  The first fact presented by observation on ourselves is the essential distinction in human beings between that which feels and that which is felt. According to Rosmini, these are quite different and unconfusible elements with opposite characteristics. That which feels is an immaterial principle (soul); that which is felt is the term (body) of this principle. Together feeler and felt constitute feeling, the underlying subject of reflection when attention is concentrated on ‘myself’ and those elements which constitute ‘myself’. The chief action of body is to produce an undetermined, shapeless extension which enables that which feels to experience determined sensations of various kinds. This ‘fundamental feeling’, with its permanent perception of unlimited space, is that in which all other feelings are perceived, and runs parallel, as it were, with the idea of being in which all other ideas are intuited. Reaction to perceived feelings constitutes vital instinct (relative to the fundamental feeling) and sensuous instinct (relative to the adventitious sensations). All feeling and instinct is per se unknown in Rosmini’s view, and comes to be known through the formation in the knowing subject of ideas and perceptions which depend upon the illumination provided by the idea of being. Thus, for Rosmini, the human being is a knowing and feeling subject, having within itself a principle which, formed by the light of being, knows and reacts to what it knows through the faculties of intellect and will, and feels and reacts to what it feels through the faculties of sense and instinct. Within the human subject, the will - which reacts to what is known—is the supreme active principle and as such constitutes ‘person’ in the individual. The dignity of the human being lies within the will as such, in the first place, and then within the will’s choice to second whatever the intellect knows. This is also the foundation of genuine freedom within the human subject. Free to adhere to or reject what is known, human beings cannot be coerced by attempted external pressure or used as a means by others without prejudice to the inviolable truth in which they share innately through their participation in the light of being and which they attain adventitiously through the direct perception that unfolds determined truths to their intellectual gaze.