Four ---- “Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a case of twice two makes four! Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as twice two makes four. Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two make four? Twice two makes four without my will. And who knows (there is no saying with certainty) perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four. Sometimes on holidays I used to stroll along the sunny side of the Nevsky about four o'clock in the afternoon. This Anton Antonitch lived on the fourth storey in a house in Five Corners, in four low-pitched rooms, one smaller than the other, of a particularly frugal and sallow appearance. I had the patience to sit like a fool beside these people for four hours at a stretch, listening to them without knowing what to say to them or venturing to say a word. Climbing up to his fourth storey I was thinking that the man disliked me and that it was a mistake to go and see him. “Do we want half a dozen for the four of us?” observed Trudolyubov, taking notice only of the half dozen. “So the three of us, with Zverkov for the fourth, twenty-one roubles, at the Hotel de Paris at five o'clock tomorrow,” Simonov, who had been asked to make the arrangements, concluded finally. I could not hold out for four days. T.

Numbers in Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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