#Resource Notes from the underground And what is it that civilisationsoftens in us? The only gain of civilisation formankind is the greater capacity for variety ofsensations—and absolutely nothing more.And through the development of this many-sidedness man may come to findingenjoyment in bloodshed. In fact, this hasalready happened to him. Have you noticedthat it is the most civilised gentlemen whohave been the subtlest slaughterers, towhom the Attilas and Stenka Razins couldnot hold a candle, and if they are not soconspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razinsit is simply because they are so often metwith, are so ordinary and have become sofamiliar to us. In any case civilisation hasmade mankind if not more bloodthirsty, atleast more vilely, more loathsomelybloodthirsty. You will say that that was in thecomparatively barbarous times; that theseare barbarous times too, because also,comparatively speaking, pins are stuck ineven now; that though man has now learnedto see more clearly than in barbarous ages,he is still far from having learnt to act asreason and science would dictate. But yetyou are fully convinced that he will be sure tolearn when he gets rid of certain old badhabits, and when common sense and sciencehave completely re-educated human natureand turned it in a normal direction. You areconfident that then man will cease from*intentional* error and will, so to say, becompelled not to want to set his will againsthis normal interests. That is not all; then, yousay, science itself will teach man (though tomy mind it’s a superfluous luxury) that henever has really had any caprice or will of hisown, and that he himself is something of thenature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ,and that there are, besides, things called thelaws of nature; so that everything he does isnot done by his willing it, but is done of itself,by the laws of nature. Consequently we haveonly to discover these laws of nature, andman will no longer have to answer for hisactions and life will become exceedingly easyfor him. All human actions will then, ofcourse, be tabulated according to theselaws, mathematically, like tables oflogarithms up to 108,000, and entered in anindex; or, better still, there would bepublished certain edifying works of thenature of encyclopaedic lexicons, in whicheverything will be so clearly calculated andexplained that there will be no more incidentsor adventures in the world. Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is notstupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to supposethat, if only from the one consideration, that,if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if heis not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful!Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believethat the best definition of man is theungrateful biped. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his 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!