Where you now see reform, progress, fulfilment of upward tendency, continual ascent by Man on the stepping stones of his dead selves to higher things, you will see nothing but an infinite comedy of illusion.
You will discover the profound truth of the saying of my friend Koheleth, that there is nothing new under the sun.
Vanitas vanitatum—
DON JUAN. [out of all patience] By Heaven, this is worse than your cant about love and beauty.
Clever dolt that you are, is a man no better than a worm, or a dog than a wolf, because he gets tired of everything?
Shall he give up eating because he destroys his appetite in the act of gratifying it?
Is a field idle when it is fallow?
Can the Commander expend his hellish energy here without accumulating heavenly energy for his next term of blessedness?
Granted that the great Life Force has hit on the device of the clockmaker's pendulum, and uses the earth for its bob; that the history of each oscillation, which seems so novel to us the actors, is but the history of the last oscillation repeated; nay more, that in the unthinkable infinitude of time the sun throws off the earth and catches it again a thousand times as a circus rider throws up a ball, and that the total of all our epochs is but the moment between the toss and the catch, has the colossal mechanism no purpose?
THE DEVIL.
None, my friend.
You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one.
You might as well expect it to have fingers and toes because you have them.
DON JUAN.
But I should not have them if they served no purpose.
And I, my friend, am as much a part of Nature as my own finger is a part of me.
If my finger is the organ by which I grasp the sword and the mandoline, my brain is the organ by which Nature strives to understand itself.
My dog's brain serves only my dog's purposes; but my brain labors at a knowledge which does nothing for me personally but make my body bitter to me and my decay and death a calamity.
Were I not possessed with a purpose beyond my own I had better be a ploughman than a philosopher; for the ploughman lives as long as the philosopher, eats more, sleeps better, and rejoices in the wife of his bosom with less misgiving.
This is because the philosopher is in the grip of the Life Force.
This Life Force says to him
"I have done a thousand wonderful things unconsciously by merely willing to live and following the line of least resistance: now I want to know myself and my destination, and choose my path; so I have made a special brain—a philosopher's brain—to grasp this knowledge for me as the husbandman's hand grasps the plough for me.
And this" says the Life Force to the philosopher "must thou strive to do for me until thou diest, when I will make another brain and another philosopher to carry on the work."
THE DEVIL.
What is the use of knowing?
DON JUAN.
Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance.
Does a ship sail to its destination no better than a log drifts nowhither?
The philosopher is Nature's pilot.
And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
THE DEVIL.
On the rocks, most likely.
DON JUAN.
Pooh! which ship goes oftenest on the rocks or to the bottom—the drifting ship or the ship with a pilot on board?
THE DEVIL.
Well, well, go your way, Senor Don Juan.
I prefer to be my own master and not the tool of any blundering universal force.
I know that beauty is good to look at; that music is good to hear; that love is good to feel; and that they are all good to think about and talk about.
I know that to be well exercised in these sensations, emotions, and studies is to be a refined and cultivated being.
Whatever they may say of me in churches on earth, I know that it is universally admitted in good society that the prince of Darkness is a gentleman; and that is enough for me.
As to your Life Force, which you think irresistible, it is the most resistible thing in the world for a person of any character.
But if you are naturally vulgar and credulous, as all reformers are, it will thrust you first into religion, where you will sprinkle water on babies to save their souls from me; then it will drive you from religion into science, where you will snatch the babies from the water sprinkling and inoculate them with disease to save them from catching it accidentally; then you will take to politics, where you will become the catspaw of corrupt functionaries and the henchman of ambitious humbugs; and the end will be despair and decrepitude, broken nerve and shattered hopes, vain regrets for that worst and silliest of wastes and sacrifices, the waste and sacrifice of the power of enjoyment: in a word, the punishment of the fool who pursues the better before he has secured the good.
DON JUAN.
But at least I shall not be bored.
The service of the Life Force has that advantage, at all events.
So fare you well, Senor Satan.
THE DEVIL. [amiably] Fare you well, Don Juan.
I shall often think of our interesting chats about things in general.
I wish you every happiness: Heaven, as I said before, suits some people.
But if you should change your mind, do not forget that the gates are always open here to the repentant prodigal.