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, A 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.