If we look only to the spatial and material aspects of the child’s
existence as an embryo in its special integuments, and as connected with
the mother by means of umbilical cord, placenta, &c., all that is
presented to the senses and reflection are certain anatomical and
physiological facts—externalities and instrumentalities in the sensible
and material which are insignificant as regards the main point, the
psychical relationship. What ought to be noted as regards this psychical
tie are not merely the striking effects communicated to and stamped upon
the child by violent emotions, injuries, &c. of the mother, but the whole
psychical _judgment_ (partition) of the underlying nature, by which the
female (like the monocotyledons among vegetables) can suffer disruption in
twain, so that the child has not merely got _communicated_ to it, but has
originally received morbid dispositions as well as other pre-dispositions
of shape, temper, character, talent, idiosyncrasies, &c.
Sporadic examples and traces of this _magic_ tie appear elsewhere in the
range of self-possessed conscious life, say between friends, especially
female friends with delicate nerves (a tie which may go so far as to show
“magnetic” phenomena), between husband and wife and between members of the
same family.
The total sensitivity has its self here in a separate subjectivity, which,
in the case cited of this sentient life in the ordinary course of nature,
is visibly present as another and a different individual. But this
sensitive totality is meant to elevate its self-hood out of itself to
subjectivity in one and the same individual: which is then its indwelling
consciousness, self-possessed, intelligent, and reasonable. For such a
consciousness the merely sentient life serves as an underlying and only
implicitly existent material; and the self-possessed subjectivity is the
rational, self-conscious, controlling genius thereof. But this sensitive
nucleus includes not merely the purely unconscious, congenital disposition
and temperament, but within its enveloping simplicity it acquires and
retains also (in habit, as to which see later) all further ties and
essential relationships, fortunes, principles—everything in short
belonging to the character, and in whose elaboration self-conscious
activity has most effectively participated. The sensitivity is thus a soul
in which the whole mental life is condensed. The total individual under
this concentrated aspect is distinct from the existing and actual play of
his consciousness, his secular ideas, developed interests, inclinations,
&c. As contrasted with this looser aggregate of means and methods the more
intensive form of individuality is termed the genius, whose decision is
ultimate whatever may be the show of reasons, intentions, means, of which
the more public consciousness is so liberal. This concentrated
individuality also reveals itself under the aspect of what is called the
heart and soul of feeling.