Page:Ethical Studies (reprint 1911).djvu/268

 perishing moment of sense; in interest the content is realized, because the moment of sense is not desired as such, but is used as the means and material for the objective result, which, as a result, does not depend on it; the perished past was the condition of translation of the ideal into reality, and a reality which is present. The one object struggles to life, but dies as fast as it is born, and for ever remains a conscious and reluctant death; the other is perpetually born anew, and is for ever the same life, which remains and keeps its past and its present.

And we must notice too, what further on will engage us, that the good which the child thus lives itself into and lives in, is in the main in harmony with itself. And hence the self, which feels itself to be one and a whole, feels in the good the answering harmony of its own true nature, and divines that what realizes it as a system realizes itself, and that the jarring and discrepant is false and untrue.

So far we have seen that the self is identified with pursuits and activities as ends to be gained by it, but further it is interested in persons and causes which stand in no direct relation to its personal activity. Apart from anything which it does or has to do, it feels its will affirmed or denied in the success or failure of that which