merchant, who leads a life of speculation, thinks long over his plans
and carries them out with great care, founds a house, and provides for
his wife, his children and descendants; takes his share, too, in the
life of a community. It is obvious that a man like this has a much
higher degree of consciousness than the former, and so his existence
has a higher degree of reality.

Then look at the man of learning, who investigates, it may be, the
history of the past. He will have reached the point at which a man
becomes conscious of existence as a whole, sees beyond the period of
his own life, beyond his own personal interests, thinking over the
whole course of the world's history.

Then, finally, look at the poet or the philosopher, in whom reflection
has reached such a height, that, instead of being drawn on to
investigate any one particular phenomenon of existence, he stands in
amazement _before existence itself_, this great sphinx, and makes it
his problem. In him consciousness has reached the degree of clearness
at which it embraces the world itself: his intellect has completely
abandoned its function as the servant of his will, and now holds the
world before him; and the world calls upon him much more to examine
and consider it, than to play a part in it himself. If, then, the
degree of consciousness is the degree of reality, such a man will be
said to exist most of all, and there will be sense and significance in
so describing him.

Between the two extremes here sketched, and the intervening stages,
everyone will be able to find the place at which he himself stands.

* * * * *