Chapter: Gentlemen, I am joking, and I know myself that my jokes are not
brilliant, but you know one can take everything as a joke.  I am,
perhaps, jesting against the grain.  Gentlemen, I am tormented by
questions; answer them for me.  You, for instance, want to cure men of
their old habits and reform their will in accordance with science and
good sense. But how do you know, not only that it is possible, but also
that it is DESIRABLE to reform man in that way?  And what leads you to
the conclusion that man's inclinations NEED reforming?  In short, how
do you know that such a reformation will be a benefit to man?  And to
go to the root of the matter, why are you so positively convinced that
not to act against his real normal interests guaranteed by the
conclusions of reason and arithmetic is certainly always advantageous
for man and must always be a law for mankind?  So far, you know, this
is only your supposition.  It may be the law of logic, but not the law
of humanity.  You think, gentlemen, perhaps that I am mad?  Allow me to
defend myself.  I agree that man is pre-eminently a creative animal,
predestined to strive consciously for an object and to engage in
engineering--that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads,
WHEREVER THEY MAY LEAD.  But the reason why he wants sometimes to go
off at a tangent may just be that he is PREDESTINED to make the road,
and perhaps, too, that however stupid the "direct" practical man may
be, the thought sometimes will occur to him that the road almost always
does lead SOMEWHERE, and that the destination it leads to is less
important than the process of making it, and that the chief thing is to
save the well-conducted child from despising engineering, and so giving
way to the fatal idleness, which, as we all know, is the mother of all
the vices.  Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact
beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction
and chaos also?  Tell me that!  But on that point I want to say a
couple of words myself.  May it not be that he loves chaos and
destruction (there can be no disputing that he does sometimes love it)
because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and
completing the edifice he is constructing?  Who knows, perhaps he only
loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it
at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want
to live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of LES
ANIMAUX DOMESTIQUES--such as the ants, the sheep, and so on.  Now the
ants have quite a different taste.  They have a marvellous edifice of
that pattern which endures for ever--the ant-heap.

With the ant-heap the respectable race of ants began and with the
ant-heap they will probably end, which does the greatest credit to
their perseverance and good sense.  But man is a frivolous and
incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the
process of the game, not the end of it.  And who knows (there is no
saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind
is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other
words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must
always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four,
and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of
death.  Anyway, man has always been afraid of this mathematical
certainty, and I am afraid of it now.  Granted that man does nothing
but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacrifices
his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it, dreads, I
assure you.  He feels that when he has found it there will be nothing
for him to look for.  When workmen have finished their work they do at
least receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken to
the police-station--and there is occupation for a week.  But where can
man go?  Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him when
he has attained such objects.  He loves the process of attaining, but
does not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very
absurd.  In fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind
of jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is after all,
something insufferable.  Twice two makes four seems to me simply a
piece of insolence.  Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands
with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting.  I admit that twice
two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything
its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.

And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the
normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to
welfare--is for the advantage of man?  Is not reason in error as
regards advantage?  Does not man, perhaps, love something besides
well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering?  Perhaps suffering
is just as great a benefit to him as well-being?  Man is sometimes
extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a
fact.  There is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that;
only ask yourself, if you are a man and have lived at all.  As far as
my personal opinion is concerned, to care only for well-being seems to
me positively ill-bred.  Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very
pleasant, too, to smash things.  I hold no brief for suffering nor for
well-being either.  I am standing for ... my caprice, and for its being
guaranteed to me when necessary.  Suffering would be out of place in
vaudevilles, for instance; I know that.  In the "Palace of Crystal" it
is unthinkable; suffering means doubt, negation, and what would be the
good of a "palace of crystal" if there could be any doubt about it?
And yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is,
destruction and chaos.  Why, suffering is the sole origin of
consciousness.  Though I did lay it down at the beginning that
consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes
it and would not give it up for any satisfaction.  Consciousness, for
instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four.  Once you
have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to
understand.  There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five
senses and plunge into contemplation.  While if you stick to
consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at
least flog yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up.
Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing.

 The underground man rejects the notion that an enlightened, educated man will automatically be drawn towards what is good because it is advantageous to him and society. He believes that intelligent people usually move toward difficult, sometimes harmful, situations because they hold self-will dearer than they do virtue and reason and believe that there can be pleasure in pain. The narrator believes, however, that the present age argues against self-will, believing that man's actions are governed by the laws of nature, making them scientifically calculable and predictable. The narrator does not ascribe to the scientific theories of the day and does not believe that man acts according to science and reason. He feels man should be free to act in whatever way he desires, whether it is advantageous or not.

