Feeling is a unity of the parts of an organism everywhere
present in it; feeling is also an ideal reproduction of
the external surroundings; feeling is therefore a
synthesis of the internal and external. Aristotle joins
locomotion and desire to feeling, as correlates; how
desire is a more explicit recognition of the unity of the
external and internal than the first form of feeling is;
feeling reproduces the external without destroying its
externality, while nutrition receives the external only
after it has destroyed its individuality and assimilated
it; desire is the side of feeling that unfolds into will.
With feeling or sensibility we come to a being that reacts on the
external world in a far higher manner, and realizes a more wonderful
form of individuality.
The animal possesses, in common with the plant, a process of
assimilation and nutrition. Moreover, he possesses a capacity to _feel_.
Through _feeling_, or sensation, all of the parts of his extended
organism are united in one centre. He is one individual, and not a
bundle of separate individuals, as a plant is. With feeling, likewise,
are joined _locomotion_ and _desire_. For these are counterparts of
feeling. He feels--_i.e._, lives as one indivisible unity throughout his
organism and controls it, and moves the parts of his body. Desire is
more than mere feeling. Mere feeling alone is the perception of the
external within the being, hence an ideal reproduction of the external
world. In feeling, the animal exists not only within himself, but also
passes over his limit, and has for object the reality of the external
world that limits him. Hence it is the perception of his finiteness--his
limits are his defects, his needs, wants, inadequateness--his separation
from the world as a whole. In feeling, the animal perceives his
separation from the rest of the world, and also his union with it.
Feeling expands into desire when the external world, or some portion of
it, is seen as ideally belonging to the limited unity of the animal
being. It is beyond the limit, and ought to be assimilated within the
limited individuality of the animal.
Mere _feeling_, when attentively considered, is found to contain these
wonderful features of self-activity: it reproduces for itself the
external world that limits it; it makes for itself an ideal object,
which includes its own self and its not-self at the same time. It is a
higher form than mere nutrition; for nutrition destroys the nature of
such externality as it receives into itself, while feeling preserves the
external in its foreign individuality.
But through _feeling_ the animal ascends to _desire_, and sees the
independent externality as an object for its acquisition, and through
locomotion it is enabled to seize and appropriate it in a degree which
the plant did not possess.