Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God/Lecture 4
As has been shown in the preceding lecture, the form of feeling is closely related to mere faith as such. It is the yet more intensive forcing back of self-consciousness into itself, the development of the content to mere definiteness of feeling.
Religion must be felt, must exist in feeling, otherwise it is not religion; faith cannot exist without feeling, otherwise it is not religion. This must be admitted to be true, for feeling is nothing but my subjectivity in its simplicity and immediacy—myself as this particular existent personality. If I have religion only as idea, faith takes the form of certainty about these ideas; its content is before me, it is still an object over against me; it is not yet identical with me as simple self; I am not so penetrated through and through with it that it constitutes my qualitative, determinate character. The very inmost unity of the content of faith with me is requisite in order that I may have quality or substance, its substance. It thus becomes my feeling. As against religion Man must hold nothing in reserve for himself, for it is the innermost region of truth. Religion must therefore possess not only this as yet abstract “I,” which even as faith is yet knowledge, but the concrete “I” in its simple personality, comprehending the whole of it in itself. Feeling is this inwardness which is not separated in itself.
Feeling is, however, understood to have the property of being something purely individual, lasting for a single moment, just as one individual thing in the process of alternation with another exists either after that other or alongside of it. But the heart signifies the all-embracing unity of the feelings, both in their quantity and also as regards their duration in time. The heart is the ground or basis which contains in itself and preserves the essential nature of feelings, independent of the fleeting nature of their succession in consciousness. In this their unbroken unity—for the heart expresses the simple pulse of the living spirit—religion is able to penetrate the different kinds of feeling, and to become for them the substance which holds, masters, and rules them.
But this brings us at once to the reflection that feeling and heart as such are only the one side, definite forms of feeling and heart being the other. And, accordingly, we must at once go further and say, that just as little is religion true, because it exists in our feelings or hearts, as because it is believed and known immediately and for certain. All religions, even the most false and unworthy, exist in our feelings and hearts just as much as those that are true. There are feelings which are immoral, unjust, and godless, just as much as there are feelings which are moral, just, and pious. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder, adultery, backbiting, and so forth; that is to say, the fact that thoughts are not bad, but good, does not depend on their being in the heart and proceeding out of it. We have to do with the definite form which is assumed by the feeling which is in the heart. This is a truism so trivial that one hesitates to give it expression, but it is part of philosophical culture to carry the analysis of ideas even to the length of questioning and denying what is most simple and most commonly received. To that shallow type of thought or Enlightenment which is vain of its boldness, it appears unmeaning and unseemly to recall trivial truths, such, for instance, as that which may be here once more brought to mind, the truth that Man is distinguished from the brute by the faculty of thought, but shares that of feeling with it. If feeling is religious feeling, religion is its definite quality. If it is wicked, bad feeling, what is bad and wicked is its definite quality. It is this determinate quality which forms the content for consciousness, what in the words already used is called thought. Feeling is bad on account of its bad content; the heart, because of its sinful thoughts. Feeling is the common form for the most different kinds of content. It can on that account just as little serve as a justification for any of its determinate qualities, for its content, as can immediate certainty.
Feeling makes itself known as a subjective form, as being something in me, while I am the subject of something. This form is that which is simple, which remains equal to itself, and therefore potentially indeterminate in every difference of content—the abstraction of my existence as a single individual. The determinateness or special character of the feeling is, on the contrary, to begin with, difference in general, the being unlike some other, being manifold. It must therefore be explicitly distinguished from the general form whose particular and definite quality it is, and be regarded on its own account. It has the form of the content which must be regarded “on its own merits,” and judged on its own account; on this value depends the value of the feeling. This content must be true, to begin with, and independently of the feeling, just as religion is true on its own account—it is what is in itself necessary and universal—the Thing or true fact which develops itself to a kingdom of truths and of laws, as well as to a kingdom of their knowledge and their final ground, God.
I shall indicate only in outline the consequences which ensue if immediate knowledge and feeling as such are elevated into a principle. It is their very concentration which carries with it for the content, simplification, abstraction, and indefiniteness. Thus they both reduce the divine content, be it religious as such, or legal and moral, to a minimum, to what is most abstract. With this the determination of the content becomes arbitrary, for in that minimum there exists nothing determinate. This is a weighty consequence, from a theoretical as well as a practical point of view. Chiefly from a practical, for since, for the justification of disposition and action, reasons are necessary, the faculty of argument must still be very untrained, and very little skilled in its work, if it does not know how to assign good reasons for what is arbitrary.
Another feature in the situation, which the withdrawal into immediate knowledge and into feeling brings into view, concerns the relation of men to other men, and their spiritual fellowship. The objective, the true fact or Thing, is what is in-and-for-itself universal, and is so, therefore, for all. As what is most universal, it is implicitly thought in general; and thought is the common basis. The man who betakes himself to feeling, to immediate knowledge, to his own ideas or his own thoughts, shuts himself up, as I have already said, in his own particularity, and breaks off any fellowship or community with others—the only way is to leave him alone. But this kind of feeling and heart lets us see more closely into the nature of feeling and heart. Restricting itself in accordance with its first principle to its own feeling, the consciousness of a content degrades it to the determinate form belonging to itself; it maintains itself rigidly as self-consciousness, in which this determinateness inheres; the self is for consciousness the object which it sets before itself, the substance which has the content only as an attribute, as a predicate in it, so that it is not the independent element in which the subject is sublated, or loses itself. The subject is itself in this way a fixed condition, which has been called the life of feeling. In the so-called Irony, which is connected with it, the “myself “is abstract only in relation to itself; in the distinction of itself from its content it stands as pure consciousness of itself, and as separated from it. In the life of feeling this subject exists rather in the above-mentioned identity with the content, it is definite consciousness in it, and remains as this individual “I,” object and end to itself. As the religious individual “I,” it is end to itself; this individual “I” is object and end in general; in the expression, for instance, that I am blessed, and in so far as this blessedness is brought about through belief in the truth, the “I” is filled with truth and penetrated by it. Filled in this way with yearning, it is unsatisfied in itself; but this yearning is the yearning of religion; it is, accordingly, satisfied in having this yearning in itself; in it it has the subjective consciousness of itself, and of itself as the religious self. Carried beyond itself only in this yearning, it is just in it that it preserves itself and the consciousness of being satisfied, and in close connection with this the consciousness of its contentment with itself. But this inwardness involves at the same time the opposite condition which consists in that most unhappy sense of division experienced by the pure hearted. While I regard myself strictly as this particular and abstract “I,” and compare my particular impulses, inclinations, and thoughts, with what ought to fill my nature, I am able to feel that this contrast is a painful contradiction within myself, which becomes permanent, owing to the fact that “I,” as this particular subjective “me,” have it as my aim and object to concern myself about myself as my individual self. It is just this fixed reflection which prevents me from being filled by the substantial content, by the Thing or true fact, for in the true fact I forget myself; in the very act of becoming absorbed in it that reflection upon myself disappears of itself. I am characterised as subjective only in that opposition to the Thing which remains with me through reflection on myself. In thus keeping myself outside of the Thing or true fact, and since this Thing constitutes my end, the real interest is transferred from the attentive observation of the Thing back to myself. I thus go on unceasingly emptying myself, and continue in this condition of emptiness. The hollowness which thus attaches to the highest end pursued by the individual, namely, pious effort and anxiety about the welfare of his own soul, has led to the most inhuman manifestations of a feeble and spiritless reality, ranging from the quiet anxiety of a loving disposition to the suffering caused to the soul by despair and madness. This was still more the case in former times than in these later days when the sense of satisfaction in the yearning has gained the upper hand of the sense of division, and has produced in the soul a feeling of contentment and even a sense of irony itself. Unreality in the heart, such as that referred to, is not only emptiness, but is also narrow-heartedness. It is its own formal, subjective life with which it is filled; it always has this particular “I” as its object and end. It is only the truly Universal, the Universal in-and-for-itself, which is broad, and the heart inwardly extends only by entering into this, and expanding within this substantial element, which is at once the religious, the moral, and the legal element. Speaking generally, love is the abandonment on the part of the heart of limitation to a particular point of its own, and its reception of the love of God is the reception of that development or unfolding of His Spirit which comprehends in itself all true content, and swallows up in this objectivity whatever is merely peculiar to the heart. In this substantial element the subjectivity, which is for the heart itself a one-sided form, is given up, and this at the same time supplies the impulse to throw off the subjectivity. This is the impulse to action in general, or, more strictly speaking, it is the impulse to take part in the action of the content which is divine in-and-for-itself, and is therefore the content which has absolute power and authority. It is this, accordingly, which constitutes the reality or real existence of the heart, and it is indivisibly both that inner reality and also outer reality.
When we have thus distinguished between what, because it is buried in and absorbed into the Thing or true object, is the unsophisticated heart, and the heart which in reflection is consciously occupied with itself, we find that the distinction constitutes the relation in which the heart stands to the substantial element. So long as the heart remains within itself, and consequently remains outside of this element, it is by its own act in an external and contingent relation to this element. This connection, which leads the heart to declare what is just, and to lay down the law in accordance with its own feeling, has been already mentioned. To the objectivity of action, that is, to action which originates in the truly substantial element, subjectivity opposes feeling, and to this substantial element and to the thinking knowledge of it it opposes immediate knowledge. Here, however, we do not stay to consider the nature of action, but simply remark that it is just this substantial element, represented by the laws of justice and morality and the commandments of God, which is by its very nature the true Universal, and has consequently its root and basis in the region of thought. If sometimes the laws of justice and morality are regarded merely as arbitrary commands of God—which would mean, in fact, that they were irrational—still it would take us too far to make that our starting-point. But the putting on a permanent basis and the investigation of the conviction, on the part of the conscious subject, of the truth of the principles which ought to constitute for him the basis of his action, is thinking knowledge. While the unsophisticated heart yields itself up to these principles, its insight is as yet so undeveloped, and any pretension on its part to independence is so foreign to it, that it reaches them rather by the road of authority, and thus this part of the heart in which they are implanted is alone the place of conscious thought, for they are themselves the thoughts of action, and are inherently universal principles. This heart cannot, therefore, offer any opposition to the development of what is its own objective basis, any more than it can to that of those truths which belong to it, and which at first appear in themselves rather as theoretical truths pertaining to its religious faith. As, however, this possession, and the intensity which characterises it, are already in the heart only through the mediation of education, which has asserted its influence upon its thought and knowledge just as it has upon its volition, so, in a still greater degree, the further developed content, and the alteration in the circle of its ideas which are implicitly native to the place where they are found, also represent mediating knowledge mediated into the conscious form of thought.