第 七 章 · 第7章

But these are all golden dreams. Oh, tell me, who was it first

announced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things

because he does not know his own interests; and that if he were

enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man

would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and

noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage,

he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else, and we all

know that not one man can, consciously, act against his own interests,

consequently, so to say, through necessity, he would begin doing good?

Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! Why, in the first place,

when in all these thousands of years has there been a time when man has

acted only from his own interest? What is to be done with the millions

of facts that bear witness that men, _consciously_, that is fully

understanding their real interests, have left them in the background

and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger,

compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were,

simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, wilfully,

struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the

darkness. So, I suppose, this obstinacy and perversity were pleasanter

to them than any advantage.... Advantage! What is advantage? And will

you take it upon yourself to define with perfect accuracy in what the

advantage of man consists? And what if it so happens that a man’s

advantage, _sometimes_, not only may, but even must, consist in his

desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not

advantageous. And if so, if there can be such a case, the whole

principle falls into dust. What do you think—are there such cases? You

laugh; laugh away, gentlemen, but only answer me: have man’s advantages

been reckoned up with perfect certainty? Are there not some which not

only have not been included but cannot possibly be included under any

classification? You see, you gentlemen have, to the best of my

knowledge, taken your whole register of human advantages from the

averages of statistical figures and politico-economical formulas. Your

advantages are prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace—and so on, and so on.

So that the man who should, for instance, go openly and knowingly in

opposition to all that list would to your thinking, and indeed mine,

too, of course, be an obscurantist or an absolute madman: would not he?

But, you know, this is what is surprising: why does it so happen that

all these statisticians, sages and lovers of humanity, when they reckon

up human advantages invariably leave out one? They don’t even take it

into their reckoning in the form in which it should be taken, and the

whole reckoning depends upon that. It would be no greater matter, they

would simply have to take it, this advantage, and add it to the list.

But the trouble is, that this strange advantage does not fall under any

classification and is not in place in any list. I have a friend for

instance ... Ech! gentlemen, but of course he is your friend, too; and

indeed there is no one, no one to whom he is not a friend! When he

prepares for any undertaking this gentleman immediately explains to

you, elegantly and clearly, exactly how he must act in accordance with

the laws of reason and truth. What is more, he will talk to you with

excitement and passion of the true normal interests of man; with irony

he will upbraid the short-sighted fools who do not understand their own

interests, nor the true significance of virtue; and, within a quarter

of an hour, without any sudden outside provocation, but simply through

something inside him which is stronger than all his interests, he will

go off on quite a different tack—that is, act in direct opposition to

what he has just been saying about himself, in opposition to the laws

of reason, in opposition to his own advantage, in fact in opposition to

everything ... I warn you that my friend is a compound personality and

therefore it is difficult to blame him as an individual. The fact is,

gentlemen, it seems there must really exist something that is dearer to

almost every man than his greatest advantages, or (not to be illogical)

there is a most advantageous advantage (the very one omitted of which

we spoke just now) which is more important and more advantageous than

all other advantages, for the sake of which a man if necessary is ready

to act in opposition to all laws; that is, in opposition to reason,

honour, peace, prosperity—in fact, in opposition to all those excellent

and useful things if only he can attain that fundamental, most

advantageous advantage which is dearer to him than all. “Yes, but it’s

advantage all the same,” you will retort. But excuse me, I’ll make the

point clear, and it is not a case of playing upon words. What matters

is, that this advantage is remarkable from the very fact that it breaks

down all our classifications, and continually shatters every system

constructed by lovers of mankind for the benefit of mankind. In fact,

it upsets everything. But before I mention this advantage to you, I

want to compromise myself personally, and therefore I boldly declare

that all these fine systems, all these theories for explaining to

mankind their real normal interests, in order that inevitably striving

to pursue these interests they may at once become good and noble—are,

in my opinion, so far, mere logical exercises! Yes, logical exercises.

Why, to maintain this theory of the regeneration of mankind by means of

the pursuit of his own advantage is to my mind almost the same thing

... as to affirm, for instance, following Buckle, that through

civilisation mankind becomes softer, and consequently less bloodthirsty

and less fitted for warfare. Logically it does seem to follow from his

arguments. But man has such a predilection for systems and abstract

deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is

ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic. I

take this example because it is the most glaring instance of it. Only

look about you: blood is being spilt in streams, and in the merriest

way, as though it were champagne. Take the whole of the nineteenth

century in which Buckle lived. Take Napoleon—the Great and also the

present one. Take North America—the eternal union. Take the farce of

Schleswig-Holstein.... And what is it that civilisation softens in us?

The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for

variety of sensations—and absolutely nothing more. And through the

development of this many-sidedness man may come to finding enjoyment in

bloodshed. In fact, this has already happened to him. Have you noticed

that it is the most civilised gentlemen who have been the subtlest

slaughterers, to whom the Attilas and Stenka Razins could not hold a

candle, and if they are not so conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka

Razins it is simply because they are so often met with, are so ordinary

and have become so familiar to us. In any case civilisation has made

mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more

loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and

with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now

we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination,

and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for

yourselves. They say that Cleopatra (excuse an instance from Roman

history) was fond of sticking gold pins into her slave-girls’ breasts

and derived gratification from their screams and writhings. You will

say that that was in the comparatively barbarous times; that these are

barbarous times too, because also, comparatively speaking, pins are

stuck in even now; that though man has now learned to see more clearly

than in barbarous ages, he is still far from having learnt to act as

reason and science would dictate. But yet you are fully convinced that

he will be sure to learn when he gets rid of certain old bad habits,

and when common sense and science have completely re-educated human

nature and turned it in a normal direction. You are confident that then

man will cease from _intentional_ error and will, so to say, be

compelled not to want to set his will against his normal interests.

That is not all; then, you say, science itself will teach man (though

to my mind it’s a superfluous luxury) that he never has really had any

caprice or will of his own, and that he himself is something of the

nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ, and that there are,

besides, things called the laws of nature; so that everything he does

is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of

nature. Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and

man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will become

exceedingly easy for him. All human actions will then, of course, be

tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of

logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still,

there would be published certain edifying works of the nature of

encyclopaedic lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly

calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or

adventures in the world.

Then—this is all what you say—new economic relations will be

established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical

exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the

twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be

provided. Then the “Palace of Crystal” will be built. Then ... In fact,

those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is

my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then

(for what will one have to do when everything will be calculated and

tabulated), but on the other hand everything will be extraordinarily

rational. Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom

sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not

matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say

people will be thankful for the gold pins then. Man is stupid, you

know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is

so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation.

I, for instance, would not be in the least surprised if all of a

sudden, _à propos_ of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a

gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical,

countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all:

“I say, gentleman, hadn’t we better kick over the whole show and

scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to

the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish

will!” That again would not matter, but what is annoying is that he

would be sure to find followers—such is the nature of man. And all that

for the most foolish reason, which, one would think, was hardly worth

mentioning: that is, that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he

may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his

reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to

one’s own interests, and sometimes one _positively ought_ (that is my

idea). One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice, however

wild it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy—is that

very “most advantageous advantage” which we have overlooked, which

comes under no classification and against which all systems and

theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these

wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has

made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice?

What man wants is simply _independent_ choice, whatever that

independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course,

the devil only knows what choice.