If some day they truly discover a formula for all our desires and caprices—that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, just how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case or another and so on, and so on, that is, a real mathematical formula—then, after all, man would most likely at once stop to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. _For who would want to choose by rule?_ Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ stop or something of that sort; for what is a man without desire, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
