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