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349 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1890
“He was convinced that there existed a corresponding type of husband, whose sole purpose consisted of nothing but corresponding to this type of woman. In his opinion, the essence of such husbands lay in their being, so to speak, ‘eternal husbands’, or, better to say, in being only husbands in life and nothing else.”
“Maybe because a dreadful anguish was growing in my soul over one circumstance which was infinitely higher than the whole of me: namely—the conviction was overtaking me that everywhere in the world it made no difference.”
“For instance, there suddenly came to me a strange consideration, that if I had once lived on the moon or on Mars, and had committed some most shameful and dishonorable act there, such as can only be imagined, and had been abused and dishonored for it as one can only perhaps feel and imagine in a dream, a nightmare, and if, ending up later on earth, I continued to preserve an awareness of what I had done on the other planet, and knew at the same time that I would never ever return there, then, looking from the earth to the moon—would it make any difference to me, or not? Would I feel shame for that act, or not?”