bull
with its horns down, and nothing but a wall will stop him. (By the way:
facing the wall, such gentlemen--that is, the "direct" persons and men
of action--are genuinely nonplussed. For them a wall is not an evasion,
as for us people who think and consequently do nothing; it is not an
excuse for turning aside, an excuse for which we are always very glad,
though we scarcely believe in it ourselves, as a rule. No, they are
nonplussed in all sincerity. The wall has for them something
tranquillizing, morally soothing, final--maybe even something mysterious
. . . but of the wall later. )

Well, such a direct person I regard as the real normal man, as his
tender mother nature wished to see him when she graciously brought him
into being on the earth. I envy such a man till I am green in the face.
He is stupid. I am not disputing that, but perhaps the normal man should
be stupid, how do you know? Perhaps it is very beautiful, in fact. And I
am the more persuaded of that suspicion, if one can call it so, by the
fact that if you take, for instance, the antithesis of the normal man,
that is, the man of acute consciousness, who has come, of course, not
out of the lap of nature but out of a retort (this is almost mysticism,
gentlemen, but I suspect this, too), this retort-made man is sometimes
so nonplussed in the presence of his antithesis that with all his
exaggerated consciousness he genuinely thinks of himself as a mouse and
not a man. It may be an acutely conscious mouse, yet it is a mouse,
while the other is a man, and therefore, et cætera, et cætera. And the
worst of it is, he himself, his very own self, looks on himself as a
mouse; no one asks him to do so; and that is an important point. Now let
us look at this mouse in action. Let us suppose, for instance, that it
feels insulted, too (and it almost always does feel insulted), and wants
to revenge itself, too. There may even be a greater accumulation of
spite in it than in _l'homme de la nature et de la vérité_. The base and
nasty desire to vent that spite on its assailant rankles perhaps even
more nastily in it than in _l'homme de la nature et de la vérité_. For
through his innate stupidity the latter looks upon his revenge as
justice pure and simple; while in consequence of his acute consciousness
the mouse does not believe in the justice of it. To come at last to the
deed itself, to the very act of revenge. Apart from the one fundamental
nastiness the luckless mouse succeeds in creating around it so many
other nastinesses in the form of doubts and questions, adds to the one
question so many unsettled questions that there inevitably works up
around it a sort of fatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts,
emotions, and of the contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action
who stand solemnly about it as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it
till their healthy sides ache. Of course the only thing left for it is
to dismiss all that with a wave of its paw, and, with a smile of assumed
contempt in which it does not even itself believe, creep ignominiously
into its mouse-hole. There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our
insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold,
malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years together it
will remember its injury down to the smallest, most ignominious details,
and every time will add, of itself, details still more ignominious,
spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own imagination. It
will itself be ashamed of its imaginings, but yet it will recall it all,
it will go over and over every detail, it will invent unheard of things
against itself, pretending that those things might happen, and will
forgive nothing. Maybe it will begin to revenge itself, too, but, as it
were, piecemeal, in trivial ways, from behind the stove, incognito,
without believing either in its own right to vengeance, or in the
success of its revenge, knowing that from all its efforts at revenge it
will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom it revenges itself,
while he, I daresay, will not even scratch himself. On its deathbed it
will recall it all over again, with interest accumulated over all the
years and. . . .

But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in
that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for
forty years, in that acutely recognized and yet partly doubtful
hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires
turned inward, in that fever of oscillations, of resolutions determined
for ever and repented of again a minute later--that the savour of that
strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies. It is so subtle, so
difficult of analysis, that persons who are a little limited, or even
simply persons of strong nerves, will not understand a single atom of
it. "Possibly," you will add on your own account with a grin, "people
will not understand it either who have never received a slap in the
face," and in that way you will politely hint to me that I, too,
perhaps, have had the experience of a slap in the face in my life, and
so I speak as one who knows. I bet that you are thinking that. But set
your minds at rest, gentlemen, I have not received a slap in the face,
though it is absolutely a matter of indifference to me what you may
think about it. Possibly, I even regret, myself, that I have given so
few slaps in the face during my life. But enough . . . not another word on
that subject of such extreme interest to you.

I will continue calmly concerning persons with strong nerves who do not
understand a certain refinement of enjoyment. Though in certain
circumstances these gentlemen bellow their loudest like bulls, though
this, let us suppose, does them the greatest credit, yet, as I have said
already, confronted with the impossible they subside at once. The
impossible means the stone wall! What stone wall? Why, of course, the
laws of nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics. As soon
as they prove to you, for instance, that you are descended from a
monkey, then it is no use scowling, accept it for a fact. When they
prove to you that in reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to
you than a hundred thousand of your fellow creatures, and that this
conclusion is the final solution of all so-called virtues and duties and
all such prejudices and fancies, then you have just to accept it, there
is no help for it, for twice two is a law of mathematics. Just try
refuting it.

"Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a
case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your permission, she
has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or
dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently
all her conclusions. A wall, you see, is a wall . . . and so on, and so
on. "

Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and
arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that
twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by
battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock
it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is
a stone wall and I have not the strength.

As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did
contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as twice
two makes four. Oh, absurdity of absurdities! How much better it is to
understand it all, to recognize it all, all the impossibilities and the
stone wall; not to be reconciled to one of those impossibilities and
stone walls if it disgusts you to be reconciled to it; by the way of the
most inevitable, logical combinations to reach the most revolting
conclusions on the everlasting theme, that even for the stone wall you
are yourself somehow to blame, though again it is as clear as day you
are not to blame in the least, and therefore grinding your teeth in
silent impotence to sink into luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact
that there is no one even for you to feel vindictive against, that you
have not, and perhaps never will have, an object for your spite, that it
is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it
is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of
all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you,
and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.


IV

"Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding enjoyment in toothache next," you cry,
with a laugh.

"Well? Even in toothache there is enjoyment," I answer. I had toothache
for a whole month and I know there is. In that case, of course, people
are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not candid moans,
they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole point. The
enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans; if he did not
feel enjoyment in them he would not moan. It is a good example,
gentlemen, and I will develop it. Those moans express in the first place
all the aimlessness of your pain, which is so humiliating to your
consciousness; the whole legal system of nature on which you spit
disdainfully, of course, but from which you suffer all the same while
she does not. They express the consciousness that you have no enemy to
punish, but that you have pain; the consciousness that in spite of all
possible Vagenheims you are in complete slavery to your teeth; that if
some one wishes it, your teeth will leave off aching, and if he does
not, they will go on aching another three months; and that finally if
you are still contumacious and still protest, all that is left you for
your own gratification is to thrash yourself or beat your wall with your
fist as hard as you can, and absolutely nothing more. Well, these mortal
insults, these jeers on the part of some one unknown, end at last in an
enjoyment which sometimes reaches the highest degree of voluptuousness.
I ask you, gentlemen, listen sometimes to the moans of an educated man
of the nineteenth century suffering from toothache, on the second or
third day of the attack, when he is beginning to moan, not as he moaned
on the first day, that is, not simply because he has toothache, not just
as any coarse peasant, but as a man affected by progress and European
civilization, a man who is "divorced from the soil and the national
elements," as they express it now-a-days. His moans become nasty,
disgustingly malignant, and go on for whole days and nights. And of
course he knows himself that he is doing himself no sort of good with
his moans; he knows better than any one that he is only lacerating and
harassing himself and others for nothing; he knows that even the
audience before whom he is making his efforts, and his whole family,
listen to him with loathing, do not put a ha'porth of faith in him, and
inwardly understand that he might moan differently, more simply, without
trills and flourishes, and that he is only amusing himself like that
from ill-humour, from malignancy. Well, in all these recognitions and
disgraces it is that there lies a voluptuous pleasure. As though he
would say: "I am worrying you, I am lacerating your hearts, I am keeping
every one in the house awake. Well, stay awake then, you, too, feel
every minute that I have toothache. I am not a hero to you now, as I
tried to seem before, but simply a nasty person, an impostor. Well, so
be it, then! I am very glad that you see through me. It is nasty for you
to hear my despicable moans: well, let it be nasty; here I will let you
have a nastier flourish in a minute. . . . " You do not understand even now,
gentlemen? No, it seems our development and our consciousness must go
further to understand all the intricacies of this pleasure. You laugh?
Delighted. My jests, gentlemen, are of course in bad taste, jerky,
involved, lacking self-confidence. But of course that is because I do
not respect myself. Can a man of perception respect himself at all?


V

Come, can a man who attempts to find enjoyment in the very feeling of
his own degradation possibly have a spark of respect for himself? I am
not saying this now from any mawkish kind of remorse. And, indeed, I
could never endure saying, "Forgive me, Papa, I won't do it again," not
because I am incapable of saying that--on the contrary, perhaps just
because I have been too capable of it, and in what a way, too! As though
of design I used to get into trouble in cases when I was not to blame in
any way. That was the nastiest part of it. At the same time I was
genuinely touched and penitent, I used to shed tears and, of course,
deceived myself, though I was not acting in the least and there was a
sick feeling in my heart at the time. . . . For that one could not blame
even the laws of nature, though the laws of nature have continually all
my life offended me more than anything. It is loathsome to remember it
all, but it was loathsome even then. Of course, a minute or so later I
would realize wrathfully that it was all a lie, a revolting lie, an
affected lie, that is, all this penitence, this emotion, these vows of
reform. You will ask why did I worry myself with such antics: answer,
because it was very dull to sit with one's hands folded, and so one
began cutting capers. That is really it. Observe yourselves more
carefully, gentlemen, then you will understand that it is so. I invented
adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some
way. How many times it has happened to me--well, for instance, to take
offence simply on purpose, for nothing; and one knows oneself, of
course, that one is offended at nothing, that one is putting it on, but
yet one brings oneself, at last to the point of being really offended.
All my life I have had an impulse to play such pranks, so that in the
end I could not control it in myself. Another time, twice, in fact, I
tried hard to be in love. I suffered, too, gentlemen, I assure you. In
the depth of my heart there was no faith in my suffering, only a faint
stir of mockery, but yet I did suffer, and in the real, orthodox way; I
was jealous, beside myself . . . and it was all from _ennui_, gentlemen,
all from _ennui_; inertia overcame me. You know the direct, legitimate
fruit of consciousness is inertia, that is, conscious
sitting-with-the-hands-folded. I have referred to this already. I
repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all "direct" persons and men of action
are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain that? I
will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate
and secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way persuade
themselves more quickly and easily than other people do that they have
found an infallible foundation for their activity, and their minds are
at ease and you know that is the chief thing. To begin to act, you know,
you must first have your mind completely at ease and no trace of doubt
left in it. Why, how am I, for example to set my mind at rest? Where are
the primary causes on which I am to build? Where are my foundations?
Where am I to get them from? I exercise myself in reflection, and
consequently with me every primary cause at once draws after itself
another still more primary, and so on to infinity. That is just the
essence of every sort of consciousness and reflection. It must be a case
of the laws of nature again. What is the result of it in the end? Why,
just the same. Remember I spoke just now of vengeance. (I am sure you
did not take it in. ) I said that a man revenges himself because he sees
justice in it. Therefore he has found a primary cause, that is, justice.
And so he is at rest on all sides, and consequently he carries out his
revenge calmly and successfully, being persuaded that he is doing a just
and honest thing. But I see no justice in it, I find no sort of virtue
in it either, and consequently if I attempt to revenge myself, it is
only out of spite. Spite, of course, might overcome everything, all my
doubts, and so might serve quite successfully in place of a primary
cause, precisely because it is not a cause. But what is to be done if I
have not even spite (I began with that just now, you know)? In
consequence again of those accursed laws of consciousness, anger in me
is subject to chemical disintegration. You look into it, the object
flies off into air, your reasons evaporate, the criminal is not to be
found, the wrong becomes not a wrong but a phantom, something like the
toothache, for which no one is to blame, and consequently there is only
the same outlet left again--that is, to beat the wall as hard as you
can.
So you give it up with a wave of the hand because you have not
found a fundamental cause. And try letting yourself be carried away by
your feelings, blindly, without reflection, without a primary cause,
repelling consciousness at least for a time; hate or love, if only not
to sit with your hands folded. The day after to-morrow, at the latest,
you will begin despising yourself for having knowingly deceived
yourself. Result: a soap-bubble and inertia. Oh, gentlemen, do you know,
perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I
have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a
babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be
done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble,
that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?


VI

Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should
have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I
should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least
have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have
believed myself. Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very
pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean that
I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something to say
about me. "Sluggard"--why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career.
Do not jest, it is so. I should then be a member of the best club by
right, and should find my occupation in continually respecting myself. I
knew a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being a connoisseur
of Lafitte. He considered this as his positive virtue, and never doubted
himself. He died, not simply with a tranquil, but with a triumphant,
conscience, and he was quite right, too. Then I should have chosen a
career for myself, I should have been a sluggard and a glutton, not a
simple one, but, for instance, one with sympathies for everything good
and beautiful. How do you like that? I have long had visions of it. That
"good and beautiful" weighs heavily on my mind at forty. But that is at
forty; then--oh, then it would have been different! I should have found
for myself a form of activity in keeping with it, to be precise,
drinking to the health of everything "good and beautiful. " I should have
snatched at every opportunity to drop a tear into my glass and then to
drain it to all that is "good and beautiful. " I should then have turned
everything into the good and the beautiful; in the nastiest,
unquestionable trash, I should have sought out the good and the
beautiful. I should have exuded tears like a wet sponge. An artist, for
instance, paints a picture worthy of Gay. At once I drink to the health
of the artist who painted the picture worthy of Gay, because I love all
that is "good and beautiful. " An author has written _As you will_: at
once I drink to the health of "any one you will" because I love all that
is "good and beautiful. "

I should claim respect for doing so. I should persecute any one who
would not show me respect. I should live at ease, I should die with
dignity, why, it is charming, perfectly charming! And what a good round
belly I should have grown, what a treble chin I should have established,
what a ruby nose I should have coloured for myself, so that every one
would have said, looking at me: "Here is an asset! Here is something
real and solid! " And, say what you like, it is very agreeable to hear
such remarks about oneself in this negative age.


VII

But these are all golden dreams. Oh, tell me, who was it first
announced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things
because he does not know his own interests; and that if he were
enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man
would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and
noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage,
he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else, and we all
know that not one man can, consciously, act against his own interests,
consequently, so to say, through necessity, he would begin doing good?
Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! Why, in the first place,
when in all these thousands of years has there been a time when man has
acted only from his own interest? What is to be done with the millions
of facts that bear witness that men, _consciously_, that is fully
understanding their real interests, have left them in the background and
have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger,
compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were,
simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, wilfully,
struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the
darkness. So, I suppose, this obstinacy and perversity were pleasanter
to them than any advantage. . . . Advantage! What is advantage? And will
you take it upon yourself to define with perfect accuracy in what the
advantage of man consists? And what if it so happens that a man's
advantage, _sometimes_, not only may, but even must, consist in his
desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not
advantageous? And if so, if there can be such a case, the whole
principle falls into dust. What do you think--are there such cases? You
laugh; laugh away, gentlemen, but only answer me: have man's advantages
been reckoned up with perfect certainty? Are there not some which not
only have not been included but cannot possibly be included under any
classification? You see, you gentlemen have, to the best of my
knowledge, taken your whole register of human advantages from the
averages of statistical figures and politico-economical formulas. Your
advantages are prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace--and so on, and so on.
So that the man who should, for instance, go openly and knowingly in
opposition to all that list would, to your thinking, and indeed mine,
too, of course, be an obscurantist or an absolute madman: would not he?
But, you know, this is what is surprising: why does it so happen that
all these statisticians, sages and lovers of humanity, when they reckon
up human advantages invariably leave out one? They don't even take it
into their reckoning in the form in which it should be taken, and the
whole reckoning depends upon that. It would be no great matter, they
would simply have to take it, this advantage, and add it to the list.
But the trouble is, that this strange advantage does not fall under any
classification and is not in place in any list. I have a friend for
instance. . . . Ech! gentlemen, but of course he is your friend, too; and
indeed there is no one, no one, to whom he is not a friend! When he
prepares for any undertaking this gentleman immediately explains to you,
elegantly and clearly, exactly how he must act in accordance with the
laws of reason and truth. What is more, he will talk to you with
excitement and passion of the true normal interests of man; with irony
he will upbraid the shortsighted fools who do not understand their own
interests, nor the true significance of virtue; and, within a quarter of
an hour, without any sudden outside provocation, but simply through
something inside him which is stronger than all his interests, he will
go off on quite a different tack--that is, act in direct opposition to
what he has just been saying about himself, in opposition to the laws of
reason, in opposition to his own advantage, in fact in opposition to
everything. . . . I warn you that my friend is a compound personality, and
therefore it is difficult to blame him as an individual. The fact is,
gentlemen, it seems there must really exist something that is dearer to
almost every man than his greatest advantages, or (not to be illogical)
there is a most advantageous advantage (the very one omitted of which we
spoke just now) which is more important and more advantageous than all
other advantages, for the sake of which a man if necessary is ready to
act in opposition to all laws; that is, in opposition to reason, honour,
peace, prosperity--in fact, in opposition to all those excellent and
useful things if only he can attain that fundamental, most advantageous
advantage which is dearer to him than all. "Yes, but it's advantage all
the same" you will retort. But excuse me, I'll make the point clear, and
it is not a case of playing upon words. What matters is, that this
advantage is remarkable from the very fact that it breaks down all our
classifications, and continually shatters every system constructed by
lovers of mankind for the benefit of mankind. In fact, it upsets
everything. But before I mention this advantage to you, I want to
compromise myself personally, and therefore I boldly declare that all
these fine systems, all these theories for explaining to mankind their
real normal interests, in order that inevitably striving to pursue these
interests they may at once become good and noble--are, in my opinion, so
far, mere logical exercises! Yes, logical exercises. Why, to maintain
this theory of the regeneration of mankind by means of the pursuit of
his own advantage is to my mind almost the same thing as . . . as to
affirm, for instance, following Buckle, that through civilization
mankind becomes softer, and consequently less bloodthirsty and less
fitted for warfare. Logically it does seem to follow from his arguments.
But man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that
he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the
evidence of his senses only to justify his logic. I take this example
because it is the most glaring instance of it. Only look about you:
blood is being spilt in streams, and in the merriest way, as though it
were champagne. Take the whole of the nineteenth century in which Buckle
lived. Take Napoleon--the Great and also the present one. Take North
America--the eternal union. Take the farce of Schleswig-Holstein. . . . And
what is it that civilization softens in us? The only gain of
civilization for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of
sensations--and absolutely nothing more. And through the development of
this many-sidedness man may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed. In
fact, this has already happened to him. Have you noticed that it is the
most civilized gentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers, to
whom the Attilas and Stenka Razins could not hold a candle, and if they
are not so conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razins it is simply
because they are so often met with, are so ordinary and have become so
familiar to us. In any case civilization has made mankind if not more
bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty. In
old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace
exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed
abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy
than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves. They say that
Cleopatra (excuse an instance from Roman history) was fond of sticking
gold pins into her slave-girls' breasts and derived gratification from
their screams and writhings. You will say that that was in the
comparatively barbarous times; that these are barbarous times too,
because also, comparatively speaking, pins are stuck in even now; that
though man has now learned to see more clearly than in barbarous ages,
he is still far from having learnt to act as reason and science would
dictate. But yet you are fully convinced that he will be sure to learn
when he gets rid of certain old bad habits, and when common sense and
science have completely re-educated human nature and turned it in a
normal direction. You are confident that then man will cease from
_intentional_ error and will, so to say, be compelled not to want to set
his will against his normal interests. That is not all; then, you say,
science itself will teach man (though to my mind it's a superfluous
luxury) that he never has really had any caprice or will of his own, and
that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key or the stop of
an organ, and that there are, besides, things called the laws of nature;
so that everything he does is not done by his willing it, but is done of
itself, by the laws of nature. Consequently we have only to discover
these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his
actions and life will become exceedingly easy for him. All human actions
will then, of course, be tabulated according to these laws,
mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in
an index; or, better still, there would be published certain edifying
works of the nature of encyclopædic lexicons, in which everything will
be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no more
incidents or adventures in the world.

Then--this is all what you say--new economic relations will be
established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude,
so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye,
simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the
"Palace of Crystal" will be built. Then. . . . In fact, those will be
halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment)
that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then (for what will
one have to do when everything will be calculated and tabulated? ), but on
the other hand everything will be extraordinarily rational. Of course
boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden
pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my
comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold
pins then. Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is
not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find
another like him in all creation. I, for instance, would not be in the
least surprised if all of a sudden, _à propos_ of nothing, in the midst
of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a
reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his
arms akimbo, say to us all: "I say, gentlemen, hadn't we better kick
over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send
these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our
own sweet foolish will! " That again would not matter; but what is
annoying is that he would be sure to find followers--such is the nature
of man. And all that for the most foolish reason, which, one would
think, was hardly worth mentioning: that is, that man everywhere and at
all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not
in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose
what is contrary to one's own interests, and sometimes one _positively
ought_ (that is my idea). One's own free unfettered choice, one's own
caprice, however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to
frenzy--is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have
overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all
systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how
do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What
has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous
choice? What man wants is simply _independent_ choice, whatever that
independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course,
the devil only knows what choice. . . .


VIII

"Ha! ha! ha! But you know there is no such thing as choice in reality,
say what you like," you will interpose with a chuckle. "Science has
succeeded in so far analysing man that we know already that choice and
what is called freedom of will is nothing else than----"

Stay, gentlemen, I meant to begin with that myself. I confess, I was
rather frightened. I was just going to say that the devil only knows
what choice depends on, and that perhaps that was a very good thing, but
I remembered the teaching of science . . . and pulled myself up. And here
you have begun upon it. Indeed, if there really is some day discovered a
formula for all our desires and caprices--that is, an explanation of
what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what
they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is a real
mathematical formula--then, most likely, man will at once cease to feel
desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who would want to choose by
rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an
organ-stop or something of the sort; for what is a man without desires,
without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ? What do
you think? Let us reckon the chances--can such a thing happen or not?

"H'm! " you decide. "Our choice is usually mistaken from a false view of
our advantage. We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our
foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a
supposed advantage. But when all that is explained and worked out on
paper (which is perfectly possible, for it is contemptible and senseless
to suppose that some laws of nature man will never understand), then
certainly so-called desires will no longer exist. For if a desire should
come into conflict with reason we shall then reason and not desire,
because it will be impossible retaining our reason to be _senseless_ in
our desires, and in that way knowingly act against reason and desire to
injure ourselves. And as all choice and reasoning can be really
calculated--because there will some day be discovered the laws of our
so-called free will--so, joking apart, there may one day be something
like a table constructed of them, so that we really shall choose in
accordance with it. If, for instance, some day they calculate and prove
to me that I made a long nose at some one because I could not help
making a long nose at him and that I had to do it in that particular
way, what _freedom_ is left me, especially if I am a learned man and
have taken my degree somewhere? Then I should be able to calculate my
whole life for thirty years beforehand. In short, if this could be
arranged there would be nothing left for us to do; anyway, we should
have to understand that. And, in fact, we ought unwearyingly to repeat
to ourselves that at such and such a time and in such and such
circumstances nature does not ask our leave; that we have got to take
her as she is and not fashion her to suit our fancy, and if we really
aspire to formulas and tables of rules, and well, even . . . to the
chemical retort, there's no help for it, we must accept the retort too,
or else it will be accepted without our consent. . . . "

Yes, but here I come to a stop! Gentlemen, you must excuse me for being
over-philosophical; it's the result of forty years underground! Allow me
to indulge my fancy. You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing,
there's no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and
satisfies only the rational side of man's nature, while will is a
manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life
including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this
manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply
extracting square roots. Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to
live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my
capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity
for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded
in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this is a poor
comfort, but why not say so frankly? ) and human nature acts as a whole,
with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even
if it goes wrong, it lives. I suspect, gentlemen, that you are looking
at me with compassion; you tell me again that an enlightened and
developed man, such, in short, as the future man will be, cannot
consciously desire anything disadvantageous to himself, that that can be
proved mathematically. I thoroughly agree, it can--by mathematics. But I
repeat for the hundredth time, there is one case, one only, when man may
consciously, purposely, desire what is injurious to himself, what is
stupid, very stupid--simply in order to have the right to desire for
himself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to
desire only what is sensible. Of course, this very stupid thing, this
caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen, more advantageous for us
than anything else on earth, especially in certain cases. And in
particular it may be more advantageous than any advantage even when it
does us obvious harm, and contradicts the soundest conclusions of our
reason concerning our advantage--for in any circumstances it preserves
for us what is most precious and most important--that is, our
personality, our individuality. Some, you see, maintain that this really
is the most precious thing for mankind; choice can, of course, if it
chooses, be in agreement with reason; and especially if this be not
abused but kept within bounds. It is profitable and sometimes even
praiseworthy. But very often, and even most often, choice is utterly and
stubbornly opposed to reason . . . and . . . and . . . do you know that that,
too, is profitable, sometimes even praiseworthy? Gentlemen, let us
suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose
that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then
who is wise? ) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful!
Phenomenally ungrateful.