Conatus~ Latin for "effort; endeavor; impulse, inclination, tendency; undertaking; striving"

I suspect that the ultimate quality of feelings, a part of why feelings feel the way they feel, is conferred by the neural medium. But a substantial part of the answer to why they feel the way they do pertains to the fact that the life governance processes are either fluid or strained. That is simply their way of operating given the strange state we call life and the strange nature of organisms -- Spinoza's 'Conatus' -- that drives them to endeavor to preserve themselves, come what may, until life is suspended by aging, disease, or externally inflicted injury.

The fact that we, sentient and sophisticated creatures, call certain feelings positive and other feelings negative is directly related to the fluidity or strain of the life process. Fluid life states are naturally preferred by our 'conatus'. We gravitate toward them. Strained life states are naturally avoided by our 'conatus'. We stay away. We can sense these relationships, and we also can verify that in the trajectory of our lives fluid life states that feel positive come to be associated with events that we call good, while strained life states that feel negative come to be associated with evil. ~ Page 131 / 132