his determinate reality and particular actions, or to what is universal in its own right; that is, he assumes an ironical attitude towards it. This is the universal import of the genial God-like irony, as that concentration of the =I= into itself for which all bonds are broken, and which will only endure to live in the bliss of self-enjoyment.[124] This irony was the invention of Herr Fried. von Schlegel, and many followed him in prating about it then, or are prating of it afresh just now. The proximate form of this negativity which displays itself as irony is, then, on the one hand the futility[125] of all that is matter of fact, or moral and of substantive import in itself; the nothingness of all that is objective, and that has essential and actual value. If the =I= remains at this point of view, all appears to it as nothing worth and as futile, excepting its own subjectivity, which thereby becomes hollow and empty, and itself mere conceit.[126] But on the other hand, the reverse may happen, and the I may also find itself unsatisfied in its enjoyment of itself, and may prove insufficient to itself, so as in consequence to feel a craving for the solid and substantial, for determinate and essential interests. Out of this there arises misfortune and antinomy, in that the subject desires to penetrate into truth and has a craving for objectivity, but yet is unable to abandon its isolation and retirement into itself, and to strip itself free of this unsatisfied abstract inwardness (of mind), and so has a seizure of sickly yearning[127] which we have also seen emanate from Fichte's school. The discontent of this quiescence and feebleness,--which does not like to act or to touch anything for fear of surrendering its inward harmony, and, for all its craving after the absolute, remains none the less unreal and empty, even though pure in itself,--is the source of morbid saintliness[128] and yearning. For a true saintly soul acts and is a reality. But all that craving is the feeling of the nullity of the empty futile[129] subject or person, which lacks the strength to escape this its futility,[129] and to fill[130] itself with something of substantial value.