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You shout at me (if you do still honor me with your shouts) that no one is taking my will from me here; that all they're doing here is busily arranging it somehow so that my will, of its own will, coincides with my normal interests, with the laws of nature, and with arithmetic.
Eh, gentlemen, what sort of will of one's own can there be if it comes to tables and arithmetic, and the only thing going is two times two is four? Two times two will be four even without my will. As if that were any will of one's own!
IX
Gentlemen, I am joking, of course, and I myself know that I am not joking very successfully, but one really ca
With the anthill the most reverend ants began, and with the anthill they will doubtless end as well, which does great credit to their constancy and positiveness. But man is a frivolous and unseemly being, and perhaps, similar to a chess player, likes only the process of achieving the goal, but not the goal itself. And who knows (one ca
And why are you so firmly, so solemnly convinced that only the normal and the positive, in short, that only well-being, is profitable for man? Is reason not perhaps mistaken as to profits? Maybe man does not love well-being only? Maybe he loves suffering just as much? Maybe suffering is just as profitable for him as well-being? For man sometimes loves suffering terribly much, to the point of passion, and that is a fact. Here there's not even any need to consult world history; just ask yourself, if you're a human being and have had any life at all. As for my personal opinion, to love just well-being alone is even somehow indecent. Whether it's good or bad, it's sometimes also very pleasant to break something. I, as a matter of fact, take my stand here neither with suffering nor with well-being. I stand… for my own caprice, and that it be guaranteed me when necessary. Suffering, for example, is inadmissible in vaudevilles, I know that. In a crystal palace it is even unthinkable: suffering is doubt, it is negation, and what good is a crystal palace in which one can have doubts? And yet I'm certain that man will never renounce real suffering, that is, destruction and chaos. Suffering - why, this is the sole cause of consciousness. Though I did declare at the begi
X
You believe in a crystal edifice, forever indestructible; that is, in an edifice at which one can neither put out one's tongue on the sly nor make a fig in the pocket. 19 Well, and perhaps I'm afraid of this edifice precisely because it is crystal and forever indestructible, and it will be impossible to put out one's tongue at it even on the sly.
Now look: if instead of a palace there is a chicken coop, and it starts to rain, I will perhaps get into the chicken coop to avoid a wetting, but all the same I will not take the chicken coop for a palace out of gratitude for its having kept me from the rain. You laugh, you even say that in that case it makes no difference - chicken coop or mansion. Yes, say I, if one were to live only so as not to get wet.
But what's to be done if I've taken it into my head that one does not live only for that, and that if one is to live, it had better be in a mansion? This is my wanting, this is my desire. You will scrape it out of me only when you change my desires. So, change them, seduce me with something else, give me a different ideal. But meanwhile I will not take a chicken coop for a palace. Let it even be so that the crystal edifice is a bluff, that by the laws of nature it should not even be, and that I've invented it only as a result of my own stupidity, as a result of certain old nonrational habits of our generation. But what do I care if it should not be? What difference does it make, since it exists in my desires, or, better, exists as long as my desires exist? Perhaps you're laughing again? Laugh, if you please; I will accept all mockery, but still I won't say I'm full when I'm hungry; still I know that I will not rest with a compromise, with a ceaseless, recurring zero, simply because according to the laws of nature it exists, and exists really. I will not take a tenement house, with apartments for the poor, and a thousand-year lease, and the dentist Wagenheim's shingle for good measure, as the crown of my desires. Destroy my desires, wipe out my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you. Perhaps you'll say it's not worth getting involved; but in that case I can answer you the same way. Our discussion is serious; if you do not deign to give me your attention, I am not going to bow and scrape before you. I have the underground.