Notes from Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

But all the same I am firmly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness.

He is stupid, I won’t argue with you about that, but perhaps a normal man ought to be stupid, how do you know? Perhaps it’s even very beautiful.

How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself?

Another time, twice even, I decided to force myself to fall in love. And I did suffer, gentlemen, I assure you.

If man has not become more bloodthirsty from civilization, at any rate he has certainly become bloodthirsty in a worse, a viler way than formerly.

One’s own free and voluntary wanting, one’s own caprice, however wild, one’s own fancy, though chafed sometimes to the point of madness—all this is that same most profitable profit, the omitted one, which does not fit into any classification, and because of which all systems and theories are constantly blown to the devil.

Moreover: he will immediately turn from a man into a sprig in an organ or something of the sort; because what is man without desires, without will, and without wantings, if not a sprig in an organ barrel?

You see: reason, gentlemen, is a fine thing, that is unquestionable, but reason is only reason and satisfies only man’s reasoning capacity, while wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life—that is, the whole of human life, including reason and various little itches.

What makes you conclude that man’s wanting so necessarily needs to be corrected?

Can it be that he has such a love of destruction and chaos (it’s indisputable that he sometimes loves them very much; that is a fact) because he is instinctively afraid of achieving the goal and completing the edifice he is creating?

But man is a frivolous and unseemly being, and perhaps, similar to a chess player, likes only the process of achieving the goal, but not the goal itself. And who knows (one cannot vouch for it), perhaps the whole goal mankind strives for on earth consists just in this ceaselessness of the process of achievement alone, that is to say, in life itself, and not at all in the goal, which, of course, is bound to be nothing other than two times two is four—that is, a formula; and two times two is four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.

Whether it’s good or bad, it’s sometimes also very pleasant to break something.

And if there was love once, if they were married out of love, why should love pass? Can’t it be sustained? It rarely happens that it can’t be. Well, and if the husband proves to be a kind and honest man, how can love pass? The first married love will pass, true, but then an even better love will come.

And how is it inconceivable, if I had managed so to corrupt myself morally, had grown so unaccustomed to “living life,” that I had dared just before to reproach and shame her for coming to me to hear “pathetic words”; and I myself never guessed that she had come to me not at all to hear pathetic words, but to love me, because for a woman it is in love that all resurrection, all salvation from ruin of whatever sort, and all regeneration consists, nor can it reveal itself in anything else but this.