“Oh, how wonderful, how mysterious is this. And so simple too.
Is it true that all individuals possess a similar Ego?
Perhaps it is only I who have it?
Or perhaps nobody has it.
Down there hundreds of soldiers stand drawn up in front of me. I give the order: ‘Eyes to the right,’ to hundreds of human beings who has each his own Ego, and who see in me something foreign, distant, i.e. non-Ego—then turn their heads at once to the right.
But I do not distinguish one from the other; they are to me merely a mass.
And to Colonel Schulgovich both I and Viatkin and Lbov, and all the captains and lieutenants, are likewise perhaps merely a ‘mass,’ viz., he does not distinguish one of us from the other, or, in other words, we are entirely outside his ken as individuals to him.”
The door was opened, and Hainan stole into the room.
He began at once his usual dance, threw up his legs into the air, rocked his shoulders, and shouted—
“Your Honour, I got no cigarettes.
They said that Lieutenant Skriabin gave orders that you were not to have any more on credit.”
“Oh, damn!
You can go, Hainan. What am I to do without cigarettes?
However, it is of no consequence. You can go, Hainan.”
“What was it I was thinking of?” Romashov asked himself, when he was once more alone.
He had lost the threads, and, unaccustomed as he was to think, he could not pick them up again at once.
“What was I thinking of just now?
It was something important and interesting. Well, let us turn back and take the questions in order. Also, I am under arrest; out in the street I see people at large; my mother tied me up with a thread—me, me. Yes, so it was. The soldier perhaps has an Ego, perhaps even Colonel Shulgovich. Ha, he! now I remember; go on.
Here I am sitting in my room.
I am arrested, but my door is open.
I want to go out, but I dare not.
Why do I not dare?
Have I committed any crime—theft—murder?
No. All I did was merely omitting to keep my heels together when I was talking to another man.
Possibly I was wrong.
Yet, why?
Is it anything important?
Is it the chief thing in life?
In about twenty or thirty years—a second in eternity—my life, my Ego, will go out like a lamp does when one turns the wick down.
They will light life—the lamp—afresh, over and over again; but my Ego is gone for ever.
Likewise this room, this sky, the regiment, the whole army, all stars, this dirty globe, my hands and feet—all, all—shall be annihilated for ever.
Yes, yes; that is so. Well, all right—but wait a bit. I must not be in too much of a hurry. I shall not be in existence.
Ah, wait. I found myself in infinite darkness. Somebody came and lighted my life’s lamp, but almost immediately he blew it out again, and once more I was in darkness, in the eternity of eternities. What did I do? What did I utter during this short moment of my existence?
I held my thumb on the seam of my trousers and my heels together. I shrieked as loud as I could: ‘Shoulder arms!’ and immediately afterwards I thundered ‘Use your butt ends, you donkeys!’ I trembled before a hundred tyrants, now miserable ghosts in eternity like my own remarkable, lofty Ego.
But why did I tremble before those ghosts and why could they compel me to do such a lot of unnecessary, idiotic, unpleasant things?
How could they venture to annoy and insult my Ego—these miserable spectres?”
Romashov sat down by the table, put his elbows on it, and leaned his head on his hands.
It was hard work for him to keep in check these wild thoughts which raced through his mind.
“H’m!—my friend Romashov, what a lot you have forgotten—your fatherland, the ashes of your sire, the altar of honour, the warrior’s oath and discipline.
Who shall preserve the land of your sires when the foe rushes over its boundaries?
Ah! when I am dead there will be no more fatherland, no enemy, no honour.
They will disappear at the same time as my consciousness.
But if all this be buried and brought to naught—country, enemies, honour, and all the other big words—what has all this to do with my Ego?
I am more important than all these phrases about duty, honour, love, etc.
Assume that I am a soldier and my Ego suddenly says,
‘I won’t fight,’ and not only my own Ego, but millions of other Egos that constitute the whole of the army, the whole of Russia, the entire world; all these say, ‘We won’t!’ Then it will be all over so far as war is concerned, and never again will any one have to hear such absurdities as ‘Open order,’ ‘Shoulder arms,’ and all the rest of that nonsense.
“Well, well, well.
It must be so some day,” shouted an exultant voice in Romashov.
“All that talk about ‘warlike deeds,’ ‘discipline,’ ‘honour of the uniform,’ ‘respect for superiors,’ and, first and last, the whole science of war exists only because humanity will not, or cannot, or dare not, say, ‘I won’t.’”
“What do you suppose all this cunningly reared edifice that is called the profession of arms really is?