Before science arrives, the understanding tries in its own way. It starts to calculate.

It pictures the drives and compares them. What does this drive bring me, and what does that one cost me? What means do I need? What consequences will it have? And above all this stands one question: What serves my happiness as a whole?

We call this happiness as a whole happiness in the full sense. It is more than one nice moment. Whoever thinks of his happiness as a whole will also go without something now and then. He does not spend all his money at once. He swallows his anger because the friendship matters more to him.

This already shows a power of thinking over the drives. The drive wants everything, and right now. Thinking says: Wait, look at the whole. In this way, the drives lose their rawness and wildness. Thinking purges them of their crudity and barbarism, even if only from outside.

This work of thinking has a name: education. A person with education does not cling to the first thing that comes along. He looks beyond the moment to the universal. This is where the absolute value of education lies.

But happiness has a catch. What does it actually consist of? Everyone says something different. One person finds it in peace and quiet, another in adventure. In the end, it comes down to pleasure again, and so to the drives. Happiness looks universal. But its content remains each person’s own business. Form and content do not fit together yet.

Summary: Whoever strives for happiness as a whole already tames his drives. This is what education achieves, and it is worth a lot. But in the end, each person decides for himself what happiness is. The will needs a content that is universal in itself.

§ 479. In this representation of a universal satisfaction, brought forth by reflecting thought, the drives are posited as negative according to their particularity and are to be sacrificed, in part one to another for the sake of that purpose, in part directly to it, wholly or in part. Their limitation through one another is on the one hand a mixture of qualitative and quantitative determination; on the other hand, since happiness has its affirmative content solely in the drives, the decision lies in them, and it is subjective feeling and pleasure which must give the casting vote as to wherein it places happiness.

§ 478. Happiness is the representation, brought forth by reflecting thought, of the satisfaction of all drives, which in their particularity are posited as negative and of which one is to be sacrificed to another, wholly or in part, and another preferred. Their limitation through one another is on the one hand a mixture of qualitative and quantitative determination; on the other hand, since happiness has its affirmative content solely in the drives, the decision lies in them, and it is subjective feeling and pleasure which must give the casting vote.

§ 396. Happiness is the confused representation of the satisfaction of all drives, of which one, however, is to be sacrificed to another, wholly or in part, preferred to it and set before it. Their limitation through one another, as drives which are, is on the one hand a mixture of qualitative and quantitative determination; on the other hand, since inclination is a subjective and immediate ground of determination, it is subjective feeling and pleasure which must give the casting vote.