الفصل الفصل 3 · 第3章

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 vérité_. 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 vérité_. 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.