These, however, are fortunate difficulties: not only because they prevent the nature of thought from devouring our own nature, not only because they bring thought into relation with obstacles which are so many 'facts' without which it would not manage to orientate itself, but also because our efforts to overcome these obstacles allow us to maintain an ideal of the self as it exists in pure thought, like a 'superior degree of identity with ourselves', which persists through the factual variations, differences and inequalities which constantly affect us.