Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/148

112 they, as such, mislead the observer! just as easily as they misguide the person acting. We none of us are such as we appear to be according to the conditions for which alone we live consciousness and words, and consequently praise and blue; we misjudge ourselves after these stormier outbursts which become known to us alone; we draw a conclusion from a material, wherein the exceptions outweigh the rule; we mistake ourselves in reading these to all appearances most intelligible characters of our own. But our opinion of ourselves, the so-called “ego," which we discovered by this wrong method, henceforth becomes a fellow-architect of our character and faith. —What men from the remotest times down to the present clay have found so hard to understand is their ignorance of themselves; not only with regard to good and evil, but with regard to something much more essential. Still that most ancient of delusions lives on, that we know, precisely know in each case, how human action is brought about. Not only "God who looks into the heart," not only the door who premeditates his deed—no, not anybody else even entertains my doubt as to his grasping the essential part in the proceedings of another person's actions. I know what I want, what I have done; I am free and responsible for my action, I make the other