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.
'Well, but it is a profit, after all,' you will interrupt me. I beg your pardon, sirs, but we shall speak further of it, and the point is not in a play on words, but in the fact that this profit is remarkable precisely because it destroys all our classifications and constantly shatters all the systems elaborated by lovers of mankind for the happiness of mankind. Interferes with everything, in short. But before naming this profit for you, I want to compromise myself personally, and therefore I boldly declare that all these beautiful systems, all these theories that explain to mankind its true, normal interests, so that, striving necessarily to attain these interests, it would at once become good and noble - all this, in my opinion, is so far only logistics! Yes, sirs, logistics! For merely to assert this theory of the renewal of all mankind by means of a system of its own profits - this, to my mind, is almost the same as… well, let's say, for example, the same as asserting, with Buckle, that man gets softer from civilization and, consequently, becomes less bloodthirsty and less capable of war. 11 Logically, it seems, that's what he comes up with. But man is so partial to systems and abstract conclusions that he is ready intentionally to distort the truth, to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, only so as to justify his logic.
