And what interests mankind mainly is some relation to their own particular thoughts and aims. Even historically important actions and events, with which the community is expressly associated, appear in this field of relative appearances merely as a manifold of isolated efforts. It is a varied collection to which each contributes as he may, with aims by no means identical, some of which meet with success while others miscarry, and indeed, be they ever so fortunate, are significant in a very subordinate degree if we consider them as contributions to the wellbeing of all. What the majority may carry through, in contrast with the entire aggregate of events and the end applicable to all[265], to which it furnishes its quota, is after all a mere patch; nay, even men of eminent standing, who feel and are fully conscious of the universal passage of events[266], as their own world, are for all that clearly immeshed in the same net of particular circumstances, conditions, and a thousand other hindrances involved in their relative position. On all these grounds it is plain that in this sphere of exterior life the individual world is unable to offer us the vision of that independent and complete freedom of the living principle, such as is essential to the true notion of beauty. It is, of course, true that the immediate appearance of human reality and its events and organizations is not without system, and as such is a totality of activities; but this whole is rather in its appearance a mere mass of isolated fragments. Moreover the practical concerns of such activities are divided and subdivided into countless parts, and in such a way that each single part is in touch with the merest fraction of all; and, in short, however much individuals may remain steadfast to their own purposes, and only bring forth to the light that which their own interest has employed as a means, the self-subsistence and freedom of their will remains more or less of a formal character, determined by external circumstance or accident, and constantly thwarted by natural causes[267]. This is the prose of the world, as presented to our own consciousness no less than to that of others; a world of finitude and change, a world immeshed in relation and submerged beneath the pressure of necessity, a world from which no individual can extricate himself. The central paradox of life confronts every unit of the living whole. On the one hand there is the impulse of individuality to perfect its isolated unity in self-exclusion; on the other there is the necessary condition of dependence on others from which none may claim immunity. However prolonged the struggle to overcome this contradiction may be the effort of that interminable battle only terminates with life itself.