ABSTRACT
This chapter expresses that identification underlies vicarious feeling in the order of functional dependence, as well as in that of genetic evolution. It is a fundamental principle of the evolution of feeling everywhere, whether from child to adult, animal to man, or from savagery to civilization, that in the early stages people still find identification where later on they encounter vicarious feeling. The emotional realization of the unity of mankind as a species must have been achieved in fellow-feeling, if benevolence in a particular sense is to be possible. The Christian love of persons, for example, was only made possible, in a real sense, by building upon the humanitas of the ancients and the later prophets; the latter having itself, by a sufficiently devious historical process. Since the non-cosmic love of persons is necessarily connected, in nature and meaning, with theism, the love of humanity in general is no less essential as a prior condition for the love of God.
