you, if you and not Karrer were in Steinhof at the moment, or if it were the case that they had sent me to Steinhof and confined me there and you were out walking with Karrer through Klosterneuburgerstrasse and talking about me. We are not certain whether we ourselves will not, the very next moment, be in the same situation as the person we are talking about and who is the object of our thought. I could just as well have gone mad in Rustenschacher’s store, says Oehler, if I had gone into Rustenschacher’s store that day in the same condition as Karrer to engage in the argument with Rustenschacher in which Karrer had been engaged and if I, like Karrer, had not accepted the consequences that followed from the argument in Rustenschacher’s store and was now in Steinhof. But in fact it is impossible that I would have acted like Karrer, says Oehler, because I am not Karrer, I would have acted like myself, just as you would have acted like yourself and not like Karrer, and even if I had entered Rustenschacher’s store, like Karrer, to begin an argument with Rustenschacher and his nephew, I would have carried on the argument in a quite different manner and of course everything would have turned out differently from what it did between Karrer and Rustenschacher and Rustenschacher’s nephew. The argument would have been a different argument, it simply wouldn’t have come to an argument, for if I had been in Karrer’s position, I would have carried on the argument quite differently and probably not carried it on at all, says Oehler. A set of several fatal circumstances, which are of themselves not fatal at all and only become fatal when they coincide, leads to a misfortune like the one that befell Karrer in Rustenschacher’s store, says Oehler. Then we are standing there because we had witnessed it all and react as though we had been insulted. It is unthinkable to me that, if I had been Karrer, I would have gone into Rustenschacher’s store that afternoon, but Karrer’s intensity that afternoon was a greater intensity and I followed Karrer into Rustenschacher’s store. But to ask why I followed Karrer into Rustenschacher’s store that afternoon is senseless. Then let’s say that what we have here is a tragedy, says Oehler. We judge an unexpected happening, like the occurrence in Rustenschacher’s store, as irrevocable and calculated where there is no justification for the concepts irrevocable and calculated. For nothing is irrevocable and nothing is calculated, but a lot, and often what is the most dreadful, simply happens. I can now say that I am astonished at my passivity in Rustenschacher’s store, my unbelievable silence, the fact that I stood by and fundamentally reacted to nothing, that I did fear something without knowing (or suspecting) what I feared, but that in the face of such a fear and thus in the face of Karrer’s condition, I did nothing. We say that circumstances bring about a certain condition in people. If that is true, then circumstances brought about a condition in Karrer in which he suddenly went finally mad in Rustenschacher’s store. I must say, says Oehler, that it was a question of fear of ceasing to be senselessly patient. We observe a person in a desperate situation, the concept of a desperate situation is clear to us, but we do nothing about the desperate condition of the person, because we can do nothing about the desperate condition of the person, because in the truest sense of the word we are powerless in the face of a person’s desperate condition, although we do not have to be powerless in the face of such a person and his desperate condition, and this is something we have to admit, says Oehler. We are suddenly conscious of the hopelessness of a desperate nature, but by then it is too late. It is not Rustenschacher and his nephew who are guilty, says Oehler. Those two behaved as they had to behave, obviously so as not to be sacrificed to Karrer. The circumstance did not, however, arise in a very short space of time, says Oehler, these circumstances always, and in every case, arise as the result of a process that has lasted a long time. The circumstances that led to Karrer’s madness in Rustenschacher’s store and to Karrer’s argument with Rustenschacher and his nephew did not arise on that day nor on that afternoon and not just in the preceding twenty-four or forty-eight hours. We always look for everything in the immediate proximity, that is a mistake. If only we did not always look for everything in the immediate proximity, says Oehler, looking in the immediate proximity reveals nothing but incompetence. One should, in every case, go back over everything, says Oehler, even if it is in the depths of the past and scarcely ascertainable and discernible any longer. Of course the most nonsensical thing, says Oehler, is to ask oneself why one went into Rustenschacher’s store with Karrer, to say nothing of reproaching oneself for doing so. He was obliged, he says, to repeat that in this case everything, and at the same time nothing, indicated that Karrer would suddenly go mad. If we may not ask ourselves the simplest of questions, then we may not ask ourselves a question like the question why Karrer went into Rustenschacher’s store in the first place, for there was absolutely no need to do so if you disregard the fact that, possibly, Karrer’s sudden fatigue after our walk to Albersbachstrasse and back again was actually a reason, nor may we ask why I followed Karrer into Rustenschacher’s store. But as we do not ask, we may not, by the same token, say that everything was a foregone conclusion, was self-evident. Suddenly, at this moment, what had until then, been possible, would now be impossible, says Oehler. On the other hand what is, is self-evident. What he sees while we are walking, he sees through, and for this reason he does not observe at all, for anything that can be seen through (completely) cannot be observed. Karrer also made this same observation, says Oehler. If we see through something, we have to say that we do not see that thing. On the other hand no one else sees the thing, for anyone who does not see through a thing does not see the thing either. Karrer was of the same opinion. The question, why do I get up in the morning? can (must) be absolutely fatal if it is asked in such a way as to be really asked and if it is taken to a conclusion or has to be taken to a conclusion. Like the question, why do I go to bed at night? Like the question, why do I eat? Why do I dress? Why does everything (or a great deal or a very little) connect me to some people and nothing at all to others? If the question is taken to a logical conclusion, which means that the person who asks a question, which he takes to its logical conclusion