I. Conscious Human Action

This is not to assert by any means that all our action flows only out of the sober deliberations of our intellect. To set forth only those actions as in the highest sense human which issue from abstract judgment, is very far from my intention. But the moment our action lifts itself up out of the area of the satisfaction of purely animal desires, what moves us to act is always intermixed with thoughts. Love, compassion, patriotism are mainsprings of action which do not let themselves be reduced into cold concepts of the intellect. One says: The heart, the Gemüt[^7] come here into their own. Without a doubt. But the heart and the Gemüt do not create what it is that moves us to act. They presuppose it and take it into their domain. Within my heart compassion appears when, in my consciousness, the mental picture arises of a person who arouses compassion. The way to the heart is through the head. Even love is no exception to this. When it is not the mere expression of the sex drive, it is then based upon the mental pictures which we make for ourselves of the loved one. And the more idealistic these mental pictures are, the more blissful is the love. Here also the thought is father to the feeling. One says: Love makes us blind to the weaknesses of the loved one. The matter can also be grasped the other way round and it can be maintained that love opens the eye in fact for precisely the good qualities of the loved one. Many pass these good qualities by without an inkling, without noticing them. One person sees them, and just because he does, love awakens in his soul. What has he done other than make for himself a mental picture of something of which a hundred others have none. They do not have the love because they lack the mental picture.