“It is natural to eat. And to eat is, from the very beginning enjoyable, easy, pleasant, and not shameful; but this is horrid, shameful, and painful. No, it is unnatural! And an unspoiled girl, as I have convinced myself, always hates it.”
“But how,” I asked, “would the human race continue?”
“Yes, would not the human race perish?” he said, irritably and ironically, as if he had expected this familiar and insincere objection. “Teach abstention from childbearing so that English lords may always gorge themselves—that is all right. Preach it for the sake of greater pleasure—that is all right; but just hint at abstention from childbearing in the name of morality—and, my goodness, what a rumpus … ! Isn’t there a danger that the human race may die out because they want to cease to be swine? But forgive me! This light is unpleasant, may I shade it?” he said, pointing to the lamp. I said I did not mind; and with the haste with which he did everything, he got up on the seat and drew the woollen shade over the lamp.
“All the same,” I said, “if everyone thought this the right thing to do, the human race would cease to exist.”
He did not reply at once.
“You ask how the human race will continue to exist,” he said, having again sat down in front of me, and spreading his legs far apart he leant his elbows on his knees. “Why should it continue?”
“Why? If not, we should not exist.”
“And why should we exist?”
“Why? In order to live, of course.”
“But why live? If life has no aim, if life is given us for life’s sake, there is no reason for living. And if it is so, then the Schopenhauers, the