will always be opportunity for good conduct. _Si fractus illabatur orbis,_ there will always be a better world to construct. Hope and fear are related to action itself in its becoming, not to its result and succession. [Sidenote: _Confirmation of the inderivability of the value of action from its success._] We can illustrate the fact that no one seriously thinks of valuing an action according to its success, but that all value it at its intrinsic value as action, from the circumstance that no one recognizes any merit to the action of a marks-man who hits the bull's-eye, when shooting at the target with closed eyes; whereas no little merit is recognized to him who, after having taken careful aim, does not hit the mark but goes very near it. We are certainly often deceived in our practical judgments, and fortunate men are continually praised to the skies as men of great practical capacity, while the unfortunate are hurled into the mire as incompetent; for we do not distinguish exactly between action and success. This is not only so as to judgments of the present life: it is also true of the life of the past, of the pages of history, where imbeciles are made heroes and heroes calumniated; to the worst of leaders is attributed the honour of victories, ridiculous statesmen credited with ability. On the other hand, the sins of madmen are attributed to the wise, or they are accused of faults that are nobody's fault, but the result of circumstances. In vain will the Pericleses of all time ask, as did the ancient Pericles of the people of Athens, that the unforeseen misfortunes of the Peloponnesian war should be attributed to him, provided that by way of compensation he might have praise for all the fortunate things that should also happen παρὰ λόγον.[2] All this depends upon an imperfect knowledge of facts more than upon anything else: hence the necessity of criticism. Just as the work of the poet and of the painter is not materially to be laid hold of in the poem or in the picture, but requires a re-evocation that is often very difficult, so the work of the man of action, which is in part fused in events and partly contained in them, as a bud that will open in the future, asks a keen eye and the greatest care in valuation. The history of men of action and of their deeds is easily changed into _legend,_ and legends are never altogether eliminable, because misunderstanding or error is never altogether eliminable. [Sidenote: _Explanation of apparently conflicting facts._]