“If you say that even all this can be calculated on tables, the chaos, the gloom, and the curses, so that the possibility alone of a preliminary calculation would put a stop to everything and reason would hold sway—well, in that case man would deliberately go mad in order to escape his reason and assert himself. I believe this, I will vouch for it because this whole human business seems really only to consist of the fact that man has been continually proving to himself that he’s a man and not an organ-stop. He’ll prove it, whatever the way; he’ll prove it even by becoming a troglodyte … And after that, how can you fail to transgress, to applaud the fact that this is not yet the case and that as yet the devil only knows on what desire depends?”

—Man