By this example I wish only to impress on you the consideration that, in a simple act, something further may be implicated than lies in the intention and consciousness of the agent. The example before us involves, however, the additional consideration that the substance of the act, consequently, we may say, the act itself, recoils upon the perpetrator--reacts upon him with destructive tendency. This union of the two extremes--the embodiment of a general idea in the form of direct reality and the elevation of a speciality into connection with universal truth--is brought to pass, at first sight, under the conditions of an utter diversity of nature between the two and an indifference of the one extreme toward the other. The aims which the agents set before them are limited and special; but it must be remarked that the agents themselves are intelligent thinking beings. The purport of their desires is interwoven with general, essential considerations of justice, good, duty, etc.; for mere desire--volition in its rough and savage forms--falls not within the scene and sphere of universal history. Those general considerations, which form at the same time a norm for directing aims and actions, have a determinate purport; for such an abstraction as "good for its own sake," has no place in living reality. If men are to act they must not only intend the Good, but must have decided for themselves whether this or that particular thing is a good. What special course of action, however, is good or not, is determined, as regards the ordinary contingencies of private life, by the laws and customs of a State; and here no great difficulty is presented. Each individual has his position; he knows, on the whole, what a just, honorable course of conduct is. As to ordinary, private relations, the assertion that it is difficult to choose the right and good--the regarding it as the mark of an exalted morality to find difficulties and raise scruples on that score--may be set down to an evil or perverse will, which seeks to evade duties not in themselves of a perplexing nature, or, at any rate, to an idly reflective habit of mind--where a feeble will affords no sufficient exercise to the faculties--leaving them therefore to find occupation within themselves and to expand themselves on moral self-adulation.