Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2 полностью

40 Add: You know that Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and all the Buddhists too, declare that it is a blessing not to live. And they are so far right that welfare for humanity coincides with self-annihilation, only they have not expressed themselves rightly: they say that the human race should destroy itself to escape from suffering – that its aim should be self-destruction. That is wrong. The aim of humanity cannot be to escape from suffering by self-destruction, because sufferings are the result of activity, and the aim of an activity cannot be to destroy its consequences. The aim both of men and of humanity is blessedness. For the attainment of blessedness a law has been given to humanity which it should fulfil. The law is that of the union of mankind.

41 In the lithographed version there are a number of small differences in the last paragraphs of Chapter XI, and Chapter XII commences with the words: ‘It is a strange story,’ said I.

‘What is there strange about it? According to all Church teaching the end of the world is coming, and according to all that science teaches the same thing is inevitable. So what is there strange in the fact that moral teaching reaches the same result? “He that is able to receive it, let him receive it,” said Christ. And I understand that just as he said it. For morality to exist between people in sexual relations it is necessary that the aim they set themselves should be complete chastity. In striving towards chastity, man falls; he falls, and the result is a moral marriage; but if, as in our society, man aims directly at physical love, then though it may clothe itself in the pseudo-moral form of marriage, that will merely be permitted debauchery with one woman – and will none the less be an immoral life, such as that in which I perished and destroyed her, and such as among us is called moral family life. Note what a perverse conception exists among us, when the happiest position for a man – that of freedom, celibacy – is considered pitiable and ridiculous. And the highest ideal, the best position, for a woman – that of being pure, a vestal, a virgin – is a thing to be afraid of and a subject for ridicule in our society. How many and many young girls have offered up their purity to that Moloch of opinion by marrying good-for-nothing fellows, merely to avoid remaining virgin, which is the highest state. For fear that she may remain in that highest state she ruins herself! But I did not then understand that the words in the Gospel – that he who looks upon a woman with desire has already committed adultery with her in his heart – refer not to other wives only, but specially and chiefly to one’s own. I did not understand that, and thought that this honeymoon and my behaviour on this honeymoon were most excellent, and that to satisfy desire with my own wife was a perfectly right thing. Then follow in the lithographed version the words: You know those wedding tours, &c.

42 Read: As happens with mirthful young people who, unable to devise funny things to laugh at quickly enough, laugh at their own laughter, so we had not time to devise excuses for our hatred.

43 Read: ‘We all – men and women – are brought up to a kind of veneration for that feeling which we are accustomed to call love. From childhood I prepared to fall in love, and I fell in love; all my youth I was in love and was glad to be so. It was instilled into me that there was no nobler and more exalted business in the world than to be in love. Well at last the expected feeling comes, and a man devotes himself to it. But that is where the deception appears. In theory love is something ideal …

44 Add: I would order them – those wizards – to perform the office of those women who, in their opinion, are necessary to men – and then let them talk!