V
No, how is it possible, how is it at all possible for a man to have the slightest respect for himself, if he has presumed to find pleasure even in the very sense of his own humiliation? I am not speaking this way now out of some cloying repentance. And, generally, I hated saying: "Forgive me, papa, I won't do it again" - not because I was incapable of saying it, but, on the contrary, perhaps precisely because I was all too capable of it. And how! As if on purpose, I used to bumble into it on occasions when I'd never thought or dreamed of doing anything wrong. That was the nastiest thing of all. And there I'd be again, waxing tenderhearted, repenting, shedding tears, and certainly hoodwinking myself, though I wasn't pretending in the least. It was my heart that somehow kept mucking things up… Here even the laws of nature could no longer be blamed, though still, throughout my life, the laws of nature have offended me constantly and more than anything else. It's nasty to look back on it all, and it was nasty then as well. For a minute or so later I'd be reasoning spitefully that it was all a lie, a lie, a loathsome, affected lie - that is, all these repentances, tenderheartednesses, all these vows of regeneration. And you ask why I twisted and tormented myself so? Answer: because it was just too boring to sit there with folded arms, that's why I'd get into such flourishes. Really, it was so. Observe yourselves more closely, gentlemen, and you'll understand that it is so. I made up adventures and devised a life for myself so as to live, at least somehow, a little. How many times it happened to me - well, say, for example, to feel offended, just so, for no reason, on purpose; and I'd know very well that I felt offended for no reason, that I was affecting it, but you can drive yourself so far that in the end, really, you do indeed get offended. Somehow all my life I've had an urge to pull such stunts, so that in the end I could no longer control myself. Another time, twice even, I decided to force myself to fall in love. And I did suffer, gentlemen, I assure you. Deep in one's soul it's hard to believe one is suffering, mockery is stirring there, but all the same I suffer, and in a real, honest-to-god way; I get jealous, lose my temper… And all that from boredom, gentlemen, all from boredom; crushed by inertia. For the direct, lawful, immediate fruit of consciousness is inertia - that is, a conscious sitting with folded arms. I've already mentioned this above. I repeat, I emphatically repeat: ingenuous people and active figures are all active simply because they are dull and narrow-minded. How to explain it? Here's how: as a consequence of their narrow-mindedness, they take the most immediate and secondary causes for the primary ones, and thus become convinced more quickly and easily than others that they have found an indisputable basis for their doings, and so they feel at ease; and that, after all, is the main thing. For in order to begin to act, one must first be completely at ease, so that no more doubts remain. Well, and how am I, for example, to set myself at ease? Where are the primary causes on which I can rest, where are my bases? Where am I going to get them? I exercise thinking, and, consequently, for me every primary cause immediately drags with it yet another, still more primary one, and so on ad infinitum. Such is precisely the essence of all consciousness and thought. So, once again it's the laws of nature. And what, finally, is the result? The same old thing. Remember: I was speaking just now about revenge. (You probably didn't grasp it.) I said: a man takes revenge because he finds justice in it. That means he has found a primary cause, a basis - namely, justice. So he is set at ease on all sides and, consequently, takes his revenge calmly and successfully, being convinced that he is doing an honest and just thing. Whereas I do not see any justice here, nor do I find any virtue in it, and, consequently, if I set about taking revenge, it will be solely out of wickedness. Wickedness could, of course, overcome everything, all my doubts, and thus could serve quite successfully in place of a primary cause, precisely in that it is not a cause. But what's to be done if there is also no wickedness in me? (I did begin with that just now.) The spite in me, again as a consequence of those cursed laws of consciousness, undergoes a chemical breakdown. Before your eyes the object vanishes, the reasons evaporate, the culprit is not to be found, the offense becomes not an offense but a fatum, something like a toothache, for which no one is to blame, and, consequently, what remains is again the same way out - that is, to give the wall a painful beating. And so you just wave it aside, because you haven't found the primary cause. But try getting blindly carried away by your feelings, without reasoning, without a primary cause, driving consciousness away at least for a time; start hating, or fall in love, only so as not to sit with folded arms. The day after tomorrow, at the very latest, you'll begin to despise yourself for having knowingly hoodwinked yourself. The result: a soap bubble, and inertia. Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble - that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.
VI
Oh, if I were doing nothing only out of laziness. Lord, how I'd respect myself then. Respect myself precisely because I'd at least be capable of having laziness in me; there would be in me at least one, as it were, positive quality, which I myself could be sure of. Question: who is he? Answer: a lazybones. Now, it would be most agreeable to hear that about myself. It means I'm positively defined; it means there's something to say about me. "Lazybones!" - now, that is a title and a mission, it's a career, sirs. No joking, it really is. By rights I'm then a member of the foremost club, and my sole occupation is ceaselessly respecting myself. I knew a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being a fine judge of Lafite. He regarded it as his positive merit and never doubted himself. He died not merely with a serene but with a triumphant conscience, and he was perfectly right. And so I would choose a career for myself: I would be a lazybones and a glutton, and not just an ordinary one, but, for example, one sympathizing with everything beautiful and lofty. How do you like that? I've long been fancying it. This "beautiful and lofty" has indeed weighed heavy on my head in my forty years; but that's my forty years, while then -oh, then it would be different! I would at once find an appropriate activity for myself - namely, drinking the health of all that is beautiful and lofty. I would seize every occasion, first to shed a tear into my glass, and then to drink it for all that is beautiful and lofty. I would then turn everything in the world into the beautiful and lofty; in the vilest, most unquestionable trash I would discover the beautiful and lofty. I'd become as tearful as a sodden sponge. An artist, for example, has painted a Ge picture. 9 I immediately drink the health of the artist who has painted the Ge picture, because I love all that is beautiful and lofty. An author has written "as anyone pleases"; 10 I immediately drink the health of "anyone who pleases," because I love all that is "beautiful and lofty." For this I'll demand to be respected, I'll persecute whoever does not show me respect. I live peacefully, I die solemnly - why, this is charming, utterly charming! And I'd grow myself such a belly then, I'd fashion such a triple chin for myself, I'd fix myself up such a ruby nose that whoever came along would say, looking at me: "Now, there's a plus! There's a real positive!" And, think what you will, it's most agreeable to hear such comments in our negative age, gentlemen.
VII
But these are all golden dreams. Oh, tell me, who first announced, who was the first to proclaim that man does dirty only because he doesn't know his real interests; and that were he to be enlightened, were his eyes to be opened to his real, normal interests, man would immediately stop doing dirty, would immediately become good and noble, because, being enlightened and understanding his real profit, he would see his real profit precisely in the good, and it's common knowledge that no man can act knowingly against his own profit, consequently, out of necessity, so to speak, he would start doing good? Oh, the babe! oh, the pure, innocent child! and when was it, to begin with, in all these thousands of years, that man acted solely for his own profit? What is to be done with the millions of facts testifying to how people knowingly, that is, fully understanding their real profit, would put it in second place and throw themselves onto another path, a risk, a perchance, not compelled by anyone or anything, but precisely as if they simply did not want the designated path, and stubbornly, willfully pushed off onto another one, difficult, absurd, searching for it all but in the dark. So, then, this stubbornness and willfulness were really more agreeable to them than any profit… Profit! What is profit? And will you take it upon yourself to define with perfect exactitude precisely what man's profit consists in? And what if it so happens that on occasion man's profit not only may but precisely must consist in sometimes wishing what is bad for himself, and not what is profitable? And if so, if there can be such a case, then the whole rule goes up in smoke. What do you think, can such a case occur? You're laughing; laugh then, gentlemen, only answer me: has man's profit been calculated quite correctly? Isn't there something that not only has not been but even cannot be fitted into any classification? Because, gentlemen, as far as I know, you have taken your whole inventory of human profits from an average of statistical figures and scientifico-economic formulas. Because profit for you is prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace, and so on and so forth; so that a man who, for example, openly and knowingly went against this whole inventory would, in your opinion - well, and also in mine, of course - be an obscurantist or a complete madman, right? But here is the surprising thing: how does it happen that all these statisticians, sages, and lovers of mankind, in calculating human profits, constantly omit one profit? They don't even take it into account in the way it ought to be taken, and yet the whole account depends on that. It's no great trouble just to take it, this profit, and include it in the list. But that's the whole bane of it, that this tricky profit doesn't fall into any classification, doesn't fit into any list. I, for instance, have a friend… Eh, gentlemen! but he's your friend as well; and whose friend is he not! Preparing to do something, this gentleman will at once expound to you, with great eloquence and clarity, precisely how he must needs act in accordance with the laws of reason and truth. Moreover: with passion and excitement he will talk to you of real, normal human interests; with mockery he will reproach those shortsighted fools who understand neither their own profit nor the true meaning of virtue; and then, exactly a quarter of an hour later, without any sudden, extraneous cause, but precisely because of something within him that is stronger than all his interests, he'll cut quite a different caper, that is, go obviously against what he himself was just saying: against the laws of reason, against his own profit; well, in short, against everything… I warn you that my friend is a collective person, and therefore it is somehow difficult to blame him alone. That's just the thing, gentlemen, that there may well exist something that is dearer for almost every man than his very best profit, or (so as not to violate logic) that there is this one most profitable profit (precisely the omitted one, the one we were just talking about), which is chiefer and more profitable than all other profits, and for which a man is ready, if need be, to go against all laws, that is, against reason, honor, peace, prosperity - in short, against all these beautiful and useful things - only so as to attain this primary, most profitable profit which is dearer to him than anything else.