§ 473. The practical ought is a “real” judgment. Will, which is
essentially self-determination, finds in the conformity—as immediate and
merely _found_ to hand—of the existing mode to its requirement a negation,
and something inappropriate to it. If the will is to satisfy itself, if
the implicit unity of the universality and the special mode is to be
realised, the conformity of its inner requirement and of the existent
thing ought to be its act and institution. The will, as regards the form
of its content, is at first still a natural will, directly identical with
its specific mode:—natural _impulse_ and _inclination_. Should, however,
the totality of the practical spirit throw itself into a single one of the
many restricted forms of impulse, each being always in conflict to
another, it is _passion_.
§ 474. Inclinations and passions embody the same constituent features as
the practical feeling. Thus, while on one hand they are based on the
rational nature of the mind; they on the other, as part and parcel of the
still subjective and single will, are infected with contingency, and
appear as particular to stand to the individual and to each other in an
external relation and with a necessity which creates bondage.
The special note in _passion_ is its restriction to one special mode of
volition, in which the whole subjectivity of the individual is merged, be
the value of that mode what it may. In consequence of this formalism,
passion is neither good nor bad; the title only states that a subject has
thrown his whole soul,—his interests of intellect, talent, character,
enjoyment,—on one aim and object. Nothing great has been and nothing great
can be accomplished without passion. It is only a dead, too often, indeed,
a hypocritical moralising which inveighs against the form of passion as
such.