Who in that age [the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries - LI] could be strong enough to refrain from murder? Who didn���t know that the worst was inevitable? Here and there someone whose glance had during the day met the savoring glance of his murderer, would be overwhelmed by a strange foreboding. . . . The eyes of the dogs, as they looked up at him, were filled with doubt, and they grew less and less sure of his commands. From the motto that had served him all his life, a secondary meaning quietly emerged. Many long-established customs appeared antiquated, but there didn���t seem to be any substitutes to take their place. . . . And then, before the late supper, this pensiveness over the hands in the silver washbasin. Your own hands. Could any coherence be brought into what they did? any order or continuity in their grasping and releasing? No. All men attempted both the thing and its opposite. All men canceled themselves out; there was no such thing as action.

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge