same. Remember I spoke just now of vengeance. (I am sure you did not
take it in.) I said that a man revenges himself because he sees justice in it.
Therefore he has found a primary cause, that is, justice. And so he is at
rest on all sides, and consequently he carries out his revenge calmly and
successfully, being persuaded that he is doing a just and honest thing. But
I see no justice in it, I find no sort of virtue in it either, and consequently
if I attempt to revenge myself, it is only out of spite. Spite, of course,
might overcome everything, all my doubts, and so might serve quite
successfully in place of a primary cause, precisely because it is not a
cause. But what is to be done if I have not even spite (I began with that
just now, you know). In consequence again of those accursed laws of
consciousness, anger in me is subject to chemical disintegration. You
look into it, the object flies off into air, your reasons evaporate, the
criminal is not to be found, the wrong becomes not a wrong but a
phantom, something like the toothache, for which no one is to blame,
and consequently there is only the same outlet left again--that is, to beat
the wall as hard as you can. So you give it up with a wave of the hand
because you have not found a fundamental cause. And try letting yourself
be carried away by your feelings, blindly, without reflection, without a
primary cause, repelling consciousness at least for a time; hate or love, if
only not to sit with your hands folded. The day after tomorrow, at the
latest, you will begin despising yourself for having knowingly deceived
yourself. Result: a soap-bubble and inertia. Oh, gentlemen, do you
know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my
life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am
a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be
done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble,
that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?