II: Self-examination

People are afraid of looking into themselves. Many tremble slavishly when they can no longer escape the questions: What have I done, what have I become, and who am I? The whole business is frightening to them, and its outcome is uncertain. They think that a person can more easily judge others than oneself. They believe they show a respectable modesty when, after the most rigorous self-scrutiny, they admit they could have still made a mistake.

Yet it is only the will that conceals people from themselves. When they really turn their attention upon themselves, their judgement cannot err. It is just this, however, that people cannot or will not do. Life and the world completely binds them; deliberately confining their view to it so that they perceive nothing else, they see nothing but the disparate, deceptive reflections of themselves.

I can know another person only from his actions, for never does his inner life come directly before my view. What a person really wants I can never know immediately. I can only compare his various actions and make uncertain conjectures about the aim of their conduct and the spirit that guides them. Surely, though, it is a pity when one sees oneself only as one stranger does another, when one knows nothing of their inner life! How clever one fancies oneself for merely considering the last decision regarding some external action, and for comparing it with the feeling that accompanied it and the idea that preceded it.