Notes from the Underground
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
PART I
Underground*
*The author of the diary and the diary itself
are, of course, imaginary. Nevertheless it is clear
that such persons as the writer of these notes
not only may, but positively must, exist in our
society, when we consider the circumstances in
the midst of which our society is formed. I have
tried to expose to the view of the public more
distinctly than is commonly done, one of the
characters of the recent past. He is one of the
representatives of a generation still living. In this
fragment, entitled "Underground," this person
introduces himself and his views, and, as it were,
tries to explain the causes owing to which he has
made his appearance and was bound to make his
appearance in our midst. In the second fragment
there are added the actual notes of this person
concerning certain events in his life. --AUTHOR'S NOTE.
I
I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I
believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my
disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor
for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors.
Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine,
anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am
superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you
probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I
can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my
spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not
consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only
injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is
from spite. My liver is bad, well--let it get worse!
I have been going on like that for a long time--twenty years. Now I am
forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a
spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take
bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A
poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound
very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off
in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!)
When petitioners used to come for information to the table at which I
sat, I used to grind my teeth at them, and felt intense enjoyment when I
succeeded in making anybody unhappy. I almost did succeed. For the
most part they were all timid people--of course, they were petitioners.
But of the uppish ones there was one officer in particular I could not
endure. He simply would not be humble, and clanked his sword in a
disgusting way. I carried on a feud with him for eighteen months over
that sword. At last I got the better of him. He left off clanking it. That
happened in my youth, though.
But do you know, gentlemen, what was the chief point about my spite?
Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually,
even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with
shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man,
that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I
might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of
tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should be appeased. I might even be
genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards
and lie awake at night with shame for months after. That was my way.
I was lying when I said just now that I was a spiteful official. I was
lying from spite. I was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and with
the officer, and in reality I never could become spiteful. I was conscious
every moment in myself of many, very many elements absolutely opposite to
that. I felt them positively swarming in me, these opposite elements.
I knew that they had been swarming in me all my life and craving
some outlet from me, but I would not let them, would not let them,
purposely would not let them come out. They tormented me till I was
ashamed: they drove me to convulsions and--sickened me, at last, how
they sickened me! Now, are not you fancying, gentlemen, that I am
expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking your forgiveness
for something? I am sure you are fancying that ... However, I assure you
I do not care if you are. ...
It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to
become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest
man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my
corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an
intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool
who becomes anything. Yes, a man in the nineteenth century must and
morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless creature; a man of
character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited creature. That is my
conviction of forty years. I am forty years old now, and you know forty
years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer
than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live
beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do:
fools and worthless fellows. I tell all old men that to their face, all these
venerable old men, all these silver-haired and reverend seniors! I tell the
whole world that to its face! I have a right to say so, for I shall go on
living to sixty myself. To seventy! To eighty! ... Stay, let me
take breath ...
You imagine no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you. You are
mistaken in that, too. I am by no means such a mirthful person as you
imagine, or as you may imagine; however, irritated by all this babble (and
I feel that you are irritated) you think fit to ask me who I am--then my
answer is, I am a collegiate assessor. I was in the service that I might have
something to eat (and solely for that reason), and when last year a distant
relation left me six thousand roubles in his will I immediately retired
from the service and settled down in my corner. I used to live in this
corner before, but now I have settled down in it. My room is a wretched,
horrid one in the outskirts of the town. My servant is an old country-
woman, ill-natured from stupidity, and, moreover, there is always a nasty
smell about her. I am told that the Petersburg climate is bad for me, and
that with my small means it is very expensive to live in Petersburg. I
know all that better than all these sage and experienced counsellors and
monitors. ... But I am remaining in Petersburg; I am not going away
from Petersburg! I am not going away because ... ech! Why, it is
absolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away.
But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?
Answer: Of himself.
Well, so I will talk about myself.
II
I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why
I could not even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many
times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. 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, everyone does do that; people do pride themselves
on their diseases, and I do, may be, more than anyone. 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 "sublime 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 "sublime 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 realise 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 tranquillising, 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 caetera, et caetera. 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
VERITE. 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
VERITE. 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 recognised 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 recognise 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 Wagenheims you are in complete slavery to your teeth; that if
someone 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 someone 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 civilisation,
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 anyone 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 everyone 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 realise 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 tomorrow, 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 sublime and beautiful. How do you like that? I
have long had visions of it. That "sublime 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 "sublime 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 "sublime and beautiful." I should
then have turned everything into the sublime and the beautiful; in the
nastiest, unquestionable trash, I should have sought out the sublime 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
"sublime and beautiful." An author has written AS YOU WILL: at once I drink
to the health of "anyone you will" because I love all that is "sublime and
beautiful."
I should claim respect for doing so. I should persecute anyone 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 everyone
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 greater 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 short-
sighted 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 to affirm, for instance, following Buckle, that through civilisation
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 civilisation softens in us? The only gain of civilisation
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
civilised 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 civilisation 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 encyclopaedic 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, A 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, gentleman, 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 someone
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. In fact, I believe that the best definition of
man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst
defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity, perpetual--from
the days of the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period. Moral obliquity
and consequently lack of good sense; for it has long been accepted that
lack of good sense is due to no other cause than moral obliquity. Put it to
the test and cast your eyes upon the history of mankind. What will you
see? Is it a grand spectacle? Grand, if you like. Take the Colossus of
Rhodes, for instance, that's worth something. With good reason Mr.
Anaevsky testifies of it that some say that it is the work of man's hands,
while others maintain that it has been created by nature herself. Is it
many-coloured? May be it is many-coloured, too: if one takes the dress
uniforms, military and civilian, of all peoples in all ages--that alone is
worth something, and if you take the undress uniforms you will never get
to the end of it; no historian would be equal to the job. Is it monotonous?
May be it's monotonous too: it's fighting and fighting; they are fighting
now, they fought first and they fought last--you will admit, that it is
almost too monotonous. In short, one may say anything about the history
of the world--anything that might enter the most disordered imagination.
The only thing one can't say is that it's rational. The very word sticks
in one's throat. And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually
happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational
persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all
their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light
to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live
morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very
people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer
trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of
man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon
him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that
nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him
economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but
sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and
even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some
nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire
the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to
introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is
just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain,
simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary--
that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of
nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to
desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really
were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural
science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable,
but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude,
simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive
destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his
point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse
(it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals),
may be by his curse alone he will attain his object--that is,
convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all
this, too, can be calculated and tabulated--chaos and darkness and
curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would
stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go
mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I
answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing
but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!
It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be by cannibalism! And this being
so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and
that desire still depends on something we don't know?
You will scream at me (that is, if you condescend to do so) that no one
is touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my will
should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own normal
interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic.
Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we
come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice
two make four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will
meant that!
IX
Gentlemen, I am joking, and I know myself that my jokes are not
brilliant,but you know one can take everything as a joke. I am, perhaps,
jesting against the grain. Gentlemen, I am tormented by questions;
answer them for me. You, for instance, want to cure men of their old
habits and reform their will in accordance with science and good sense.
But how do you know, not only that it is possible, but also that it is
DESIRABLE to reform man in that way? And what leads you to the conclusion
that man's inclinations NEED reforming? In short, how do you know
that such a reformation will be a benefit to man? And to go to the root of
the matter, why are you so positively convinced that not to act against his
real normal interests guaranteed by the conclusions of reason and arithmetic
is certainly always advantageous for man and must always be a law
for mankind? So far, you know, this is only your supposition. It may be
the law of logic, but not the law of humanity. You think, gentlemen,
perhaps that I am mad? Allow me to defend myself. I agree that man is
pre-eminently a creative animal, predestined to strive consciously for an
object and to engage in engineering--that is, incessantly and eternally to
make new roads, WHEREVER THEY MAY LEAD. But the reason why he wants
sometimes to go off at a tangent may just be that he is PREDESTINED to make
the road, and perhaps, too, that however stupid the "direct" practical
man may be, the thought sometimes will occur to him that the road
almost always does lead SOMEWHERE, and that the destination it leads to is
less important than the process of making it, and that the chief thing is to
save the well-conducted child from despising engineering, and so giving
way to the fatal idleness, which, as we all know, is the mother of all the
vices. Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute.
But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? Tell
me that! But on that point I want to say a couple of words myself. May it
not be that he loves chaos and destruction (there can be no disputing that
he does sometimes love it) because he is instinctively afraid of attaining
his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows,
perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in
love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does
not want to live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of
LES ANIMAUX DOMESTIQUES--such as the ants, the sheep, and so on. Now the
ants have quite a different taste. They have a marvellous edifice of that
pattern which endures for ever--the ant-heap.
With the ant-heap the respectable race of ants began and with the ant-
heap they will probably end, which does the greatest credit to their
perseverance and good sense. But man is a frivolous and incongruous
creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game,
not the end of it. And who knows (there is no saying with certainty),
perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this
incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the
thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as
positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life,
gentlemen, but is the beginning of death. Anyway, man has always been
afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted
that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses
oceans, sacrifices his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it,
dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be
nothing for him to look for. When workmen have finished their work
they do at least receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken
to the police-station--and there is occupation for a week. But where can
man go? Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him
when he has attained such objects. He loves the process of attaining, but
does not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd. In
fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all.
But yet mathematical certainty is after all, something insufferable. Twice
two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two
makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your
path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing,
but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes
a very charming thing too.
And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the
normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to
welfare--is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards
advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being?
Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a
benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately,
in love with suffering, and that is a fact. There is no need to appeal
to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself, if you are a man and
have lived at all. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, to care only
for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it
is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things. I hold no brief for
suffering nor for well-being either. I am standing for ... my caprice, and
for its being guaranteed to me when necessary. Suffering would be out of
place in vaudevilles, for instance; I know that. In the "Palace of Crystal" it
is unthinkable; suffering means doubt, negation, and what would be the
good of a "palace of crystal" if there could be any doubt about it? And yet
I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is, destruction and
chaos. Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. Though I did
lay it down at the beginning that consciousness is the greatest misfortune
for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any
satisfaction. Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice
two makes four. Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing
left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your
five senses and plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to
consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at least flog
yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up. Reactionary as it
is, corporal punishment is better than nothing.
X
You believe in a palace of crystal that can never be destroyed--a palace at
which one will not be able to put out one's tongue or make a long nose on
the sly. And perhaps that is just why I am afraid of this edifice, that it is
of crystal and can never be destroyed and that one cannot put one's tongue
out at it even on the sly.
You see, if it were not a palace, but a hen-house, I might creep into it
to avoid getting wet, and yet I would not call the hen-house a palace out
of gratitude to it for keeping me dry. You laugh and say that in such
circumstances a hen-house is as good as a mansion. Yes, I answer, if one
had to live simply to keep out of the rain.
But what is to be done if I have taken it into my head that that is not the
only object in life, and that if one must live one had better live in a
mansion? That is my choice, my desire. You will only eradicate it when
you have changed my preference. Well, do change it, allure me with
something else, give me another ideal. But meanwhile I will not take a
hen-house for a mansion. The palace of crystal may be an idle dream, it
may be that it is inconsistent with the laws of nature and that I have
invented it only through my own stupidity, through the old-fashioned
irrational habits of my generation. But what does it matter to me that it is
inconsistent? That makes no difference since it exists in my desires, or
rather exists as long as my desires exist. Perhaps you are laughing again?
Laugh away; I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am
satisfied when I am hungry. I know, anyway, that I will not be put off with
a compromise, with a recurring zero, simply because it is consistent with
the laws of nature and actually exists. I will not accept as the crown of my
desires a block of buildings with tenements for the poor on a lease of a
thousand years, and perhaps with a sign-board of a dentist hanging out.
Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I
will follow you. You will say, perhaps, that it is not worth your trouble;
but in that case I can give you the same answer. We are discussing things
seriously; but if you won't deign to give me your attention, I will drop
your acquaintance. I can retreat into my underground hole.
But while I am alive and have desires I would rather my hand were
withered off than bring one brick to such a building! Don't remind me
that I have just rejected the palace of crystal for the sole reason that one
cannot put out one's tongue at it. I did not say because I am so fond of
putting my tongue out. Perhaps the thing I resented was, that of all your
edifices there has not been one at which one could not put out one's
tongue. On the contrary, I would let my tongue be cut off out of gratitude
if things could be so arranged that I should lose all desire to put it out. It
is not my fault that things cannot be so arranged, and that one must be
satisfied with model flats. Then why am I made with such desires? Can I
have been constructed simply in order to come to the conclusion that all
my construction is a cheat? Can this be my whole purpose? I do not
believe it.
But do you know what: I am convinced that we underground folk
ought to be kept on a curb. Though we may sit forty years underground
without speaking, when we do come out into the light of day and break
out we talk and talk and talk ....
XI
The long and the short of it is, gentlemen, that it is better to do nothing!
Better conscious inertia! And so hurrah for underground! Though I have
said that I envy the normal man to the last drop of my bile, yet I should
not care to be in his place such as he is now (though I shall not cease
envying him). No, no; anyway the underground life is more advantageous.
There, at any rate, one can ... Oh, but even now I am lying! I
am lying because I know myself that it is not underground that is better,
but something different, quite different, for which I am thirsting, but
which I cannot find! Damn underground!
I will tell you another thing that would be better, and that is, if I
myself believed in anything of what I have just written. I swear to you,
gentlemen, there is not one thing, not one word of what I have written that I
really believe. That is, I believe it, perhaps, but at the same time I feel
and suspect that I am lying like a cobbler.
"Then why have you written all this?" you will say to me. "I ought to
put you underground for forty years without anything to do and then
come to you in your cellar, to find out what stage you have reached! How
can a man be left with nothing to do for forty years?"
"Isn't that shameful, isn't that humiliating?" you will say, perhaps,
wagging your heads contemptuously. "You thirst for life and try to settle
the problems of life by a logical tangle. And how persistent, how insolent
are your sallies, and at the same time what a scare you are in! You talk
nonsense and are pleased with it; you say impudent things and are in
continual alarm and apologising for them. You declare that you are
afraid of nothing and at the same time try to ingratiate yourself in our
good opinion. You declare that you are gnashing your teeth and at the
same time you try to be witty so as to amuse us. You know that your
witticisms are not witty, but you are evidently well satisfied with their
literary value. You may, perhaps, have really suffered, but you have no
respect for your own suffering. You may have sincerity, but you have no
modesty; out of the pettiest vanity you expose your sincerity to publicity
and ignominy. You doubtlessly mean to say something, but hide your last
word through fear, because you have not the resolution to utter it, and
only have a cowardly impudence. You boast of consciousness, but you
are not sure of your ground, for though your mind works, yet your heart is
darkened and corrupt, and you cannot have a full, genuine consciousness
without a pure heart. And how intrusive you are, how you insist and
grimace! Lies, lies, lies!"
Of course I have myself made up all the things you say. That, too, is
from underground. I have been for forty years listening to you through a
crack under the floor. I have invented them myself, there was nothing
else I could invent. It is no wonder that I have learned it by heart and it
has taken a literary form ....
But can you really be so credulous as to think that I will print all this
and give it to you to read too? And another problem: why do I call you
"gentlemen," why do I address you as though you really were my readers?
Such confessions as I intend to make are never printed nor given to other
people to read. Anyway, I am not strong-minded enough for that, and I
don't see why I should be. But you see a fancy has occurred to me and I
want to realise it at all costs. Let me explain.
Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone,
but only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would
not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But
there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and
every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.
The more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his
mind. Anyway, I have only lately determined to remember some of my
early adventures. Till now I have always avoided them, even with a
certain uneasiness. Now, when I am not only recalling them, but have
actually decided to write an account of them, I want to try the experiment
whether one can, even with oneself, be perfectly open and not take
fright at the whole truth. I will observe, in parenthesis, that Heine says
that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility, and that man is
bound to lie about himself. He considers that Rousseau certainly told lies
about himself in his confessions, and even intentionally lied, out of
vanity. I am convinced that Heine is right; I quite understand how
sometimes one may, out of sheer vanity, attribute regular crimes to
oneself, and indeed I can very well conceive that kind of vanity. But
Heine judged of people who made their confessions to the public. I write
only for myself, and I wish to declare once and for all that if I write as
though I were addressing readers, that is simply because it is easier for me
to write in that form. It is a form, an empty form--I shall never have
readers. I have made this plain already ...
I don't wish to be hampered by any restrictions in the compilation of
my notes. I shall not attempt any system or method. I will jot things down
as I remember them.
But here, perhaps, someone will catch at the word and ask me: if you
really don't reckon on readers, why do you make such compacts with
yourself--and on paper too--that is, that you won't attempt any system
or method, that you jot things down as you remember them, and so on,
and so on? Why are you explaining? Why do you apologise?
Well, there it is, I answer.
There is a whole psychology in all this, though. Perhaps it is simply
that I am a coward. And perhaps that I purposely imagine an audience
before me in order that I may be more dignified while I write. There are
perhaps thousands of reasons. Again, what is my object precisely in
writing? If it is not for the benefit of the public why should I not simply
recall these incidents in my own mind without putting them on paper?
Quite so; but yet it is more imposing on paper. There is something
more impressive in it; I shall be better able to criticise myself and improve
my style. Besides, I shall perhaps obtain actual relief from writing.
Today, for instance, I am particularly oppressed by one