ulsions is simply a problem
advanced by reason, and which man will only be able to solve in the
perfection of his being. It is in the strictest signification of the
term: the idea of his humanity; accordingly, it is an infinite to which
he can approach nearer and nearer in the course of time, but without ever
reaching it. "He ought not to aim at form to the injury of reality, nor
to reality to the detriment of the form. He must rather seek the
absolute being by means of a determinate being, and the determinate being
by means of an infinite being. He must set the world before him because
he is a person, and he must be a person because he has the world before
him. He must feel because he has a consciousness of himself, and he must
have a consciousness of himself because he feels." It is only in
conformity with this idea that he is a man in the full sense of the word;
but he cannot be convinced of this so long as he gives himself up
exclusively to one of these two impulsions, or only satisfies them one
after the other. For as long as he only feels, his absolute personality
and existence remain a mystery to him, and as long as he only thinks, his
condition or existence in time escapes him. But if there were cases in
which he could have at once this twofold experience in which he would
have the consciousness of his freedom and the feeling of his existence
together, in which he would simultaneously feel as matter and know
himself as spirit, in such cases, and in such only, would he have a
complete intuition of his humanity, and the object that would procure him
this intuition would be a symbol of his accomplished destiny and
consequently serve to express the infinite to him--since this destination
can only be fulfilled in the fulness of time.

Presuming that cases of this kind could present themselves in experience,
they would awake in him a new impulsion, which, precisely because the
other two impulsions would co-operate in it, would be opposed to each of
them taken in isolation, and might, with good grounds, be taken for a new
impulsion. The sensuous impulsion requires that there should be change,
that time should have contents; the formal impulsion requires that time
should be suppressed, that there should be no change. Consequently, the
impulsion in which both of the others act in concert--allow me to call it
the instinct of play, till I explain the term--the instinct of play would
have as its object to suppress time in ti