There is no reason whatsoever to presume that man will cease to be ungrateful and insane if you offer him exactly what he wants, or even what he needs.
Shower upon him every earthly blessing; drown him in a sea of happiness so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface. Give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes, and busy himself with the continuation of his species—even then, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal, fantastic element.
It is just his fantastic dreams—his vulgar folly—that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself (as though that were so necessary) that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.
Even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find the means, he will contrive destruction and chaos; he will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!
He will launch a curse upon the world—and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), maybe by his curse alone he will attain his object - that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key!
If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated—chaos and darkness and curses—so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point!
I believe in it. I answer for it. For the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!… And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don’t know?
You will scream at me (that is, if you condescend to do so) that no one is touching my free will; that all they are concerned with is that my will should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own normal interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic. Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two makes four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that!