Open them, weak yet proud man, pitiful ant that struggles to crawl over its
speck of dust! You declare yourself free and great, and for all the wretchedness of
your life you hold yourself in high esteem, celebrating – no doubt in a spirit of
derision – your rotten and transient flesh. And then you imagine that this beautiful
life, lived out between a little pride that you call greatness, and that base selfinterest
which is at the heart of your society, will be rewarded by some form of
immortality. Immortality for you – more lascivious than the monkey, more evil
than the tiger, more crawling than the serpent? Come on! Show me a paradise for
the monkey, the tiger, the snake, a paradise of lust, of cruelty and baseness, a
paradise of selfishness – eternity for this dust, immortality for this nothingness.
You boast of being free and of being able to do what you call good and evil?
Doubtless so that you can be denounced more rapidly, for what good can you
possibly do? Is a single one of your gestures produced by anything other than
pride or self-interest?
speck of dust! You declare yourself free and great, and for all the wretchedness of
your life you hold yourself in high esteem, celebrating – no doubt in a spirit of
derision – your rotten and transient flesh. And then you imagine that this beautiful
life, lived out between a little pride that you call greatness, and that base selfinterest
which is at the heart of your society, will be rewarded by some form of
immortality. Immortality for you – more lascivious than the monkey, more evil
than the tiger, more crawling than the serpent? Come on! Show me a paradise for
the monkey, the tiger, the snake, a paradise of lust, of cruelty and baseness, a
paradise of selfishness – eternity for this dust, immortality for this nothingness.
You boast of being free and of being able to do what you call good and evil?
Doubtless so that you can be denounced more rapidly, for what good can you
possibly do? Is a single one of your gestures produced by anything other than
pride or self-interest?
( Gustave Flaubert )
[ Memoirs of a Madman ]
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