Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/149

Rh responsible; I can mention by name all moral possibilities and all internal emotions preceding all action; you may act as you like in this matter—I understand myself and you all!"—so everybody of old used to think, so almost everybody thinks even now. Socrates and Plato, great doubters and admirable innovators on this head, yet were naïve believers in regard to that most fatal prejudice, that most profound mistake, that “the right knowledge must necessarily be followed up by the right action." With regard to this principle they still were the heirs of the universal madness and presumption which believes in the existence of knowledge and the essence of all action. It would, truly, be terrible if the insight into the essence of the right action were not to be followed up by the right action itself," is the only explanation which these great men deemed needful in proof of this idea ; to them the contrary seemed out of the question and harebrained, and yet this contrary is the bare truth itself which, from times immemorial, has been proved daily and hourly. Is it not a very :terrible" truth that, whatever we may know of all action in general, it never suffices for accomplishing it; that the bridge between knowledge and action has never yet been constructed in one single instance ? The actions are never such as they appear to us. We have been at such pains to learn that things external are not such as they appear to us—very well, the same may be asserted with regard to the things internal. The