“Nature! Ha, ha!” Sanine laughed feebly, and waved his hand in derision. “It is customary, I know, to say that Nature is perfect. The truth is, that Nature is just as defective as mankind. Without any great effort of imagination any of us could present a world a hundred times better than this one. Why should we not have perpetual warmth and light, and a garden ever verdant and ever gay? As to the meaning of life, of course it has a meaning of some sort, because the aim implies the march of things; without an aim all would be chaos, But this aim lies outside the pale of our existence, in the very basis of the universe. That is certain. We cannot be the origin nor the end of the universe. Our role is a passive, and auxiliary one. By the mere fact of living we fulfil our mission. Our life is necessary; thus our death is necessary also.”
“For what?”
“How should I know?” replied Sanine, “and, besides, what do I care? My life means my sensations, pleasant or unpleasant; what is outside those limits; well, to the deuce with it all! Whatever hypothesis we may like to invent, it will always remain an hypothesis upon which it would be folly to construct life. Let him who likes worry about it; as for me, I mean to live!”
“Let us all have a drink on the strength of it!” suggested Ivanoff.
“But you believe in God, don’t you?” said Ilitsch, looking at Sanine with bleared eyes. “Nowadays nobody believes in anything—not even in that which is easy of belief.”
Sanine laughed. “Yes, I believe in God. As a child I did that, and there’s no need to dispute or to affirm any reasons for doing so. It’s the most profitable thing, really, for if there is a God, I offer Him sincere faith, and, if there isn’t, well, all the better for me.”
“But on belief or on unbelief all life is based?” said Yourii.
Sanine shook his head, and smiled complacently.
“No, my life is not based on such things,” he said.
“On what, then?” asked Yourii, languidly. “A—a—a! I mustn’t drink any more,” he thought to himself, as he drew his hand across his cold, moist brow. If Sanine made any reply he did not hear it. His head was in a whirl, and for a moment he felt quite overcome.