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CHAPTER II.

PART V. THE REFLECTIVE AND IMAGINATIVE EMOTIONS.

The spirit and the power,

Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower

A new Earth and new Heaven.

Coleridge.

BOOK I. CH. II. PART V.

§ 39. The inner

nature of the world consists in emotion.

§ 39. 1. No sooner have we formed empirical and remote objects in consciousness than we ask ourselves what they mean, what the whole scene of existence, as it unfolds itself before us, means. It has been shown in "Time and Space," how, out of the formal element occupied by each set of qualities, we imagine a substance, an essence, or a force, underlying, evolving, producing, and then supporting these qualities, and exerting itself, expressing its own nature, in the actions, movements, or effects of these upon other sets of qualities, and upon the substances, essences, or forces similarly imagined as underlying them. It is of such objects, consisting of substance and attribute, that we then proceed to ask ourselves the meaning or significance. The purpose of our question is to discover the nature of the substance, essence, or force, underlying the qualities; to discover it apart from the qualities in which it manifests itself, that is,

ture.

BOOK I.

CH. II. PART V.

$39. The inner nature of the world consists

to discover what it would be if it existed alone, free to produce other qualities, as we imagine it did exist before it produced the actual qualities out of its naWe wish to dive and penetrate, as it were, into the nature, the hidden nature, of the Ding-an- in emotion. sich, the Transcendental Object, substance, essence, or force. This is the scope of the question as to the meaning of things, as it is at first conceived. (See Jouffroy, Cours d'Esthétique, Leçon xviii.).

2. Now this penetration into the nature of things, though mistaken as to its object being of a transcendental nature, a Ding-an-sich, is nevertheless a real effort to reach some further knowledge. Its preconceived notion as to the nature of the object it investigates is not essential to its existence as an effort to penetrate farther than before; and we can now see what it really is, and what it really does while imagining that it investigates the Ding-an-sich. It is, while penetrating into the nature of things, at the same time also a penetration into the nature of our own consciousness; and for this reason, that we can examine only what is known, or so far as it is a mode of consciousness. The process backward or downward, behind or below the surface of phenomena objectively, is also a process in the opposite direction, backward or downward, behind or below the surface of phenomena subjectively; just as the apparent movement of an object into the depth of apparent space behind a mirror, as we look into it, is, corresponds to, or is the reflection of, the real movement of the object itself into the depth of real space away from the front of the mirroring surface. Each corresponding movement is real, each of the corresponding objects is precisely the same, equally real and true;

BOOK I. CH. II. PART V.

$39.

The inner

world consists

in emotion.

one is the opposite aspect of the other, subjective and objective aspects of the same thing. The objective aspect, however, is the imagined counterpart nature of the of the subjective; the subjective is the immediately certain counterpart of the objective, the cause of knowing it. The subjective is known, the objective is known to exist. The only difference or advantage which the objective has over the subjective is its bare existence, and this is an imagination in the subjective aspect; its nature in all its parts or qualities is entirely exhausted by the subjective aspect. We go into the depths of our mind by developing, combining, and analysing representations; and the new modes of consciousness, which arise for us there, we attribute to the objects which we are examining, with the imagined substances, essences, or powers, underlying them. The new class of conscious phenomena which arises in representation is that of the emotions. The meaning of things therefore consists in our emotions when we dwell upon them.

3. But what is this "bare existence" in which the prerogative of the objective aspect over the subjective consists? For we cannot say that it is an unreality, merely because it is "imagined" by the subjective aspect. Existence is a second intention, a predication about the phenomena of the subjective aspect. The objective aspect is those phenomena plus the reflection, the particular subjective reflection, that they are phenomena. In this way the bare existence, which in the preceding paragraph was said to be the peculiar prerogative of the objective aspect, loses that prerogative as its peculiar property, by having its subjective aspect found. The transcendentalism of the objects imagined as tran

BOOK I.

CH. II.

PART V.

$ 39. The inner

world consists in emotion.

scendental is in this way destroyed, for its subjective counterpart is discovered. It makes little difference whether we call, with Hegel, this thoroughly equated pair of relatives, the objective and subjective aspects nature of the of phenomena, taken together, by the name of The Absolute, or not. The Absolute seems to me a name expressing the imagination of the "bare existence" belonging to both alike and both together. That we do always imagine them as "existing" is certain; and that this existence is imagined is but one mode of the complete relativeness, or equatedness, of the two aspects. A great deal however depends upon the way in which the equation between subject and object is worked out; and in this respect, it is needless to say, the way here taken is essentially different from Hegel's. The emotions, and among them the reflective emotions ending with the moral sense, have hitherto been our means of penetrating into the inner nature of the objective world. The framework of these emotions is the world as we represent it to ourselves in all respects; for as object of the senses it is visible, tangible, audible, and so on, and as object of the emotions it has certain characters, or moral qualities, in the several objects of sense, personal objects being among them, which it consists of. As a whole it has a complicated moral character, and the people who inhabit it are but different repetitions of the different emotions variously combined of the Subject himself, like the different leaves of one tree.

4. At the beginning of Part ii. of this Chapter, in § 13, it was said that the entrance upon the world of representations was usually imagined as the entrance upon a subjective world, as opposed to the

BOOK I.
CH. II.

PART V.

§ 39.

The inner

world consists

in emotion.

objective world of sensations; and then, in this subjective world, the frameworks of representation were distinguished, as being inferences of reasoning, from nature of the the emotional element pervading them, and this latter imagined as more subjective still. But now this entire subjective world is shown to be reflected back upon the objective world of sensations, out of which it sprang by the process of redintegration and representation spontaneous and voluntary; and its entire nature, its two aspects, emotion and framework, are made objective by reflection upon them. The objective world is this world of objects of emotion such as we have found it by subjective analysis. The entire range of emotions and their frameworks exists; they are the deeper, latest evolved, character of the tangible, visible, and otherwise sensible world. They belong to that world and are produced out of it; in short they are "real" in precisely the same sense of the term. The world which was so made as to give us the impressions of sense, and the objects which are sometimes called absolute, or always real, is now found to be so made as to give us the impressions of emotions, which equally deserve the same titles.

§ 40.

The two modes of reflective

and imagina

§ 40. We are now entering on the imaginative emotions of reflection. In the hitherto examined tive emotion. reflective emotions there has arisen no question as to the reality or truth of their objective frameworks. But imagination is usually opposed to reality in the sense of truth of fact; the imagined to the real or true. Yet imagination is as much a part of our intellectual and emotional nature as is remembrance without imagination, or as remembrance without reasoning; and reasoning itself, inferring the unknown from the known, is a mode of imagination and in

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