§ 14. The Effect of Decentralization upon Feeling

§ 14. The Effect of Decentralization upon Feeling.

Feeling, as a distinct fundamental power of the soul, possesses in itself a wholly different psychical structure from the two other fundamental powers, those of cognition and of will. Cognition (thought) and will both possess a sharply emergent central-peripheral structure, cognition moving from without inward, will from within outward; but both possess this structure only insofar as the center of subjectivity moves toward its own periphery; it lies in the nature of the central power, in becoming alive, to move toward its polar, opposed periphery, and back again from that periphery to itself, and this movement of subjectivity from center to periphery, from periphery to center, grasped substantially, is the very fundamental power of will and cognition themselves. But since both are thus the substantiated movement of the egoic center, they must be kept continually in flux, inward and outward, and so must possess a continually flowing, mobile nature, and must continually be capable, and in the act, of pouring forth and spending the egoic power that surges through them; finally, moreover, the sharp separation of periphery and centrality, which they possess in one, and the spiritual ray, ever running through them from the most intensive light-source of the spirit (the ego), make them the most thoroughly clarified and brightest bearers of subjectivity, so that in them, above all, the sharply divided light of the spiritual has its life and activity.

Against this, however, the third fundamental power of the soul, feeling, possesses an altogether differently arranged structure. From the outset not peripheral, but placed in the middle between the two central-peripheral fundamental powers, it bears the peculiarity that the life-force dwelling within it does not stream forth freely for itself, but by passing over into the powers of will and of thought, and into bodily life; hence a proportionately measured degree of the power of feeling steels, stirs, and keeps alive the energy of thought; a stronger degree sustains the energy of will and action in its ever-necessary state of refreshment; another part, finally, just as it fashions the life-force generally at work in bodily life, strengthens and lifts up the body's living co-inspiration at every inward upswing of the spirit. But if feeling thus has only a mediate outlet for its living force, it follows that this force is far more held back in its outward vibration than that of the two peripheral powers; that it is therefore all the more compelled to remain with itself and to gather itself even as it radiates outward; and that, accordingly, the essence and life of feeling has a structure that remains more densely with itself, contracted and held together. And already from this predominant self-abiding it follows that its movements remain in an undifferentiatedness of light, so that only the darkness of light, the half-darkness, belongs properly to feelings. To this is added, moreover, that the fundamental power of feeling, in relation to the centrality of the spirit, lies neither above it nor beyond the spiritual, but beneath the ego, since feeling contains the mystical, misty atmosphere of the not-yet-polarized subjective, above which alone the strict separation of subjective clarity is first able to come to life. But if feeling thus stands beneath the ego within the organism of the soul, it follows that it is also essentially withdrawn from the spontaneous influence of the ego; it therefore lacks not only the sharp illumination of the ray of the ego, but also the ego's voluntary mastery and governance; and, indeed, the surging feeling of the soul can never be directly subdued by the power of the ego, but only through gradual derivation, in that the ego strains its peripheral powers, firm thought and will, and, through the exertion of these, absorbs the exaltation of feeling.