Journey to Nuremburg

By Hermann Hesse:

"Reasons, so it seems to me, are always obscure, causality never prevails in life, only in thought. The completely intellectualized man to be sure, one who has altogether outgrown nature, should be able to recognize an uninterrupted causal nexus in his life and would be justified in considering the causes and impulses accessible to his consciousness as the only ones, for he would consist wholly and entirely of consciousness. However, I have never yet encountered such a man or such a god, and with us humans I permit myself to be skeptical about all ostnesible motivations for any action or occurrence. There is no one who acts from "reasons"; people simply pretend to do so and they try very hard, in the interests of vanity and virtue, to convince others that this is true. In my own case, at least, I have been able in each and every instance to determine that the impulses for actions lie in regions which neither my reason nor my will can penetrate. "