α. In order to be able to give a general answer to this question, we most recollect what was said above of the principle of self-preservation, according to which virtue has to do with the rational nature. The fulfilment of its end is happiness as finding itself realized, and as the knowledge or intuitive perception of itself as an external—a harmony of its Notion or its genius with its Being or its reality. The harmony of virtue with happiness thus means that the virtuous action realizes itself in and for itself, man becomes in it an immediate object to himself, and he comes to the perception of himself as objective, or of the objective as himself. This rests in the conception of action and particularly of good action. For the bad destroys reality and is opposed to self-preservation; but the good is what makes for its self-preservation and effectuates it—the good end is thus the content that realizes itself in action. But in this general answer to that question, properly speaking, the consciousness of the implicitly existent end has not sufficiently exactly the signification of virtue, nor has action proceeding from the same exactly the signification of virtuous action, neither has the reality which it attains the signification of happiness. The distinction rests in the fact that the Stoics have merely remained at this general conception, and set it forth immediately as actuality; in it however, the conception of virtuous action is merely expressed, and not reality. β. A further point is that just because the Stoics have remained at this position, the opposition between virtue and happiness immediately enters in, or, in abstract form, that between thought and its determination. These opposites are with Cicero _honestum_ and _utile_, and their union is the question dealt with.[137] Virtue, which is living in accordance with the universal law of nature, is confronted by the satisfaction of the subject as such in his particularity. The two sides are, in the first place, this particularity of the individual, which, in the most varied aspects has existence in me as the abstract “this,” for example, in the pre-supposition of determinate inclinations; and here we have pleasure and enjoyment in which my existence harmonizes with the demands of my particularity. In the second place, I, as the will that fulfils law, am only the formal character which has to carry out the universal; and thus, as willing the universal, I am in accord with myself as thinking. The two now come into collision, and because I seek the one satisfaction or the other, I am in collision with myself, because I am also individual. As to this we may hear many trivial things said, such as that things often go badly with the virtuous and well with the wicked, and that the latter is happy, &c. By going well all external circumstances are understood, and on the whole the content is quite uninteresting, for it is constituted by the attainment of commonplace ends, points