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Reading Susanne Mantel’s Determined by Reasons felt a lot like I imagine it
would feel to have your hand held by an expert as they guide you through
a minefield. Densely argued and highly original, her demolition of existing
views of what it is to act for reasons is completely convincing, as are her
arguments for her own normative competence account. This book is a must-
read for philosophers of action and metaethicists alike.
Michael Smith, McCosh Professor of
Philosophy, Princeton University, USA

In this excellent monograph, Susanne Mantel provides us with a fascinating,

novel account of what it is to act for a reason. According to Mantel, a special
kind of normative competence is required for acting on reasons. The account
of normative competence on offer is sophisticated. I found one of its key
virtues to be that it offers to explain how we are able to respond to reasons in
an unreflective, non-intellectual manner, as well as in a reflective, intellectual
manner. I highly recommend this book to everyone interested in reasons.
Daniel Star, Boston University, USA

Determined by Reasons is a remarkable achievement. Mantel argues

forcefully and convincingly against the influential view that the normative
reasons we act for are identical with our motivating reasons. According to
the Competence Account, when we act for normative reasons our normative
competence establishes a correspondence between our normative and our
motivating reasons. This book has the potential of reshaping the debate about
normative reasons and action explanations. It deserves to be widely read.
Jonas Olson, Professor of Practical
Philosophy, Stockholm University, Sweden
Determined by Reasons

This book offers a new account of what it is to act for a normative reason.
The first part of the book examines the problems of causal accounts of acting
for reasons and suggests to solve them by a dispositional approach. The
author argues for a dispositional account which unites epistemic, volitional,
and executional dispositions in a complex normative competence. This
‘Normative Competence Account’ allows for more and less reflective ways
of acting for normative reasons. The second part of the book clarifies the
relation between the normative reason that an agent acts for and his or her
motivating reasons. It refutes the widely held ‘identity view’ that acting for
a normative reason requires the normative reason to be identical with a
motivating reason. The author describes how normative reasons are related
to motivating reasons by a relation of correspondence, and proposes a new
understanding of how normative reasons explain those actions that are
performed for them. Determined by Reasons engages with current debates
from a wide range of different philosophical areas, including action theory,
metaethics, moral psychology, epistemology, and ontology, to develop a new
account of acting for normative reasons.

Susanne Mantel is an assistant at Saarland University. She works on

metaethics, action theory, and epistemology with a focus on reasons
and normativity. Her articles have been published in Erkenntnis, Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Explorations, and Synthese. She
received the Wolfgang-Stegmüller-Preis and the Lauener Prize for Up and
Coming Philosophers.
Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory
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41 Welfare, Meaning and Worth

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New Essays
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A New Moral Pluralism and Its Implication
Benjamin Sachs

44 Determined by Reasons
A Competence Account of Acting for a Normative Reason
Susanne Mantel
Determined by Reasons
A Competence Account of Acting
for a Normative Reason

Susanne Mantel
First published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of Susanne Mantel to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mantel, Susanne, author.
Title: Determined by reasons : a competence account of acting for a
normative reason / by Susanne Mantel.
Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series:
Routledge studies in ethics and moral theory ; 44 | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017061295 | ISBN 9780815394334 (hardback :
alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Normativity (Ethics) | Act (Philosophy)
Classification: LCC BJ1458.3 .M35 2018 | DDC 170/.42—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017061295
ISBN: 978-0-8153-9433-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-18635-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Frank, Laura, and Sandra
Contents

List of Figures xi
Acknowledgments xii

1 Introduction 1

PART 1
Acting for a Normative Reason 11

2 The Causal Approach and the Role of Dispositions 13

3 The Normative Competence Account 42

4 Two Ways of Acting for a Normative Reason 70

5 Conclusion of Part 1 88

PART 2
Squaring Normative Reasons With Motivating Reasons 91

6 The Identity Thesis 93

7 Worldly Reasons in the Deliberative Realm 110

8 Worldly Reasons in the Explanatory Realm 129

9 Worldly Reasons and the Psychological Tradition 160

x Contents
10 Conclusion of Part 2 and General Reflections 175

References 178
Appendix 186
Index 187
Figures

2.1 Promise 18
2.2 Angry Bob 20
2.3 Bicycle 29
2.4 Dispositional Causal Account 32
2.5 Doubly Dispositional Causal Account 33
2.6 Triply Dispositional Causal Account 36
3.1 Normative Competence Account 44
3.2 Moralistic Demon 56
3.3 Competence to Bake a Cake 62
3.4 Normative Competence 62
4.1 Bicycle II 72
4.2 More Reflective Way 74
4.3 Less Reflective Way 80
8.1 Dispositional Explanation of Wailing Sirens 148
8.2 Dispositional Explanation of Lucky Dog 148
Acknowledgments

In writing this book I received the generous help and support of a great
number of friends and colleagues. I am grateful for being part of this inspir-
ing and amiable philosophical community.
I thank my supervisor Christoph Fehige who never tired of engaging
with my views in the most ingenious manner. By hosting the Doktoran-
denkolloquium Praktische Philosophie Christoph Fehige and Ulla Wessels
provided the ideal environment for discussing my work with very talented
students and advanced philosophers. The feedback I received from them has
substantially shaped my work. I am especially indebted to my colleagues
Stephan Padel, Oliver Petersen, and Eva Schmidt for countless over-lunch
discussions and to Stephan Schweitzer for help with the figures.
Niko Kolodny and Jay Wallace were so kind as to enable me to come to
the UC Berkeley as a visiting scholar in spring 2010 and provided me with a
multitude of insightful comments. The Deutsche Akademische Austausch­
dienst (DAAD) generously supported my stay at Berkeley.
I am grateful to Nico Scarano for helping me to find my own view of
reasons for actions and to Sabine Döring, who sharpened my view on many
philosophical issues and supervised my dissertation from 2008 to 2010 at
the University of Tübingen. I received generous financial support as a fellow
of a Dissertationsstipendium nach dem Landesgraduiertenförderungsgesetz
by the Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg.
Ideas from this book have been presented on many occasions, among them
three retreats to the Island Reichenau organized by Attila Tanyi between
2011 and 2013, two meetings of the network Practical Thought and Good
Action of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg) in Magdeburg and
Leipzig in 2012 and 2016, the conference of the British Society for Ethi-
cal Theory (bset) in London in 2013, a colloquium and a book discussion
meeting at the Humboldt University Berlin in 2014 and 2015, a meeting
of the Research Unit for Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Philosophy of
Cognition at Aarhus in 2016, the Humboldt-Southampton Normativity
Conference in Southampton in 2017, as well as in research colloquia at
the University of Göttingen and the Humboldt University Berlin. On all
these occasions, I received valuable comments that helped me to improve
my views in various ways.
 Acknowledgments xiii
Further acknowledgements for insightful written or oral comments on
parts of this project are due to Hannah Altehenger, Maria Alvarez, Vuko
Andrić, Nomy Arpaly, Kevin Baum, Rüdiger Bittner, Matthew Braham,
Mario Brandhorst, Joseph Cunningham, Jonathan Dancy, Julian Fink, Dan-
iel Fogal, Cord Friebe, Simon Gaus, Jan Gertken, Jens Gillessen, Alex Greg-
ory, Thomas Grundmann, Dieter Heckmann, Tim Henning, Ulrike Heuer,
Donald C. Hubin, David Hunter, Kent Hurtig, John Hyman, Siegfried Jaag,
Antti Kauppinen, Geert Keil, Benjamin Kiesewetter, Christian Kietzmann,
Sebastian Köhler, Jeanette Lang, Clayton Littlejohn, Errol Lord, Christoph
Lumer, Erasmus Mayr, Kirsten Meyer, Elijah Millgram, Matteo Morganti,
Andreas Müller, Olaf Müller, Jonas Olson, Michael Pauen, Christian Piller,
Johannes Roessler, Tobias Rosefeldt, Neil Roughley, Peter Ruhrberg, Con-
stantine Sandis, Peter Schaber, Thomas Schmidt, Peter Schulte, Stephan
Schweitzer, Kieran Setiya, Michael Smith, Ernest Sosa, Thomas Spitzley,
Daniel Star, Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, Holmer Steinfath, Ralf Stoecker,
Holger Sturm, Kurt Sylvan, Attila Tanyi, Sergio Tenenbaum, Christine
Tiefensee, Teemu Toppinen, Barbara Vetter, Tatjana Višak, Jonathan Way,
Christian Wendelborn, and Daniel Whiting (with apologies to those I might
have forgotten to name).
A version of Chapter 2 has been published as “Three Cheers for Dis-
positions: A Dispositional Approach to Acting for a Normative Reason,”
Erkenntnis, 2017, 82 (3):561–582. A version of Chapter 6 has been pub-
lished as “No Reason for Identity: On the Relation Between Motivating
and Normative Reasons,” Philosophical Explorations, 2014, 17 (1):49–62.
A version of Chapter 7 has been published as “Worldly Reasons: An Onto-
logical Inquiry Into Motivating Considerations and Normative Reasons,”
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2017, 98 (S1):5–28. A version of Chapter 8
has been accepted as “Because There Is a Reason to Do It” by Analytic Phi-
losophy (forthcoming in 2018). A version of Chapter 9 has been published
as “How To Be Psychologistic About Motivating but Not About Normative
Reasons,” Grazer Philosophische Studien, 2016, 93: 80–105. I would like
to thank Springer, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and Brill for the permission to
reprint this material.
Moreover, I thank the anonymous referees of various versions of the paper
manuscripts and of the book manuscript for their very helpful feedback.
I am grateful to Andrew Weckenmann and Allie Simmons for their won-
derful support and to the entire editorial team of Routledge who helped me
in every possible way during the production of this book.
I owe special thanks to my mother Dorothee Mantel for encouraging me
to think about the world, as well as for popping up to care for the kids
whenever my work-family balance threatened to collapse.
Most of all, however, I want to thank my husband Frank Hofmann for his
love and his invaluable and uncountable comments on this manuscript and
my daughters Laura and Sandra Hofmann for drawing my attention to all
the other wonderful subjects in life in the most adorable way.
1 Introduction

Suppose Finn should turn off the horror movie because a child is entering
the room who will otherwise be scared. Finn turns off the movie, but he is
doing this only for the fun of annoying Lisa who wanted the movie to con-
tinue. He does not act for the moral reason that a child is entering the room,
but merely in accordance with that reason.1
Normative reasons are entities that favor actions. They jointly determine
what we ought to do. Sometimes our actions merely coincide with nor-
mative reasons, as does Finn’s action. But when things go well, normative
reasons not only determine what we ought to do, but some of them actu-
ally determine what we do. They genuinely make a difference to what hap-
pens in the world. Of course, they do not do so against our will, but via
our agency, by determining our minds and motivations and, thereby, our
actions. When we manifest our competence to conform to them, we make
normative reasons determine what we do. The agent’s character enables this
determination. This is important: not only do we want our actions to match
normative reasons, we want to make them match. This is what we do when
we act for normative reasons.
The present inquiry aims to develop an account of acting for a norma-
tive reason that meets certain conditions of adequacy. Most importantly,
the account must explain how reasons determine action via determining
the minds and motivations of agents. That is, it must provide the correct
characterization of the non-accidental relation between the action and the
normative reason(s) for which it is performed. Furthermore, it must capture
the idea that agents deserve credit when they act for a normative reason,
and it must account for many different intuitively plausible ways of acting
for reasons.
More specifically, sometimes agents engage in detailed normative reflec-
tion, form well-founded beliefs about their obligations, and seem to act for a
normative reason when they manifest their competence to do what they believe
they ought to do. However, on other occasions agents do not act on well-
founded normative beliefs. Nevertheless, they may seem to act for certain
normative reasons, namely if their character is such that they give a firm
and appropriate emotional and motivational response to these reasons. The
contrast between the role of normative belief and motivational states might
2 Introduction
be highlighted by saying that there is both a Kantian and a Humean way
of acting for a normative reason (although, of course, these labels might
be questioned and Hume might have denied the very existence of norma-
tive reasons). As I will put it, there is a more reflective and a less reflective
way. The account should make room for this variety. It should be more
liberal, therefore, both than accounts that focus primarily on acting from
moral knowledge (e.g., the account of moral worth in Sliwa 2016), and
than accounts that focus on acting from the right non-instrumental desire
(e.g., the account in Arpaly and Schroeder 2014).
Acting for a normative reason cannot be understood if normative theory
and action theory are held separate. Ethics (or normative theory more gen-
erally) identifies normative reasons and tells us what to do. Action theory,
by contrast, provides explanations for what we do. However, we need to
understand not only agency as such, but also moral (and, more generally,
normatively appropriate) agency. We need to understand how it is that
sometimes we perform an action precisely because it is the thing to do (or,
at least, is favored by a reason).
A lot of contemporary philosophy of action is concerned with a causal
account of action. This tradition can be traced back to Aristotle and
Hobbes, and was reinforced by Davidson (1963).2 According to this tradi-
tion, actions are causally explained by certain psychological entities (in a
certain way) and this is what distinguishes action from mere behavior.3 No
matter whether we agree with this tradition or not, if we want to understand
acting for a normative reason, we need to find a place for normative reasons
in the explanation of the action.
Because that place is hard to find, acting for a normative reason is, I think,
still poorly understood and has often been misconstrued. Normative rea-
sons do not easily fit into the causal and psychological framework, because
it may be doubted both that they must cause the actions that are performed
for them and that they are located within the psychology of the agent. Along
with a growing number of philosophers, e.g., Parfit (1997, 2011), Scan-
lon (1998), and Alvarez (2010), I assume that normative reasons often are
facts in the world, such as the fact that a storm is approaching. They often
are independent of the agent’s mind, although they must be registered and
represented when the agent acts for them. Acting for a normative reason
requires responding to how things are ‘out there.’ Call this the ‘worldly’
view of normative reasons.
This worldly view of normative reasons does not seem to jive well with
the psychological tradition, although this tradition arguably centers on
motivating, not normative reasons. Motivating reasons can roughly be
described as considerations that explain actions in a certain, characteristic
way or motivate in deliberation.4 Proponents of the causal tradition, such
as Davidson (1963) and Smith (1994), argue that they consist in pairs of
beliefs and desires that cause actions. However, according to writers such
as Dancy (2000) and Stoutland (2001), worldly normative reasons cannot
 Introduction 3
be fitted into a coherent picture with a psychological account of motivating
reasons because both kinds of reasons must be construed in similar ways.
The received view about acting for a normative reason is expressed by the
identity thesis, which states that acting for a normative reason requires the
normative reason to be identical with a motivating reason. In other words,
what motivates in deliberation and explains the action must be identical
to that which favors it. This identity is commonly thought to refute the
psychological tradition by proving that motivating reasons are no more psy-
chological than normative reasons are (e.g., Dancy 2000, Bittner 2001, and
Stoutland 2001).5
However, in my view the identity thesis leads us astray. It is both too
weak and too strong to properly account for the way in which normative
reasons determine actions. The identity thesis is meant to establish, or to
help establish, the agent’s special relation to the normative reason, but it fails
to do so. In the grip of this thesis, many philosophers have abandoned the
causal and psychological tradition, and it has gone unnoticed that, despite
its limits, this tradition is a better starting point for developing a theory of
acting for a normative reason.
The identity thesis is too weak because it is not sufficiently informative
about the relation between the normative reason and the agent’s motiva-
tion. Identity does not contribute anything of importance to help establish
this relation. Even if identity holds, the agent might be motivated by the
consideration not because it is a normative reason to perform the action,
but rather independently of, or even despite its being a normative reason.
For instance, the fact that the baby is reaching for the knife is a normative
reason to put the knife away, and an older sibling might put it away for
the motivating reason that the baby is reaching for the knife. Suppose that
in this case the motivating reason and the normative reason are identical.
However, the older sibling might merely follow an impulse of envy and take
away whatever the baby wants, and he might, in this sense, be completely
untouched by the normativity of the reason. If the object had been a harm-
less toy, he would have put it away for the motivating reason that the baby
is reaching for it all the same.6 Acting for a normative reason should be
understood in a more demanding sense in which it reflects well on the agent,
which this action does not. The identity thesis states that acting for a norma-
tive reason requires that the reason be identical with a motivating reason.
This is not specific enough to rule out the case just mentioned. The identity
thesis is therefore too weak: being motivated by a fact that happens to be a
normative reason does not get us far.
Instead, acting for a normative reason is, by approximation, to act such
that the match between the action and the normative reason is due to the
agent’s responsiveness to that reason in its role as a normative reason.7 This,
at any rate, is the phenomenon that this inquiry is about.8
The causal and psychological tradition is a very helpful starting point
for identifying this phenomenon. In a nutshell, the best accounts in the
4 Introduction
causal tradition help to make out various dispositions or competences that
exclude merely accidental connections between mental states (e.g. Arpaly
2006, Wedgwood 2006, Smith 2009, and Turri 2011). For instance, dispo-
sitions are used to distinguish inferences that manifest instrumental ratio-
nality from deviant causal connections between desires, means end beliefs,
and intentions. However, such a dispositional structure can be extended
beyond mental states to cover worldly normative reasons, such as to rule
out a merely accidental connection with these. All we need to do is focus
on the agent’s dispositions to respond appropriately to features of the world
around them.
In order to understand the full significance and nature of this disposi-
tional structure, it must be identified as a complex tracking disposition.
Tracking dispositions are structures that tend to trigger an appropri-
ate, fine-tuned response to a condition that is thus being tracked by that
response. They are manifested by exhibiting that response in the face of
the condition—for instance by the wailing of a tsunami siren when there is
a tsunami. Similarly, an action is a manifestation of a tracking disposition
to do what normative reasons favor only if it results from a motivational
structure that tends to adjust the agent’s actions to the normative force of
reasons (of a relevant kind).
Since taking the knife away from the baby out of envy does not mani-
fest a tendency to respond appropriately to the normativity at issue (but
rather manifests a tendency to disadvantage the baby), this account rules
out problem cases to the identity view. The identity view did not exclude
this case, since the sibling’s motivating consideration seems to be identical
to a normatively significant fact: that the baby is reaching for the knife. The
dispositional strategy does better. It may therefore fruitfully be applied to
normative reasons, although these lie beyond the boundaries of the psycho-
logical tradition.
The tracking disposition at the center of my account of acting for a nor-
mative reason is a normative competence: a competence to respond correctly
to the normative force of reasons. According to the Normative Competence
Account, acting for a normative reason consists in manifesting normative
competence. When this competence is manifested, the normative reason
determines the agent’s mind, motivation, and action: the agent manifests
a tendency to represent the reason correctly, to be motivated to do what it
favors, and to execute that motivation successfully. Consequently, the action
matches the reason insofar as it is favored by that reason, but the match
between the reason and the action is not due to luck, but to the agent’s
competence. Hence, acting for a normative reason merits positive character
evaluation: the agent deserves credit for doing what the reason favors. The
normatively appropriate outcome reflects well on the agent.9 Acting for a
normative reason can be understood as a manifestation of some form of
virtue.
 Introduction 5
Equipped with this dispositional strategy, we may even call into ques-
tion specific assumptions that the causal tradition is founded on. Tracking
dispositions are very flexible and often respond to various different types
of stimuli when they produce matches. Thus it turns out that they do not
require the specific causal assumptions that the psychological tradition has
adopted from Davidson. The causal tradition helps to identify the disposi-
tional structure of acting for a normative reason, but when this structure
is sufficiently understood, a more promising account emerges that crosses
both the psychological and the causal limits of that tradition.
In another respect, the identity thesis is too strong and the Normative
Competence Account is more liberal. Stipulating identity carries a heavy
ontological burden—in fact, it seems that the identity thesis cannot account
for the important differences between the nature of normative and motivat-
ing reasons. By contrast, the Normative Competence Account does, since
it allows that normative reasons are objective states of affairs to which
agents competently respond, whereas motivating reasons are more subjec-
tive. More precisely, the account allows for normative reasons to be in the
world, i.e., to be worldly states of affairs or events, even if motivating rea-
sons are in the mind. Locating normative reasons in the world and motivat-
ing reasons in the mind separates these two kinds of reasons, but, to me, it
seems intuitively plausible. What we ought to do is determined by worldly
circumstances. States of affairs or events, such as upcoming storms, make
a difference to what we ought to do. They might disfavor staying outside
and instead favor seeking shelter. Action, including morally good action,
is primarily about reacting appropriately to the world itself. We do so via
representing and conceptualizing the worldly phenomena we encounter, but
we must not conclude from this that what favors action is primarily our
own fine-grained mental description of the world. If a person gets injured,
for instance, this is a normative reason to help, and it does not depend on
how we conceptualize it.
By contrast, motivating considerations depend on the exact conceptual-
ization that an agent employs. Although I do not identify them with mental
states themselves, they belong to the mind insofar as they are contents of
mental states. At any rate, I will argue that this picture, which construes
motivating reasons as propositions, but normative reasons as objective
states of affairs or events, is the most plausible classification from an onto-
logical point of view.
Identity leaves no room for this ontological contrast between motivating
and normative reasons. By contrast, the Normative Competence Account
highlights correspondence, not identity: The agent manifests a tendency to
represent the normative reason correctly, and to be motivated by this rep-
resentation to do what it favors. The agent’s motivating consideration cor-
responds to the normative reason by representing it. This correspondence is
not just due to luck, but established by normative competence. Furthermore,
6 Introduction
the action corresponds to the normative reason in the sense that it is favored
by that reason. We perform an action ‘because there is a normative reason
to do so’ when it is this reason that we competently track by doing what it
favors. Thereby, we match our actions with the normative reasons there are,
such that the match is not merely coincidental. Our action is determined by
the normative reason in such a way that we deserve credit for the outcome.
In this introduction, I have pointed out how the Normative Competence
Account helps to combine the worldly conception of normative reasons
with the causal and psychological tradition. We might even say that the
Normative Competence Account bridges a gap, namely a theoretical gap
between action theory, on the one hand, and normative ethics as well as
metaethics, on the other hand. The literature on action theory tends to focus
on motivating reasons and mental states, and rarely takes non-psychological
normative reasons into view. But certainly anyone who believes in the exis-
tence of non-psychological normative reasons should want to know how
these reasons can relate to actions—in a way that is appropriate to their
normative force, of course, not just by way of an accidental match between
the normative reason and the action. The Normative Competence Account
identifies a systematic role that normative reasons play with respect to the
actions we perform, via our competent representation of them, and our
competent motivation to do what they favor.

***
As a short summary of the desiderata laid out so far, let me state a plan for
the book, and as a summary of the main ideas, a preview.
The plan for the book is twofold. First, it will give an account of acting
for a normative reason that is more demanding than the identity view when
it comes to the agent’s responsiveness to the normative force of reasons.
This account must accommodate that the agent deserves credit for doing
what is favored by the reason. It must license a positive character evalua-
tion. However, the account should not be burdened with the identity view’s
ontological commitments. Instead, it should leave room for an ontological
difference between normative and motivating reasons. Finally, it should be
liberal enough to allow for various intuitively possible ways of acting for
normative reasons, e.g., more and less intellectually sophisticated ways, and
enkratic as well as akratic ways.
Second, the book will examine the ontology of normative and motivat-
ing reasons and point out why the identity view is problematic. The project
is to articulate the merits of locating normative reasons within the world,
but also motivating reasons within the mind (namely, among the contents
of beliefs). Subsequently, an alternative to the identity view needs to be for-
mulated that spells out what is left of the relation between normative and
motivating reasons that was mistaken for identity. The task is to point out
that this ontologically more liberal relation is robust enough for replac-
ing the identity view—both when it comes to understanding the motivating
 Introduction 7
considerations of agents and to giving an illuminating interpretation of the
explanatory force of normative reasons with respect to the actions that are
performed for them.
Corresponding to this twofold plan, the inquiry is divided into two parts.
Part 1 is devoted to the development of the Normative Competence Account
of acting for a normative reason.
It begins with Chapter 2, which demonstrates that a causal account of
acting for a normative reason needs to be supplemented by certain dispo-
sitional conditions. In particular, these state that the agent be disposed to
respond with appropriate motivation to her own beliefs when these repre-
sent normative reasons, but also that she possess the epistemic disposition to
respond with appropriate beliefs to those circumstances in her surrounding
that are normatively relevant. Since the epistemic disposition is concerned
with responses to the normatively relevant features of the agent’s surround-
ing, the causal account is thus stretched beyond its traditional focus on the
agent’s mental states.
In Chapter 3, the dispositional conditions are used to form the backbone
of the Normative Competence Account. Acting for a normative reason is
the manifestation of a normative competence. This competence can be ana-
lyzed further as consisting of certain epistemic, volitional, and executional
sub-competences. However, I point out that the competences involved are
tracking dispositions that do not require the specific causal conditions of
traditional causal accounts. In other words, the Normative Competence
Account employs the dispositional structure of causal accounts, but aban-
dons their central causal assumptions.
Chapter 4 is concerned with the richness of the phenomenon of acting
for a normative reason. It describes two different ways in which agents may
implement normative competence. Agents may either exercise their rational
competence to conform to normative judgments, or they may act on certain
desires (which can be done without normative judgment). Either way, the
agent deserves credit for doing what is favored by the normative reason, and
the action manifests some form of virtue.
Chapter 5 is a short summary of Part 1.
Part 2 explores the relation between the normative reason for which an
agent acts and his or her motivating reasons.
Chapter 6 examines different arguments for the identity thesis. I distin-
guish between two different notions of a motivating reason—the delibera-
tive and the explanatory notion—and point out that ontological inquiries
are needed to properly evaluate the different theses of identity that result
from these two notions.
In Chapter 7 I investigate the ontology of motivating reasons in the delib-
erative sense and the ontology of normative reasons. The negative con-
clusion of this chapter is that motivating reasons in the deliberative sense
are individuated in a more fine-grained way than normative reasons, and
that this precludes identity. However, the positive conclusion is that the
8 Introduction
normative reasons for which an agent acts reliably correspond to the agent’s
motivating reasons, since they are the contents of beliefs that represent nor-
mative reasons.
In Chapter 8, the focus is on motivating reasons in the explanatory sense.
There are good arguments for the view that motivating reasons in this sense,
too, are individuated more fine-grainedly than normative reasons, and
therefore cannot be identical with them. I argue that the normative reasons
for which agents act nevertheless correspond to motivating reasons in the
explanatory sense. This can be seen only if different forms of explanations
of actions are taken into account. Neither non-factive nor causal explana-
tions are able to capture correspondence, whereas dispositional explana-
tions are well suited to establish correspondence between normative and
motivating reasons.
In Chapter 9 I argue that my view is compatible with the psychological
aspects of the Causal-Psychological Account of Action. Acting for a non-
psychological normative reason can be reconciled with psychological moti-
vating reasons. My argument can be read as a summary of how motivating
reasons of several different kinds relate to normative reasons.
Chapter 10, the conclusion of Part 2, contains a short summary and some
reflections on the nexus between Part 1 and Part 2.

Notes
1 Another famous example is the shopkeeper who treats his customers fairly merely
for the sake of his reputation (Kant 1785/6, 22–23).
2 For an overview, see, e.g., Aguilar and Buckareff 2010.
3 For the view that actions are explained by psychological entities, see, e.g., Hempel
1961, Davidson 1970, 1976, and 1978, Smith 1994 and 2009, Mele 2003, and
Setiya 2007 and 2009. Most of these texts also state that this explanation distin-
guishes actions from mere behavior.
4 The distinction between motivating and normative reasons is discussed, for exam-
ple, in Smith 1994, 95–101, Setiya 2007, 9, and Velleman 2007, 189. Some prefer
to say that there are two perspectives on reasons, e.g., Dancy (2000, 2), Alva-
rez (2010, 33–39), and Gibbons (2010, 344). Others suggest to avoid the term
‘motivating reason’ because it is ambiguous and introduces confusions (see, for
example, Wallace 2006a, 70, Setiya 2007, 28–32 and 102, Broome 2009, 88, and
Hieronymi 2011). However, a certain ambiguity does not undermine the general
distinction between normative reasons, on the one hand, and one, or more, other
sorts of reasons that are referred to as ‘motivating reasons,’ on the other hand.
5 Dancy (2000, 98) traces his view back to Nagel (1970).
6 One might try other characterizations of the motivating reason in order to get rid
of this example. However, this move might result in an implausibly rich descrip-
tion of motivating reasons.
  In the epistemic domain, a similar view prevails about believing for a good epis-
temic reason. Here, a similar criticism applies: believing for a consideration which
is identical with (or corresponds to) a consideration that justifies the belief does
not amount to believing for a normative or justifying epistemic reason (compare
Way 2017 and Lord and Sylvan ms), since the believer might have derived the
 Introduction 9
belief from the justifying consideration in an epistemically incompetent way in
which the fact that it is suitable to justify the belief did not play any role at all.
7 The expression ‘responding to reasons’ plays an important role also in Fisher and
Ravizza 1998 and Jones 2003. I mean to use this term in an intuitive sense here,
not necessarily in exactly the way these authors do.
8 It is not about a colloquial expression. The expression ‘acting for a normative
reason’ is a technical term in moral philosophy. It is loosely inspired by the more
colloquial expression ‘doing something for a good reason,’ but maybe it does not
refer to exactly the same phenomenon.
9 For a similar (but slightly different) view, compare Way 2017.
Part 1

Acting for a Normative

Reason

Normative and motivating reasons can come apart. My project is to build

an account of acting for a normative reason, which needs to be distinguished
from building an account of acting for a motivating reason.
Sometimes there is a normative reason to perform an action, but no moti-
vating reason, and vice versa (see Smith 1994, 95–101).1 Roughly, norma-
tive reasons determine what we ought to do, while motivating reasons are
the considerations that actually figure in our deliberation or that explain our
actions. That a child is entering the room is a normative reason to turn off
the horror movie even if Finn has no motivating reason to do so—maybe
because he does not notice the child or does not care. Conversely, a girl hits
her brother, a baby, who is playing with her toy. She acts for the motivat-
ing reason that it is her toy, or that she wants her toy back, but there is no
normative reason for doing what she does.
For both normative and motivating reasons we may ask what it is to
act for them. Take motivating reasons first. A motivating reason arguably
entails having some inclination to act. Nevertheless, it can happen that the
agent does what he has a motivating reason to do, but that he does not do
it for that motivating reason (see Davidson 1963, 1973), but merely for
another one. Therefore, it is interesting to ask what acting for a motivating
reason is—over and above doing what one has a motivating reason to do.
A similar question can be asked concerning normative reasons. If one
does what there is a normative reason to do, one may nevertheless act for
some other (possibly bad, merely motivating) reason, instead of acting for
this normative reason. This is what Finn did when he turned off the horror
movie because doing so will annoy Lisa, and not for the normative reason
that a child entered the room. Cases like this one prompt the question what
exactly acting for a normative reason amounts to.
The second question is more demanding. Acting for a normative reason
might involve acting for a motivating reason, but not the other way around
(since the girl who hits her brother does not act for a normative reason). It
is the second question that I will pursue in the first part of this book.
2 The Causal Approach and the
Role of Dispositions

The causal tradition in action theory aims to identify the reasons for which
an agent acts by describing the causal relations between the agent’s mental
states and the agent’s motivation. This strategy is often applied to motivat-
ing reasons, which are characterized as mental states by this tradition, but it
is quite natural to think that causal conditions are also required for acting
for a normative reason (cf. Mantel 2017a). Unfolding a causal approach
to acting for a normative reason has two main merits: it helps to explore
some problem cases of deviant causal chains that any account of acting
for a normative reason has to exclude, and, more importantly, it reveals a
dispositional structure that will lie at the heart of the account that I want to
defend in the following chapter.
In my discussion of the causal approach I will remind the reader of the
ways in which dispositions have been invoked in the literature to exclude
deviant causal chains between mental states. Causal relations may be influ-
enced by arbitrary circumstances, but dispositions establish a non-accidental
connection between mental states. These observations provide a blueprint
of what dispositional determination is. When the role of dispositions has
been described in the mental domain of belief and motivation (where it is
arguably well established already, see Section 2.3), I will expand it both to
normative force (Section 2.4) and to worldly circumstances (Section 2.5)
and thus apply it also to normative reasons themselves.

2.1 Laying the Basis: Action, Reason, and Representation

A causal account needs to specify some basic elements, some basic mental
and non-mental states that will be the candidates for standing in causal rela-
tions. These elements are provided by a few basic observations about acting
for a normative reason.
Acting for a normative reason is to be contrasted, of course, with acting
merely in accordance with a normative reason. However, acting for a nor-
mative reason implies acting in accordance with the normative reason: only
if the action is in accordance with a normative reason can the accordance be
due to the agent’s responsiveness to that reason. Furthermore, acting for a
normative reason implies that the agent suitably grasps the reason.
14 Acting for a Normative Reason
These views lead to a factive and intensional interpretation of the expres-
sion ‘acting for a normative reason’ and to the following three necessary
conditions.

If agent A performs action X for the normative reason that p, the fol-
lowing must hold:

Action
Agent A performs action X.2

Reason
There is an entity, that p, and it is a normative reason for A to do X.

Descriptive Representation
A has the belief that p or a logically stronger belief.

These conditions are rather uncontroversial, but I will briefly make some
clarifications and discuss some worries that readers might have concerning
the second and the third condition, to make sure that these conditions form
a solid basis for upcoming accounts. However, the reader who is happy with
these conditions may skip the rest of this section.
What is a normative reason? A normative reason for an action favors
that action, and a normative reason against an action disfavors that action.
Some claim that the notion of a reason is primitive and cannot be analyzed
in other terms (Scanlon 1998, 17, Parfit 2011, 31–42). For my purposes,
nothing substantial hangs on this question. At least for illustrative purposes,
however, what it is for a reason to favor or disfavor an action can helpfully
be explained by how reasons are connected to oughts. Most authors see
such a connection, but they disagree on its direction. Scanlon and Parfit hold
that reasons are more fundamental than oughts, whereas Broome thinks
that oughts are more fundamental than reasons. According to his view, nor-
mative reasons figure in explanations of what someone ought to do.3 This
statement nicely highlights the normative character of normative reasons:
they are the entities that determine which action ought to be done.
There are different views on what normative reasons are, ontologically
speaking. I assume that normative reasons are often independent of the
agent’s psychology, such as the reason that a storm is approaching. A simi-
lar view is held, e.g., by, Smith (1994), Parfit (1997), Scanlon (1998), Dancy
(2000), Stoutland (2001), R. Stout (2004), and Alvarez (2010).
In Reason, the normative reason is, somewhat awkwardly, referred to
by the expression ‘the entity that p.’ This is supposed to leave open cer-
tain ontological alternatives: normative reasons might be true propositions,
Another random document with
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 “Trevor has a good deal on his hands,” she reminded herself
however, “and of course he will know it does not matter if he misses
one dance with me. We have two still—one other waltz.”
So the face was still sweet and unruffled, the eyes guiltless of
reproach, when, at the very end of the waltz—when the last notes of
the inviting Zuleika were dying away—the laggard partner made his
appearance. He looked flushed and discomposed, and evidently
conscious that he deserved a scolding.
“I am so sorry, so very sorry,” he began. “I was coming here to
look for you, but I hadn’t got rid of my last partner, and the music
began before I expected, and we found ourselves regularly hemmed
in. We took a turn to get clear, and then I had to get Ge—, my
partner, an ice, and now it is too late!”
“Never mind,” said Cicely brightly. “What does it matter? I have
kept two others for you.”
Trevor looked at her with a curious mixture of expressions in his
face. “My dear old Cit,” he said, reverting to a pet name of long ago,
“you are awfully sweet-tempered.” Then a frown gathered over his
face. Whose soft voice had whispered in his ear a minute before?
—“Do not please tell my cousin you were just now dancing with me.
It might—it might vex her. She thinks sometimes I forget too much I
am but a stranger. I would not that she should think I knew this was
the waltz you should dance with her.”
Cicely did not see the frown. She only heard the pleasant words.
“Am I?” she said. “I don’t know that it is true, but any way I like you to
think so. By the bye, how is Geneviève getting on? I have not seen
her for ever so long.”
“Oh! she’s all right. She’s had any number of partners,” replied Mr.
Fawcett hastily, as he ran off to fulfil his next engagement—this time
probably with some less long-suffering damsel than Miss Methvyn. In
the doorway he almost knocked over a small man, quietly making his
way in. “I beg your pardon,” he exclaimed. “Ah! Hayle, is it you? Why
are you so late?”
 “I could not come earlier,” replied Mr. Hayle. “Is Miss Methvyn
here?”
“Yes, in the little drawing-room,” said Trevor, as he disappeared.
Mr. Hayle peered about till he caught sight of Cicely.
“How late you are, Mr. Hayle!” she exclaimed. “I suppose you
don’t care about balls though.”
“Not much. I have hardly any experience of them. But I could not
come earlier to-night. I have been at Notcotts till half an hour ago,”
he answered.
“Is anything wrong there?”
“No,—this is the evening I have fixed for my class there. That is
what I wanted to ask you about. We are rather at a loss for some
books. Would you mind letting me look over again some of those you
offered me before?”
“Certainly,” said Cicely, “you can have any of them you like.”
Then Mr. Hayle proceeded to relate to her, as he had got into the
habit of doing, the small chronicle of his difficulties, hopes, and fears.
Cicely listened with interest—she had found it quite possible to like
and respect the boy-faced clergyman, and there was plenty of
common ground on which they could meet without jarring. But half
an hour before, she could not have listened without impatience to the
history of the Notcott’s night-school, the shortcomings of the choir,
the ever-increasing necessity for the renovation of Lingthurst church.
Whence had the sunshine come again? Trevor had called her his
“dear old Cit; it was all nonsense and fancy” about his being
changed.
Mr. Hayle did not dance, but he escorted Miss Methvyn in to
supper instead. Then he had to resign his charge to the partner to
whom she was engaged for the next dance.
It happened to be Mr. Dangerfield. The poor young man could talk
of nothing but Geneviève.
 “She’s so awfully pretty,” he said. “What a pity she can’t speak
English. I didn’t know she was your cousin till just now, when one of
the officers from Haverstock asked me if I couldn’t get him an
introduction to Miss Methvyn; and being such old friends, of course I
said yes. And we were steering away towards you, you know, when
he holla’ed out to me to stop, and I found out it was your cousin he
meant. He said the Miss Methvyn who was engaged to Fawcett, so
of course I thought it was all right. She—your cousin I mean—was
dancing with Fawcett at the time, so Captain Burnett had made the
mistake. Fawcett put it all right, but I couldn’t catch your cousin’s
name—Castle, isn’t it? only that doesn’t sound like a French name.”
“Casalis,” corrected Cicely, smiling. She had known young
Dangerfield all her life, and had rather liked him for his unaffected
good nature, and been tolerant of his matter of-fact prosiness. This
evening however, long before her dance with him was over, she
began to think he must surely have grown heavier and more stupid
than of old. Could he find nothing else to talk about than Geneviève
and that absurd mistake of Captain Burnett’s?
But even the slowest of dances “wears through” at last. Cicely’s
next engagement was to one of the aforesaid officers from
Haverstock—a quiet man—who danced little but talked sensibly, and
did not seem, like every one else this evening, to have had his head
turned by Miss Casalis. And when his dance was over, Cicely began
to feel tired in earnest. She sat down in the corner where she had
been before, resolving not to dance any more—“at least,” she said to
herself, “not unless Trevor very much wants to make up for the waltz
we missed. I wonder what has become of him? I did not see him
dancing the last at all. And Geneviève? She is engaged to Fred
Dangerfield again for this one, I think he told me. No, there he is,
talking to Miss Falconer. Where can Geneviève be?”
Her speculations were interrupted by Mr. Hayle, who, with great
satisfaction, had spied her out again in her retreat.
“I don’t think I remembered to ask you how Colonel Methvyn is,”
he began, as he came up to her.
 “Not very well, thank you,” said Cicely, “indeed, I was not much
inclined to leave him to come here to-night—but—I hardly liked to
stay away. My cousin has had very little amusement since she has
been with us. I came greatly on her account.”
“Then you yourself don’t care for balls and dancing?” said Mr.
Hayle eagerly.
Cicely smiled. “Oh! yes I do,” she answered. “When I am light-
hearted about other things, I enjoy them very much.”
Mr. Hayle made no reply.
“Have you seen my cousin lately?” Cicely went on, “I can’t think
what has become of her.”
“If you mean Miss Casalis, I saw her just now with Mr. Fawcett. I
think they were going to dance,” said Mr. Hayle.
“Oh!” said Cicely, and then relapsed into silence.
“Don’t you think it is rather too hot here,” said Mr. Hayle, “would
you not like to find a seat where there is a little more air?”
“It is hot,” said Cicely, rising as she spoke; “yes, I think I should
like to go into one of the other rooms. I want to find Geneviève—it
must be getting late. Will you take me, Mr. Hayle?” she added with a
smile.
They made a little tour of the rooms; dancing in the ball-room was
still going on vigorously, but no Geneviève, no Trevor, were to be
seen.
“I dare say they are in the supper-room,” said Mr. Hayle. “I saw
several people there still, a few minutes ago. Suppose we look for a
nice cool place in the conservatory, Miss Methvyn; this way—ah!
yes, over there among the ferns there is a charming corner. Now, if
you will stay here, I will get you an ice and look for Miss Casalis on
the way.”
The poor little man seemed quite pleased to find himself of use.
Cicely thanked him and established herself comfortably in the nook
he had discovered. It was at the further end of the fernery, into which
opened the great dining-room, to-night metamorphosed into a ball-
room. Cicely looked round her admiringly. She had always coveted
the Lingthurst fernery; in the hottest summer day it seemed cool and
fresh—there were greens of every shade to rest the eye, an
incessant, soothing murmur of trickling water to please the ear; and
to-night the soft lights of the many-coloured lamps, hung here and
there among the climbing plants which hid the walls, made the whole
into a veritable fairy-land.
Cicely leant her head back and shut her eyes. “The music sounds
far nicer here than in the ball-room,” she said to herself; “it is almost
too loud in there. I shall go to sleep if Mr. Hayle doesn’t come soon. I
don’t want an ice in the least, but it would have been a shame to
refuse it; he was so pleased with the idea. Ah, there he is!”
Steps were approaching her, but they were not Mr. Hayle’s.
Where she sat, some great stands of tall tropical ferns concealed her
from the view of any one coming to wards her; but not realising this,
it never occurred to her to move when first the sound of voices fell
upon her ear. Well known, familiar voices they proved to be, but the
words they uttered deprived the girl for the moment of all power or
vitality.
“I tell you I will do anything—anything to make you believe me—
anything to free myself from this horrible hypocrisy. I can stand it no
longer. The words were spoken low, but with a sort of suppressed
fierceness; the voice was Trevor’s. Then came a sound of half-
smothered weeping, some broken reply of which Cicely could not
catch the meaning—then Trevor’s voice again.
“Not care for you? Good God! what will you say next? I wish I did
not care for you. I wish we had never seen each other. Not care for
you, you say, when I am breaking my word for you, trampling my
honour under foot! I only hope that is the worst of what I am doing,
Geneviève. I only hope what you tell me is true, that in her heart of
hearts Cicely does not care for me except as a brother. If I thought
otherwise! No, even for you, Geneviève, I could not do it.”
“But it is true—it is, it is,” broke in the girl’s voice. “I know it is, I
have always known it. She does not care as I do—oh, no! Trevor, I
shall die if I have to lose you.”
“Hush,” said Trevor, “there is some one behind us. Come this
way.”
He led her close to where Cicely was sitting, then through a small
doorway in the wall leading into a passage used by the gardeners;
as the two passed her, the skirt of Geneviève’s dress almost brushed
against Cicely’s, but thanks to the subdued light and to their own
absorption, she remained unperceived.
She had sat perfectly still—motionless, as if suddenly turned into
stone. It had required no effort on her part to remain so, for now
even that they were gone—out of sight and hearing—she moved not
so much as a muscle of her whole body; afterwards, on looking
back, it seemed to herself that she had almost for a time ceased to
breathe. She was stunned into a species of unconsciousness, and
how long she might have remained thus it would be impossible to
say, had not Mr. Hayle made his appearance with the ice he had
gone in search of.
“Here is the ice. I had to wait some time—” he was beginning, but
broke off in alarm. “What is the matter?” he exclaimed, “you look so
dreadfully pale, Miss Methvyn.”
“I have got a chill, I think,” said Cicely shivering, and attempting to
smile. She was surprised to find that she could speak; for the last
few minutes a sort of dreamy, almost pleasant feeling of death, or
dying, had been stealing over her. Now she awoke to a faint
consciousness of pain; like the unfortunate traveller in the Alps, who
beseeches to be allowed to sleep, even though the sleep should be
unto death, she shrank from coming to life again. “I have got a little
chill, I think,” she repeated. “I should just like to stay here quietly.”
She leant her head back again among the graceful nestling ferns
—their delicate fronds caressing her colourless cheeks and brushing
the coils of her bright fair hair; she closed her eyes, and for a
moment Mr. Hayle thought she had fainted. Perhaps in a sense she
had—at least she was conscious of nothing more till he was again
beside her, this time with a glass of wine.
 “Drink this, Miss Methvyn,” he said.
“No, thank you,” she replied, turning her head away.
“But you really must,” he insisted. “The sort of chill you have had
may make you ill if you don’t take this. Think how frightened Mrs.
Methvyn will be if you go home looking like a ghost.”
Mr. Hayle was not wanting in discrimination and common sense.
He had met Mr. Fawcett and Miss Casalis on his way to fetch the ice;
he was not without a shrewd suspicion as to the nature of the “chill”
which the girl beside him had received. His mention of her mother
roused Cicely a little. She took the glass and drank some of the
wine.
“Thank you very much,” she said to her companion. “I am all right
again now. Must we go back to the drawing-room? Oh! I do so want
to go home,” she exclaimed wearily. “It is late now, is it not? I wonder
if Geneviève—”
“Would you like me to find out if Miss Casalis is ready to go now?”
interrupted Mr. Hayle.
“Yes please, I wish you would,” said Cicely. The mention of her
cousin’s name had driven back from her cheeks such faint colour as
had begun to return to them. Mr. Hayle’s suspicions were confirmed.
“Do I look very dilapidated?” continued Cicely, smiling and
smoothing back the ruffled hair from her temples. “I should not like
Lady Frederica to think I was ill. I have felt very dull and tired all the
evening. You know my father has not been well; we have been
anxious about him, and anxiety is very tiring.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Hayle, “nothing more so. You need not go back to
the drawing room, Miss Methvyn. We can go round by the passage
behind the dining-room, and you can wait in the study while I find
your cousin.”
He was turning towards the door through which Trevor and
Geneviève had disappeared.
“Not that way,” exclaimed Cicely sharply.
 Mr. Hayle glanced at her. “It is much better than having to go
through the ball room,” he said composedly. Cicely made no further
objections.
The next quarter of an hour was a dream to her. She sat in Sir
Thomas’s little study waiting for Geneviève for about ten minutes,
clearly conscious of one sensation only an unspeakable horror of
meeting Trevor Fawcett face to face and alone. But this she was
spared. How Mr. Hayle managed it she never knew; but in a few
minutes he reappeared with Geneviève alone.
Then Cicely remembered a vision of Parker and wraps, a hasty
progress across the hall, still escorted by the young clergyman, a
glimpse through open doors of the still crowded drawing-rooms, a
sound of music in the distance—then she seemed to awake to find
herself in the carriage, with Parker’s anxious face opposite, dimly
discernible in the uncertain light of the flickering lamps, with some
one else beside her; some one whose face she dreaded to see,
whose voice she shrank from hearing.
But all the way home Geneviève never spoke.
CHAPTER II.
 AFTER THE BALL.

“Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair;
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary, fu’ o’ care!
Ye’ll break my heart, ye warbling birds
That wanton through the flow’ry thorn;
Ye mind me o’ departed joys,
Departed never to return.”

IT was a very dark night. The full moon, whose services had been
reckoned upon to light the guests to and from the Lingthurst ball,
was not in an obliging humour. She had gone to bed again in the
clouds so early, and the curtains behind which she had hidden
herself were so thick, that, for all the use she had been of, she might
as well not have risen at all. It was so dark that the cautious old
Greystone coachman thought it necessary to drive extra slowly; it
seemed to Cicely that hours, if not whole days, or nights rather, had
passed, when at last they turned in at the Abbey gates.
 Not that she cared. She was not eager to be home now—what
comfort could meet her there?—anywhere? What was anything in
life to her now? What was life itself? A horrible mockery, a delusion,
a sham from beginning to end. There was no goodness, no loyalty,
no truth. All these things she had once—long ago it seemed already
—believed in so firmly, that till now she had never realised how
largely such faith had formed a part of her existence, or how frightful
could be the results of its destruction. Already she had tasted the
bitterest drop of the bitter cup; she had been deceived by her
nearest and dearest—by the one of all the world who should have
been true to her.
“If even he had trusted me,” she moaned, “if he had come and
told me all, I could have borne it. I am not beautiful as she is, I could
have forgiven him; I could have believed that this new love had come
upon him unawares, and that he had fought against it. If he had
trusted me!”
To Geneviève, to her share in the whole, Cicely, in this first chaos
of misery and indignation somehow hardly gave a thought. She
shrank from her, it is true. She was thankful that Geneviève’s silence
prevented the necessity of addressing her, but whatever Geneviève
had done, however great her portion of responsibility, she was only
Geneviève—a new-comer, a comparative stranger. False-hearted,
scheming, unscrupulous she might be—in a sense it did not seem to
matter; for her conduct there was at least the possibility of the
excuse of ignorance and inexperience,—there was not the
aggravation of a broken vow, of life-long affection trampled under
foot.
Over and over again during the three quarters of an hour’s drive
from Lingthurst these bitter thoughts chased each other round
Cicely’s excited brain. The practical results of her discovery, the
explanation she must come to with Trevor, what she must say to her
parents, how they would look upon Geneviève—all these points she
as yet forgot to consider. Extreme misery makes even the best of us
selfish for the time. In Cicely’s nature there was no lack of
magnanimity, but the first instinct of the victim is not to heap coals of
fire upon the head of him whose hand has dealt the cruel blow.
Forgiveness, sincere and generous, would come in due time; but not
yet. It was no small injury which Cicely Methvyn had received; that it
would leave a life-long scar there could be no doubt: would the
wound ever heal? was the question at present. Could the faith, once
shattered so cruelly, ever again be made whole?
“If I live to be a hundred I can never endure greater suffering than
that of this evening,” thought Cicely, as the carriage stopped at last
and the cousins got out. That her present suffering could be
increased—even, in a sense, overwhelmed by an anguish of a totally
different nature—she would have maintained to be all but
impossible. At twenty we are apt to be over hasty in declaring that
we have already drunk of misery to the very dregs.
The hall-door was opened quickly. The light streaming out into the
darkness dazzled Cicely’s eyes for the instant; she did not notice
who it was that was standing just inside, evidently awaiting her. She
was passing on, followed by Geneviève and the maid, when a slight
exclamation from the latter startled her, and almost at the same
moment the sound of her own name caused her to stop short.
“Miss Methvyn,” said a voice, which at first in her bewilderment
she failed to recognise, “Miss Methvyn, will you wait a moment.”
Cicely turned; there before her stood the man from whom but a
few hours before she had parted, as he said, for ever. What was he
doing here again? What had brought him to Greystone in the middle
of the night? Once, only once before had he been there at so
unseasonable an hour. Cicely shuddered as she recalled that once
before. He saw the shudder, even then, through the great unselfish
pity which was softening his voice and shining out of his grave eyes;
he caught the involuntary movement and groaned in his heart.
“It is hard, very hard upon me to have to break it to her,” he said
to himself. “I, that am already repulsive to her. What can I say to
soothe or comfort? Why did they not send for Mr. Fawcett?”
Cicely stood still. Her pale face had little colour to lose; but what
there was faded out of it utterly as she gazed, in but half-conscious
terror, at Mr. Guildford. Quick as lightning the thought flashed
through her mind, “I had forgotten about papa—I had actually
forgotten about papa!” Aloud she only said, in a voice that even to
herself sounded unnaturally hard and cold, “What is it, Mr. Guildford?
What is it you have to tell me. If it is—any thing wrong, why did you
not send for me before?”
“I have not been here very long,” began Mr. Guildford with a sort
of apology in his manner very new to him. “It was by Mrs. Methvyn’s
wish I waited here to see you when you first came in. We should
have sent for you at once, an hour ago that is to say, if—if it had
been any use.”
“What do you mean?” said Cicely fiercely.
Mr. Guildford glanced round him with a silent appeal. “Will no one
help me?” his look seemed to say. Parker had disappeared, but
Geneviève was still standing close behind Cicely, and to her his eyes
travelled. She understood him, but instead of responding to his
unspoken request, she covered her face with her hands, uttered a
smothered cry, and rushed away.
“Little fool,” muttered Mr. Guildford, between his teeth.
But Cicely did not seem to have observed her cousin’s
defalcation. She stood there, still in the same attitude, before Mr.
Guildford, and still there was an approach to fierceness in her tone,
as she repeated her inquiry. “What do you mean? Tell me what you
mean.”
Then the young man gathered up his courage.
“I mean,” he said slowly, speaking with an effort which he did not
attempt to conceal, “I mean that even if you had been sent for the
very moment Colonel Methvyn was taken ill, it would have been no
use. He was utterly unconscious from the first he never spoke again
—from the very commencement of the attack there was nothing
whatever to be done; not all the doctors in Europe could have
restored him to consciousness, or prolonged his life, for five minutes.
And, I think,” he added, speaking still more slowly and reluctantly, “I
think it was better so.”
 Cicely had kept her eyes fixed upon him while he spoke; they
seemed to drag the unwilling words out of him by the intensity of
their gaze, something in their expression made him instinctively
conscious that any attempt at softening what he had to tell, any
common-place expressions of sympathy and regret would have been
utterly futile; the girl could not have taken in their meaning. Now,
when he left off speaking, the strain seemed to slacken; the terrible
stony stare left her eyes; she threw out her hands like a child in
terror—as if for protection and support. “You mean,” she said, “oh! I
know what you mean—but you mustn’t say it. Why didn’t you do
anything? Why didn’t you come sooner? I can’t, indeed I can’t bear
it.”
What could he do—what could he say? The relentless summons
had gone forth—Cicely Methvyn was fatherless. It was very hard
upon him!
“I would have given ten years of my life to save him for you, if he
could have been saved. I would have cut off my right hand rather
than have been the one to tell you. I cannot bear to see you suffer,”
he broke out passionately. Then he turned away from her, in despair,
ashamed of his want of self-control, heart-broken that he could say
nothing to comfort her.
The sight of his distress awoke the unselfishness that seldom
slumbered long in Cicely’s heart.
“Forgive me,” she exclaimed, “forgive me. I didn’t know what I
was saying. I will try to bear it, indeed I will. I know nothing could
have been done, if you say so. Tell me about it—tell me how it was—
but must I not go to mamma?”
Mr. Guildford shook his head. “No, not yet,” he said, “she was
very much excited. I was a little alarmed about her, and gave her
something to soothe her. I think she has fallen asleep. I promised to
wait here to meet you, and that seemed to satisfy her.”
Then he told her all he knew. He had been sent for about ten
o’clock, but, by the time he reached Greystone, even Mrs. Methvyn
had seen that his coming would be of no avail; the life had all but
flickered out already. “It was as I always feared it would be,” said Mr.
Guildford, hesitating again. “I always dreaded the effect of any great
shock.”
He looked at Cicely inquiringly. Had she anticipated anything of
the kind; was she in the least acquainted with the nature of the
shock, which for some time must have been impending?
“A great shock,” she repeated, “what great shock? He did not
know—”
She stopped short. With lightning-like rapidity her mind flew back
to the events of that evening—could her father have come to the
knowledge of what she had discovered? But almost before she had
time to dismiss the idea as wild and improbable in the last degree,
Mr. Guildford’s next words put it altogether to flight.
“It was some news that came in a telegram this evening, that—
that brought on this attack,” he said reluctantly, not feeling sure of his
ground with Cicely, but judging it wisest to put her in possession at
once of all that there was to tell. By the expression of her face, he
saw at once that she did not in the least know to what he referred.
“What was the telegram about? Did you see it?” she demanded.
He hesitated again. “You had better tell me,” said Cicely, “that is,
unless mamma did not want me to know.”
“Oh! no; Mrs. Methvyn wished me to tell you everything. The
telegram was about the failure of some company in which Colonel
Methvyn had largely invested. It told him of a great loss of property.”
“And was that all?” said Cicely. “As if that would have mattered!
Oh! Mr. Guildford, why should he have taken that to heart so?”
“It was only natural that he should do so,” said Mr. Guildford.
There was no necessity at present for telling her how great he
suspected the extent of the calamity to be, and indeed just now the
loss of a few hundred pounds or of a quarter of a million would have
been looked upon by Cicely as matters of equal indifference. “It was
only natural he should have felt it as he did,” he repeated. “That is
why I think, perhaps, it is best his consciousness never returned. He
would only have awakened to distress and anxiety, and at the very
best his life could only have been prolonged for a few hours.”
“But he would have known us, he could have said good-bye; we
could have told him how little we cared about the loss of the money,”
cried Cicely. “Oh! I cannot think it is better never to have seen him
again—I cannot.”
For the first time the tears came into her eyes. She sat down and
cried unrestrainedly, refusing to be comforted.
Mr. Guildford left her. He was anxious to know if Mrs. Methvyn
was asleep. On the staircase he met the housekeeper.
“Miss Cicely is in the hall—alone,” he said. “She knows. I have
told her. Do you think you can get her to go to bed?”
Poor Mrs. Moore’s eyes were streaming. She could not speak, but
she nodded her head and set off in the direction of the hall, so Mr.
Guildford felt that his task was accomplished.
Cicely went to bed, and, strange as it may seem, to sleep. She
was only twenty; she had never been really ill in her life, and sorrow
was unfamiliar to her; there were vigour and vitality enough in her to
stand a much more prolonged attack from adversity, though, as she
laid her head on her pillow, she said to herself that but for her mother
she would pray never to wake again.
“It could not be wrong,” she thought. “Except mother nobody
wants me. Amiel has her husband, but poor mamma has only me
now.” And the thought seemed a something to cling to; it made the
idea of living on, notwithstanding the wreck of her future, endurable,
if nothing more. So Cicely slept.
Who does not know the awful agony of the first waking after some
overwhelming sorrow has befallen us? The shuddering glimmer of
recollection that something has happened, the frantic clutch at the
blessed unconsciousness of the sleep that is leaving us, the wild
refusal to recall the truth! And, oh! the unutterable loathing at life, at
existence even when at last we realize the whole and find that
another day has dawned, that the heartless sunshine is over the
world again, that we ourselves must eat and drink and clothe
ourselves, and live! If we could see that our individual misery made
its mark, if the birds would only leave off singing, if the flowers would
all wither, if a veil could be drawn over the sun, would it seem quite
so bad?
“No,” thought Cicely, “if the trees and the flowers and all the living
things seemed to care, I think I could endure it. But they don’t—they
don’t! The world is brighter than ever this morning, though the
brightness has died out of my life for ever.”
She was standing by the open window in her room. She had
forgotten that the blinds should be drawn down, and was gazing with
reproachful appreciation at the beauty of the autumn morning.
Yesterday it would have filled her with delight, to-day its very
perfection repelled and wounded her. Even Nature, with whose
varying moods she had been ever so ready to sympathize, whose
face she had learnt to know so well, had played her false. “Why is it
so fine to-day?” she said to herself; “why is it not cloudy and raining?
Why should it ever be anything else, there must always have been,
there always must be, thousands of people to whom the sunshine is
as dreadful as it is to-day to me.”
She turned wearily away, and began to think what she had to do.
She had been with her mother already this morning, and poor Mrs.
Methvyn had clung to her in a way that was pitiful to see.
“You won’t leave me just yet, my darling,” her mother had
whispered, and Cicely felt thankful that she could give her the
assurance she asked for, without at present adding to her sorrows by
explaining the real state of the case. And this reflection led to
another. Her father had at least been spared the knowledge of
Trevor’s faithlessness.
“Yes,” thought Cicely, “I can be thankful for that.”
Then suddenly she recollected what Mr. Guildford had told her of
the news contained in the fatal telegram. Her mother had not alluded
to it. “We will talk about everything afterwards. Not yet,” she had said
to Cicely. What could “everything” mean? Could it be that the loss of
property, the tidings of which had, she reflected with a shudder,
actually killed her father; could it be that this loss was something
very great? For herself she did not care; but when she thought of her
delicate mother, a vague apprehension for the first time made itself
felt. She wished that she had asked Mr. Guildford to tell her more;
from his manner she fancied he was in possession of fuller details
than he had mentioned to her; but for this it was now too late. Mr.
Guildford had gone back to Sothernbay; the chances were that she
would not see him again, as in all probability he would now hasten
his departure from the neighbourhood.
“He need not have asked me to release him from his promise,”
she said to herself with a sort of sorrowful bitterness.
There came a knock at the door. It was Parker.
“If you please, Miss Cicely,” she began timidly, “Miss Casalis has
been asking how you are. She would be so pleased if you would let
her come and sit with you, or do anythink; anythink she says she
would be so pleased to do.”
“Tell her there is nothing whatever she can do to help me, or my
mother. And for to-day, at least, Parker, I wish to be left quite alone.”
The cold tone was discouraging, but the pale wan face and poor
swollen eyes, moved Parker to another effort.
“Miss Casalis do seem very miserable,” she said insinuatingly. “I
should not have thought she was a young lady as would have taken
it to heart so. I don’t think she closed a eye last night. I do wish, Miss
Cicely, my dear, you would let her come and sit with you. She’s
wandering about like a ghost. She seems as if she could settle to
nothing.”
Parker’s conscience was pricked by the sight of Geneviève’s
distress. She felt that she had done her injustice. Only the evening
before, she had been far from amiably disposed to the girl, whose
fresh loveliness had won the universal admiration which, according
to the old servant’s way of thinking, belonged of right to “her own
young lady,” and any appearance of indifference or carelessness
would have confirmed her prejudice. But that Geneviève was in real
distress, no one could doubt. “She must have a tender heart, for all
her flighty, foreign ways,” thought Parker, and she waited with some
anxiety for the result of her second appeal.
“I am sorry for her,” said Cicely slowly. The thought of the
miserable little figure wandering about alone in the desolate rooms
downstairs, the remembrance of Geneviève’s great brown, velvety
eyes with the tears in them, moved her in spite of herself. “I am very
sorry for her,” she repeated with a quiver in her voice. “I dare say she
is very unhappy, but, Parker, I really cannot see her. I don’t want to
see any one—not even, remember, Parker, not even Mr. Fawcett if
he calls to-day.”
Parker gazed at her young lady in astonishment. “Not Mr. Trevor!”
she exclaimed under her breath.
“No; I wish to seeno one,” repeated Cicely.
“There is never any telling how trouble will change people,”
thought the old servant philosophically. “Poor Miss Cicely doesn’t
hardly know how she feels yet; we must let her have her own way for
awhile.”
She was leaving the room when Cicely called her back. “On
second thoughts,” she said, speaking with an effort, “you may tell
Miss Casalis that if she likes to come up here in half an hour or so, I
will ask her to write some letters for me.”
Parker departed in triumph. Half an hour later Geneviève, pale,
worn-looking, with great black circles under her eyes, and dressed in
the plain black gown in which she had travelled from Hivèritz, crept
into the room; Cicely looked at her and her heart melted.
“Will you write these letters for me, Geneviève?” she said,
pointing to a slip of paper on which she had written down some
addresses. “I can easily tell you what to say. Mother asked me to see
about her mourning—and I think you had better write home to-day to
tell your mother what has happened.”
Her lips quivered, she turned her head away. Geneviève threw
her arms round her.
 “Oh! Cicely, dear Cicely, I do love you. I do. I am so sorry, oh! I am
so sorry. Oh, Cicely, I wish I had never come here!”
Cicely disengaged herself gently, very gently, from her cousin’s
embrace.
“I am glad you are sorry for our sorrow, Geneviève,” she said
quietly, “even though it is impossible you should understand all we—I
—am feeling.”
Geneviève looked up at her with a puzzled air. “I thought you
were colder than you are,” she said. “Perhaps I have mistaken you
altogether. I—I don’t know what to do. Shall I go home—to Hivèritz
to-day, this afternoon? You would never hear of me again. Would
you like me to go?”
“What do you mean, Geneviève?” asked Cicely sternly. “Why
should I wish you to go? Do you know any reason why I should?”
Geneviève grew scarlet. In her excitement and confusion of
thought, she had almost persuaded herself that Cicely must suspect
her secret, or that, if this were not so, that she must confess it. But
now that the opportunity offered, her natural cowardice returned and
tied her tongue. “I do not know what I mean,” she said. “I thought,
perhaps, now that you are sad, I should be a trouble to you.”
Cicely looked at her. “You have no reason to think so,” she said
coldly. But she did not press Geneviève to explain herself further. “I
shall say what I have to say to Trevor, and to him alone,” she
resolved.
Geneviève had begun to cry again. “I am so unhappy, so very
unhappy,” she said miserably.
“I am sorry for you,” said Cicely kindly.
“You would not be if you knew the whole, why I am so unhappy,”
sobbed Geneviève.
“Yes, I should be. If I thought even that your unhappiness was of
your own causing, that you deserved it,” said Cicely impressively,
“still I should be sorry for you—more sorry, perhaps.”