spite of my horror of definitions, my own position with regard to the
problem that I have been examining; but I know there will always be some
dissatisfied reader, educated in some dogmatism or other, who will say:
"This man comes to no conclusion, he vacillates--now he seems to affirm
one thing and then its contrary--he is full of contradictions--I can't
label him. What is he?" Just this--one who affirms contraries, a man of
contradiction and strife, as Jeremiah said of himself; one who says one
thing with his heart and the contrary with his head, and for whom this
conflict is the very stuff of life. And that is as clear as the water
that flows from the melted snow upon the mountain tops.

I shall be told that this is an untenable position, that a foundation
must be laid upon which to build our action and our works, that it is
impossible to live by contradictions, that unity and clarity are
essential conditions of life and thought, and that it is necessary to
unify thought. And this leaves us as we were before. For it is precisely
this inner contradiction that unifies my life and gives it its practical
purpose.

Or rather it is the conflict itself, it is this self-same passionate
uncertainty, that unifies my action and makes me live and work.

We think in order that we may live, I have said; but perhaps it were
more correct to say that we think because we live, and the form of our
thought corresponds with that of our life. Once more I must repeat that
our ethical and philosophical doctrines in general are usually merely
the justification _a posteriori_ of our conduct, of our actions. Our
doctrines are usually the means we seek in order to explain and justify
to others and to ourselves our own mode of action. And this, be it
observed, not merely for others, but for ourselves. The man who does not
really know why he acts as he does and not otherwise, feels the
necessity of explaining to himself the motive of his action and so he
forges a motive. What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are
usually but the pretexts for it. The very same reason which one man may
regard as a motive for taking care to prolong his life may be regarded
by another man as a motive for shooting himself.

Nevertheless it cannot be denied that reasons, ideas, have an influence
upon human actions, and sometimes even determine them, by a process
analogous to that of suggestion upon a hypnotized person, and this is so
because of the tenden