Wise and simple?

The aim of [Aristotle's Ethics] is the acquisition and propagation of a certain kind of knowledge (science), but this knowledge and the thinking which brings it about are subsidiary to a practical end. The knowledge aimed at is of what is best for man and of the conditions of its realisation. Such knowledge is that which in its consumate form we find in great statesmen, enabling them to organise and administer their states and regulate by law the life of the citizens to their advantage and happiness, but it is the same kind of knowledge which on a smaller scale secures success in the management of the family or of private life.

It is characteristic of such knowledge that it should be deficient in "exactness," in precision of statement, and closeness of logical concatenation. We must not look for a mathematics of conduct. The subject-matter of Human Conduct is not governed by necessary and uniform laws. But this does not mean that it is subject to no laws. There are general principles at work in it, and these can be formulated in "rules," which rules can be systematised or unified. It is all-important to remember that practical or moral rules are only general and always admit of exceptions, and that they arise not from the mere complexity of the facts, but from the liability of the facts to a certain unpredictable variation. At their very best, practical rules state probabilities, not certainties; a relative constancy of connection is all that exists, but it is enough to serve as a guide in life. Aristotle here holds the balance between a misleading hope of reducing the subject-matter of conduct to a few simple rigorous abstract principles, with conclusions necessarily issuing from them, and the view that it is the field of operation of inscrutable forces acting without predictable regularity. He does not pretend to find in it absolute uniformities, or to deduce the details from his principles. Hence, too, he insists on the necessity of experience as the source or test of all that he has to say. Moral experience—the actual possession and exercise of good character—is necessary truly to understand moral principles and profitably to apply them. The mere intellectual apprehension of them is not possible, or if possible, profitless.

...

[The first parts of the Ethics] lay down a principle which governs all Greek thought about human life, viz. that it is only intelligible when viewed as directed towards some end or good. This is the Greek way of expressing that all human life involves an ideal element—something which it is not yet and which under certain conditions it is to be. In that sense Greek Moral Philosophy is essentially idealistic. Further it is always assumed that all human practical activity is directed or "oriented" to a single end, and that that end is knowable or definable in advance of its realisation. To know it is not merely a matter of speculative interest, it is of the highest practical moment for only in the light of it can life be duly guided, and particularly only so can the state be properly organised and administered. This explains the stress laid throughout by Greek Moral Philosophy upon the necessity of knowledge as a condition of the best life. This knowledge is not, though it includes knowledge of the nature of man and his circumstances, it is knowledge of what is best—of man's supreme end or good.

But this end is not conceived as presented to him by a superior power nor even as something which ought to be. The presentation of the Moral Ideal as Duty is almost absent. From the outset it is identified with the object of desire, of what we not merely judge desirable but actually do desire, or that which would, if realised, satisfy human desire. In fact it is what we all, wise and simple, agree in naming "Happiness" (Welfare or Well-being).

In what then does happiness consist? Aristotle summarily sets aside the more or less popular identifications of it with abundance of physical pleasures, with political power and honour, with the mere possession of such superior gifts or attainments as normally entitle men to these, with wealth. None of these can constitute the end or good of man as such. On the other hand, he rejects his master Plato's conception of a good which is the end of the whole universe, or at least dismisses it as irrelevant to his present enquiry. The good towards which all human desires and practical activities are directed must be one conformable to man's special nature and circumstances and attainable by his efforts. There is in Aristotle's theory of human conduct no trace of Plato's "other worldliness", he brings the moral ideal in Bacon's phrase down to "right earth"—and so closer to the facts and problems of actual human living. Turning from criticism of others he states his own positive view of Happiness, and, though he avowedly states it merely in outline his account is pregnant with significance. Human Happiness lies in activity or energising, and that in a way peculiar to man with his given nature and his given circumstances, it is not theoretical, but practical: it is the activity not of reason but still of a being who possesses reason and applies it, and it presupposes in that being the development, and not merely the natural possession, of certain relevant powers and capacities. The last is the prime condition of successful living and therefore of satisfaction, but Aristotle does not ignore other conditions, such as length of life, wealth and good luck, the absence or diminution of which render happiness not impossible, but difficult of attainment.

Introduction to Aristotle's Ethics

the rules of perspective

If we are too young our judgement is impaired, just as it is if we are too old.
Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.
If we look at our work immediately after completing it, we are still too involved; if too long afterwards, we cannot pick up the thread again.
It is like looking at pictures which are too near or too far away. There is just one indivisible point which is the right place.
Others are too near, too far, too high, or too low. In painting the rules of perspective decide it, but how will it be decided when it comes to truth and morality?

Blaise Pascal, Pensees

all motivations working simultaneously

A psychological interpretation of science begins with the acute realization that science is a human creation, rather than an autonomous, non-human, or per se "thing" with intrinsic rules of its own. Its origins are in human motives, its goals are human goals, and it is created, renewed, and maintained by human beings. Its laws, organization, and articulations rest not only on the nature of the reality that it discovers, but also on the nature of the human nature that does the discovering. The psychologist, especially if he has had any clinical experience, will quite naturally and spontaneously approach any subject matter in a personal way by studying people, rather than the abstractions they produce, scientists as well as science.
  The misguided effort to make believe that this is not so, the persistent attempt to make science completely autonomous and self-regulating and to regard it as a disinterested game, having intrinsic, arbitrary chesslike rules, the psychologist must consider unrealistic, false, and even anti-empirical.
  ... Scientists are motivated, like all other members of the human species, by species-wide needs for food, etc.; by needs for safety, protection, and care; by needs for gregariousness and for affection-and-love relations; by needs for respect, standing, and status, with consequent self-respect; and by a need for self-actualization or self-fulfillment of the idiosyncratic and species-wide potentialities of the individual person. These are the needs that are best known to psychologists for the simple reason that their frustration produces psychopathology.
  Less studied but knowable through common observation are the cognitive needs for sheer knowledge (curiosity) and for understanding (the philosophical, theological, value-system-building explanation needed).
  Finally, least well known are the impulses to beauty, symmetry, and possibly to simplicity, completion, and order, which we may call aesthetic needs, and the needs to express, to act out, and to motor completion that may be related to these aesthetic needs.
  To date it seems as if all other needs or desires or drives are either means to the basic ends listed above, or are neurotic, or else are products of certain kinds of learning processes.
  Obviously the cognitive needs are of most concern to the philosopher of science. It is man's persistent curiosity that is most responsible for science in its natural-history stage, and it is his equally persistent desire to understand, explain, and systematize that generates science in its more theoretical and abstract levels. However, it is this latter theoretical urge that is more specifically a sine qua non for science, for sheer curiosity is seen often enough in animals.
  But the other motives are certainly also involved in science at all its stages. It is too often overlooked that the original theorizers of science often thought of science primarily as a means to help the human race. Bacon, for instance, expected much amelioration of disease and poverty from science. It has been shown that even for Greek science where pure unmanual contemplation of the Platonic sort was a strong tradition, the practical and humanistic trend was also fairly strong. The feeling of identification and belongingness with people in general, and even more strongly the feeling of love for human beings may often be the primary motivation in many men of science. Some people go into science, as they might into social work or medicine, in order to help people.
  And then finally we must recognize that any other human need may serve as a primary motivation for going into science, for working at it, or for staying in it. It may serve as a living, a source of prestige, a means of self-expression, or as a satisfaction for any one of many neurotic needs.
  In most persons, a single primary all-important motive is less often found than a combination in varying amounts of all motivations working simultaneously. It is safest to assume that in any single scientist his work is motivated not only by love, but also by simple curiosity, not only by prestige, but also by the need to earn money, etc.

Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality (2nd ed., 1970: 1-3)

by definition without rule

Although Chaos can be studied in terms of antecedents in classical literature and philosophy, its appearance in [Paradise Lost] owes its problematic character to Milton's theology. Chaos is infinite, and filled by a ubiquitous God who has nonetheless withdrawn his creative will from chaotic matter (7.168-73). None of the categorical binaries established during the creation of Genesis inhere in Chaos. It is neither this nor that, "neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant cause mixed/ Confus'dly" (2.912-14); therefore Satan, as he traverses this indeterminate space, confusedly mixes locomotions, "And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies" (2.950). The "embryon atoms" (2.900) of Chaos are "the womb of Nature" (2.911), the pure potential that the Son first circumscribes with golden compasses when creating our universe (7.225-31) and will doubtless use again in creating new worlds (2.915-16). Chaos cannot be good until God has infused it with creative order. It is at least morally neutral, at best thoroughly praiseworthy, as a part of the process by which God makes and sustains all things.
  But alongside the language of atomism, Milton gives us a mythic Chaos, personified as the ruler of his realm, or rather its "Anarch" (2.988), since Chaos is by definition without rule. This Chaos, speaking for his consort, Night, and for a shadowy pack of Hesiodic creatures and personifications (2.963-67), expresses his resentment over recent losses (the creations of Hell and our universe) and supports Satan's mission on the assumption that "Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain" (2.1009). We thus arrive at a paradox. Theologically, Chaos is neutral or better. Mythically, in terms of the epic narrative, Chaos is the ally of Satan.

Kerrigan, Rumrich, & Fallon, intro. to Paradise Lost (2007: xiv-xv).

the element of sacredness

Apart from the precarious and random luck that makes possession of the loved one possible, humanity has from the earliest times endeavored to reach this liberating continuity by means not dependent on chance. The problem arises when man is faced with death which seems to pitch the discontinuous creature headlong into continuity. This way of seeing the matter is not the first that springs to mind, yet death, in that it destroys the discontinuous being, leaves intact the general continuity of existence outside ourselves. I am not forgetting that the need to make sure of the survival of the individual as such is basic to our desire for immortality but I am not concerned to discuss this just now. What I want to emphasise is that death does not affect the continuity of existence, since in existence itself all separate existences originate; continuity of existence is independent of death and is even proved by death. This I think is the way to interpret religious sacrifices, with which I suggest that erotic activity can be compared. Erotic activity, by dissolving the separate beings that participate in it, reveals their fundamental continuity, like the waves of a stormy sea. In sacrifice, the victim dies and the spectators share in what his death reveals. This is what religious historians call the element of sacredness. This sacredness is the revelation of a continuity through the death of a discontinuous being to those who watch it as a solemn rite. A violent death disrupts the creature's discontinuity; what remains, what the tense onlookers experience in the succeeding silence, is the continuity of all existence with which the victim is now one. Only a spectacular killing, carried out as the solemn and collective nature as religion dictates, has the power to reveal what normally escapes notice. We should incidentally be unable to imagine what goes on in the secret depths of the minds of the bystanders if we could not call on our own personal religious experiences, if only childhood ones. Everything leads us to the conclusion that in essence the sacramental quality of primitive sacrifices is analagous to the comparable element in contemporary religions.

Georges Bataille, Erotism (1986: 21-22)

an impotent, quivering yearning

Physical eroticism has in any case a heavy, sinister quality. It holds on to the separateness of the individual in a rather selfish and cynical fashion. Emotional eroticism is less constrained. Although it may appear detached from material sensuality it often derives from it, being merely an aspect made stable by the reciprocal affection of the lovers. It can be divorced from physical eroticism entirely, for the enormous diversity of human kind is bound to contain exceptions of this sort. The fusion of lovers' bodies persists on the spiritual plane because of the passion they feel, or else this passion is the prelude to physical fusion. For the man in love, however, the fervour of love may be felt more violently than physical desire is. We ought never to forget that in spite of the bliss love promises its first effect is one of turmoil and distress. Passion fulfilled itself provokes such violent agitation that the happiness involved, before being a happiness to be enjoyed, is so great as to be more like its opposite, suffering. Its essence is to substitute for their persistent discontinuity a miraculous continuity between two beings. Yet this continuity is chiefly to be felt in the anguish of desire, when it is still inaccessible, still an impotent, quivering yearning. A tranquil feeling of secure happiness can only mean the calm which follows the long storm of suffering, for it is more likely that lovers will not meet in such timeless fusion than they will; the chances are most often against their contemplating in speechless wonder the continuity that unites them.

Georges Bataille, Erotism (1986: 19-20)

This is Politics

Do all primitive societies have government? Here again we immediately come up against another of the unfortunate interpretations of the word "primitive." Some writers, particularly in the nineteenth century, have thought that many of the institutions which are fundamental to western society developed fairly late in the history of mankind, so that we might expect not to find them among peoples who had not advanced along the path of civilization as far as ourselves. Government and law are among these, and if politics is defined as that which pertains to government, those who hold this view would consider that primitive societies pursue no activities which deserve the name politics.
  But there is another way of looking at politics, according to which it indubitably does exist in primitive societies. One definition of politics is the struggle for power; and even if one is not willing to agree that power is the only thing that men struggle for, one must admit that in every society there are conflicts which must somehow be reconciled if the society is not split into separate independent parts. Conflict and competition begin within the family, however little we care to admit it; in fact, this is recognized in such phrases as 'fraternal enmity'. But every society has an ideal of family unity such that disputes between kinsmen are expected to be settled without any outside intervention. Some anthropologists would hold that the sphere of politics begins where that of kinship ends. In the case of primitive societies it is not always easy to say where this line comes, for in such societies people trace the links of kinship much further than they do in the western world. But what one can say is that between people who are in close daily contact throughout their lives, sentiments are expected to develop (and often do) which limit the expression of conflict, whereas outside these narrow circles one cannot rely on sentiment alone to reconcile conflicting interests. In these wider fields of social relationships there are always and everywhere persons with conflicting and competing interests, seeking to have disputes settled in their favour and to influence community decisions ('policy') in accordance with their interests. This is politics.
  The seventeenth-century philosopher Hobbes contrasted the state of nature, in which every man's hand was against his neighbour, with civil society, in which authority had been surrendered to a sovereign ruler (not necessarily a single man). This was a logical rather than a historical argument; it followed from Hobbes' assumptions about human nature that if there were no supreme authority there could only be a war if each against all. But he did refer to "savage people in many places of America" whose condition he thought approached this. We shall see that in a number of primitive societies fighting is recognized as a legitimate means of obtaining redress for an injury, though in those cases it is not, as Hobbes imagined, a means of dominating others. The question whether societies of this kind can or cannot be said to have government or law is an interesting one, and contemporary anthropologists have answered it in many ways.
  Many modern writers have assumed that government must be carried on through the type of organization which we call the state - a body of persons authorized to make and enforce rules binding on everyone who comes under their jurisdiction, to settle disputes arising between them, to organize their defence against enemies, and to impose taxes or other economic contributions upon them, not to mention the multifarious new functions which the state has undertaken in the present century. Some primitive societies have this kind of organization, but others do not, and the question then arises whether they can be said to have government.

Lucy Mair, Primitive Government (1964: 9-11)

the childhood stage

People very commonly confuse the technical superiority of a nation with the moral and intellectual superiority of the population who make it up. Europeans are apt to talk about devices such as the internal combustion engine, or even the atomic reactor, as if they had all had a share in inventing them, whereas in fact most of us simply take advantage of inventions which we could not possibly have made and do not begin to understand. From this it is an easy step to seeing the peoples where these inventions were made as in some way more adult than those whose technical outfit does not include them. And this popular attitude gains support from the Jungian theory of psychology, which at the same time describes as 'primitive' the irrational elements in all human minds and holds that people who get through life with a primitive technical outfit have minds in which the irrational elements predominate.
  Let me make it clear, then, that if I write of primitive societies I am not implying anything about the characteristics of the persons who compose them - least of all that such persons have remained in the childhood stage if a human race whose maturity is represented by the "western" nations. It is ways of doing things which can be described as primitive or otherwise. The development of more complicated and efficient ways of doing things is a matter of discoveries and inventions which simply cannot be credited to the superiority of certain total populations over others. But the possession of a complex technology is what enables the modern state to control, and to a large extent organize, the lives of populations of many millions.

Lucy Mair, Primitive Government (1964: 8)

odd man

Strangeness and oddity will sooner harm than justify any claim to attention, especially when everyone is striving to unite particulars and find at least some general sense in the general senselessness. Whereas an odd man is most often a particular and isolated case. Is that not so?

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

the modern age

In "the modern age" the idea of freedom and a new beginning coincide ... yet if this truism is frequently forgotten, it is because liberation has always loomed large and the foundation of freedom has always been uncertain.

Heel of a shoe.

"How well-made that is! What a skillful workman! What a brave soldier!" That is where our inclinations come from, and our choice of careers. "What a lot that man drinks! How little that man drinks!" That is what makes people temperate or drunkards, soldiers, cowards, etc.

Pascal, Pensées 117 (1987: 38)

a really positive role

What I would like to get free from, is the idea that political power—in all its forms and at whatever level we grasp it—has to be analyzed within the Hegelian horizon of a sort of beautiful totality that through an effect of power is misrecognized or broken up by abstraction or division. It seems to me that it is both a methodological and a historical error to consider power as an essentially negative mechanism of repression whose principal function is to protect, preserve, or reproduce the relations of production. It also seems to me wrong to consider power as something situated in a superstructural level relative to the play of forces. Finally, it is wrong to consider power as essentially linked to the effects of ignorance. It seems to me that this kind of traditional and "omni-circulating" conception of power, found in historical writing and in present day political and polemical texts, is actually constructed on the basis of a number of outdated historical models. It is a composite notion that is inadequate for the real world in which we have been living for a considerable length of time, that is, since at least the end of the eighteenth century.
  From where is this conception of power borrowed that sees power impinging massively from the outside, as it were, with a continuous violence that some (always the same) exercise over others (who are also always the same)? It comes from the model of, or if you like, from the historical reality of, slave society. The idea that power has the essential function of prohibiting, preventing, and isolating, rather than allowing the circulation, change, and multiple combination of elements, seems to me a conception of power that also refers to an outdated historical model, in this case the model of caste society. By making power a mechanism whose function is not to produce but to deduct, to impose obligatory transfers of wealth and, consequently, to deprive some of the fruit of their work; in short, the idea that the essential function of power is to seal off the process of production and to make a certain social class profit from it, in an absolutely identical renewal of the relations of power, does not seem to me to refer at all to the real functioning of power at the present time, but to how we may suppose or reconstruct it as functioning in feudal society. Finally, in referring to a power that, with its administrative machinery of control, is superimposed on forms, forces, and relations of production established at the level of an already given economy, by describing power in this way, it seems to me that we are still using an outdated historical model that in this case is the model of the administrative monarchy.
  In other words, it seems to me that by making the major characteristics we attribute to political power into an instance of repression, a superstructural level, and an instance whose essential function is to reproduce and preserve the relations of production, we do no more than constitute, on the basis of historically outdated and different models, a sort of daguerreotype of power that is really based on what we think we can see in power in a slave society, a caste society, a feudal society, and in a society like the administrative monarchy. It hardly matters whether this is a failure to recognize the reality of these societies; it is in any case a failure to grasp what is specific and new in what took place during the eighteenth century and the Classical Age, that is to say, the installation of a power that, with regard to productive forces, relations of production, and the preexisting social systems, does not play a role of control and reproduction but rather a really positive role. What the eighteenth century established through the "discipline of normalization," or the system of "discipline-normalization," seems to me to be a power that is not in fact repressive but productive, repression figuring only as a lateral or secondary effect with regard to its central, creative, and productive mechanisms.

Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France 1974-1975 (2003: 50-52)

the message of true love

"Love's highest need is to renounce its own power." This is what Lacan calls 'symbolic castration': if one is to remain faithful to one's love, one should not elevate it into the direct focus of one's love, one should renounce its centrality. Perhaps, a detour through the best (or worst) of Hollywood's melodrama can help us clarify this point. The basic lesson of King Vidor's Rhapsody is that, in order to gain the beloved woman's love, the man has to prove that he is able to survive without her, that he prefers his mission or profession to her. There are two immediate choices: (i) my professional career is what matters most to me, the woman is just an amusement, a distracting affair; (ii) the woman is everything to me, I am ready to humiliate myself, to forsake all my public and professional dignity for her. They are both false, they lead to the man being rejected by the woman. The message of true love is thus: even if you are everything to me, I can survive without you, I am ready to forsake you for my mission or profession. The proper way for the woman to test the man's love is thus to 'betray' him at the crucial moment of his career (the first public concert in the film, the key exam, the business negotiation which will decide his career)—only if he can survive the ordeal, and successfully accomplish his task although deeply traumatized by her desertion, will he deserve her and will she return to him. The underlying paradox is that love, precisely as the Absolute, should not be posited as a direct goal—it should retain the status of a by-product, of something we receive as an undeserved grace.

Slavoj Žižek, Why is Wagner Worth Saving? (intro. to Adorno, In Search of Wagner, xxii)

the destruction of objects

Children in particular (and here I am supposing it would also be necessary to include grown-ups in certain cases) willfully plunge their fingers into coloring materials, into containers of paint, for example, so as to leave traces of their passage while dragging their fingers across walls or doors. Such marks only "seem to be able to be explained as mechanical assertions of their author's personality." And in that capacity, Luquet associates them with one of the rare means that children have of asserting their personality, the destruction of objects, the exploits of "butter-fingered children"...

Georges Bataille, Primitive Art (The Cradle of Humanity, 2005: 36)

human no longer

Beyond consent the convulsions of the flesh demand silence and the spirit's absence. The physical urge is curiously foreign to human life, loosed without reference to it so long as it remains silent and keeps away. The being yielding to that urge is human no longer but, like the beasts, a prey of blind forces in action, wallowing in blindness and oblivion.

Georges Bataille, Eroticism: Death and Sensuality (1986:105)

the bridge across has been destroyed

Two men may talk together enthusiastically for an hour or so about shared experiences, and yet not have a true conversation. A lonely man who wants to indulge his nostalgic mood feels the need of someone with whom to share it. When he finds such a companion, he starts to pour out his monologue as though recounting a dream. And so the talk goes on between them, their monologues alternating, but after a time they suddenly become aware that they have nothing to say to each other. They are like two men standing at either side of a chasm, the bridge across which has been destroyed.

Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses (1990: 57)

no basis whatsoever

Somewhere Honda had become separated even from Iinuma. As the crowd surged by, it occurred to him that Kiyoaki himself, alive again, was caught in this same press of humanity. How wild a fancy this seemed here at midday beneath the early summer sun! He was dazzled by the excessive brightness of the mystery.
  Just as sea and sky blurred together at the horizon, so, too, dream and reality could certainly become confused when viewed from a distance. But here, at least around Honda, everyone was clearly subject to the law and, in turn, guarded by the law. His role was that of a guardian of the order established by the operative law of this world. This operative law was like a heavy iron lid upon the pot in which the multifarious stew of the day-to-day world simmered.
  Human beings eating, digesting, excreting, reproducing, loving and hating ... Honda reflected that these were the human beings under the court's jurisdiction. If worst came to worst they would appear before it as defendants.
  They alone had reality. Human beings who sneezed, laughed, human beings who went about with absurdly dangling reproductive gear. If all human beings were like this, there was no basis whatsoever for Honda's fearful mystery. Even if a single reborn Kiyoaki might be hidden in their midst.

Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses (55)

the present usually hurts

  We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.
  Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.

Pascal, Pensées (1987: 43)

Man is nothing but a subject full of natural error that cannot be eradicated except through grace. Nothing shows him the truth, everything deceives him. The two principles of truth, reason and senses, are not only both not genuine, but are engaged in mutual deception. The senses deceive reason through false appearances, and, just as they trick the soul, they are tricked by [the soul] in their turn: it takes its revenge. The senses are disturbed by passions, which produce false impressions. They both compete in lies and deception.

Pascal, Pensées (1987:42)

he's always there

On my way upstairs, in the dark, I bumped into old Salamano, my next-door neighbour. He had his dog with him. They've been together for eight years. The spaniel has got a skin disease—mange, I think—which makes almost all its hair fall out and covers it with brown blotches and scabs. After living with it for so long, the two of them alone together in one tiny room, Salamano has ended up looking like the dog. He's got reddish scabs on his face and his hair is thin and yellow. And the dog has developed something of its master's walk, all hunched up with its neck stretched forward and its nose sticking out. They look as if they belong to the same species and yet they hate each other. Twice a day, at eleven o'clock and six, the old man takes his dog for a walk. In eight years they haven't changed their route. You can see them in the rue de Lyon, the dog dragging the man along until old Salamano stumbles. Then he beats the dog and swears at it. The dog cringes in fear and trails behind. At that point it's the old man's turn to drag it along. When the dog forgets, it starts pulling its master along again and gets beaten and sworn at again. Then they both stop on the pavement and stare at each other, the dog in terror, the man in hatred. It's like that every day. When the dog wants to urinate, the old man won't give it time and drags it on, so that the spaniel scatters a trail of little drops behind it. But if the dog ever does it in the room, then it gets beaten again. It's been going on like that for eight years. Celeste always says, "It's dreadful," but in fact you can never tell. When I met him on the stairs, Salamano was busy swearing at his dog. He was saying, "Filthy, lousy animal!" and the dog was whimpering. I said, "Good evening," but the old man went on swearing. So I asked him what the dog had done. He didn't answer. He just went on saying, "Filthy, lousy animal!" I could just about see him, bent over his dog, busy fiddling with something on its collar. I asked again a bit louder. Then, without turning around, he answered with a sort of suppressed fury, "He's always there." Then he set off, dragging the animal after him as it trailed its feet along the ground, whimpering.

...

  We went out and Raymond bought me a brandy. Then he wanted a game of billiards and I just lost. After that he wanted to go to a brothel, but I said no because I don't like that sort of thing. So we made our way slowly back and he kept telling me how pleased he was that he'd managed to punish his mistress. I found him very friendly towards me and I thought it was a good moment.
  From some distance away I noticed old Salamano standing on the doorstep looking flustered. When we got nearer, I saw that his dog wasn't with him. He'd look in all directions, spin around, peer into the darkness of the hall, mumble a string of unconnected words and then start searching the street again with his little red eyes. When Raymond asked him what was wrong, he didn't answer at first. I vaguely heard him muttering, "Filthy, lousy animal," and he went on flustering. I asked him where his dog was. He replied abruptly that he'd disappeared. And then all of a sudden he spoke rapidly: "I took him to the Parade Ground, as usual. There were crowds of people, round the stalls at the fair. I stopped to watch 'the Escape King'. And when I turned to go, he wasn't there any more. Of course, I'd been meaning to get him a smaller collar for a long time. But I never thought the lousy animal could disappear like that."
  Raymond then explained that the dog might just have got lost and that it would come back. He cited cases of dogs that had travelled dozens of miles to get back to their masters. This only seemed to make the old man more flustered. "But they'll take him away from me, don't you see? If only someone would take him in. But they won't, everyone's disgusted by his scabs. The police'll get him, I know they will." So I told him he should go to the pound and they'd give it back to him for a small charge. He asked me how much the charge was. I didn't know. Then he got angry: "Pay money for that lousy animal. Ha! He can die for all I care!" And he started swearing at it. Raymond laughed and went inside the building. I followed him and we said goodnight to each other on the upstairs landing. A minute later I heard the old man's footsteps and he knocked at my door. When I opened it, he stood for a moment in the doorway and said, "Excuse me, excuse me." I asked him in, but he didn't want to. He was looking down at his boots and his scabby hands were trembling. Without looking up at me, he asked, "They won't take him away from me, will they, Mr. Meursault. They will give him back to me. Otherwise what will I do?" I told him that they kept dogs at the pound for three days for their owners to collect them and that after that they dealt with them as they saw fit. He looked at me in silence. Then he said, "Goodnight." He closed his door and I heard him pacing up and down. Then his bed creaked. And from the peculiar little noise coming through the partition wall, I realized that he was crying. For some reason I thought of mother. But I had to get up early in the morning. I wasn't hungry and I went to bed without any dinner.


...

Outside my door I found old Salamano. I asked him in and he told me that his dog was definitely lost, because it wasn't at the pound. The people there had told him that it might have been run over. He'd asked them if he could possibly find out at the police station. He'd been told that they didn't keep records of things like that, because they happened every day. I told old Salamano that he could get another dog, but he rightly pointed out to me that he'd got used to this one.
  I was crouched on my bed and Salamano had sat down on a chair by the table. He was facing me, with both his hands on his knees. He still had his old felt hat on. He was mumbling half-finished sentences into his yellowing moustache. He was annoying me a bit, but I didn't have anything to do and I didn't feel sleepy. To make conversation, I asked him about his dog. He told me that he'd got it when his wife had died. He'd married fairly late. As a young man he'd wanted to go into the theatre: in the army he used to act in military vaudevilles. But he'd ended up working on the railways and he didn't regret it, because now he had a small pension. He hadn't been happy with his wife, but on the whole he'd got quite used to her. When she'd died he'd felt very lonely. So he'd asked a friend in the workshop for a dog and he'd got this one as a puppy. He had to feed it from a bottle. But since a dog doesn't live as long as a man, they'd ended up growing old together. "He was bad-tempered," Salamano said. "Every now and then we had a right old row. But he was a nice dog all the same." I said he was a good breed and Salamano looked pleased. "Yes," he added, "but you should have seen him before his illness. His coat was his best point." Every night and every morning, after it got that skin trouble, Salamano used to rub it with ointment. But according to him, its real trouble was old age, and there's no cure for old age.
  At that point I yawned and the old man said he'd be going. I told him that he could stay, and that I was upset about what had happened to his dog: he thanked me. He told me that mother used to be very fond of his dog. He referred to her as "your poor mother." He seemed to assume that I'd been very unhappy ever since mother had died and I didn't say anything. Then, very quickly as if he was embarrassed, he told me that he realized that local people thought badly of me for sending my mother to a home, but that he knew me better and he knew I loved mother very much. I replied, I still don't know why, that I hadn't realized before that people thought badly of me for doing that, but that the home had seemed the natural thing since I didn't have enough money to have mother looked after. "Anyway," I added, "she'd run out of things to say to me a long time ago and she'd got bored of being alone." "Yes," he said, "and at least in a home you can make a few friends." Then he said he must go. He wanted to get some sleep. His life had changed now and he didn't quite know what he was going to do. For the first time since I'd known him, and with a rather secretive gesture, he gave me his hand and I felt the scales on his skin. He smiled slightly and before he went, he said, "I hope the dogs don't bark tonight. I always think it's mine."


Albert Camus, The Outsider (2000: 30-31, 40-42, 46-48)