(I am sure you did not

take it in.) I said that a man revenges himself because he sees justice in it.

Therefore he has found a primary cause, that is, justice. And so he is at

rest on all sides, and consequently he carries out his revenge calmly and

successfully, being persuaded that he is doing a just and honest thing. But

I see no justice in it, I find no sort of virtue in it either, and consequently

if I attempt to revenge myself, it is only out of spite. Spite, of course,

might overcome everything, all my doubts, and so might serve quite

successfully in place of a primary cause, precisely because it is not a

cause. But what is to be done if I have not even spite (I began with that

just now, you know). In consequence again of those accursed laws of

consciousness, anger in me is subject to chemical disintegration. You

look into it, the object flies off into air, your reasons evaporate, the

criminal is not to be found, the wrong becomes not a wrong but a

phantom, something like the toothache, for which no one is to blame,

and consequently there is only the same outlet left again--that is, to beat

the wall as hard as you can. So you give it up with a wave of the hand

because you have not found a fundamental cause. And try letting yourself

be carried away by your feelings, blindly, without reflection, without a

primary cause, repelling consciousness at least for a time; hate or love, if

only not to sit with your hands folded. The day after tomorrow, at the

latest, you will begin despising yourself for having knowingly deceived

yourself. Result: a soap-bubble and inertia. Oh, gentlemen, do you

know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my

life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am

a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be

done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble,

that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?

VI

Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should

have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I

should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have

been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed

myself. Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very pleasant it

would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean that I was positively

defined, it would mean that there was something to say about me.

"Sluggard"--why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career. Do not jest, it is so. I should then be a member of the best club by right, and should find

my occupation in continually respecting myself. I knew a gentleman who

prided himself all his life on being a connoisseur of Lafitte. He considered

this as his positive virtue, and never doubted himself. He died, not simply

with a tranquil, but with a triumphant conscience, and he was quite right,

too. Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a

sluggard and a glutton, not a simple one, but, for instance, one with

sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful. How do you like that? I

have long had visions of it. That "sublime and beautiful" weighs heavily

on my mind at forty But that is at forty; then--oh, then it would have

been different! I should have found for myself a form of activity in keeping

with it, to be precise, drinking to the health of everything "sublime and

beautiful." I should have snatched at every opportunity to drop a tear into

my glass and then to drain it to all that is "sublime and beautiful." I should then have turned everything into the sublime and the beautiful; in the

nastiest, unquestionable trash, I should have sought out the sublime and

the beautiful. I should have exuded tears like a wet sponge. An artist, for

instance, paints a picture worthy of Gay. At once I drink to the health of

the artist who painted the picture worthy of Gay, because I love all that is

"sublime and beautiful." An author has written AS YOU WILL: at once I drink to the health of "anyone you will" because I love all that is "sublime and beautiful."

I should claim respect for doing so. I should persecute anyone who

would not show me respect.