The mj'stical writers of Germany in the Middle Ages, writing on practical more than speculative sub- jects, spoke of feeling in particular as a subjective con- sciousness, and demanded its renunciation. The spir- itual man, they urged, should emancipate hiu.self from all emotion, and sever his connection with every- thing created, that God might become present to him, and eternitj' might I e felt by him and tasted. The objective feeling of the supranatural God appears to these writers as the final result of the renunciation of the subjective feeling of personal and individual ex- istence.
Luther warned against a reliance upon " feeling" instead of clinging to the " word." At the same time, liowever, he demands that tlie soul feel the call of the Lord, and the "spirit of adoption, wherebj' we cry Abba, father" (Eom. viii, 15), he defines as a feeling of the fatherlj' love of God. The testimony of the Holj- Ghost he finds in the religious experience, and this ex- perience he identifies with the religious feeling. Sim- ilar are the views of the other reformers and the earlj'^ writers of the Reformed ciiurches.
A greater stress was laid on feeling as an clement of religion by the Pietists, who regarded its very inex- pressibilitj' as an argument for its truth. The same was done by the IMoravians, who reduced religion to the feeling of truth. Opposition to the Pietists made most of the later dogmatic writers of the Lutheran Church suspicious of feeling as an element of religion ; but some recognised its importance, as M. Pfaff (In- stit. Theol. and Moral.), Avho did not hesitate to apply (like the society of Friends) to the "spiritual feeling" (sensus or gustus spiiittialis) the expression " spiritual light" (lumen spirituale).
About the middle of the 18th century arose the sys- tem of Utilitarianism. Bread and butter were now more valuable than metaphysics. In the same pro- portion as confidence in the truth of thought vanished, confidence in the objective contents of feeling was also weakened. But gradually philosopliy prepared the way for a more correct appreciation of feeling. Until Wolf, philosophy had onlj' recognised two fac- ulties of the soul, intellect and will (or desire). • Te- tens added feeling as "the inner sense for the pleasant and the unpleasant." Kant, also, in his Kritik dcr Urtheilskroft, reAiiced all faculties of the soul to three, one of which was the Gefiihl der Lust und Unlust (feel-
FEET
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ing of the pleasant and unpleasant). Kant also called attention to tlie fact that in aesthetics the beautiful and sublime is felt, and the infinite is seen in the finite ap- pearance. Here, therefore, an objective feeling was found. This idea of Kant's iesthetics was further de- veloped by Fries, who based upon feeling an ajsthetico- religious system which taught that the highest ideas must be divined by faith. Jacobi taught an immedi- ate faculty of the divine, which he first called the fac- ultj' of faith ; later, of reason ; finally — adopting the terms of Fries — of feeling.
These philosophical speculations greatly influenced the various sj'Stems of Rationalism. After the times of AVolf, only a few, as Rohr, adhered to an exclusive intelloctualism. Most of the important representatives of Rationalism accept the theories of F'ries and Jacobi. Thus Wegscheider refers chiefly to the philosophical works of the disciples of Jacobi — Gerlacli, Bouterweck, and Salat. And Gabler, one of the keenest of the early Rationalists, defines religion as a "feeling of depend- ence upon the infinite."
Among the adherents of Supranaturalism, Bret- schneider and Reinhard recognised only a subjective feeling, but De Wette introduced the theory of Fries into sj'stematic thoolog3% Unlike Fries, however, in M'hose system there still was some obscurity as regards the relation of feeling and will to religion, De Wette based religion altogether on feeling or an aesthetic view of the world, in which all difference between religion and art disappeared.
The sj'stem of Jacobi and of Spinoza, together with the spirit prevailing among the Moravians, worked to- gether to produce the new doctrine of feeling which constituted the basis of the theology of Sehleiermacher, and which still influences most theological systems of modern times. For Sehleiermacher, religion is "the feeling of absolute dependence ;" that to which our re- flection traces our individual existence is called God ; and thus, in feeling, God is given to us in an original manner. See Sciileiermacher. This theory of feel- ing was defended and keenly developed by Twesten, and in particular by Nitzsch. Hegel severel}' attacked the views of Sehleiermacher, but his own views con- siderably changed with the gradual development of his system. See Tholuck, in Herzog's Rial-EncyklopMie, iv, 703. (A. J. S.)
Feet. See Foot.
Feith, Rhijnvis, was born at Zwolle Feb. 7, 1753. He received a careful Christian training. At fifteen he entered the University of Leyden. In 1781 he competed with Lannoy in celebrating De Ruj'ter. His epic received the gold, and his lyric the silver medal. As a poet, he enjoj'ed a high reputation through life. He excelled chiefly as a didactic poet, though he also tried his hand at Ijtic and dramatic poetry. His Ija-ic on Immortality {De Onsterfelijkheid) is beautiful and sublime. His didactic poem on the Grave {Ilet Graf) is his longest, and is regarded as one of his best pro- ductions, abounding in the beautiful, the striking, and the sublime. His poetic writings are very numer- ous ; and he also wrote several volumes of prose. He was appointed one of a commission to prepare a book of hymns for the use of the Reformed Church in Hulland. This Ai\ty he discharged with great zeal and fidelity. To this collection he contributed himself a lar;4e number of beautiful and appropriate hymns, most of them original, and a few translated from the German. Thout;li a layman, he was a suc- cessful cultivator of theology. Two essays or trea- tises of his on important questions received the pre- mium from Teyler's Theological Societj', and another was crowned by the Hague Society. He died Feb- ruary 8, 1824, at his villa near Zwolle. See Siegen- beek's Geschiedenis der Nederlaiuhche Letierkunde (Haarlem, 1826) ; Hofdijk's Geschiedenis der Neder- landscke Letterhtnde, bl. 415 en verv. (Amsterd. 1864) ;