A question often asked is thus answered at the same time, one which has correctly seemed to be a matter of life or death for æsthetic science, namely, whether feeling and pleasure precede or follow, are cause or effect of the æsthetic fact. We must widen this question to include the relation between the various spiritual forms, and answer it by maintaining that one cannot talk of cause and effect and of a chronological before and after in the unity of the spirit.
And once the relation above expounded is established, all necessity for inquiry as to the nature of æsthetic, moral, intellectual and even what was sometimes called economic feelings, must disappear. In this last case, it is clear that it is a question, not of two terms, but of one, and inquiry as to economic feeling must be the same as that relating to economic activity. But in the other cases also, we must attend, not to the substantive, but to the adjective: the æsthetic, moral and logical character will explain the colouring of the feelings as æsthetic, moral and intellectual, whereas feeling, studied alone, will never explain those refractions and colorations.
[Sidenote: _Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of feelings._]
A further consequence is, that we no longer need retain the well-known distinctions between values or feelings _of value,_ and feelings that are merely hedonistic and _without value_; _disinterested_ and _interested_ feelings, _objective_ feelings and feelings not _objective_ but simply _subjective_ feelings of _approbation_ and of _mere pleasure_ (cf. the distinction of _Gefallen_ and _Vergnügen_ in German). Those distinctions were used to save the three spiritual forms, which were recognized as the triad of the _True,_ the _Good_ and the _Beautiful,_ from confusion with the fourth form, still unknown, and therefore insidious in its indeterminateness and mother of scandals. For us this triad has completed its task, because we are capable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by receiving also the selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings among the respectable forms of the spirit; and where formerly antitheses were conceived (by ourselves and others), between value and feelings, as between spirituality and naturality, henceforth we see nothing but differences between value and value.