almost too monotonous. In short, one may say anything about the history
of the world--anything that might enter the most disordered imagination.
The only thing one can't say is that it's rational. The very word sticks
in one's throat. And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually
happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational
persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all
their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light
to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live
morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very
people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer
trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of
man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon
him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that
nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him
economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but
sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and
even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some
nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire
the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to
introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is
just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain,
simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary--
that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of
nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to
desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really
were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural
science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable,
but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude,
simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive
destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his