So the first and most essential element in our life's happiness is
what we are,--our personality, if for no other reason than that it is
a constant factor coming into play under all circumstances: besides,
unlike the blessings which are described under the other two heads, it
is not the sport of destiny and cannot be wrested from us;--and, so
far, it is endowed with an absolute value in contrast to the merely
relative worth of the other two. The consequence of this is that it is
much more difficult than people commonly suppose to get a hold on a
man from without. But here the all-powerful agent, Time, comes in
and claims its rights, and before its influence physical and mental
advantages gradually waste away. Moral character alone remains
inaccessible to it. In view of the destructive effect of time, it
seems, indeed, as if the blessings named under the other two heads,
of which time cannot directly rob us, were superior to those of the
first. Another advantage might be claimed for them, namely, that being
in their very nature objective and external, they are attainable, and
every one is presented with the possibility, at least, of coming into
possession of them; whilst what is subjective is not open to us to
acquire, but making its entry by a kind of _divine right_, it remains
for life, immutable, inalienable, an inexorable doom. Let me quote
those lines in which Goethe describes how an unalterable destiny is
assigned to every man at the hour of his birth, so that he can develop
only in the lines laid down for him, as it were, by the conjunctions
of the stars: and how the Sybil and the prophets declare that
_himself_ a man can never escape, nor any power of time avail to
change the path on which his life is cast:--

_Wie an dem Tag, der dich der Welt verliehen,
Dïe Sonne stand zum Grusse der Planeten,
Bist alsobald und fort und fort gediehen,