and against all facts, without existing against this fact and against all facts, just as it is always possible for them to exist in (and with) a fact and with all facts and against one and all facts and thus, above all, against the fact that existence is unbearable and horrible. It is always a question of intellectual indifference and intellectual acuity and of the ruthlessness of intellectual indifference and intellectual acuity, says Oehler. Most people, over ninety-eight percent, says Oehler, possess neither indifference of intellect nor acuity of intellect and do not even have the faculty of reason. The whole of history to date proves this without a doubt. Wherever we look, neither indifference of intellect, nor acuity of intellect, says Oehler, everything is a giant, a shatteringly long history without intellectual indifference and without acuity of intellect and so without the faculty of reason. If we look at history, it is above all its total lack of the faculty of reason that depresses us, to say nothing of intellectual indifference and acuity. To that extent it is no exaggeration to say that the whole of history is a history totally without reason, which makes it a dead history. We have, it is true, says Oehler, if we look at history, if we look into history, which a person like me is from time to time brave enough to do, a tremendous nature behind us, actually under us but in reality no history at all. History is a historical lie, is what I maintain, says Oehler. But let us return to the individual, says Oehler. To have the faculty of reason would mean nothing other than breaking off with history and first and foremost with one’s own personal history. From one moment to the next simply to give up, accepting nothing more, that’s what having the faculty of reason means, not accepting a person and not a thing, not a system and also, in the nature of things, not accepting a thought, just simply nothing more and then to commit suicide in this literally single revolutionary realization. But to think like this leads inevitably to sudden intellectual madness, says Oehler, as we know, and to what Karrer has had to pay for with sudden total madness. He, Oehler, did not believe that Karrer would ever be released from Steinhof, his madness is too fundamental for that, says Oehler. His own daily discipline had been to school himself more and more in the most exciting and in the most tremendous and most epoch-making thoughts with an ever greater determination, but only to the furthest possible point before absolute madness. If you go as far as Karrer, says Oehler, then you are suddenly decisively and absolutely mad and have, at one stroke, become useless. Go on thinking more and more and more and more with ever greater intensity and with an ever greater ruthlessness and with an ever greater fanaticism for finding out, says Oehler, but never for one moment think too far. At any moment we can think too far, says Oehler, simply go too far in our thoughts, says Oehler, and everything become valueless. I am now going to return once again, says Oehler, to what Karrer always came back to: that there is actually no faculty of reason in this world, or rather in what we call this world, because we have always called it this world, if we analyze what the faculty of reason is, we have to say that there simply is no faculty of reason — but Karrer had already analyzed that, says Oehler — that actually, as Karrer quite rightly said and the conclusion at which he finally arrived by his continued consideration of this incredibly fascinating subject, there is no faculty of reason, only an underfaculty of reason. The so-called human faculty of reason, says Oehler, is, as Karrer said, always a mere underfaculty of reason, even a subfaculty of reason. For if a faculty of reason were possible, says Oehler, then history would be possible, but history is not possible, because the faculty of reason is not possible and history does not arise from an underfaculty or a subfaculty of reason, a discovery of Karrer’s, says Oehler. The fact of the underfaculty of reason, or of the so-called subfaculty of reason, says Oehler, does without doubt make possible the continued existence of nature through human beings. If I had a faculty of reason, says Oehler, if I had an unbroken faculty of reason, he says, I would long ago have committed suicide. What is to be understood from, or by, what I am saying, says Oehler, can be understood, what is not to be understood cannot be understood. Even if everything cannot be understood, everything is nevertheless unambiguous, says Oehler. What we call thinking has in reality nothing to do with the faculty of reason, says Oehler, Karrer is right about that when he says that we have no faculty of reason because we think, for to have a faculty of reason means not to think and so to have no thoughts. What we have is nothing but a substitute for a faculty of reason. A substitute for thought makes our existence possible. All the thinking that is done is only substitute thinking, because actual thinking is not possible, because there is no such thing as actual thinking, because nature excludes actual thinking, because it has to exclude actual thinking. You may think I’m mad, says Oehler, but actual, and that means real, thinking is completely excluded. But what we think is thinking we call thinking, just as what we consider to be walking we call walking, just as we say we are walking when we believe that we are walking and are actually walking, says Oehler. What I’ve just said has absolutely nothing to do with cause and effect, says Oehler. And there’s no objection to saying thinking, where it’s not a question of thinking, and there’s no objection to saying faculty of reason where there’s no possibility of its being a question of faculty of reason and there’s no objection to saying concepts where they are not at issue. It is only by designating as actions and things actions and things that are in no way actions and things, because there is no way that they can be actions and things, that we get any farther, it is only in this way, says Oehler, that something is possible, indeed that anything is possible. Experience is a fact about which we know nothing and above all it is something which we cannot get to the root of, says Oehler. But on the other hand it is just as much a fact that we always act exactly or at least much more in concert with this fact, which is what I do (and recognize) when I say, these children, whom we see here in Klosterneuburgerstrasse, have been made because the faculty of reason was suspended, although we know that the concepts used in that statement, and as a result the words used in the statement, are completely false and thus we know that everything in the statement is false. Yet if we cling to our experience, which represents a zenith, and we can no longer sustain ourselves, then we no longer exist, says Oehler. Offhand, therefore I say, these children whom we see here in Klosterneuburgerstrasse were made because the faculty of reason was suspended. And it is only, because I do not cling to experience, that everything is possible. It is only possible in this way to utter a statement like: people simply walk along the street and make a child, or the statement: people have made a child because their faculty of reason is suspended. Oehler says, these people who make a child do not ask themselves anything, is a statement that is completely correct and at the same time completely false, like all statements. You have to know, says Oehler, that every statement that is uttered and thought and that exists is at the same time correct and at the same time false, if we are talking about proper statements. He now interrupts the conversation and says: In fact these people do not ask themselves anything when they make a child although they must know that to make a child and above all to make your own child means making a misfortune and thus making a child and thus making one’s own child is nothing short of infamy. And when the child has been made, says Oehler, those who have made it allow the state to pay for it, this child they have made of their own free will. The state has to be responsible for these millions and millions of children who have been made completely of people’s own free will, for the, as we know, completely superfluous children, who have contributed nothing but new, millionfold misfortune. The hysteria of history, says Oehler, overlooks the fact that in the case of all the children who are made it is a question of misfortune that has been made and a question of superfluity that has been made. We cannot spare the child makers the reproach that they have made their children without using their heads, and in the basest and lowest manner, although, as we know, they are not mindless. There is no greater catastrophe, says Oehler, than these children made mindlessly and whom the state, which has been betrayed by these children, has to pay for. Anyone who makes a child, says Oehler, deserves to be punished with the most extreme possible punishment and not to be subsidized. It is nothing but this completely false, so-called social, enthusiasm for subsidy by the state — which as we know is not social in the least, and of which it is said that it is nothing but the most distasteful anachronism in existence, and which is guilty of the fact that the crime of bringing a child into the world, which I call the greatest crime of all, says Oehler — that this crime, says Oehler, is not punished but is subsidized. The state should have the responsibility, Oehler now says, for punishing people who make children, but no, it subsidizes the crime. And the fact that all children who are made are made mindlessly, says Oehler, is a fact. And whatever is made mindlessly and above all whatever is made that is mindless should be punished. It should be the job of parliament and of parliaments to propose and carry out laws against the mindless making of children and to introduce and impose the supreme punishment, and everyone has his own supreme punishment, for the mindless making of children. After the introduction of such a law, says Oehler, the world would very quickly change to its own advantage. A state that subsidizes the making of children and not only the mindless making of children without using one’s head, says Oehler, is a mindless state, certainly not a progressive one, says Oehler. The state that subsidizes the making of children has neither experience nor knowledge. Such a state is criminal, because it is quite consciously blind, such a state is not up-to-date, says Oehler, but we know that the up-to-date or, let’s say, the so-called up-to-date state is simply not possible and thus this, our present, state cannot be in any shape or form a present-day state. Anyone who makes a child, says Oehler, knows that he is making a misfortune, he is making something that will be unhappy, because it has to be unhappy, something that is by nature totally catastrophic, in which again there is nothing else except what is by nature and which is bound to be totally catastrophic. He is making an endless misfortune, even if he makes only one child, says Oehler. It is a crime. We may never cease to say that anyone who makes a child, whether mindlessly or not, says Oehler, is committing a crime. At this moment, as we are walking along Klosterneuburgerstrasse, the situation is that there are so many, indeed hundreds of, children on Klosterneuburgerstrasse, and this prompts Oehler to continue his remarks about the making of children. To make a human being about whom we know that he does not want the life that has been made for him, says Oehler, for the fact that there is not a single human being who wants the life that has been made for him will certainly come out sooner or later, and before that person ceases to exist no matter who it is: to make such a person is really criminal. People in their baseness — disguised as helplessness — simply convince themselves that they want to have their lives, whereas in reality they never wished to have their lives, because they do not wish to perish because of the fact that nothing disgusts them more than their lives and, at root, nothing more than their irresponsible father, whether these fathers have already left their progeny or not, they do not want to perish because of this fact. All of these people convince themselves of this unbelievable lie. Millions convince themselves of this lie. They wish to have their lives, they say, and bear witness to it in public, day in day out, but the truth is that they do not want to have their lives. No one wants to have his life, says Oehler, everyone has come to terms with his life, but he does not want to have it, if he once has his life, says Oehler, he has to pretend to himself that his life is something, but in reality and in truth it is nothing but horrible to him. Life is not worth a single day, says Oehler, if you will only take the trouble to look at these hundreds of people here on this street, if you keep your eyes open where people are. If you walk along this street overflowing with children just once and keep your eyes open, says Oehler. So much helplessness and so much frightfulness and so much misery, says Oehler. The truth is no different from what I see here: frightful. I ask myself, says Oehler, how can so much helplessness and so much misfortune and so much misery be possible? That nature can create so much misfortune and so much palpable horror. That nature can be so ruthless toward its most helpless and pitiable creatures. This limitless capacity for suffering, says Oehler. This limitless capricious will to procreate and then to survive misfortune. In point of fact, right here in this street, this individual sickness, which runs into the thousands. Uncomprehending and helpless, says Oehler, you have to watch, day in day out, the making of masses of new and ever greater human misfortune, so much human ugliness, so much human atrocity, he says, every day, with unparalleled regularity and stupidity. You know yourself, says Oehler, just as I know myself, and all these people are also no different from us, but only unhappy and helpless and fundamentally lost. He, Oehler, to speak radically, stood for the gradual, total demise of the human race, if he had his way, no more children not a single one and thus no more human beings, not a single one. The world would slowly die out, says Oehler. Ever fewer human beings, finally no human beings at all, not a single human being more. But what he has just said, the earth gradually dying out and human beings growing fewer and fewer in the most natural way and finally dying out altogether, is only the raving of a mind that is already totally, and in the most total manner, working with the process of thinking and, in Oehler’s own words, a