And the same thing obtains to much the same extent in what might appear to be more intellectual lines of practical action. The soldier, the man of business, the statesman, all require no doubt immense and competent detailed knowledge in their particular professions. But here also too great analysis, a too curious probing of motives and processes and alternatives and possibilities hurts rather than helps. The pure thinker is too often apt to cry out with Goethe’s horror: ‘There is nothing more frightful than active ignorance.’[100] Yet nine tenths of the work of the world is done, sometimes efficiently, sometimes haltingly, but done, by active ignorance, and could not be done otherwise. The thinker, the profound analyst, debates, hesitates, falters, and too often accomplishes nothing. It may be that, not only in the realm of muscular effort, but in all practical action, the best results are obtained by comparatively instinctive methods. Yet it is evident that deliberate conscious reasoning is an important instrument in the work of the man of affairs. Also, reason, the enchainment of thoughts through elaborate logical processes, is the chief agent of the scientific spirit. In an earlier chapter we have analyzed the dangers and betrayals of reason. But the greatest betrayal of all is when reason turns upon itself and devotes its brilliant, magnificent powers to self-dissection, instead of to accomplishment in the practical world. The extreme illustrations are in such minds as Sénancour, Maine de Biran, Amiel, men naturally equipped for the performance of great things, but in whom the force of genius is paralyzed by the perpetual introspective consideration of the means and methods by which genius operates. As Amiel expresses it: ‘I also feel at times the mad rage for life, the desperate impulse to seize happiness, but much more often a complete prostration and a silent despair. And whence comes this? From doubt of my own reason, of myself, of men, of life, from doubt which enervates the will and destroys the powers, which makes one forget God, forget prayer, forget duty, from unquiet and corrosive doubt, which renders existence impossible, and makes a ghastly mock of hope.’[101]