Moreover, if the idea is combined with a strong, passionate desire, you might one day take it, finally, for something fatal, inevitable, predestined, for something that can no longer not be and not happen.

Maybe there's also something else, some combination of presentiments, some extraordinary effort of will, a self-intoxication by your own fantasy, or whatever else - I don't know.

On that evening, a miraculous event took place. Though it is perfectly justified arithmetically, nonetheless for me it is still miraculous. And why, why did this certainty lodge itself so deeply inside me?

I surely must have thought of it, I repeat to you, not as an event that might happen among others (and therefore also might not happen), but as something that could simply not fail to happen!