Yes, but what should it matter to me? Now that I've become sane, I shouldn't be thinking about such things at all. "Think about myself!" — this is my new motto. It took some effort to persuade myself to use that as a guide for every act of this new "life" of mine, let's call it that. But somehow, by not doing anything... Enough said. If, for instance, I now stop under the window of a house where I know there are people crying, I must immediately look for my own bewildered and haggard image in the pane of that window. When it appears, it has the express obligation to shout down to me from up there, as it lowers its head slightly and points a finger at its breast: "And me?"

Just like that.

Always: "And me?" on all occasions. For therein lies the basis of true wisdom.

Instead when I was crazy...

2. The Foundation of Morality

When I was crazy, I didn't feel I was inside myself, which is like saying, I wasn't at home within myself. I had, in fact, become a hotel, open to everyone. And if I would but tap my forehead a bit, I would feel that there were always people who had taken up lodgings there: poor souls who needed my help. I had, likewise, many, many other tenants in my heart. Nor can anyone say that my hands and legs were for my own personal use, but rather for the use of the unhappy people within me who sent me here and there to continuously tend to their affairs.

I could no sooner say "I" to myself than an echo would immediately repeat "I, I, I" for so many others, as if I had a flock of sparrows within me. And this meant that if, let us say, I was hungry and would tell myself that, so, so, many others within me would repeat on their own behalf: "I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry." Naturally I felt I had to provide for them and always regretted not being able to do so for everyone. I viewed myself, in brief, as being part of a mutual aid society with the universe. But since at that time I needed no one, that "mutual" had meaning only for the others.

The strangest part, however, was that I thought I could justify my madness; actually, to tell the whole truth without shame, I had gone so far as to make an outline of a unique treatise that I intended to write and that was to be entitled The Foundation of Morality.

Here in my drawer I have my notes for this treatise, and once in a while in the evening (while Marta is taking her usual after-dinner nap in the adjoining room), I take them out and reread them very, very slowly to myself. I do this secretly and, admittedly, with some pleasure and bewilderment, because it's undeniable that I reasoned quite well, when I was crazy.

I should really laugh about this, but I can't, perhaps for the rather particular reason that the majority of my arguments were aimed at converting that unfortunate woman who was my first wife and of whom I will speak later in order to furnish the most incontestable proof of the blatantly mad acts of those times.

From these notes I surmise that the treatise The Foundation of Morality no doubt was to consist of dialogs between that first wife of mine and myself, or perhaps of apologs. One small notebook, for example, is entitled The Timid Young Man, and certainly in it I was referring to that fine boy, son of a country merchant who was a business associate of mine. This boy would come to the city, sent by his father to visit me, and that wretched woman would invite him to have dinner with us in order to have some fun at his expense.

I'm transcribing from that small notebook:

Oh, Mirina, tell me. What sort of eyes do you have? Can't you see that the poor boy has caught on that you intend to make fun of him? You consider him stupid, but actually he's only timid — so timid that he doesn't know how to avoid the ridicule you expose him to, however much it makes him suffer internally. Oh Mirina, if the boy's suffering were no longer just something that made you laugh, if you weren't only aware of your wicked pleasure, but also at the same time, of his pain, don't you think you'd stop making him suffer, because your pleasure would be disturbed and destroyed by your awareness of someone else's pain? Obviously, Mirina, you're acting without being fully aware of your action, and you feel its effect only in yourself.

That's it exactly. You must admit, for a madman, it's not bad. The trouble was that I didn't realize that it's one thing to reason, and quite another to live. A half, or about a half, of all those wretches who are kept locked up in asylums — aren't they perhaps people who wanted to live in accordance with common abstract reasoning? How much proof, how many examples I could cite here, if every sane individual today didn't recognize the fact that so many things one does or says in life, as well as certain customs and traditions, are really irrational, so that whoever justifies them is crazy.

Such was I, after all, and such did I appear in my treatise. I would not have become aware of it, had Marta not lent me her eyeglasses.

Meanwhile, those who do not wish to content themselves with a belief in God, because they say that that belief is founded on a sentiment that does not acknowledge reason, might be curious to see how I justified His existence in this treatise of mine. The trouble is, I now admit that this would be a difficult God for sane people. Indeed, it would also be quite an impractical one, because whoever would accept Him, would have to act towards others as I once did, that is, like a madman, treating others as one does himself, since those others are conscious beings just as we are. Whoever would truly do that, and would attribute to others a reality identical to his own, would of necessity possess the idea of a reality common to everyone, of a truth and even of an existence that transcends us — namely, God.

But, I repeat, not for sane people.

Meanwhile, it's curious to note that when I read The Little Flowers of St. Francis, for example (following our old custom of reading some good book before going to bed), Marta interrupts me from time to time to exclaim with reverence and great admiration:

"What a saint! What a saint!"

Like that.

It's probably a temptation from the devil, but I put the book down on my lap and look at her for a while to find out whether she's really speaking earnestly in my presence. Now really, if one follows logic, St.