1. Man and Religion in Relation to Nature.

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...that he carries within himself; for wherever there is life, there is an opposition opposition: Gegensätzlichkeit – a state of contrast or polarity between two forces that must be balanced. Life manifests itself through the equalization of this opposition. The life process can therefore fittingly be compared with the process of balancing two substances that are chemically strained against one another 1. Erdmann, Psychological Letters, p. 198., for from the first moment of life, the individual seeks to reconcile the duality of his being—the inwardness or psyche—with the outwardness or physicality. In the balancing of this difference between body and soul, individual life is enacted. It is a law of nature that everything which affects the body is shifted into the soul and, conversely, that internal states are embodied—that is, they are made to appear externally. The human individual thus lives in a constant, reciprocal interaction between the internal and the external and vice versa, and his life is only healthy so long as this opposition is condensed into a unity.

Through the senses, mediated by the organic activity of the nervous system, man enters into communication with the external world. From the various sensory organs, where the nerves have their peripheral endings, these nerves conduct the impressions they have received to the central organ The author is likely referring to the brain or the sensorium commune, where they achieve mutual interpenetration. The diversity of life’s activities, summed up into a common whole, stirs as inwardness and unity, as a common feeling common feeling: Gemeingefühl – also known as coenesthesia, this refers to a general sense of one's own bodily existence, distinct from the specific senses like sight or touch, in which life becomes aware of itself and finds itself. This dim feeling of existence becomes a sensation original: Empfindung when the actual state of the body is perceived. The development toward clarity is stimulated by opposition, through which life feels itself either inhibited or promoted, so that the specific state of life is felt as determined by external circumstances. If the opposition is such that the organic activity of life is called upon to exert its strength and thereby overcomes the obstacle, the sensation is a pleasant one, which intensifies into delight as the movement grows; otherwise, the common feeling remains—due to a lack of stimulus or through excessive stimulation, which the activity...

¹ Erdmann, Psychological Letters, p. 198. Johann Eduard Erdmann (1805–1892) was a prominent German Hegelian philosopher who wrote extensively on the relationship between the body and the soul.