The position is somewhat similar with regard to the idea of the good. In the attempts to which we have referred, it passed current as a deliverance from all selfish happiness, which was felt to be intolerably narrow. A new, purer, and more comprehensive life is to proceed from the winning of a new position. Now, there are many different conceptions of happiness, and higher levels are distinguished plainly from lower. But the highest level does not transcend human desire; man must bring all into relation with his own well-being. He cannot in opposition to his own well-being adopt something alien as an end in itself; his activity can be aroused for nothing which has not some value for himself. In this case also, therefore, the bounds of his life hold him fast, and, unless these bounds are transcended, the good cannot be distinguished from the useful. Of this a clear confirmation is furnished by the experiences of religions. In their origin they wished to free man from himself and to set him in a new life--whether they promised tranquillity in a surrender to the infinite whole or won a positive content by the revelation of a kingdom of divine love. How soon the succession of events has led back to a quest of happiness! How soon has it become evident that the religions have far less revealed a new world to the majority of mankind than chained them more firmly to the old; and that they easily arouse to greater power the raw instinct of life, which they desired to overcome! We seem to be shut in on all sides: it seems a monstrous inconsistency to wish to build up from man a world transcending man; to remove him into a world other than that of a man. A world of this kind is, however, essential to the spiritual life; with its abandonment that life is only a delusion; and the less intelligent people who reject as a meaningless folly all striving for the true and the good seem to be right. * * * * *