NOTES TOWARDS A UTOPIA
515
itous act is anarchic and this gives it an authentic value: the value
inherent in all human acts that try to break the chain of necessity.
But it can never go beyond a gesture of defiance. Its futility is
not due to the intensely personal nature of all anarchic acts;
everyone knows that there have been anarchist
movements
which
have modified an existing order or helped prepare a new one.
It is due to the fallacy that by committing a random act the
chain of consequences might be suspended. But the act without
motive will still generate its consequence--the only difference
being that now the consequence will be even less predictable than
is normal. The most a "gratuitous agent" can achieve is to elide
motive from each of his successive actions and so create a dis–
continuous series instead of the usual series, which has the form:
motive/act/new motive arising from that act, and so on
ad
infinitum.
The fallacy resides in the notion that by eliminating
conventional (pragmatic, prudential or simply psychological)
motive our chain of actions may be decisively broken. But what
is broken is the continuity of the chain, not the chain itself. Viewed
from the outside, or in retrospect, a series of abrupt, deliberately
mad acts still form a pattern. Yet the real protest of the mind
desiring to be free--i.e. unconditioned-is not directed against the
motive/act/new motive sequence,though it may think that it is,
but against the very notion of consequence in both human thought
and human action; against the conditioning principle behind every
act of intellection, every
pragma.
That principle is withdrawn
from our perception and inaccessible to our will. By acting gratui–
tously we may achieve a peculiar sense of exhilaration, not avail–
able to the man acting from motive.
If
we keep up the game for
any length of time, we shall probably go insane--throw our psychic
machinery out of gear. Our effect on the outside world will be
one of confusion or mystification, and in most instances this is
all the gratuitous agent hopes to achieve. But it seems clear that
this is not one of the ways in which a new order can be created.
2. I believe that the chain of motive and consequence should
be acceded to by the will, but that
im.
order for it to function
significantly it must be translated from the individual realm to the
communal. Any true liberation of the individual must come from the
group. But the first step must be taken by the individuals, col-
