The Collected Works of EDITH STEIN ON THE PROBLEM OF EMPATHY

104 Edith Stein
this means. We can say that every feeling has a certain mood
component that causes the feeling to be spread throughout the
"I" from the feeling's place of origin and fill it up. Starting from a
peripheral level, a slight resentment can fill me "entirely," but it
can also happen upon a deep joy that prevents it fiom pushing
further forward to the center. Nolv, in turn, this joy progresses
victoriously from the center to the periphery and lills out all the
layers above it. In terms of our previous metaphor, feelings are
like different sources of light on whose position and luminosity
the resulting illumination depends.
The metaphor of light and color can illustrate the relationship
between feelings and moods for us in still another respect. Emotions
can have mood components essentially and occasionally just
as colors have a specific brightness over and above their higher or
lower degrees of brightness. So there is a serious and a cheerful
.joy. Apart from this, however, joy has specifically a "luminous"
character.
On the other hand, we can still further elucidate the nature of
moods from these relationships between moods and feelings. I
can not only experience a mood and myself in it, but also its
penetration into me. For example, I can experience it as resulting
frn rational lan's,
lrou' alreacl\' r'ariouslv clemonstrated, is clearlv dist i nguished from
the soul's subordinati