Although the ego comes into focus through reflection on its own past, yet it is always in the present, projecting itself into the future. This leads to the conception of the ego as a “drive” (SW VI: 182). But a drive to sense, experience, or act always implies a goal. Hence “the ego appears most clearly in its outer activity” (SW VI: 182): it represents its action to itself, and assumes a cognitive distance from its actions. “It knows what it is about to do, and it also knows what it did” (SW VI: 182). In this way, the ego progressively abstracts itself from its activity, and eventually appears to itself as a “mere knowing that now has no object” (SW VI: 182). Further, by being with others in public, we come to notice an inner private sphere; for while other people and things may appear opaque, “the ego is always present to itself” (SW VI: 183). Thus the educated (gebildet) person comes to ascribe 