Freedom of thought is also the most obvious example of that freedom of the spirit in morally “willing,” which it is the business of ethical science to teach and defend. As in the one case thought shows itself superior to the physiologically or psychologically conditioned sequence of its concepts, so the free spirit, in the uniqueness of its moral laws, reveals itself as lord over all the motives, the lower feelings of pleasure and pain that have their play within us. As in the one case it is free to measure according to the criteria of true or false, and thus is able to intervene in the sequence of its own conceptions, correcting and confirming, so in the other it is able to estimate by the criteria of good or bad. As in [pg 325] the one case it carries within it its own fundamental laws as logic, so in the other the moral ideals and fundamental judgments which arise out of its own being. And in both cases it is free from nature and natural law, and capable of subordinating nature to its own rules, in so far as it “wills,” and of becoming subordinate to nature—in erroneous thinking and non-moral acting—in so far as it does not will.
Feeling, Individuality, Genius, and Mysticism.
The four things here mentioned are very closely associated with one another, especially the second and third, as is easily perceived, but the second is rooted in the first. And in the second and third there is already to be discovered a factor which goes beyond the sphere of the purely rational, and is no longer accessible to our comprehension, but carries us over into the sphere of the fourth. This is really true even of the phenomena of moral consciousness and moral “freedom.” In this quality, and in the ethical ideal of “personality,” there is implied something that is inaccessible to a purely rational consideration, and is directly related to mystery and divination. (What is “personality”? We all feel it. We respect it from the depths of our soul wherever we meet it. We bow down before it unconditionally. But what it is no philosophy has ever yet been able definitely to state. In seeking to comprehend it intuition and feeling must always play the largest part.)
Feeling.
It is in the four attributes here emphasised that the true nature of mind in its underivability and superiority to all nature first becomes clear. All that we have so far considered under the name of mind is only preliminary and leads up to this. All reality of external things is of little account compared with that of the mind. It does not occur to any one in practice to regard anything in the whole world as more real and genuine than his own love and hate, fear and hope, his pain, from the simplest discomfort due to a wound to the pangs of conscience and the gnawings of remorse—his pleasure, from the merest comfort to the highest raptures of delight. This world of feeling is for us the meaning of all existence. The more we plunge ourselves into it, the deeper are the intricacies and mysteries it reveals. At every point underivable and unintelligible in terms of physiological processes, it reveals itself from stage to stage as more deeply and wholly unique in its relations, interactions, and processes, and grows farther and farther beyond the laboured and insufficient schemes and formulas under which science desires to range all psychical phenomena.
Individuality.
It is especially in “feeling” that what we call individuality has its roots. The individual really means the “indivisible,” and in the strict sense of the word need mean nothing more than the ego, and the unity [pg 327] of consciousness of which we have already spoken. But through a change in the meaning of the word we have come to mean much more than that by it. This individuality forces itself most distinctly upon our attention in regard to prominent and distinguished persons. It is the particular determination of their psychical nature that marks them out so distinctly, and it often rather escapes analysis and characterisation than is attained by it. “Individuum est ineffabile.” It can only be grasped intuitively and by experience. And people of a non-reflective mood are usually more successful in understanding it than those who reflect and analyse. It requires “fine feeling,” which knows exactly how it stands towards the person in question, which yet can seldom give any definite account of his characteristics. Individuality usually meets us most obviously in exceptional men, and we are apt to contrast these with ordinary men. But on closer examination we see that this difference is only one of degree. “Individuality” in a less marked manner belongs to them all, and where it exists it is a distinctly original thing, which cannot be derived from its antecedents. No psyche is simply derivable from other psyches. What a child receives from its parents by “heredity” are factors which, taken together, amount to more than the mere sum of them. The synthesis of these is at once the creation of something new and peculiar, and what has been handed down is merely the building material. This can be felt in an intensified and striking [pg 328] degree in regard to “pronounced individuality,” but careful study will disclose the fact that there are no men quite alike. This kind of “creative synthesis,” that is, the underivability of the individual, was the element of truth in the mythologies of “creationism” held by the Church fathers, or in the theory of the “pre-existence of the soul” maintained by Plato and others.