Immediate unity of a finite psychical centre. It means

for me, first, the general condition before distinctions

and relations have been developed, and where as yet

neither any subject nor object exists. And it means, in

the second place, anything which is present at any stage

of mental life, in so far as that is only present and

simply is. In this latter sense

we may say that everything actual, no matter what, must

be felt; but we do not call it feeling except so far as

we take it as failing to be more. Now, in either of

these senses, is it possible to consider feeling as

real, or as a consistent aspect of reality? We must

reply in the negative.

Feeling has a content, and this content is not

consistent within itself, and such a discrepancy tends

to destroy and to break up the stage of feeling. The

matter may be briefly put thus--the finite

content is irreconcilable with the immediacy of its

existence. For the finite content is necessarily

determined from the outside; its external relations

(however negative they may desire to remain) penetrate

its essence, and so carry that beyond its own being. And

hence, since the "what" of all feeling is discordant

with its "that," it is appearance, and, as such, it

cannot be real. This fleeting and untrue character is

perpetually forced on our notice by the hard fact of

change. And, both from within and from without, feeling

is compelled to pass off into the relational

consciousness. It is the ground and foundation of

further developments, but it is a foundation that bears

them only by a ceaseless lapse from itself. Hence we

could not, in any proper sense, call these products its

adjectives. For their life consists in the diremption of

feeling's unity, and this unity is not again restored

and made good except in the Absolute.

(3) We may pass next to the perceptional or

theoretic, and again, on the other side, to the

practical aspect. Each of these differs from the two

foregoing by implying distinction, and, in the first

place, a distinction between subject and object.

The perceptional side has at the outset, of course, no

special existence; for it is given at first in union

with the practical side, and is but slowly

differentiated. But what we are concerned with here is

to attempt to apprehend its specific nature. One or more

elements are separated from the confused mass of

feeling, and stand apparently by themselves and over

against this. And the distinctive character of such an

object is that it seems simply to be. If it appeared to