SECTION LXII. The Feeling Spirit.

(3) Man is a feeling, a sensitive, spirit,—becomes conscious of himself as standing in harmony with, or in antagonist to, other being; and, inasmuch as in the primitive unperverted creation, goodness, and hence harmony, is an essential quality, and a real disharmony therein inconceivable, hence while man—as self-developing, that is, as seeking after an, as 50yet, unrealized goal—has a consciousness of something yet lacking to his ultimate perfection, still he knows nothing of any real antagonism of existence, and hence he has no feeling of pain, but only of joy in existence, arising from his consciousness of an undisturbed harmony of universal existence with his own. personality,—that is, in a word, the feeling of happiness. In so far as this feeling expresses at the same time the recognition of this existence in its peculiar reality, it is love. Bliss and love to God and to his works are not two different things, but only two different phases of the same spiritual life-manifestation,—the former being rather the subjective, the latter the objective phase,—inasmuch as in bliss and love man is, in fact, perfectly at one with the objective universe.

Feeling is not peculiar to the rational spirit; it becomes rational only in so far as it is an expression of self-consciousness; and as self-consciousness is rational only in being a consciousness not of mere individual being but also of a Godlikeness in the peculiarity of the person, so also is rational feeling not of a merely individual nature, but it is excited by the traces of God which shine forth from all created existence, and hence it is, at bottom, always a love of God. The goodness of created existence is embraced by rational feeling not as being good merely for the feeling individual, but as a being-good per se; the rational spirit feels not merely that this or that entity stands in harmony with itself, but it feels itself as standing in harmony with the totality of existence,—feels the harmony of God’s world as such. In the same degree that spirituality rises, rises also the vividness and compass of feeling. The unconscious nature-object is affected only by the very few things that come into immediate contact with it; the brute shows so much the more extended and more lively a sympathy with external existence the higher and nobler its rank. Emotionlessness, blunt indifference toward 51external objects, is always, save where it is artificially superinduced by false teachings, a sign of deep moral degradation. The Biblical account of the primitive condition of man uniformly represents the destination of nature to be, to procure to the rational spirit the feeling of joy, of happiness. Man is placed in the garden of Eden, and thereby brought into the immediate presence of the full harmony of the created. world; in it God causes to grow “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food;” and the full feeling of happiness, as springing from his love to that which harmonizes with him, is procured to man (to whom it is not “good” to be alone) by the creation of woman,—in whom he at once recognizes that she is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh,—a being other than, and yet of, himself.

Feeling is the presupposition of all activity, and hence also of the moral; and the most real feeling of all—that which relates to the moral-is not an un-pleasure feeling,—as is often assumed in antagonism to the Biblical world-view, but in fact a happiness-feeling. It would not imply a “good” creation, nor indeed any God-likeness in man, were it a fact that man were incited to activity only by un-pleasure, that is, by pain, while yet happiness were the end of the active life. Even as God is not prompted to activity by any feeling of want, but rather in virtue of his eternal and absolutely perfect bliss, so also can the true moral feeling of man, who is God’s image, be no other than the feeling of happiness and love; but the consciousness of a yet to be won good is per se by no means a feeling of unhappiness, on the contrary it in fact awakens a direct pleasure in seeking.