Two kinds of causes that are often confused. – This seems to me to be one of my most essential steps forward: I learned to distinguish the cause of acting from the cause of acting in a certain way, in a certain direction, with a certain goal. The first kind of cause is a quantum of dammed-up energy waiting to be used somehow, for something; the second kind, by contrast, is something quite insignificant, mostly a small accident in accordance with which this quantum ‘discharges’ itself in one particular way: the match versus the powder keg. Among these small accidents and matches I consider all so-called ‘purposes’ as well as the even more so-called ‘vocations’: they are relatively random, arbitrary, nearly indifferent in relation to the enormous force of energy that presses on, as I said, to be used up somehow. The usual view is different: one is used to seeing the driving force precisely in the goals (purposes, professions, etc.), in keeping with a very ancient error; but it is only the directing force – one has mistaken the helmsman for the stream. And not even always the helmsman, the directing force…Is the ‘goal’, the ‘purpose’, not often enough a beautifying pretext, a self-deception of vanity after the fact that does not want to acknowledge that the ship is following the current into which it has entered accidentally? That it ‘wills’ to go that way because it – must? That it certainly has a direction but – no helmsman whatsoever? We still need a critique of the concept of ‘purpose’.