The protagonist I ought to be distinguished from the subject I. The former does not exist in the present, the latter is synonymous with presence. The former is then an object of a special sort, the locus of responsibilities, needs, actions, decisions and suffering, including all passive experiences. The two meanings are not merely accidentally expressed by the same word, there is a relationship between them which  makes the protagonist a special sort of object, and puts the subject at stake, but it is not an objective relationship in any way that can be understood. Personal reality is formed out of the resulting chains of associations, habits, entailments and heteronomous conjunctions. The protagonists world is one of feeling, and it reveals itself in layers, with hidden consistencies behind each emergent inconsistency and each consistency merely an alignment of deeper inconsistencies. The key components are passion and dispassion: love, fear and serenity - but the combinations are endless because feelings are effective for the subject only at a distance, whether of time or space or both. If the distance is small they seem to be feelings proper to the subject, if it is a little greater they seem to be feelings about the subject, and if it is greater still then they are events to which the subject is present, is audience. Whenever the feeling is not proper to the subject another, and proper, feeling is induced like a secondary wave or counter-current.