The Freudian Stumble

"The Roman who gave up an important undertaking if he saw an ill-omened flight of birds was therefore in a relative sense justified; his behavior was consistent with his premisses. But if he withdrew from the undertaking because he had stumbled on the threshold of his door he was also in an absolute sense superior to us unbelievers; he was a better psychologist than we are striving to be. For his stumbling must have revealed to him the existence of a doubt, a counter-current at work within him, whose force might at the moment of execution subtract from the force of his intention." - Sigmund Freud, Psychopathology of Everyday Life p. 259