about goodness. “But then,” it will be exclaimed, “this is too horrible. There really after all will be self-sacrifice; and virtue and selfishness after all will not be identical.” But I have already explained, in Chapter xxv., why this moving appeal finds me deaf. “But then strict justice is not paramount.” No, I am sure that it is not so. There is a great deal in the universe, I am sure, beyond mere morality; and I have yet to learn that, even in the moral world, the highest law is justice. “But, if we die, think of the loss of all our hard-won gains.” But is a thing lost, in the first place, because I fail to get it or retain it? And, in the second place, what seems to us sheer waste is, to a very large extent, the way of the universe. We need not take on ourselves to be anxious about that. “But without endless progress, how reach perfection?” And with endless progress (if that means anything) I answer, how reach it? Surely perfection and finitude are in principle not compatible. If you are to be perfect, then you, as such, must be resolved and cease; and endless progress sounds merely like an attempt indefinitely to put off perfection.[1] And as a function of the perfect universe, on the other hand, you are perfect already. “But after all we must wish that pain and sorrow should be somewhere made good.” On the whole, and in the whole, if our view is right, this is fully the case. With the individual often I agree it is not the case. And I wish it otherwise, meaning by this that my inclination and duty as a fellow-creature impels me that way, and that wishes and actions of this sort among finite beings fulfil the plan of the Whole. But I cannot argue, therefore, that all is wrong if individuals suffer. There is in life always, I admit, a note of sadness; but it ought not to prevail, nor can we truly assert that it does so. And the universe in its attitude towards
- ↑ The reader, who desires to follow out this point, must be referred to Hegel’s Phänomenologie, 449-460.
