It may be

the law of logic, but not the law of humanity. You think, gentlemen,

perhaps that I am mad? Allow me to defend myself. I agree that man is

pre-eminently a creative animal, predestined to strive consciously for an

object and to engage in engineering--that is, incessantly and eternally to

make new roads, WHEREVER THEY MAY LEAD. But the reason why he wants

sometimes to go off at a tangent may just be that he is PREDESTINED to make

the road, and perhaps, too, that however stupid the "direct" practical

man may be, the thought sometimes will occur to him that the road

almost always does lead SOMEWHERE, and that the destination it leads to is

less important than the process of making it, and that the chief thing is to

save the well-conducted child from despising engineering, and so giving

way to the fatal idleness, which, as we all know, is the mother of all the

vices. Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute.

But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? Tell

me that! But on that point I want to say a couple of words myself. May it

not be that he loves chaos and destruction (there can be no disputing that

he does sometimes love it) because he is instinctively afraid of attaining

his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows,

perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in

love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does

not want to live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of

LES ANIMAUX DOMESTIQUES--such as the ants, the sheep, and so on. Now the

ants have quite a different taste. They have a marvellous edifice of that

pattern which endures for ever--the ant-heap.

With the ant-heap the respectable race of ants began and with the ant-

heap they will probably end, which does the greatest credit to their

perseverance and good sense. But man is a frivolous and incongruous

creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game,

not the end of it. And who knows (there is no saying with certainty),

perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this

incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the

thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as

positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life,

gentlemen, but is the beginning of death. Anyway, man has always been

afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted

that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses

oceans, sacrifices his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it,

dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be

nothing for him to look for. When workmen have finished their work

they do at least receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken

to the police-station--and there is occupation for a week. But where can

man go? Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him

when he has attained such objects. He loves the process of attaining, but

does not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd. In

fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all.

But yet mathematical certainty is after all, something insufferable. Twice

two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two

makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your

path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing,

but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes

a very charming thing too.

And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the

normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to

welfare--is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards

advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being?

Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a

benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately,

in love with suffering, and that is a fact. There is no need to appeal

to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself, if you are a man and

have lived at all. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, to care only

for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it

is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things. I hold no brief for

suffering nor for well-being either. I am standing for ... my caprice, and

for its being guaranteed to me when necessary.