e will contrive destruction and chaos, will
contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will
launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his
privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may
be by his curse alone he will attain his object--that is, convince
himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all
this, too, can be calculated and tabulated--chaos and darkness and
curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand
would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would
purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I
believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems
to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a
man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be
by cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted to
rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on
something we don't know?

You will scream at me (that is, if you condescend to do so) that no one
is touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my
will should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own
normal interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic.

Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to
tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two make
four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant
that!

IX

Gentlemen, I am joking, and I know myself that my jokes are not
brilliant, but you know one can take everything as a joke. I am,
perhaps, jesting against the grain. Gentlemen, I am tormented by
questions; answer them for me. You, for instance, want to cure men of
their old habits and reform their will in accordance with science and
good sense. But how do you know, not only that it is possible, but also
that it is DESIRABLE to reform man in that way? And what leads you to
the conclusion that man's inclinations NEED reforming? In short, how
do you know that such a reformation will be a benefit to man? And to
go to the root of the matter, why are you so positively convinced that
not to act against his real normal interests guaranteed by the
conclusions of reason and arithmetic is certainly always advantageous
for man and must always be a law for mankind? So far, you know, this
is only your supposition. It may be