Hegel's Philosophy of Mind Part 12

Productive imagination is the centre in which the universal and being, one's own and what is picked up, internal and external, are completely welded into one. The preceding "syntheses" of intuition, recollection, &c., are unifications of the same factors, but they are "syntheses"; it is not till creative imagination that intelligence ceases to be the vague mine and the universal, and becomes an individuality, a concrete subjectivity, in which the self-reference is defined both to being and to universality. The creations of imagination are on all hands recognised as such combinations of the mind's own and inward with the matter of intuition; what further and more definite aspects they have is a matter for other departments. For the present this internal studio of intelligence is only to be looked at in these abstract aspects.-Imagination, when regarded as the agency of this unification, is reason, but only a nominal reason, because the matter or theme it embodies is to imagination _qua_ imagination a matter of indifference; whilst reason _qua_ reason also insists upon the _truth_ of its content.

Another point calling for special notice is that, when imagination elevates the internal meaning to an image and intuition, and this is expressed by saying that it gives the former the character of an _existent_, the phrase must not seem surprising that intelligence makes itself _be_ as a _thing_; for its ideal import is itself, and so is the aspect which it imposes upon it. The image produced by imagination of an object is a bare mental or subjective intuition: in the sign or symbol it adds intuitability proper; and in mechanical memory it completes, so far as it is concerned, this form of _being_.

-- 458. In this unity (initiated by intelligence) of an independent representation with an intuition, the matter of the latter is, in the first instance, something accepted, somewhat immediate or given (e.g. the colour of the c.o.c.kade, &c.). But in the fusion of the two elements, the intuition does not count positively or as representing itself, but as representative of something else. It is an image, which has received as its soul and meaning an independent mental representation. This intuition is the _Sign_.

The sign is some immediate intuition, representing a totally different import from what naturally belongs to it; it is the pyramid into which a foreign soul has been conveyed, and where it is conserved. The _sign_ is different from the _symbol_: for in the symbol the original characters (in essence and conception) of the visible object are more or less identical with the import which it bears as symbol; whereas in the sign, strictly so-called, the natural attributes of the intuition, and the connotation of which it is a sign, have nothing to do with each other. Intelligence therefore gives proof of wider choice and ampler authority in the use of intuitions when it treats them as designatory (significative) rather than as symbolical.

In logic and psychology, signs and language are usually foisted in somewhere as an appendix, without any trouble being taken to display their necessity and systematic place in the economy of intelligence. The right place for the sign is that just given: where intelligence-which as intuiting generates the form of time and s.p.a.ce, but is apparently recipient of sensible matter, out of which it forms ideas-now gives its own original ideas a definite existence from itself, treating the intuition (or time and s.p.a.ce as filled full) as its own property, deleting the connotation which properly and naturally belongs to it, and conferring on it an other connotation as its soul and import. This sign-creating activity may be distinctively named "productive" Memory (the primarily abstract "Mnemosyne"); since memory, which in ordinary life is often used as interchangeable and synonymous with remembrance (recollection), and even with conception and imagination, has always to do with signs only.

-- 459. The intuition-in its natural phase a something given and given in s.p.a.ce-acquires, when employed as a sign, the peculiar characteristic of existing only as superseded and sublimated. Such is the negativity of intelligence; and thus the truer phase of the intuition used as a sign is existence in _time_ (but its existence vanishes in the moment of being), and if we consider the rest of its external psychical quality, its _inst.i.tution_ by intelligence, but an inst.i.tution growing out of its (anthropological) own naturalness. This inst.i.tution of the natural is the vocal note, where the inward idea manifests itself in adequate utterance.

The vocal note which receives further articulation to express specific ideas-speech and, its system, language-gives to sensations, intuitions, conceptions, a second and higher existence than they naturally possess,-invests them with the right of existence in the ideational realm.

Language here comes under discussion only in the special aspect of a product of intelligence for manifesting its ideas in an external medium.

If language had to be treated in its concrete nature, it would be necessary for its vocabulary or material part to recall the anthropological or psycho-physiological point of view (-- 401), and for the grammar or formal portion to antic.i.p.ate the standpoint of a.n.a.lytic understanding. With regard to the elementary _material_ of language, while on one hand the theory of mere accident has disappeared, on the other the principle of imitation has been restricted to the slight range it actually covers-that of vocal objects. Yet one may still hear the German language praised for its wealth-that wealth consisting in its special expression for special sounds-_Rauschen_, _Sausen_, _Knarren_, &c.;-there have been collected more than a hundred such words, perhaps: the humour of the moment creates fresh ones when it pleases. Such superabundance in the realm of sense and of triviality contributes nothing to form the real wealth of a cultivated language. The strictly raw material of language itself depends more upon an inward symbolism than a symbolism referring to external objects; it depends, i.e. on anthropological articulation, as it were the posture in the corporeal act of oral utterance. For each vowel and consonant accordingly, as well as for their more abstract elements (the posture of lips, palate, tongue in each) and for their combinations, people have tried to find the appropriate signification. But these dull sub-conscious beginnings are deprived of their original importance and prominence by new influences, it may be by external agencies or by the needs of civilisation. Having been originally sensuous intuitions, they are reduced to signs, and thus have only traces left of their original meaning, if it be not altogether extinguished. As to the _formal_ element, again, it is the work of a.n.a.lytic intellect which informs language with its categories: it is this logical instinct which gives rise to grammar.

The study of languages still in their original state, which we have first really begun to make acquaintance with in modern times, has shown on this point that they contain a very elaborate grammar and express distinctions which are lost or have been largely obliterated in the languages of more civilised nations. It seems as if the language of the most civilised nations has the most imperfect grammar, and that the same language has a more perfect grammar when the nation is in a more uncivilised state than when it reaches a higher civilisation. (Cf. W. von Humboldt's _Essay on the Dual_.)

In speaking of vocal (which is the original) language, we may touch, only in pa.s.sing, upon written language,-a further development in the particular sphere of language which borrows the help of an externally practical activity. It is from the province of immediate spatial intuition to which written language proceeds that it takes and produces the signs (-- 454). In particular, hieroglyphics uses spatial figures to designate _ideas_; alphabetical writing, on the other hand, uses them to designate vocal notes which are already signs. Alphabetical writing thus consists of signs of signs,-the words or concrete signs of vocal language being a.n.a.lysed into their simple elements, which severally receive designation.-Leibnitz's practical mind misled him to exaggerate the advantages which a complete written language, formed on the hieroglyphic method (and hieroglyphics are used even where there is alphabetic writing, as in our signs for the numbers, the planets, the chemical elements, &c.), would have as a universal language for the intercourse of nations and especially of scholars. But we may be sure that it was rather the intercourse of nations (as was probably the case in Phoenicia, and still takes place in Canton-see _Macartney's Travels_ by Staunton) which occasioned the need of alphabetical writing and led to its formation. At any rate a comprehensive hieroglyphic language for ever completed is impracticable. Sensible objects no doubt admit of permanent signs; but, as regards signs for mental objects, the progress of thought and the continual development of logic lead to changes in the views of their internal relations and thus also of their nature; and this would involve the rise of a new hieroglyphical denotation. Even in the case of sense-objects it happens that their names, i.e. their signs in vocal language, are frequently changed, as e.g. in chemistry and mineralogy. Now that it has been forgotten what names properly are, viz. externalities which of themselves have no sense, and only get signification as signs, and now that, instead of names proper, people ask for terms expressing a sort of definition, which is frequently changed capriciously and fortuitously, the denomination, i.e. the composite name formed of signs of their generic characters or other supposed characteristic properties, is altered in accordance with the differences of view with regard to the genus or other supposed specific property. It is only a stationary civilisation, like the Chinese, which admits of the hieroglyphic language of that nation; and its method of writing moreover can only be the lot of that small part of a nation which is in exclusive possession of mental culture.-The progress of the vocal language depends most closely on the habit of alphabetical writing; by means of which only does vocal language acquire the precision and purity of its articulation. The imperfection of the Chinese vocal language is notorious: numbers of its words possess several utterly different meanings, as many as ten and twenty, so that, in speaking, the distinction is made perceptible merely by accent and intensity, by speaking low and soft or crying out. The European, learning to speak Chinese, falls into the most ridiculous blunders before he has mastered these absurd refinements of accentuation. Perfection here consists in the opposite of that _parler sans accent_ which in Europe is justly required of an educated speaker. The hieroglyphic mode of writing keeps the Chinese vocal language from reaching that objective precision which is gained in articulation by alphabetic writing.

Alphabetic writing is on all accounts the more intelligent: in it the _word_-the mode, peculiar to the intellect, of uttering its ideas most worthily-is brought to consciousness and made an object of reflection.

Engaging the attention of intelligence, as it does, it is a.n.a.lysed; the work of sign-making is reduced to its few simple elements (the primary postures of articulation) in which the sense-factor in speech is brought to the form of universality, at the same time that in this elementary phase it acquires complete precision and purity. Thus alphabetic writing retains at the same time the advantage of vocal language, that the ideas have names strictly so called: the name is the simple sign for the exact idea, i.e. the simple plain idea, not decomposed into its features and compounded out of them. Hieroglyphics, instead of springing from the direct a.n.a.lysis of sensible signs, like alphabetic writing, arise from an antecedent a.n.a.lysis of ideas. Thus a theory readily arises that all ideas may be reduced to their elements, or simple logical terms, so that from the elementary signs chosen to express these (as, in the case of the Chinese _Koua_, the simple straight stroke, and the stroke broken into two parts) a hieroglyphic system would be generated by their composition. This feature of hieroglyphic-the a.n.a.lytical designations of ideas-which misled Leibnitz to regard it as preferable to alphabetic writing is rather in antagonism with the fundamental desideratum of language,-the name. To want a name means that for the immediate idea (which, however ample a connotation it may include, is still for the mind simple in the name), we require a simple immediate sign which for its own sake does not suggest anything, and has for its sole function to signify and represent sensibly the simple idea as such. It is not merely the image-loving and image-limited intelligence that lingers over the simplicity of ideas and redintegrates them from the more abstract factors into which they have been a.n.a.lysed: thought too reduces to the form of a simple thought the concrete connotation which it "resumes" and reunites from the mere aggregate of attributes to which a.n.a.lysis has reduced it. Both alike require such signs, simple in respect of their meaning: signs, which though consisting of several letters or syllables and even decomposed into such, yet do not exhibit a combination of several ideas.-What has been stated is the principle for settling the value of these written languages.

It also follows that in hieroglyphics the relations of concrete mental ideas to one another must necessarily be tangled and perplexed, and that the a.n.a.lysis of these (and the proximate results of such a.n.a.lysis must again be a.n.a.lysed) appears to be possible in the most various and divergent ways. Every divergence in a.n.a.lysis would give rise to another formation of the written name; just as in modern times (as already noted, even in the region of sense) muriatic acid has undergone several changes of name. A hieroglyphic written language would require a philosophy as stationary as is the civilisation of the Chinese.

What has been said shows the inestimable and not sufficiently appreciated educational value of learning to read and write an alphabetic character.

It leads the mind from the sensibly concrete image to attend to the more formal structure of the vocal word and its abstract elements, and contributes much to give stability and independence to the inward realm of mental life. Acquired habit subsequently effaces the peculiarity by which alphabetic writing appears, in the interest of vision, as a roundabout way to ideas by means of audibility; it makes them a sort of hieroglyphic to us, so that in using them we need not consciously realise them by means of tones, whereas people unpractised in reading utter aloud what they read in order to catch its meaning in the sound. Thus, while (with the faculty which transformed alphabetic writing into hieroglyphics) the capacity of abstraction gained by the first practice remains, hieroglyphic reading is of itself a deaf reading and a dumb writing. It is true that the audible (which is in time) and the visible (which is in s.p.a.ce), each have their own basis, one no less authoritative than the other. But in the case of alphabetic writing there is only a _single_ basis: the two aspects occupy their rightful relation to each other: the visible language is related to the vocal only as a sign, and intelligence expresses itself immediately and unconditionally by speaking.-The instrumental function of the comparatively non-sensuous element of tone for all ideational work shows itself further as peculiarly important in memory which forms the pa.s.sage from representation to thought.

-- 460. The name, combining the intuition (an intellectual production) with its signification, is primarily a single transient product; and conjunction of the idea (which is inward) with the intuition (which is outward) is itself outward. The reduction of this outwardness to inwardness is (verbal) Memory.

(??) Memory(141).

-- 461. Under the shape of memory the course of intelligence pa.s.ses through the same inwardising (recollecting) functions, as regards the intuition of the _word_, as representation in general does in dealing with the first immediate intuition (-- 451). (1) Making its own the synthesis achieved in the sign, intelligence, by this inwardising (memorising) elevates the _single_ synthesis to a universal, i.e. permanent, synthesis, in which name and meaning are for it objectively united, and renders the intuition (which the name originally is) a representation. Thus the import (connotation) and sign, being identified, form one representation: the representation in its inwardness is rendered concrete and gets existence for its import: all this being the work of memory which retains names (retentive Memory).

-- 462. The name is thus the thing so far as it exists and counts in the ideational realm. (2) In the name, _Reproductive_ memory has and recognises the thing, and with the thing it has the name, apart from intuition and image. The name, as giving an _existence_ to the content in intelligence, is the externality of intelligence to itself; and the inwardising or recollection of the name, i.e. of an intuition of intellectual origin, is at the same time a self-externalisation to which intelligence reduces itself on its own ground. The a.s.sociation of the particular names lies in the meaning of the features sensitive, representative, or cogitant,-series of which the intelligence traverses as it feels, represents, or thinks.

Given the name lion, we need neither the actual vision of the animal, nor its image even: the name alone, if we _understand_ it, is the unimaged simple representation. We _think_ in names.

The recent attempts-already, as they deserved, forgotten-to rehabilitate the Mnemonic of the ancients, consist in transforming names into images, and thus again deposing memory to the level of imagination. The place of the power of memory is taken by a permanent tableau of a series of images, fixed in the imagination, to which is then attached the series of ideas forming the composition to be learned by rote. Considering the heterogeneity between the import of these ideas and those permanent images, and the speed with which the attachment has to be made, the attachment cannot be made otherwise than by shallow, silly, and utterly accidental links. Not merely is the mind put to the torture of being worried by idiotic stuff, but what is thus learnt by rote is just as quickly forgotten, seeing that the same tableau is used for getting by rote every other series of ideas, and so those previously attached to it are effaced. What is mnemonically impressed is not like what is retained in memory really got by heart, i.e. strictly produced from within outwards, from the deep pit of the ego, and thus recited, but is, so to speak, read off the tableau of fancy.-Mnemonic is connected with the common prepossession about memory, in comparison with fancy and imagination; as if the latter were a higher and more intellectual activity than memory. On the contrary, memory has ceased to deal with an image derived from intuition,-the immediate and incomplete mode of intelligence; it has rather to do with an object which is the product of intelligence itself,-such a _without book_(142) as remains locked up in the _within-book_(143) of intelligence, and is, within intelligence, only its outward and existing side.

-- 463. (3) As the interconnexion of the names lies in the meaning, the conjunction of their meaning with the reality as names is still an (external) synthesis; and intelligence in this its externality has not made a complete and simple return into self. But intelligence is the universal,-the single plain truth of its particular self-divestments; and its consummated appropriation of them abolishes that distinction between meaning and name. This extreme inwardising of representation is the supreme self-divestment of intelligence, in which it renders itself the mere _being_, the universal s.p.a.ce of names as such, i.e. of meaningless words. The ego, which is this abstract being, is, because subjectivity, at the same time the power over the different names,-the link which, having nothing in itself, fixes in itself series of them and keeps them in stable order. So far as they merely _are_, and intelligence is here itself this _being_ of theirs, its power is a merely abstract subjectivity,-memory; which, on account of the complete externality in which the members of such series stand to one another, and because it is itself this externality (subjective though that be), is called mechanical (-- 195).

A composition is, as we know, not thoroughly conned by rote, until one attaches no meaning to the words. The recitation of what has been thus got by heart is therefore of course accentless. The correct accent, if it is introduced, suggests the meaning: but this introduction of the signification of an idea disturbs the mechanical nexus and therefore easily throws out the reciter. The faculty of conning by rote series of words, with no principle governing their succession, or which are separately meaningless, e.g. a series of proper names, is so supremely marvellous, because it is the very essence of mind to have its wits about it; whereas in this case the mind is estranged in itself, and its action is like machinery. But it is only as uniting subjectivity with objectivity that the mind has its wits about it. Whereas in the case before us, after it has in intuition been at first so external as to pick up its facts ready-made, and in representation inwardises or recollects this datum and makes it its own,-it proceeds as memory to make itself external in itself, so that what is its own a.s.sumes the guise of something found. Thus one of the two dynamic factors of thought, viz. objectivity, is here put in intelligence itself as a quality of it.-It is only a step further to treat memory as mechanical-the act implying no intelligence-in which case it is only justified by its uses, its indispensability perhaps for other purposes and functions of mind. But by so doing we overlook the proper signification it has in the mind.

-- 464. If it is to be the fact and true objectivity, the mere name as an existent requires something else,-to be interpreted by the representing intellect. Now in the shape of mechanical memory, intelligence is at once that external objectivity and the meaning. In this way intelligence is explicitly made an _existence_ of this ident.i.ty, i.e. it is explicitly active as such an ident.i.ty which as reason it is implicitly. Memory is in this manner the pa.s.sage into the function of _thought_, which no longer has a _meaning_, i.e. its objectivity is no longer severed from the subjective, and its inwardness does not need to go outside for its existence.

The German language has etymologically a.s.signed memory (_Gedachtni_), of which it has become a foregone conclusion to speak contemptuously, the high position of direct kindred with thought (_Gedanke_).-It is not matter of chance that the young have a better memory than the old, nor is their memory solely exercised for the sake of utility. The young have a good memory because they have not yet reached the stage of reflection; their memory is exercised with or without design so as to level the ground of their inner life to pure being or to pure s.p.a.ce in which the fact, the implicit content, may reign and unfold itself with no ant.i.thesis to a subjective inwardness. Genuine ability is in youth generally combined with a good memory. But empirical statements of this sort help little towards a knowledge of what memory intrinsically is. To comprehend the position and meaning of memory and to understand its organic interconnexion with thought is one of the hardest points, and hitherto one quite unregarded in the theory of mind. Memory _qua_ memory is itself the merely _external_ mode, or merely _existential_ aspect of thought, and thus needs a complementary element. The pa.s.sage from it to thought is to our view and implicitly the ident.i.ty of reason with this existential mode: an ident.i.ty from which it follows that reason only exists in a subject, and as the function of that subject. Thus active reason is _Thinking_.

(?) Thinking(144).

-- 465. Intelligence is recognitive: it cognises an intuition, but only because that intuition is already its own (-- 454); and in the name it re-discovers the fact (-- 462): but now it finds _its_ universal in the double signification of the universal as such, and of the universal as immediate or as being,-finds i.e. the genuine universal which is its own unity overlapping and including its other, viz. being. Thus intelligence is explicitly, and on its own part cognitive: _virtually_ it is the universal,-its product (the thought) is the thing: it is a plain ident.i.ty of subjective and objective. It knows that what is _thought_, _is_, and that what _is_, only _is_ in so far as it is a thought (-- 521); the thinking of intelligence is to _have thoughts_: these are as its content and object.

-- 466. But cognition by thought is still in the first instance formal: the universality and its being is the plain subjectivity of intelligence. The thoughts therefore are not yet fully and freely determinate, and the representations which have been inwardised to thoughts are so far still the given content.

-- 467. As dealing with this given content, thought is (a) _understanding_ with its formal ident.i.ty, working up the representations, that have been memorised, into species, genera, laws, forces, &c., in short into categories,-thus indicating that the raw material does not get the truth of its being save in these thought-forms. As intrinsically infinite negativity, thought is () essentially an act of part.i.tion,-_judgment_, which however does not break up the concept again into the old ant.i.thesis of universality and being, but distinguishes on the lines supplied by the interconnexions peculiar to the concept. Thirdly (?), thought supersedes the formal distinction and inst.i.tutes at the same time an ident.i.ty of the differences,-thus being nominal _reason_ or inferential understanding.

Intelligence, as the act of thought, cognises. And (a) understanding out of its generalities (the categories) _explains_ the individual, and is then said to comprehend or understand itself: () in the judgment it explains the individual to be an universal (species, genus). In these forms the _content_ appears as given: (?) but in inference (syllogism) it characterises a content from itself, by superseding that form-difference.

With the perception of the necessity, the last immediacy still attaching to formal thought has vanished.

In _Logic_ there was thought, but in its implicitness, and as reason develops itself in this distinction-lacking medium. So in _consciousness_ thought occurs as a stage (-- 437 note). Here reason is as the truth of the ant.i.thetical distinction, as it had taken shape within the mind's own limits. Thought thus recurs again and again in these different parts of philosophy, because these parts are different only through the medium they are in and the ant.i.thesis they imply; while thought is this one and the same centre, to which as to their truth the ant.i.thesis return.

-- 468. Intelligence which as theoretical appropriates an immediate mode of being, is, now that it has completed _taking possession_, in its own _property_: the last negation of immediacy has implicitly required that the intelligence shall itself determine its content. Thus thought, as free notion, is now also free in point of _content_. But when intelligence is aware that it is determinative of the content, which is _its_ mode no less than it is a mode of being, it is Will.

(b) Mind Practical(145).

-- 469. As will, the mind is aware that it is the author of its own conclusions, the origin of its self-fulfilment. Thus fulfilled, this independency or individuality form the side of existence or of _reality_ for the Idea of mind. As will, the mind steps into actuality; whereas as cognition it is on the soil of notional generality. Supplying its own content, the will is self-possessed, and in the widest sense free: this is its characteristic trait. Its finitude lies in the formalism that the spontaneity of its self-fulfilment means no more than a general and abstract ownness, not yet identified with matured reason. It is the function of the essential will to bring liberty to exist in the formal will, and it is therefore the aim of that formal will to fill itself with its essential nature, i.e. to make liberty its pervading character, content, and aim, as well as its sphere of existence. The essential freedom of will is, and must always be, a thought: hence the way by which will can make itself objective mind is to rise to be a thinking will,-to give itself the content which it can only have as it thinks itself.

True liberty, in the shape of moral life, consists in the will finding its purpose in a universal content, not in subjective or selfish interests.

But such a content is only possible in thought and through thought: it is nothing short of absurd to seek to banish thought from the moral, religious, and law-abiding life.

-- 470. Practical mind, considered at first as formal or immediate will, contains a double ought-(1) in the contrast which the new mode of being projected outward by the will offers to the immediate positivity of its old existence and condition,-an antagonism which in consciousness grows to correlation with external objects. (2) That first self-determination, being itself immediate, is not at once elevated into a thinking universality: the latter, therefore, virtually const.i.tutes an obligation on the former in point of form, as it may also const.i.tute it in point of matter;-a distinction which only exists for the observer.

(a) Practical Sense or Feeling(146).

-- 471. The autonomy of the practical mind at first is immediate and therefore formal, i.e. it _finds_ itself as an _individuality_ determined in _its_ inward _nature_. It is thus "practical feeling," or instinct of action. In this phase, as it is at bottom a subjectivity simply identical with reason, it has no doubt a rational content, but a content which as it stands is individual, and for that reason also natural, contingent and subjective,-a content which may be determined quite as much by mere personalities of want and opinion, &c., and by the subjectivity which selfishly sets itself against the universal, as it may be virtually in conformity with reason.

An appeal is sometimes made to the sense (feeling) of right and morality, as well as of religion, which man is alleged to possess,-to his benevolent dispositions,-and even to his heart generally,-i.e. to the subject so far as the various practical feelings are in it all combined. So far as this appeal implies (1) that these ideas are immanent in his own self, and (2) that when feeling is opposed to the logical understanding, it, and not the partial abstractions of the latter, _may_ be the _totality_-the appeal has a legitimate meaning. But on the other hand feeling too _may_ be onesided, unessential and bad. The rational, which exists in the shape of rationality when it is apprehended by thought, is the same content as the _good_ practical feeling has, but presented in its universality and necessity, in its objectivity and truth.

Thus it is on the one hand _silly_ to suppose that in the pa.s.sage from feeling to law and duty there is any loss of import and excellence; it is this pa.s.sage which lets feeling first reach its truth. It is equally silly to consider intellect as superfluous or even harmful to feeling, heart, and will; the truth and, what is the same thing, the actual rationality of the heart and will can only be at home in the universality of intellect, and not in the singleness of feeling as feeling. If feelings are of the right sort, it is because of their quality or content,-which is right only so far as it is intrinsically universal or has its source in the thinking mind. The difficulty for the logical intellect consists in throwing off the separation it has arbitrarily imposed between the several faculties of feeling and thinking mind, and coming to see that in the human being there is only _one_ reason, in feeling, volition, and thought. Another difficulty connected with this is found in the fact that the Ideas which are the special property of the thinking mind, viz. G.o.d, law and morality, can also be _felt_. But feeling is only the form of the immediate and peculiar individuality of the subject, in which these facts, like any other objective facts (which consciousness also sets over against itself), may be placed.

On the other hand, it is _suspicious_ or even worse to cling to feeling and heart in place of the intelligent rationality of law, right and duty; because all that the former holds more than the latter is only the particular subjectivity with its vanity and caprice. For the same reason it is out of place in a scientific treatment of the feelings to deal with anything beyond their form, and to discuss their content; for the latter, when thought, is precisely what const.i.tutes, in their universality and necessity, the rights and duties which are the true works of mental autonomy. So long as we study practical feelings and dispositions specially, we have only to deal with the selfish, bad, and evil; it is these alone which belong to the individuality which retains its opposition to the universal: their content is the reverse of rights and duties, and precisely in that way do they-but only in ant.i.thesis to the latter-retain a speciality of their own.

-- 472. The "Ought" of practical feeling is the claim of its essential autonomy to control some existing mode of fact-which is a.s.sumed to be worth nothing save as adapted to that claim. But as both, in their immediacy, lack objective determination, this relation of the _requirement_ to existent fact is the utterly subjective and superficial feeling of pleasant or unpleasant.

Delight, joy, grief, &c., shame, repentance, contentment, &c., are partly only modifications of the formal "practical feeling" in _general_, but are partly different in the features that give the special tone and character mode to their "Ought."

The celebrated question as to the origin of evil in the world, so far at least as evil is understood to mean what is disagreeable and painful merely, arises on this stage of the formal practical feeling. Evil is nothing but the incompatibility between what is and what ought to be.

"Ought" is an ambiguous term,-indeed infinitely so, considering that casual aims may also come under the form of Ought. But where the objects sought are thus casual, evil only executes what is rightfully due to the vanity and nullity of their planning: for they themselves were radically evil. The finitude of life and mind is seen in their judgment: the contrary which is separated from them they also have as a negative in them, and thus they are the contradiction called evil. In the dead there is neither evil nor pain: for in inorganic nature the intelligible unity (concept) does not confront its existence and does not in the difference at the same time remain its permanent subject. Whereas in life, and still more in mind, we have this immanent distinction present: hence arises the Ought: and this negativity, subjectivity, ego, freedom are the principles of evil and pain. Jacob Bohme viewed egoity (selfhood) as pain and torment, and as the fountain of nature and of spirit.

() The Impulses and Choice(147).