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