onciled to it simply because
it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.

As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did
contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as
twice two makes four. Oh, absurdity of absurdities! How much better
it is to understand it all, to recognise it all, all the
impossibilities and the stone wall; not to be reconciled to one of
those impossibilities and stone walls if it disgusts you to be
reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable, logical
combinations to reach the most revolting conclusions on the everlasting
theme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself somehow to blame,
though again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the least,
and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into
luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for
you to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never
will have, an object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a
bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no
knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these
uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the
more you do not know, the worse the ache.

IV

"Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding enjoyment in toothache next," you
cry, with a laugh.

"Well, even in toothache there is enjoyment," I answer. I had
toothache for a whole month and I know there is. In that case, of
course, people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not
candid moans, they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole
point. The enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans;
if he did not feel enjoyment in them he would not moan. It is a good
example, gentlemen, and I will develop it. Those moans express in the
first place all the aimlessness of your pain, which is so humiliating
to your consciousness; the whole legal system of nature on which you
spit disdainfully, of course, but from which you suffer all the same
while she does not. They express the consciousness that you have no
enemy to punish, but that you have pain; the consciousness that in
spite of all possible Wagenheims you are in complete slavery to your
teeth; that if someone wishes it, your teeth will leave off aching, and
if he does not, they will go on aching another three months; and that
finally if you are still contumacious and still protest, all