appears natural and necessary. And each of these pursuits, in general and in the abstract, is equally good. It is only the particular conditions which in each case can decide between them.
Now that this divergence ceases, and is brought together in the end, is most certain. For nothing is outside the Absolute, and in the Absolute there is nothing imperfect. And an un-accomplished object, implying discrepancy between idea and existence, is most surely imperfection. In the Absolute everything finite attains the perfection which it seeks; but, upon the other hand, it cannot gain perfection precisely as it seeks it. For, as we have seen throughout, the finite is more or less transmuted, and, as such, disappears in being accomplished. This common destiny is assuredly the end of the Good. The ends sought by self-assertion and self-sacrifice are, each alike, unattainable. The individual never can in himself become an harmonious system. And in the wider ideal to which he devotes himself, no matter how thoroughly, he never can find complete self-realization. For, even if we take that ideal to be perfect and to be somehow completely fulfilled, yet, after all, he himself is not totally absorbed in it. If his discordant element is for faith swallowed up, yet faith, no less, means that a jarring appearance remains. And, in the complete gift and dissipation of his personality, he, as such, must vanish; and, with that, the good is, as such, transcended and submerged. This result is but the conclusion with which our chapter began. Goodness is an appearance, it is phenomenal, and therefore self-contradictory. And therefore, as was the case with degrees of truth and reality, it shows two forms of one standard which will not wholly coincide. In the end, where every discord is brought to harmony, every idea is also realized. But there, where nothing can be lost, everything, by addition and by re-arrangement,
