x; 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 classi