overcoming the world 89
with the reconstruction of society, undertaken in the name of succes-
sive revolutionary programs, and skeptical of the transformability of
the world. Th e world such as it appears to us, in its phenomenal diver-
sity and temporal evanescence, does not, they will think, deserve to be
changed. It deserves to be overcome. Th ey may seem to go about their
business as if time and diversity were for real. Th ey will nevertheless
insist that the only reliable way of dealing with the irreparable fl aws in
human life is to increase our share in an impersonal reality more real
and reliable than the individual, mindful organism and than its con-
sciousness of itself as embodied spirit.