Kromitzki need have no fear for his life; thoughts like these will never be acted upon.  I should not kill him if I could do it without more responsibility than is incurred in crushing a spider; should not kill him if we two were alone together on a desert island.  If one could divide the human brain as one cuts in two an apple, and lay bare its thoughts, it would be found that mine is honeycombed with murderous thoughts.  What is more, I am well aware that if I refrain from killing Kromitzki it is not by reason of any moral principle contained in the law “Thou shalt do no murder.”  This law I have already violated morally.  I refrain from killing him because some remnants of chivalric tradition bar my way; because my refined nerves would not permit me to commit a brutal deed; in short, I am too far removed from primitive man to be physically competent to the task, though morally I slay him every day.  And now I ask myself whether, in presence of a higher judgment, I should be held responsible, as if I had committed the deed.

It may be that if one could lay open the human brain, as I said before, in the most virtuous individual thoughts would be found to make our hair stand on end.  I remember that, when a little boy, there came upon me a period of such religious fervor that I prayed from morning until night; and at the same time, in the midst of my pious transports, there came into my mind blasphemous thoughts, as if an evil wind had blown them thither, or a demon whispered them into my ear.  In the same way I had irreverent thoughts about persons whom I loved with all my heart and for whom I would have given my life without a moment’s hesitation.  I remember that this, which I might call a tragedy of childhood, cost me a great deal of anguish.  But I will not dwell upon that now.  Going back to blasphemous or criminal thoughts, I do not think we are responsible for them, as they come from the knowledge of evil, not from an evil growing within the organism itself; and for the very reason that it is outward to ourselves we fancy an evil spirit suggesting the thoughts.  Man listens to it, and being averse to evil, spurns it; and there may be some merit in this.  But with me it is different.  The thought of getting rid of Kromitzki does not come from the outside, but springs from me and exists within me.  I have come down to that morally, and if I do not commit the deed it is a mere matter of nerves.  The part of my inward Mephistopheles is confined to mocking and whispering into my ear that the deed would only prove my energy, and not be much of a crime.

These are the crossways on which I never dreamed of finding myself.  I look into the depths of my own self with amazement.  I do not know whether my exceptional troubles will partly atone for my errors, but one thing I know, namely:  that he whose life cannot find room in the simple code Aniela and others like her cling to, if his soul is brimming over and breaks its bounds it must mix with dust and be polluted in the mud.