With people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up
for themselves in general, how is it done? Why, when they are
possessed, let us suppose, by the feeling of revenge, then for the
time there is nothing else but that feeling left in their whole
being. Such a gentleman simply dashes straight for his object like
an infuriated bull with its horns down, and nothing but a wall will
stop him. (By the way: facing the wall, such gentlemen—that is, the
"direct" persons and men of action—are genuinely nonplussed. For
them a wall is not an evasion, as for us people who think and
consequently do nothing; it is not an excuse for turning aside, an
excuse for which we are always very glad, though we scarcely
believe in it ourselves, as a rule. No, they are nonplussed in all
sincerity. The wall has for them something tranquillising, morally
soothing, final— maybe even something mysterious … but of the
wall later.)
Well, such a direct person I regard as the real normal man, as
his tender mother nature wished to see him when she graciously
brought him into being on the earth. I envy such a man till I am
green in the face. He is stupid. I am not disputing that, but
perhaps the normal man should be stupid, how do you know? Perhaps
it is very beautiful, in fact. And I am the more persuaded of that
suspicion, if one can call it so, by the fact that if you take, for
instance, the antithesis of the normal man, that is, the man of
acute consciousness, who has come, of course, not out of the lap of
nature but out of a retort (this is almost mysticism, gentlemen,
but I suspect this, too), this retort-made man is sometimes so
nonplussed in the presence of his antithesis that with all his
exaggerated consciousness he genuinely thinks of himself as a mouse
and not a man. It may be an acutely conscious mouse, yet it is a
mouse, while the other is a man, and therefore, et caetera, et
caetera. And the worst of it is, he himself, his very own self,
looks on himself as a mouse; no one asks him to do so; and that is
an important point. Now let us look at this mouse in action. Let us
suppose, for instance, that it feels insulted, too (and it almost
always does feel insulted), and wants to revenge itself, too. There
may even be a greater accumulation of spite in it than in L'HOMME
DE LA NATURE ET DE LA VERITE. The base and nasty desire to vent
that spite on its assailant rankles perhaps even more nastily in it
than in L'HOMME DE LA NATURE ET DE LA VERITE. For through his
innate stupidity the latter looks upon his revenge as justice pure
and simple; while in consequence of his acute consciousness the
mouse does not believe in the justice of it. To come at last to the
deed itself, to the very act of revenge. Apart from the one
fundamental nastiness the luckless mouse succeeds in creating
around it so many other nastinesses in the form of doubts and
questions, adds to the one question so many unsettled questions
that there inevitably works up around it a sort of fatal brew, a
stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of the contempt
spat upon it by the direct men of action who stand solemnly about
it as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it till their healthy
sides ache. Of course the only thing left for it is to dismiss all
that with a wave of its paw, and, with a smile of assumed contempt
in which it does not even itself believe, creep ignominiously into
its mouse-hole. There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our
insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in
cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years
together it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most
ignominious details, and every time will add, of itself, details
still more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting itself
with its own imagination. It will itself be ashamed of its
imaginings, but yet it will recall it all, it will go over and over
every detail, it will invent unheard of things against itself,
pretending that those things might happen, and will forgive
nothing. Maybe it will begin to revenge itself, too, but, as it
were, piecemeal, in trivial ways, from behind the stove, incognito,
without believing either in its own right to vengeance, or in the
success of its revenge, knowing that from all its efforts at
revenge it will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom it
revenges itself, while he, I daresay, will not even scratch
himself. On its deathbed it will recall it all over again, with
interest accumulated over all the years and …
But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half
belief, in that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the
underworld for forty years, in that acutely recognised and yet
partly doubtful hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of
unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of oscillations,
of resolutions determined for ever and repented of again a minute
later—that the savour of that strange enjoyment of which I have
spoken lies. It is so subtle, so difficult of analysis, that
persons who are a little limited, or even simply persons of strong
nerves, will not understand a single atom of it. "Possibly," you
will add on your own account with a grin, "people will not
understand it either who have never received a slap in the face,"
and in that way you will politely hint to me that I, too, perhaps,
have had the experience of a slap in the face in my life, and so I
speak as one who knows. I bet that you are thinking that. But set
your minds at rest, gentlemen, I have not received a slap in the
face, though it is absolutely a matter of indifference to me what
you may think about it. Possibly, I even regret, myself, that I
have given so few slaps in the face during my life. But
enough … not another word on that subject of such extreme
interest to you.
I will continue calmly concerning persons with strong nerves who
do not understand a certain refinement of enjoyment. Though in
certain circumstances these gentlemen bellow their loudest like
bulls, though this, let us suppose, does them the greatest credit,
yet, as I have said already, confronted with the impossible they
subside at once. The impossible means the stone wall! What stone
wall? Why, of course, the laws of nature, the deductions of natural
science, mathematics. As soon as they prove to you, for instance,
that you are descended from a monkey, then it is no use scowling,
accept it for a fact. When they prove to you that in reality one
drop of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred thousand
of your fellow-creatures, and that this conclusion is the final
solution of all so-called virtues and duties and all such
prejudices and fancies, then you have just to accept it, there is
no help for it, for twice two is a law of mathematics. Just try
refuting it.
"Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting:
it is a case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your
permission, she has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you
like her laws or dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she
is, and consequently all her conclusions. A wall, you see, is a
wall … and so on, and so on."
Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and
arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact
that twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the
wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the
strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to
it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the
strength.
As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and
really did contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is
as true as twice two makes four. Oh, absurdity of absurdities! How
much better it is to understand it all, to recognise it all, all
the impossibilities and the stone wall; not to be reconciled to one
of those impossibilities and stone walls if it disgusts you to be
reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable, logical
combinations to reach the most revolting conclusions on the
everlasting theme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself
somehow to blame, though again it is as clear as day you are not to
blame in the least, and therefore grinding your teeth in silent
impotence to sink into luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that
there is no one even for you to feel vindictive against, that you
have not, and perhaps never will have, an object for your spite,
that it is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card- sharper's
trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing
who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still
there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse
the ache.