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,