It is usual to say that feeling is something purely subjective; but it is in reference to an object of perception, or of which I form an idea, that I first become subjective by placing some “other” over against me. It would consequently appear that feeling cannot be termed something subjective, since in it the distinction of subjectivity and objectivity has not as yet appeared. This division, however, namely, that I as subject exist in reference to objectivity, is in reality a relation and identity, which is at the same time distinguished from this distinction, and it is just here that Universality begins. While I stand in relation to another, and in perception, or in forming ideas, distinguish the object from myself, I am the mutual reference of these two, myself and the other, and I am making a distinction in which an identity is posited, and my attitude with regard to the object is that of a grasping over (übergreifen) or bridging over of the difference. In feeling, as such, on the contrary, the Ego exists in this immediate simple unity, in a condition in which it is wholly filled with determinate character, and does not go beyond this character. Thus I am, as feeling, something entirely special or particular; I am thoroughly immersed in determinateness, and am in the strict sense of the word subjective only, without objectivity and without universality.
Now, if feeling be the essential religious attitude, this attitude is identical with my empirical self. Determinateness, representing the eternal thought of the Universal, and I as wholly empirical subjectivity, are in me comprised and comprehended in feeling. I am the immediate reconciliation and resolution of the strife between the two. But just because I thus find myself determined on the one hand as a particular empirical subject, and am on the other raised into a wholly different region, and have the experience of passing to and fro from the one to the other, and have the feeling of the relation of the two, do I
