G. W. F. Hegel

“ But this brings us at once to the reflection that feeling and heart as such are only the one side, definite forms of feeling and heart being the other. And, accordingly, we must at once go further and say, that just as little is religion true, because it exists in our feelings or hearts, as because it is believed and known immediately and for certain. All religions, even the most false and unworthy, exist in our feelings and hearts just as much as those that are true. There are feelings which are immoral, unjust, and godless, just as much as there are feelings which are moral, just, and pious. ”

“ It is only the truly Universal, the Universal in-and-for-itself, which is broad, and the heart inwardly extends only by entering into this, and expanding within this substantial element, which is at once the religious, the moral, and the legal element. Speaking generally, love is the abandonment on the part of the heart of limitation to a particular point of its own, and its reception of the love of God is the reception of that development or unfolding of His Spirit which comprehends in itself all true content, and swallows up in this objectivity whatever is merely peculiar to the heart. ”

“ The very inmost unity of the content of faith with me is requisite in order that I may have quality or substance, its substance. It thus becomes my feeling. As against religion Man must hold nothing in reserve for himself, for it is the innermost region of truth. Religion must therefore possess not only this as yet abstract “I,” which even as faith is yet knowledge, but the concrete “I” in its simple personality, comprehending the whole of it in itself. Feeling is this inwardness which is not separated in itself. ”

“ It is the yet more intensive forcing back of self-consciousness into itself, the development of the content to mere definiteness of feeling.
Religion must be felt, must exist in feeling, otherwise it is not religion; faith cannot exist without feeling, otherwise it is not religion. ”

“ Feeling is, however, understood to have the property of being something purely individual, lasting for a single moment, just as one individual thing in the process of alternation with another exists either after that other or alongside of it. But the heart signifies the all-embracing unity of the feelings, both in their quantity and also as regards their duration in time. ”

“ To the objectivity of action, that is, to action which originates in the truly substantial element, subjectivity opposes feeling, and to this substantial element and to the thinking knowledge of it it opposes immediate knowledge. Here, however, we do not stay to consider the nature of action, but simply remark that it is just this substantial element, represented by the laws of justice and morality and the commandments of God, which is by its very nature the true Universal, and has consequently its root and basis in the region of thought. ”

“ If sometimes the laws of justice and morality are regarded merely as arbitrary commands of God—which would mean, in fact, that they were irrational—still it would take us too far to make that our starting-point. But the putting on a permanent basis and the investigation of the conviction, on the part of the conscious subject, of the truth of the principles which ought to constitute for him the basis of his action, is thinking knowledge. ”

“ Feeling makes itself known as a subjective form, as being something in me, while I am the subject of something. This form is that which is simple, which remains equal to itself, and therefore potentially indeterminate in every difference of content—the abstraction of my existence as a single individual. The determinateness or special character of the feeling is, on the contrary, to begin with, difference in general, the being unlike some other, being manifold. ”

“ While the unsophisticated heart yields itself up to these principles, its insight is as yet so undeveloped, and any pretension on its part to independence is so foreign to it, that it reaches them rather by the road of authority, and thus this part of the heart in which they are implanted is alone the place of conscious thought, for they are themselves the thoughts of action, and are inherently universal principles. ”

“ If feeling is religious feeling, religion is its definite quality. If it is wicked, bad feeling, what is bad and wicked is its definite quality. It is this determinate quality which forms the content for consciousness, what in the words already used is called thought. Feeling is bad on account of its bad content; the heart, because of its sinful thoughts. Feeling is the common form for the most different kinds of content. ”

“ This was still more the case in former times than in these later days when the sense of satisfaction in the yearning has gained the upper hand of the sense of division, and has produced in the soul a feeling of contentment and even a sense of irony itself. Unreality in the heart, such as that referred to, is not only emptiness, but is also narrow-heartedness. ”

“ When we have thus distinguished between what, because it is buried in and absorbed into the Thing or true object, is the unsophisticated heart, and the heart which in reflection is consciously occupied with itself, we find that the distinction constitutes the relation in which the heart stands to the substantial element. ”

“ Another feature in the situation, which the withdrawal into immediate knowledge and into feeling brings into view, concerns the relation of men to other men, and their spiritual fellowship. The objective, the true fact or Thing, is what is in-and-for-itself universal, and is so, therefore, for all. ”

“ This content must be true, to begin with, and independently of the feeling, just as religion is true on its own account—it is what is in itself necessary and universal—the Thing or true fact which develops itself to a kingdom of truths and of laws, as well as to a kingdom of their knowledge and their final ground, God. ”

“ The hollowness which thus attaches to the highest end pursued by the individual, namely, pious effort and anxiety about the welfare of his own soul, has led to the most inhuman manifestations of a feeble and spiritless reality, ranging from the quiet anxiety of a loving disposition to the suffering caused to the soul by despair and madness. ”

“ Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder, adultery, backbiting, and so forth; that is to say, the fact that thoughts are not bad, but good, does not depend on their being in the heart and proceeding out of it. We have to do with the definite form which is assumed by the feeling which is in the heart. ”

“ Chiefly from a practical, for since, for the justification of disposition and action, reasons are necessary, the faculty of argument must still be very untrained, and very little skilled in its work, if it does not know how to assign good reasons for what is arbitrary. ”