Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/162

{{rh|126|THE DAWN OF DAY}] to and fro, a weighing up and down of parts—and this would be the real "contest of motives"—something quite invisible and unknown to us. I have calculated the results and successes, and in so doing placed a very essential motive into the battle-line of the motives, but I run as far from drawing up this battle-line as I am from seeing it ; the battle itself is hidden from me, and so is the victory as victory; for I certainly learn to know that which I eventually shall do, but I do not come to know which motive thereby has proved victorious. Yet we are certainly wont not to take all these unknown occurrences into account, and to imagine the preparatory stage of an action only in so far as it is conscious, and so we mistake the contest of the motives for the comparison of the possible results of divers actions a mistake of most important consequences, and most fatal to the development of morality. —We are wont to believe in two— realms in the realm of purposes and volition and that of accidents. In the latter things proceed absurdly, they move, stand, and fall without anybody being able to say why? wherefore? We dread this powerful realm of the great, cosmical stupidity, for, in most cases, we learn to know it as dropping down upon that other world of purposes and intentions, like a brick from the roof, destroying some beautiful purpose of ours. This