The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (26 page)

“Humanitas,” he said, “the principle of things, is nothing but man himself divided up into all men. Humanitas has three phases: the
static
, previous to all creation; the
expansive
, the beginning things; the
dispersive
, the appearance of man; and it will have one more, the
contractive
, the absorption of man and things. The
expansion
, starting the universe, suggested to Humanitas the desire to enjoy it, and from there the
dispersion
, which is nothing but the personified multiplication of the original substance.”

Since that explanation didn’t seem sufficiently clear to me, Quincas Borba developed it in a profound way, pointing out the main lines of the system. He explained to me that on the one side Humanitism was related to Brahmanism, to wit, in the distribution of men throughout the different parts of the body of Humanitas, but what had only a narrow theological and political meaning in the Indian religion, in Humanitism was the great law of personal worth. Thus, descending from the chest or the kidneys of Humanitas, that is, being
strong
, wasn’t the same as descending from the hair or the tip of the nose. Therefore the necessity to cultivate and temper muscles. Hercules was only an anticipatory symbol of Humanitism. At that point Quincas Borba pondered whether or not paganism might have reached the truth if it hadn’t been debased by the amorous part of its myths. Nothing like that will occur with Humanitism. In this new church there will be no easy adventures, or falls, or sadness, or puerile joys. Love, for example, is a priestly function, reproduction a ritual. Since life is the greatest reward in the universe and there’s no beggar who doesn’t prefer misery to death (which is a delightful infusion of Humanitas), it follows that the transmission of life, far from being an occasion of lovemaking, is the supreme moment of the spiritual mass. From all of which there is truly only one misfortune: that of not being born.

“Imagine, for example, that I had not been born,” Quincas Borba went on. “It’s positive that I wouldn’t be having the pleasure of chatting with you now, of eating this potato, of going to the theatre, or, to put it all into one word, living. Note that I’m not making a man a simple vehicle of Humanitas. He is vehicle, passenger, and coachman all at the same time. He is Humanitas itself in a reduced form. It follows from that that there is a need for him to worship himself. Do you want a
proof of the superiority of my system? Think about envy. There is no moralist, Greek or Turkish, Christian or Muslim, who doesn’t thunder against the feeling of envy. Agreement is universal, from the fields of Idumea to the heights of Tijuca. So, then, let go of old prejudices, forget about shabby rhetoric, and study envy, that ever so subtle and so noble feeling. With every man a reduction of Humanitas, it’s clear that no man is fundamentally opposed to another man, whatever contrary appearances may be. Thus, for example, the headsman who executes the condemned man can excite the vain clamor of poets. But, substantially, it is Humanitas correcting in Humanitas an infraction of the law of Humanitas. I will say the same of an individual who disembowels another. It’s a manifestation of the force of Humanitas. There is nothing to prevent (and there are examples) his being disemboweled just the same. If you’ve understood well, you will easily understand that envy is nothing but an admiration that fights, and since fighting is the main function of humankind, all bellicose feelings are the ones that best serve its happiness. It follows, then, that envy is a virtue.”

Why deny it? I was flabbergasted. The clarity of the exposition, the logic of the principles, the rigor of the deductions, all of that seemed great to the highest degree, and it became necessary for me to break off the conversation for a few minutes while I digested the new philosophy. Quincas Borba couldn’t conceal the satisfaction of his triumph. He had a chicken wing on his plate and he was gnawing on it with philosophical serenity. I voiced a few objections still, but they were so feeble that he didn’t waste much time in knocking them down.

“In order to understand my system well,” he concluded, “it’s necessary never to forget the universal principle, distributed and summed up in every man. Look. War, which looks like a calamity, is a convenient operation, which we could call the snapping of Humanitas’ fingers; hunger (and he sucked philosophically on his chicken wing), hunger is proof that Humanitas is subject to its own entrails. But I don’t need any other documentation of the sublimity of my system than this chicken right here. It nourished itself on corn, which was planted by an African, let us suppose imported from Angola. That African was born, grew up, was sold. A ship brought him here, a ship built of wood cut in the forest by ten or twelve men, propelled by sails that eight or ten men sewed together, not to mention the rigging and other parts of the nautical apparatus. In that way, this chicken, which I have lunched on just now, is the result of a multitude of efforts and struggles carried out with the sole aim of satisfying my appetite.”

Between cheese and coffee Quincas Borba demonstrated to me how his system meant the destruction of pain. Pain, according to Humanitism, is pure illusion. When a child is threatened with a stick, even before being struck, he closes his eyes and trembles. That
predisposition
is what constitutes the basis of the human illusion, inherited and transmitted. It’s not enough, of course, to adopt the system in order to do away with pain immediately, but it is indispensable. The rest is the natural evolution of things. Once man gets it completely into his head that he is Humanitas itself, there’s nothing else to do but raise his thought up to the original substance in order to prevent any painful sensation. The evolution is so profound, however, that it can only take place over a few thousand years.

For a few days after that Quincas Borba read me his
magnum opus
. It consisted of four handwritten volumes, a hundred pages each, in a cramped hand and with Latin quotations. The last volume was a political treatise based on Humanitas. It was, perhaps, the most tedious part of the system, since it was conceived with a formidable rigor of logic. With society reorganized by his method, not even then would war, insurrection, a simple beating, an anonymous stabbing, hunger, or illness be eliminated. But since those supposed plagues were really errors of understanding, because they were nothing but external movements of the internal substance destined not to have any influence over man except as a simple break in universal monotony, it was clear that their existence would not be a barrier against human happiness. But even when such plagues (a basically false concept) corresponded in the future to the narrow conception of former times, not even then would the system be destroyed, and for two reasons: first, because Humanitas being the creative and absolute substance, every individual would find the greatest delight in the world in sacrificing himself to the principle from which he descends; second, because even then it wouldn’t diminish man’s spiritual power over the earth, invented solely for his recreation, like the stars, breezes, dates, and rhubarb. Pangloss, he said to me as he closed the book, wasn’t as dotty as Voltaire painted him.

The third force that called me into the bustle was the pleasure of making a show and, above all, an incapacity to live by myself. The multitude attracted me, applause was my love. If the idea of the poultice had come to me at that time, who knows. I might not have died so soon and would have been famous. But the poultice didn’t come. What did come was a desire to be active in something, with something, and for something.

I want to leave in parenthesis here half a dozen maxims from the many I wrote down around that time. They’re yawns of annoyance. They can serve as epigraphs to speeches that have no subject:

Bear your neighbor’s bellyache with patience.

We kill time; time buries us.

A philosophical coachman used to say that the pleasure of a coach would be less if we all traveled in coaches.

Believe in yourself, but don’t always doubt others.

It’s beyond understanding why a Botocudo Indian pierces his lip to adorn it with a piece of wood. This is the reflection of a jeweler.