({ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}) Practical Sense or Feeling(146).
§ 471. The autonomy of the practical mind at first is immediate and therefore formal, i.e. it _finds_ itself as an _individuality_ determined in _its_ inward _nature_. It is thus "practical feeling," or instinct of action. In this phase, as it is at bottom a subjectivity simply identical with reason, it has no doubt a rational content, but a content which as it stands is individual, and for that reason also natural, contingent and subjective,--a content which may be determined quite as much by mere personalities of want and opinion, &c., and by the subjectivity which selfishly sets itself against the universal, as it may be virtually in conformity with reason.
An appeal is sometimes made to the sense (feeling) of right and morality, as well as of religion, which man is alleged to possess,--to his benevolent dispositions,--and even to his heart generally,--i.e. to the subject so far as the various practical feelings are in it all combined. So far as this appeal implies (1) that these ideas are immanent in his own self, and (2) that when feeling is opposed to the logical understanding, it, and not the partial abstractions of the latter, _may_ be the _totality_--the appeal has a legitimate meaning. But on the other hand feeling too _may_ be onesided, unessential and bad. The rational, which exists in the shape of rationality when it is apprehended by thought, is the same content as the _good_ practical feeling has, but presented in its universality and necessity, in its objectivity and truth.
Thus it is on the one hand _silly_ to suppose that in the passage from feeling to law and duty there is any loss of import and excellence; it is this passage which lets feeling first reach its truth. It is equally silly to consider intellect as superfluous or even harmful to feeling, heart, and will; the truth and, what is the same thing, the actual rationality of the heart and will can only be at home in the universality of intellect, and not in the singleness of feeling as feeling. If feelings are of the right sort, it is because of their quality or content,--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, viz. 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.