No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

67
not their comrade. Yet I attended every single meeting
and performed for them my full repertory of farce.
I did it because I liked to, because those people
pleased me—and not necessarily because we were
linked by any common affection derived from Marx.
Irrationality. I found the thought faintly pleasurable.
Or rather, I felt at ease with it. What frightened
me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of
something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was
incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain
closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room.
Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was
far more agreeable to swim in its waters until presently
I drowned.
People talk of "social outcasts." The words apparently
denote the miserable losers of the world, the
vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a "social
outcast" from the moment I was born. If ever I meet
someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably
feci affection for him, an emotion which
carries me away in melting tenderness.
People also talk of a "criminal consciousness." All
my life in this world of human beings I have been
tortured by such a consciousness, but it has been my
faithful companion, like a wife in poverty, and together,
just the two of us, we have indulged in our
forlorn pleasures. This, perhaps, has been one of the