The development of the function of experiencing and using comes about mostly through decrease of man’s power to enter into relation.
How does this same man, who made spirit into a means of enjoyment for himself, behave towards the beings that live round about him?
Taking his stand in the shelter of the primary word of separation, which holds off the I and the It from one another, he has divided his life with his fellow-men into two tidily circled-off provinces, one of institutions and the other of feelings—the province of It and the province of I.
Institutions are “outside”, where all sorts of aims are pursued, where a man works, negotiates, bears influence, undertakes, concurs, organises, conducts business, officiates, preaches. They are the tolerably well-ordered and to some extent harmonious structure, in which, with the manifold help of men’s brains and hands, the process of affairs is fulfilled.
Feelings are “within”, where life is lived and man recovers from institutions. Here the spectrum of the emotions dances before the interested glance. Here a man’s liking and hate and pleasure are indulged, and his pain if it is not too severe. Here he is at home, and stretches himself out in his rocking-chair.
Institutions are a complicated market-place, feelings a boudoir rich in ever-changing interests.
The boundary line, to be sure, is constantly in danger since the wanton feelings break in at times on the most objective institutions; but with united goodwill it may be restored.
Most difficult of all is the reliable drawing of the boundary line in the realms of so-called personal life. In marriage, for instance, the line is occasionally not to be fully drawn in any simple way; but in the end it is possible. In the realms of so-called public life it can be perfectly drawn. Let it be considered, for instance, how faultlessly, in the year of the parties and the groups with their “movements” which aimed at being above parties, the heaven-storming sessions on the one hand, and on the other hand business, creeping along the ground (smoothly like a machine or slovenly and organically), are separated from one another.
But the separated It of institutions is an animated clod without soul, and the separated I of feelings an uneasily ¿uttering soul-bird. Neither of them knows man: institutions know only the specimen, feelings only the “object”; neither knows the person, or mutual life. Neither of them knows the present: even the most up-to-date institutions know only the lifeless past that is over and done with, and even the most lasting feelings know only the flitting moment that has not yet come properly into being. Neither of them has access to real life. Institutions yield no public life, and feelings no personal life.