All work is directed only to the aim or end; and when it is attained, people are surprised to find nothing else but just the very thing which they had wished for. The interest lies in the whole movement. When a man traces up the steps of his life, the end may appear to him very restricted
 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Science of Logic (1816). copy citation

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Author Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Source Science of Logic
Topic interest work
Date 1816
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by William Wallace
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55108/55108-h/55108-h.htm

Context

“Even if the child understands the truths of religion, he cannot but imagine them to be something outside of which lies the whole of life and the whole of the world. The same may be said to be the case with human life as a whole and the occurrences with which it is fraught. All work is directed only to the aim or end; and when it is attained, people are surprised to find nothing else but just the very thing which they had wished for. The interest lies in the whole movement. When a man traces up the steps of his life, the end may appear to him very restricted: but in it the whole decursus vitae is comprehended. So, too, the content of the absolute idea is the whole breadth of ground which has passed under our view up to this point. Last of all comes the discovery that the whole evolution is what constitutes the content and the interest.” source