And in the fact that it serves as a basis for action and morals, this
feeling of uncertainty and the inward struggle between reason on the one
hand and faith and the passionate longing for eternal life on the other,
should find their justification in the eyes of the pragmatist. But it
must be clearly stated that I do not adduce this practical consequence
in order to justify the feeling, but merely because I encounter it in my
inward experience. I neither desire to seek, nor ought I to seek, any
justification for this state of inward struggle and uncertainty and
longing; it is a fact and that suffices. And if anyone finding himself
in this state, in the depth of the abyss, fails to find there motives
for and incentives to life and action, and concludes by committing
bodily or spiritual suicide, whether he kills himself or he abandons all
co-operation with his fellows in human endeavour, it will not be I who
will pass censure upon him. And apart from the fact that the evil
consequences of a doctrine, or rather those which we call evil, only
prove, I repeat, that the doctrine is disastrous for our desires, but
not that it is false in itself, the consequences themselves depend not
so much upon the doctrine as upon him who deduces them. The same
principle may furnish one man with grounds for action and another man
with grounds for abstaining from action, it may lead one man to direct
his effort towards a certain end and another man towards a directly
opposite end.
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