That's why I've chosen this example, because it is an all too vivid one. Why, look around you: blood is flowing in rivers, and in such a jolly way besides, like champagne. Take this whole nineteenth century of ours, in which Buckle also lived. Take Napoleon - both the great one and the present one. Take North America - that everlasting union. Take, finally, this caricature of a Schleswig-Holstein… 12 What is it that civilization softens in us? Civilization cultivates only a versatility of sensations in man, and… decidedly nothing else. And through the development of this versatility, man may even reach the point of finding pleasure in blood. Indeed, this has already happened to him. Have you noticed that the most refined blood-shedders have almost all been the most civilized gentlemen, to whom the various Attilas and Stenka Razins 13 sometimes could not hold a candle? And if they don't strike one as sharply as Attila or Stenka Razin, it is precisely because they occur too frequently, they are too ordinary, too familiar a sight. If man has not become more bloodthirsty from civilization, at any rate he has certainly become bloodthirsty in a worse, a viler way than formerly. Formerly, he saw justice in bloodshed and with a quiet conscience exterminated whoever he had to; while now, though we do regard bloodshed as vile, we still occupy ourselves with this vileness, and even more than formerly. Which is worse? - decide for yourselves. They say that Cleopatra (excuse this example from Roman history) liked to stick golden pins into her slave girls' breasts, and took pleasure in their screaming and writhing. You'll say that this was, relatively speaking, in barbarous times; that now, too, the times are barbarous because (again relatively speaking) now, too, pins get stuck in; that now, too, though man has learned to see more clearly on occasion than in barbarous times, he is still far from having grown accustomed to acting as reason and science dictate. But even so you are perfectly confident that he will not fail to grow accustomed once one or two old bad habits have passed and once common sense and science have thoroughly re- educated and given a normal direction to human nature. You are confident that man will then voluntarily cease making mistakes and, willy-nilly, so to speak, refuse to set his will at variance with his normal interests. Moreover: then, you say, science itself will teach man (though this is really a luxury in my opinion) that in fact he has neither will nor caprice, and never did have any, and that he himself is nothing but a sort of piano key or a sprig in an organ; 14 and that, furthermore, there also exist in the world the laws of nature; so that whatever he does is done not at all according to his own wanting, but of itself, according to the laws of nature. Consequently, these laws of nature need only be discovered, and then man will no longer be answerable for his actions, and his life will become extremely easy. Needless to say, all human actions will then be calculated according to these laws, mathematically, like a table of logarithms, up to 108,000, and entered into a calendar; or, better still, some well-meaning publications will appear, like the present-day encyclopedic dictionaries, in which everything will be so precisely calculated and designated that there will no longer be any actions or adventures in the world.
And it is then - this is still you speaking - that new economic relations will come, quite ready-made, and also calculated with mathematical precision, so that all possible questions will vanish in an instant, essentially because they will have been given all possible answers. Then the crystal palace will get built. 15 Then… well, in short, then the bird Kagan will come flying. 16 Of course, there's no guaranteeing (this is me speaking now) that it won't, for example, be terribly boring then (because what is there to do if everything's calculated according to some little table?), but, on the other hand, it will all be extremely reasonable. Of course, what inventions can boredom not lead to! Golden pins also get stuck in from boredom, but all that would be nothing. The bad thing is (this is me speaking again) that, for all I know, they may be glad of the golden pins then. Man really is stupid, phenomenally stupid. That is, he's by no means stupid, but rather he's so ungrateful that it would be hard to find the likes of him. I, for example, would not be the least bit surprised if suddenly, out of the blue, amid the universal future reasonableness, some gentleman of ignoble, or, better, of retrograde and jeering physiognomy, should emerge, set his arms akimbo, and say to us all: 'Well, gentlemen, why don't we reduce all this reasonableness to dust with one good kick, for the sole purpose of sending all these logarithms to the devil and living once more according to our own stupid will!' That would still be nothing, but what is offensive is that he'd be sure to find followers: that's how man is arranged. And all this for the emptiest of reasons, which would seem not even worth mentioning: namely, that man, whoever he might be, has always and everywhere liked to act as he wants, and not at all as reason and profit dictate; and one can want even against one's own profit, and one sometimes even positively must (this is my idea now). One's own free and voluntary wanting, one's own caprice, however wild, one's own fancy, though chafed sometimes to the point of madness - all this is that same most profitable profit, the omitted one, which does not fit into any classification, and because of which all systems and theories are constantly blown to the devil. And where did all these sages get the idea that man needs some normal, some virtuous wanting? What made them necessarily imagine that what man needs is necessarily a reasonably profitable wanting? Man needs only independent wanting, whatever this independence may cost and wherever it may lead. Well, and this wanting, the devil knows…
VIII
HA, ha, ha! but in fact, if you want to know, there isn't any wanting!' you interrupt with a guffaw. 'Today's science has even so succeeded in anatomizing man up that we now know that wanting and so-called free will are nothing else but…'
Wait, gentlemen, I myself wanted to begin that way. I confess, I even got scared. I just wanted to cry out that wanting depends on the devil knows what, and thank God, perhaps, for that, but I remembered about this science and… backed off. And just then you started talking. And indeed, well, if one day they really find the formula for all our wantings and caprices -that is, what they depend on, by precisely what laws they occur, precisely how they spread, what they strive for in such-and-such a case, and so on and so forth; a real, mathematical formula, that is - then perhaps man will immediately stop wanting; what's more, perhaps he will certainly stop. Who wants to want according to a little table? Moreover: he will immediately turn from a man into a sprig in an organ or something of the sort; because what is man without desires, without will, and without wantings, if not a sprig in an organ barrel? What do you think?
– let's reckon up the probabilities - can it happen or not?
'Hm…' you decide, 'our wantings are for the most part mistaken owing to a mistaken view of our profit. We sometimes want pure rubbish precisely because, in our stupidity, we see this rubbish as the easiest path to the attainment of some preconceived profit. Well, but when it's all explained, worked out on a piece of paper (which is quite possible because, after all, it's vile and senseless to believe beforehand that there are certain laws of nature which man will never learn) - then, to be sure, there will be no more so-called desires. For if wanting someday gets completely in cahoots with reason, then essentially we shall be reasoning and not wanting, because it really is impossible, for example, while preserving reason, to want senselessness and thus knowingly go against reason and wish yourself harm… And since all wantings and reasonings can indeed be calculated
– because, after all, they will someday discover the laws of our so-called free will - then consequently, and joking aside, something like a little table can be arranged, so that we shall indeed want according to this little table. For if it should someday be worked out and proved to me that when I made a fig at such-and-such a person, it was precisely because I could not do otherwise, and that I was bound to do it with such-and-such a finger, then what is left so free in me, especially if I am a learned man and have completed a course of studies somewhere? No, then I can calculate my life for thirty years ahead; in short, if this does get arranged, then we really will have no choice; we'll have to accept it in any case. And, generally, we ought tirelessly to repeat to ourselves that, precisely at such-and-such a moment, in such-and-such circumstances, nature does not ask our permission; that it must be accepted as it is, and not as we fancy, and if we are really aiming at a little table and a calendar, and… well, and even at a retort, then there's no help for it, we must accept the retort! Or else it will get accepted of itself, without you…'
Yes, sirs, but for me that's just where the hitch comes! You will forgive me, gentlemen, for philosophizing away; it's a matter of forty years underground! Allow me to indulge my fancy a bit. You see: reason, gentlemen, is a fine thing, that is unquestionable, but reason is only reason and satisfies only man's reasoning capacity, while
