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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, namely God, 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 constitutes, 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 antithesis 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 assumed 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, etc., shame, repentance, contentment, etc., 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,
SUB-SECTION C. PSYCHOLOGY, MIND 37
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
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 judgement: 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 lifeless 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.
(b) The Impulses and Choice(14)
¤ 473 The practical ought is a 'real' judgement. Will, which is essentially self-determination, finds in the
conformity - as immediate and merely found to hand - of the existing mode to its requirement a negation,
and something inappropriate to it. If the will is to satisfy itself, if the implicit unity of the universality and the
special mode is to be realized, the conformity of its inner requirement and of the existent thing ought to be its
act and institution. The will, as regards the form of its content, is at first still a natural will, directly identical
with its specific mode: - natural impulse and inclination. Should, however, the totality of the practical spirit
throw itself into a single one of the many restricted forms of impulse, each being always in conflict to
another, it is passion.
¤ 474 Inclinations and passions embody the same constituent features as the practical feeling. Thus, while, on
one hand, they are based on the rational nature of the mind; they, on the other, as part and parcel of the still
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