Chapter 4

How philosophical meditation,
in analysing the animal feeling perceived by the soul,
distinguishes the subjective body and recognises it as having the same nature as extrasubjective bodies

272. How do we separate and distinguish, in the primal perception of the fundamental feeling, the body which, as term of this feeling, is not separate from it? The answer demands much mental activity carried to a very high level of reflection, as follows:

273. 1st. level. Through sense-experiences we first perceive external, extrasubjective bodies. They are presented spontaneously to us as something separate from our feeling principle. We are passive in their regard, perceiving them as a foreign energy, independent of the activity of our subjective, feeling principle. In other words, we perceive them precisely as extrasubjective bodies, that is, independent of the subject.(129)

2nd. level. Next, reflection shows us that in every senseexperience produced in us by an extended, extrasubjective energy there is something subjective, in addition to the foreign energy.

3rd. level. Meditation on the nature of this subjective element shows it to be a modification of our feeling, which now feels in a new, unaccustomed way

4th. level. From the concept of modification we reason that even before this sense-experience there was in us an ordinary mode of feeling, which has now been modified. This feeling is the fundamental feeling.

5th. level. Moreover, we notice that the modification, that is, our sense-experience, is extended in an extension equal to that of the foreign energy acting in our feeling. We conclude that subjective feeling itself has extension as its term.

6th. level. We also see that every feeling presupposes an agent and an energy different from the feeling principle, although indivisibly united with it and dependent on it in many ways. We conclude that the term of our animal-fundamental feeling is a body, because it has the two conditions constituting body: energy and extension.

7th. level. Next, by means of external sense-experiences, we discover the limits of this term.

8th. level. Finally, we find that the same body, the term of the fundamental feeling, falls under our extrasubjective experience just as every other foreign body does, and we conclude that the subjective body and the extrasubjective body have an identical nature, although only one depends on the principle of feeling.

This is my analysis of the fundamental perception and, I conclude that through it a body is united to our rational soul.

Notes

(129) The subject, in a state of mere feeling, has as yet no perception. The mind therefore does not need to deny feeling and distinguish it from bodies to be able to perceive it, as Fichte wanted. As I said, external bodies spontaneously present themselves as different to the attention of our understanding which attends to them alone.