No More Learning

He is justified in
regarding this work of political thraldom as non-existing, though a wild
and arbitrary caprice may have founded its work very artfully; though it
may strive to maintain it with great arrogance and encompass it with a
halo of veneration. For the work of blind powers possesses no authority
before which freedom need bow, and all must be made to adapt itself to
the highest end which reason has set up in his personality. It is in
this wise that a people in a state of manhood is justified in exchanging
a condition of thraldom for one of moral freedom.

Now the term natural condition can be applied to every political body
which owes its establishment originally to forces and not to laws, and
such a state contradicts the moral nature of man, because lawfulness can
alone have authority over this. At the same time this natural condition
is quite sufficient for the physical man, who only gives himself laws in
order to get rid of brute force. Moreover, the physical man is a
reality, and the moral man problematical. Therefore when the reason
suppresses the natural condition, as she must if she wishes to substitute
her own, she weighs the real physical man against the problematical moral
man, she weighs the existence of society against a possible, though
morally necessary, ideal of society. She takes from man something which
he really possesses, and without which he possesses nothing, and refers
him as a substitute to something that he ought to possess and might
possess; and if reason had relied too exclusively on him she might, in
order to secure him a state of humanity in which he is wanting and can
want without injury to his life, have robbed him even of the means of
animal existence, which is the first necessary condition of his being a
man. Before he had opportunity to hold firm to the law with his will,
reason would have withdrawn from his feet the ladder of nature.

The great point is, therefore, to reconcile these two considerations, to
prevent physical society from ceasing for a moment in time, while the
moral society is being formed in the idea; in other words, to prevent its
existence from being placed in jeopardy for the sake of the moral dignity
of man. When the mechanic has to mend a watch he lets the wheels run
out; but the living watchworks of the state have to be repaired while
they act, and a wheel has to be exchanged for another during its
revolutions. Accordingly props must be sought for to support society and
keep it going while it is made independent of the natural condition from
which it is sought to emancipate it.

This prop is not found in the natural character of man, who, being
selfish and violent, directs his energies rather to the destruction than
to the preservation of society. Nor is it found in his moral character,
which has to be formed, which can never be worked upon or calculated on
by the lawgiver, because it is free and never appears. It would seem,
therefore, that another measure must be adopted. It would seem that the
physical character of the arbitrary must be separated from moral freedom;
that it is incumbent to make the former harmonize with the laws and the
latter dependent on impressions; it would be expedient to remove the
former still farther from matter and to bring the latter somewhat more
near to it; in short, to produce a third character related to both the
others--the physical and the moral--paving the way to a transition from
the sway of mere force to that of law, without preventing the proper
development of the moral character, but serving rather as a pledge in the
sensuous sphere of a morality in the unseen.




LETTER IV.


Thus much is certain. It is only when a third character, as previously
suggested, has preponderance that a revolution in a state according to
moral principles can be free from injurious consequences; nor can
anything else secure its endurance. In proposing or setting up a moral
state, the moral law is relied upon as a real power, and free-will is
drawn into the realm of causes, where all hangs together mutually with
stringent necessity and rigidity. But we know that the condition of the
human will always remains contingent, and that only in the Absolute Being
physical coexists with moral necessity. Accordingly, if it is wished to
depend on the moral conduct of man as on natural results, this conduct
must become nature, and he must be led by natural impulse to such a
course of action as can only and invariably have moral results. But the
will of man is perfectly free between inclination and duty, and no
physical necessity ought to enter as a sharer in this magisterial
personality. If, therefore, he is to retain this power of solution, and
yet become a reliable link in the causal concatenation of forces, this
can only be effected when the operations of both these impulses are
presented quite equally in the world of appearances. It is only possible
when, with every difference of form, the matter of man's volition remains
the same, when all his impulses agreeing with his reason are sufficient
to have the value of a universal legislation.

It may be urged that every individual man carries within himself, at
least in his adaptation and destination, a purely ideal man. The great
problem of his existence is to bring all the incessant changes of his
outer life into conformity with the unchanging unity of this ideal. This
pure ideal man, which makes itself known more or less clearly in every
subject, is represented by the state, which is the objective, and, so to
speak, canonical form in which the manifold differences of the subjects
strive to unite. Now two ways present themselves to the thought in which
the man of time can agree with the man of idea, and there are also two
ways in which the state can maintain itself in individuals. One of these
ways is when the pure ideal man subdues the empirical man, and the state
suppresses the individual, or again when the individual becomes the
state, and the man of time is ennobled to the man of idea.

I admit that in a one-sided estimate from the point of view of morality
this difference vanishes, for the reason is satisfied if her law prevails
unconditionally. But when the survey taken is complete and embraces the
whole man (anthropology), where the form is considered together with the
substance, and a living feeling has a voice, the difference will become
far more evident. No doubt the reason demands unity, and nature variety,
and both legislations take man in hand. The law of the former is stamped
upon him by an incorruptible consciousness, that of the latter by an
ineradicable feeling. Consequently education will always appear
deficient when the moral feeling can only be maintained with the
sacrifice of what is natural; and a political administration will always
be very imperfect when it is only able to bring about unity by
suppressing variety. The state ought not only to respect the objective
and generic, but also the subjective and specific in individuals; and
while diffusing the unseen world of morals, it must not depopulate the
kingdom of appearance, the external world of matter.

When the mechanical artist places his hand on the formless block, to give
it a form according to his intention, he has not any scruples in doing
violence to it. For the nature on which he works does not deserve any
respect in itself, and he does not value the whole for its parts, but the
parts on account of the whole. When the child of the fine arts sets his
hand to the same block, he has no scruples either in doing violence to
it, he only avoids showing this violence. He does not respect the matter
in which he works any more than the mechanical artist; but he seeks by an
apparent consideration for it to deceive the eye which takes this matter
under its protection. The political and educating artist follows a very
different course, while making man at once his material and his end. In
this case the aim or end meets in the material, and it is only because
the whole serves the parts that the parts adapt themselves to the end.
The political artist has to treat his material--man--with a very
different kind of respect than that shown by the artist of fine art to
his work. He must spare man's peculiarity and personality, not to
produce a defective effect on the senses, but objectively and out of
consideration for his inner being.

But the state is an organization which fashions itself through itself and
for itself, and for this reason it can only be realized when the parts
have been accorded to the idea of the whole. The state serves the
purpose of a representative, both to pure ideal and to objective
humanity, in the breast of its citizens, accordingly it will have to
observe the same relation to its citizens in which they are placed to it;
and it will only respect their subjective humanity in the same degree
that it is ennobled to an objective existence. If the internal man is
one with himself he will be able to rescue his peculiarity, even in the
greatest generalization of his conduct, and the state will only become
the exponent of his fine instinct, the clearer formula of his internal
legislation. But if the subjective man is in conflict with the
objective, and contradicts him in the character of a people, so that only
the oppression of the former can give victory to the latter, then the
state will take up the severe aspect of the law against the citizen, and
in order not to fall a sacrifice, it will have to crush under foot such a
hostile individuality without any compromise.

Now man can be opposed to himself in a twofold manner; either as a
savage, when his feelings rule over his principles; or as a barbarian,
when his principles destroy his feelings. The savage despises art, and
acknowledges nature as his despotic ruler; the barbarian laughs at
nature, and dishonors it, but he often proceeds in a more contemptible
way than the savage to be the slave of his senses. The cultivated man
makes of nature his friend, and honors its friendship, while only
bridling its caprice.

Consequently, when reason brings her moral unity into physical society,
she must not injure the manifold in nature. When nature strives to
maintain her manifold character in the moral structure of society, this
must not create any breach in moral unity; the victorious form is equally
remote from uniformity and confusion. Therefore, totality of character
must be found in the people which is capable and worthy to exchange the
state of necessity for that of freedom.




LETTER V.


Does the present age, do passing events, present this character? I
direct my attention at once to the most prominent object in this vast
structure.

It is true that the consideration of opinion is fallen; caprice is
unnerved, and, although still armed with power, receives no longer any
respect. Man has awakened from his long lethargy and self-deception, and
he demands with impressive unanimity to be restored to his imperishable
rights. But he does not only demand them; he rises on all sides to seize
by force what, in his opinion, has been unjustly wrested from him. The
edifice of the natural state is tottering, its foundations shake, and a
physical possibility seems at length granted to place law on the throne,
to honor man at length as an end, and to make true freedom the basis of
political union. Vain hope! The moral possibility is wanting, and the
generous occasion finds an unsusceptible rule.

Man paints himself in his actions, and what is the form depicted in the
drama of the present time? On the one hand, he is seen running wild, on
the other, in a state of lethargy; the two extremest stages of human
degeneracy, and both seen in one and the same period.

In the lower larger masses, coarse, lawless impulses come to view,
breaking loose when the bonds of civil order are burst asunder, and
hastening with unbridled fury to satisfy their savage instinct.
Objective humanity may have had cause to complain of the state; yet
subjective man must honor its institutions. Ought he to be blamed
because he lost sight of the dignity of human nature, so long as he was
concerned in preserving his existence? Can we blame him that he
proceeded to separate by the force of gravity, to fasten by the force of
cohesion, at a time when there could be no thought of building or raising
up? The extinction of the state contains its justification. Society set
free, instead of hastening upward into organic life, collapses into its
elements.

On the other hand, the civilized classes give us the still more repulsive
sight of lethargy, and of a depravity of character which is the more
revolting because it roots in culture. I forget who of the older or more
recent philosophers makes the remark, that what is more noble is the more
revolting in its destruction. The remark applies with truth to the world
of morals. The child of nature, when he breaks loose, becomes a madman;
but the art scholar, when he breaks loose, becomes a debased character.
The enlightenment of the understanding, on which the more refined classes
pride themselves with some ground, shows on the whole so little of an
ennobling influence on the mind that it seems rather to confirm
corruption by its maxims. We deny nature on her legitimate field and
feel her tyranny in the moral sphere, and while resisting her
impressions, we receive our principles from her. While the affected
decency of our manners does not even grant to nature a pardonable
influence in the initial stage, our materialistic system of morals allows
her the casting vote in the last and essential stage. Egotism has
founded its system in the very bosom of a refined society, and without
developing even a sociable character, we feel all the contagions and
miseries of society. We subject our free judgment to its despotic
opinions, our feelings to its bizarre customs, and our will to its
seductions. We only maintain our caprice against her holy rights. The
man of the world has his heart contracted by a proud self-complacency,
while that of the man of nature often beats in sympathy; and every man
seeks for nothing more than to save his wretched property from the
general destruction, as it were from some great conflagration. It is
conceived that the only way to find a shelter against the aberrations of
sentiment is by completely foregoing its indulgence, and mockery, which
is often a useful chastener of mysticism, slanders in the same breath the
noblest aspirations. Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops,
as it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more
tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent
impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held
to be the highest wisdom of life. Thus the spirit of the time is seen to
waver between perversion and savagism, between what is unnatural and mere
nature, between superstition and moral unbelief, and it is often nothing
but the equilibrium of evils that sets bounds to it.




LETTER VI.


Have I gone too far in this portraiture of our times? I do not
anticipate this stricture, but rather another--that I have proved too
much by it. You will tell me that the picture I have presented resembles
the humanity of our day, but it also bodies forth all nations engaged in
the same degree of culture, because all, without exception, have fallen
off from nature by the abuse of reason, before they can return to it
through reason.

But if we bestow some serious attention to the character of our times, we
shall be astonished at the contrast between the present and the previous
form of humanity, especially that of Greece. We are justified in
claiming the reputation of culture and refinement, when contrasted with a
purely natural state of society, but not so comparing ourselves with the
Grecian nature. For the latter was combined with all the charms of art
and with all the dignity of wisdom, without, however, as with us,
becoming a victim to these influences. The Greeks have put us to shame
not only by their simplicity, which is foreign to our age; they are at
the same time our rivals, nay, frequently our models, in those very
points of superiority from which we seek comfort when regretting the
unnatural character of our manners. We see that remarkable people
uniting at once fulness of form and fulness of substance, both
philosophizing and creating, both tender and energetic, uniting a
youthful fancy to the virility of reason in a glorious humanity.

At the period of Greek culture, which was an awakening of the powers of
the mind, the senses and the spirit had no distinctly separated property;
no division had yet torn them asunder, leading them to partition in a
hostile attitude, and to mark off their limits with precision. Poetry
had not as yet become the adversary of wit, nor had speculation abused
itself by passing into quibbling. In cases of necessity both poetry and
wit could exchange parts, because they both honored truth only in their
special way. However high might be the flight of reason, it drew matter
in a loving spirit after it, and while sharply and stiffly defining it,
never mutilated what it touched. It is true the Greek mind displaced
humanity, and recast it on a magnified scale in the glorious circle of
its gods; but it did this not by dissecting human nature, but by giving
it fresh combinations, for the whole of human nature was represented in
each of the gods. How different is the course followed by us moderns!
We also displace and magnify individuals to form the image of the
species, but we do this in a fragmentary way, not by altered
combinations, so that it is necessary to gather up from different
individuals the elements that form the species in its totality. It would
almost appear as if the powers of mind express themselves with us in real
life or empirically as separately as the psychologist distinguishes them
in the representation. For we see not only individual subjects, but
whole classes of men, uphold their capacities only in part, while the
rest of their faculties scarcely show a germ of activity, as in the case
of the stunted growth of plants.

I do not overlook the advantages to which the present race, regarded as a
unity and in the balance of the understanding, may lay claim over what is
best in the ancient world; but it is obliged to engage in the contest as
a compact mass, and measure itself as a whole against a whole. Who among
the moderns could step forth, man against man, and strive with an
Athenian for the prize of higher humanity.

Whence comes this disadvantageous relation of individuals coupled with
great advantages of the race? Why could the individual Greek be
qualified as the type of his time; and why can no modern dare to offer
himself as such? Because all-uniting nature imparted its forms to the
Greek, and an all-dividing understanding gives our forms to us.

It was culture itself that gave these wounds to modern humanity. The
inner union of human nature was broken, and a destructive contest divided
its harmonious forces directly; on the one hand, an enlarged experience
and a more distinct thinking necessitated a sharper separation of the
sciences, while, on the other hand, the more complicated machinery of
states necessitated a stricter sundering of ranks and occupations.
Intuitive and speculative understanding took up a hostile attitude in
opposite fields, whose borders were guarded with jealousy and distrust;
and by limiting its operation to a narrow sphere, men have made unto
themselves a master who is wont not unfrequently to end by subduing and
oppressing all the other faculties. Whilst on the one hand a luxuriant
imagination creates ravages in the plantations that have cost the
intelligence so much labor; on the other hand, a spirit of abstraction
suffocates the fire that might have warmed the heart and inflamed the
imagination.

This subversion, commenced by art and learning in the inner man, was
carried out to fulness and finished by the spirit of innovation in
government. It was, no doubt, reasonable to expect that the simple
organization of the primitive republics should survive the quaintness of
primitive manners and of the relations of antiquity. But, instead of
rising to a higher and nobler degree of animal life, this organization
degenerated into a common and coarse mechanism. The zoophyte condition
of the Grecian states, where each individual enjoyed an independent life,
and could, in cases of necessity, become a separate whole and unit in
himself, gave way to an ingenious mechanism, when, from the splitting up
into numberless parts, there results a mechanical life in the
combination. Then there was a rupture between the state and the church,
between laws and customs; enjoyment was separated from labor, the means
from the end, the effort from the reward. Man himself, eternally chained
down to a little fragment of the whole, only forms a kind of fragment;
having nothing in his ears but the monotonous sound of the perpetually
revolving wheel, he never develops the harmony of his being, and instead
of imprinting the seal of humanity on his being, he ends by being nothing
more than the living impress of the craft to which he devotes himself, of
the science that he cultivates. This very partial and paltry relation,
linking the isolated members to the whole, does not depend on forms that
are given spontaneously; for how could a complicated machine, which shuns
the light, confide itself to the free will of man? This relation is
rather dictated, with a rigorous strictness, by a formulary in which the
free intelligence of man is chained down. The dead letter takes the
place of a living meaning, and a practised memory becomes a safer guide
than genius and feeling.

If the community or state measures man by his function, only asking of
its citizens memory, or the intelligence of a craftsman, or mechanical
skill, we cannot be surprised that the other faculties of the mind are
neglected for the exclusive culture of the one that brings in honor and
profit. Such is the necessary result of an organization that is
indifferent about character, only looking to acquirements, whilst in
other cases it tolerates the thickest darkness, to favor a spirit of law
and order; it must result if it wishes that individuals in the exercise
of special aptitudes should gain in depth what they are permitted to lose
in extension. We are aware, no doubt, that a powerful genius does not
shut up its activity within the limits of its functions; but mediocre
talents consume in the craft fallen to their lot the whole of their
feeble energy; and if some of their energy is reserved for matters of
preference, without prejudice to its functions, such a state of things at
once bespeaks a spirit soaring above the vulgar. Moreover, it is rarely
a recommendation in the eye of a state to have a capacity superior to
your employment, or one of those noble intellectual cravings of a man of
talent which contend in rivalry with the duties of office. The state is
so jealous of the exclusive possession of its servants that it would
prefer--nor can it be blamed in this--for functionaries to show their
powers with the Venus of Cytherea rather than the Uranian Venus.

It is thus that concrete individual life is extinguished, in order that
the abstract whole may continue its miserable life, and the state remains
forever a stranger to its citizens, because feeling does not discover it
anywhere. The governing authorities find themselves compelled to
classify, and thereby simplify the multiplicity of citizens, and only to
know humanity in a representative form and at second-hand. Accordingly
they end by entirely losing sight of humanity, and by confounding it with
a simple artificial creation of the understanding, whilst on their part
the subject-classes cannot help receiving coldly laws that address
themselves so little to their personality. At length, society, weary of
having a burden that the state takes so little trouble to lighten, falls
to pieces and is broken up--a destiny that has long since attended most
European states. They are dissolved in what may be called a state of
moral nature, in which public authority is only one function more, hated
and deceived by those who think it necessary, respected only by those who
can do without it.

Thus compressed between two forces, within and without, could humanity
follow any other course than that which it has taken? The speculative
mind, pursuing imprescriptible goods and rights in the sphere of ideas,
must needs have become a stranger to the world of sense, and lose sight
of matter for the sake of form. On its part, the world of public
affairs, shut up in a monotonous circle of objects, and even there
restricted by formulas, was led to lose sight of the life and liberty of
the whole, while becoming impoverished at the same time in its own
sphere. Just as the speculative mind was tempted to model the real after
the intelligible, and to raise the subjective laws of its imagination
into laws constituting the existence of things, so the state spirit
rushed into the opposite extreme, wished to make a particular and
fragmentary experience the measure of all observation, and to apply
without exception to all affairs the rules of its own particular craft.
The speculative mind had necessarily to become the prey of a vain
subtlety, the state spirit of a narrow pedantry; for the former was
placed too high to see the individual, and the latter too low to survey
the whole. But the disadvantage of this direction of mind was not
confined to knowledge and mental production; it extended to action and
feeling. We know that the sensibility of the mind depends, as to degree,
on the liveliness, and for extent on the richness of the imagination.
Now the predominance of the faculty of analysis must necessarily deprive
the imagination of its warmth and energy, and a restricted sphere of
objects must diminish its wealth. It is for this reason that the
abstract thinker has very often a cold heart, because he analyzes
impressions, which only move the mind by their combination or totality;
on the other hand, the man of business, the statesman, has very often a
narrow heart, because, shut up in the narrow circle of his employment,
his imagination can neither expand nor adapt itself to another manner of
viewing things.

My subject has led me naturally to place in relief the distressing
tendency of the character of our own times and to show the sources of the
evil, without its being my province to point out the compensations
offered by nature. I will readily admit to you that, although this
splitting up of their being was unfavorable for individuals, it was the
only open road for the progress of the race. The point at which we see
humanity arrived among the Greeks was undoubtedly a maximum; it could
neither stop there nor rise higher. It could not stop there, for the sum
of notions acquired forced infallibly the intelligence to break with
feeling and intuition, and to lead to clearness of knowledge. Nor could
it rise any higher; for it is only in a determinate measure that
clearness can be reconciled with a certain degree of abundance and of
warmth. The Greeks had attained this measure, and to continue their
progress in culture, they, as we, were obliged to renounce the totality
of their being, and to follow different and separate roads in order to
seek after truth.

There was no other way to develop the manifold aptitudes of man than to
bring them in opposition with one another. This antagonism of forces is
the great instrument of culture, but it is only an instrument: for as
long as this antagonism lasts man is only on the road to culture. It is
only because these special forces are isolated in man, and because they
take on themselves to impose all exclusive legislation, that they enter
into strife with the truth of things, and oblige common sense, which
generally adheres imperturbably to external phenomena, to dive into the
essence of things. While pure understanding usurps authority in the
world of sense, and empiricism attempts to subject this intellect to the
conditions of experience, these two rival directions arrive at the
highest possible development, and exhaust the whole extent of their
sphere. While, on the one hand, imagination, by its tyranny, ventures to
destroy the order of the world, it forces reason, on the other side, to
rise up to the supreme sources of knowledge, and to invoke against this
predominance of fancy the help of the law of necessity.

By an exclusive spirit in the case of his faculties, the individual is
fatally led to error; but the species is led to truth. It is only by
gathering up all the energy of our mind in a single focus, and
concentrating a single force in our being, that we give in some sort
wings to this isolated force, and that we draw it on artificially far
beyond the limits that nature seems to have imposed upon it. If it be
certain that all human individuals taken together would never have
arrived, with the visual power given them by nature, to see a satellite
of Jupiter, discovered by the telescope of the astronomer, it is just as
well established that never would the human understanding have produced
the analysis of the infinite, or the critique of pure reason, if in
particular branches, destined for this mission, reason had not applied
itself to special researches, and it, after having, as it were, freed
itself from all matter, it had not, by the most powerful abstraction
given to the spiritual eye of man the force necessary, in order to look
into the absolute. But the question is, if a spirit thus absorbed in
pure reason and intuition will be able to emancipate itself from the
rigorous fetters of logic, to take the free action of poetry, and seize
the individuality of things with a faithful and chaste sense? Here
nature imposes even on the most universal genius a limit it cannot pass,
and truth will make martyrs as long as philosophy will be reduced to make
its principal occupation the search for arms against errors.

But whatever may be the final profit for the totality of the world, of
this distinct and special perfecting of the human faculties, it cannot be
denied that this final aim of the universe, which devotes them to this
kind of culture, is a cause of suffering, and a kind of malediction for
individuals. I admit that the exercises of the gymnasium form athletic
bodies; but beauty is only developed by the free and equal play of the
limbs. In the same way the tension of the isolated spiritual forces may
make extraordinary men; but it is only the well-tempered equilibrium of
these forces that can produce happy and accomplished men. And in what
relation should we be placed with past and future ages if the perfecting
of human nature made such a sacrifice indispensable? In that case we
should have been the slaves of humanity, we should have consumed our
forces in servile work for it during some thousands of years, and we
should have stamped on our humiliated, mutilated nature the shameful
brand of this slavery--all this in order that future generations, in a
happy leisure, might consecrate themselves to the cure of their moral
health, and develop the whole of human nature by their free culture.

But can it be true that man has to neglect himself for any end whatever?
Can nature snatch from us, for any end whatever, the perfection which is
prescribed to us by the aim of reason? It must be false that the
perfecting of particular faculties renders the sacrifice of their
totality necessary; and even if the law of nature had imperiously this
tendency, we must have the power to reform by a superior art this
totality of our being, which art has destroyed.




LETTER VII.


Can this effect of harmony be attained by the state? That is not
possible, for the state, as at present constituted, has given occasion to
evil, and the state as conceived in the idea, instead of being able to
establish this more perfect humanity, ought to be based upon it. Thus
the researches in which I have indulged would have brought me back to the
same point from which they had called me off for a time. The present
age, far from offering us this form of humanity, which we have
acknowledged as a necessary condition of an improvement of the state,
shows us rather the diametrically opposite form. If, therefore, the
principles I have laid down are correct, and if experience confirms the
picture I have traced of the present time, it would be necessary to
qualify as unseasonable every attempt to effect a similar change in the
state, and all hope as chimerical that would be based on such an attempt,
until the division of the inner man ceases, and nature has been
sufficiently developed to become herself the instrument of this great
change and secure the reality of the political creation of reason.

In the physical creation, nature shows us the road that we have to follow
in the moral creation. Only when the struggle of elementary forces has
ceased in inferior organizations, nature rises to the noble form of the
physical man. In like manner, the conflict of the elements of the moral
man and that of blind instincts must have ceased, and a coarse antagonism
in himself, before the attempt can be hazarded. On the other hand, the
independence of man's character must be secured, and his submission to
despotic forms must have given place to a suitable liberty, before the
variety in his constitution can be made subordinate to the unity of the
ideal. When the man of nature still makes such an anarchial abuse of his
will, his liberty ought hardly to be disclosed to him. And when the man
fashioned by culture makes so little use of his freedom, his free will
ought not to be taken from him. The concession of liberal principles
becomes a treason to social order when it is associated with a force
still in fermentation, and increases the already exuberant energy of its
nature. Again, the law of conformity under one level becomes tyranny to
the individual when it is allied to a weakness already holding sway and
to natural obstacles, and when it comes to extinguish the last spark of
spontaneity and of originality.

The tone of the age must therefore rise from its profound moral
degradation; on the one hand it must emancipate itself from the blind
service of nature, and on the other it must revert to its simplicity, its
truth, and its fruitful sap; a sufficient task for more than a century.
However, I admit readily, more than one special effort may meet with
success, but no improvement of the whole will result from it, and
contradictions in action will be a continual protest against the unity of
maxims. It will be quite possible, then, that in remote corners of the
world humanity may be honored in the person of the negro, while in Europe
it may be degraded in the person of the thinker. The old principles will
remain, but they will adopt the dress of the age, and philosophy will
lend its name to an oppression that was formerly authorized by the
church. In one place, alarmed at the liberty which in its opening
efforts always shows itself an enemy, it will cast itself into the arms
of a convenient servitude. In another place, reduced to despair by a
pedantic tutelage, it will be driven into the savage license of the state
of nature. Usurpation will invoke the weakness of human nature, and
insurrection will invoke its dignity, till at length the great sovereign
of all human things, blind force, shall come in and decide, like a vulgar
pugilist, this pretended contest of principles.




LETTER VIII.


Must philosophy therefore retire from this field, disappointed in its
hopes? Whilst in all other directions the dominion of forms is extended,
must this the most precious of all gifts be abandoned to a formless
chance? Must the contest of blind forces last eternally in the political
world, and is social law never to triumph over a hating egotism?

Not in the least. It is true that reason herself will never attempt
directly a struggle with this brutal force which resists her arms, and
she will be as far as the son of Saturn in the "Iliad" from descending
into the dismal field of battle, to fight them in person. But she
chooses the most deserving among the combatants, clothes him with divine
arms as Jupiter gave them to his son-in-law, and by her triumphing force
she finally decides the victory.

Reason has done all that she could in finding the law and promulgating
it; it is for the energy of the will and the ardor of feeling to carry it
out. To issue victoriously from her contest with force, truth herself
must first become a force, and turn one of the instincts of man into her
champion in the empire of phenomena. For instincts are the only motive
forces in the material world. If hitherto truth has so little manifested
her victorious power, this has not depended on the understanding, which
could not have unveiled it, but on the heart which remained closed to it
and on instinct which did not act with it.

Whence, in fact, proceeds this general sway of prejudices, this might of
the understanding in the midst of the light disseminated by philosophy
and experience? The age is enlightened, that is to say, that knowledge,
obtained and vulgarized, suffices to set right at least on practical
principles. The spirit of free inquiry has dissipated the erroneous
opinions which long barred the access to truth, and has undermined the
ground on which fanaticism and deception had erected their throne.
Reason has purified itself from the illusions of the senses and from a
mendacious sophistry, and philosophy herself raises her voice and exhorts
us to return to the bosom of nature, to which she had first made us
unfaithful.
Whence then is it that we remain still barbarians?

There must be something in the spirit of man--as it is not in the objects
themselves--which prevents us from receiving the truth, notwithstanding
the brilliant light she diffuses, and from accepting her, whatever may be
her strength for producing conviction. This something was perceived and
expressed by an ancient sage in this very significant maxim: sapere aude
[dare to be wise. ]

Dare to be wise! A spirited courage is required to triumph over the
impediments that the indolence of nature as well as the cowardice of the
heart oppose to our instruction. It was not without reason that the
ancient Mythos made Minerva issue fully armed from the head of Jupiter,
for it is with warfare that this instruction commences. From its very
outset it has to sustain a hard fight against the senses, which do not
like to be roused from their easy slumber. The greater part of men are
much too exhausted and enervated by their struggle with want to be able
to engage in a new and severe contest with error. Satisfied if they
themselves can escape from the hard labor of thought, they willingly
abandon to others the guardianship of their thoughts. And if it happens
that nobler necessities agitate their soul, they cling with a greedy
faith to the formula that the state and the church hold in reserve for
such cases. If these unhappy men deserve our compassion, those others
deserve our just contempt, who, though set free from those necessities by
more fortunate circumstances, yet willingly bend to their yoke. These
latter persons prefer this twilight of obscure ideas, where the feelings
have more intensity, and the imagination can at will create convenient
chimeras, to the rays of truth which put to flight the pleasant illusions
of their dreams. They have founded the whole structure of their
happiness on these very illusions, which ought to be combated and
dissipated by the light of knowledge, and they would think they were
paying too dearly for a truth which begins by robbing them of all that
has value in their sight. It would be necessary that they should be
already sages to love wisdom: a truth that was felt at once by him to
whom philosophy owes its name. [The Greek word means, as is known, love
of wisdom. ]

It is therefore not going far enough to say that the light of the
understanding only deserves respect when it reacts on the character; to a
certain extent it is from the character that this light proceeds; for the
road that terminates in the head must pass through the heart.
Accordingly, the most pressing need of the present time is to educate the
sensibility, because it is the means, not only to render efficacious in
practice the improvement of ideas, but to call this improvement into
existence.




LETTER IX.


But perhaps there is a vicious circle in our previous reasoning!
Theoretical culture must it seems bring along with it practical culture,
and yet the latter must be the condition of the former. All improvement
in the political sphere must proceed from the ennobling of the character.
But, subject to the influence of a social constitution still barbarous,
how can character become ennobled? It would then be necessary to seek
for this end an instrument that the state does not furnish, and to open
sources that would have preserved themselves pure in the midst of
political corruption.

I have now reached the point to which all the considerations tended that
have engaged me up to the present time. This instrument is the art of
the beautiful; these sources are open to us in its immortal models.

Art, like science, is emancipated from all that is positive, and all that
is humanly conventional; both are completely independent of the arbitrary
will of man. The political legislator may place their empire under an
interdict, but he cannot reign there. He can proscribe the friend of
truth, but truth subsists; he can degrade the artist, but he cannot
change art. No doubt, nothing is more common than to see science and art
bend before the spirit of the age, and creative taste receive its law
from critical taste. When the character becomes stiff and hardens
itself, we see science severely keeping her limits, and art subject to
the harsh restraint of rules; when the character is relaxed and softened,
science endeavors to please and art to rejoice. For whole ages
philosophers as well as artists show themselves occupied in letting down
truth and beauty to the depths of vulgar humanity. They themselves are
swallowed up in it; but, thanks to their essential vigor and
indestructible life, the true and the beautiful make a victorious fight,
and issue triumphant from the abyss.

No doubt the artist is the child of his time, but unhappy for him if he
is its disciple or even its favorite! Let a beneficent deity carry off
in good time the suckling from the breast of its mother, let it nourish
him on the milk of a better age, and suffer him to grow up and arrive at
virility under the distant sky of Greece. When he has attained manhood,
let him come back, presenting a face strange to his own age; let him
come, not to delight it with his apparition, but rather to purify it,
terrible as the son of Agamemnon. He will, indeed, receive his matter
from the present time, but he will borrow the form from a nobler time and
even beyond all time, from the essential, absolute, immutable unity.
There, issuing from the pure ether of its heavenly nature, flows the
source of all beauty, which was never tainted by the corruptions of
generations or of ages, which roll along far beneath it in dark eddies.
Its matter may be dishonored as well as ennobled by fancy, but the
ever-chaste form escapes from the caprices of imagination. The Roman had
already bent his knee for long years to the divinity of the emperors, and
yet the statues of the gods stood erect; the temples retained their
sanctity for the eye long after the gods had become a theme for mockery,
and the noble architecture of the palaces that shielded the infamies of
Nero and of Commodus were a protest against them. Humanity has lost its
dignity, but art has saved it, and preserves it in marbles full of
meaning; truth continues to live in illusion, and the copy will serve to
re-establish the model. If the nobility of art has survived the nobility
of nature, it also goes before it like an inspiring genius, forming and
awakening minds. Before truth causes her triumphant light to penetrate
into the depths of the heart, poetry intercepts her rays, and the summits
of humanity shine in a bright light, while a dark and humid night still
hangs over the valleys.

But how will the artist avoid the corruption of his time which encloses
him on all hands? Let him raise his eyes to his own dignity, and to law;
let him not lower them to necessity and fortune. Equally exempt from a
vain activity which would imprint its trace on the fugitive moment, and
from the dreams of an impatient enthusiasm which applies the measure of
the absolute to the paltry productions of time, let the artist abandon
the real to the understanding, for that is its proper field. But let the
artist endeavor to give birth to the ideal by the union of the possible
and of the necessary. Let him stamp illusion and truth with the effigy
of this ideal; let him apply it to the play of his imagination and his
most serious actions, in short, to all sensuous and spiritual forms; then
let him quietly launch his work into infinite time.

But the minds set on fire by this ideal have not all received an equal
share of calm from the creative genius--that great and patient temper
which is required to impress the ideal on the dumb marble, or to spread
it over a page of cold, sober letters, and then intrust it to the
faithful hands of time. This divine instinct, and creative force, much
too ardent to follow this peaceful walk, often throws itself immediately
on the present, on active life, and strives to transform the shapeless
matter of the moral world. The misfortune of his brothers, of the whole
species, appeals loudly to the heart of the man of feeling; their
abasement appeals still louder: enthusiasm is inflamed, and in souls
endowed with energy the burning desire aspires impatiently to action and
facts. But has this innovator examined himself to see if these disorders
of the moral world wound his reason, or if they do not rather wound his
self-love? If he does not determine this point at once, he will find it
from the impulsiveness with which he pursues a prompt and definite end.
A pure, moral motive has for its end the absolute; time does not exist
for it, and the future becomes the present to it directly; by a necessary
development, it has to issue from the present. To a reason having no
limits the direction towards an end becomes confounded with the
accomplishment of this end, and to enter on a course is to have finished
it.

If, then, a young friend of the true and of the beautiful were to ask me
how, notwithstanding the resistance of the times, he can satisfy the
noble longing of his heart, I should reply: Direct the world on which you
act towards that which is good, and the measured and peaceful course of
time will bring about the results. You have given it this direction if
by your teaching you raise its thoughts towards the necessary and the
eternal; if, by your acts or your creations, you make the necessary and
the eternal the object of your leanings. The structure of error and of
all that is arbitrary must fall, and it has already fallen, as soon as
you are sure that it is tottering. But it is important that it should
not only totter in the external but also in the internal man. Cherish
triumphant truth in the modest sanctuary of your heart; give it an
incarnate form through beauty, that it may not only be in the
understanding that does homage to it, but that feeling may lovingly grasp
its appearance. And that you may not by any chance take from external
reality the model which you yourself ought to furnish, do not venture
into its dangerous society before you are assured in your own heart that
you have a good escort furnished by ideal nature. Live with your age,
but be not its creation; labor for your contemporaries, but do for them
what they need, and not what they praise. Without having shared their
faults, share their punishment with a noble resignation, and bend under
the yoke which they find it as painful to dispense with as to bear. By
the constancy with which you will despise their good fortune, you will
prove to them that it is not through cowardice that you submit to their
sufferings. See them in thought such as they ought to be when you must
act upon them; but see them as they are when you are tempted to act for
them. Seek to owe their suffrage to their dignity; but to make them
happy keep an account of their unworthiness: thus, on the one hand, the
nobleness of your heart will kindle theirs, and, on the other, your end
will not be reduced to nothingness by their unworthiness. The gravity of
your principles will keep them off from you, but in play they will still
endure them. Their taste is purer than their heart, and it is by their
taste you must lay hold of this suspicious fugitive. In vain will you
combat their maxims, in vain will you condemn their actions; but you can
try your moulding hand on their leisure. Drive away caprice, frivolity,
and coarseness from their pleasures, and you will banish them
imperceptibly from their acts, and at length from their feelings.
Everywhere that you meet them, surround them with great, noble, and
ingenious forms; multiply around them the symbols of perfection, till
appearance triumphs over reality, and art over nature.




LETTER X.


Convinced by my preceding letters, you agree with me on this point, that
man can depart from his destination by two opposite roads, that our epoch
is actually moving on these two false roads, and that it has become the
prey, in one case, of coarseness, and elsewhere of exhaustion and
depravity. It is the beautiful that must bring it back from this twofold
departure. But how can the cultivation of the fine arts remedy, at the
same time, these opposite defects, and unite in itself two contradictory
qualities? Can it bind nature in the savage, and set it free in the
barbarian? Can it at once tighten a spring and loose it; and if it
cannot produce this double effect, how will it be reasonable to expect
from it so important a result as the education of man?

It may be urged that it is almost a proverbial adage that the feeling
developed by the beautiful refines manners, and any new proof offered on
the subject would appear superfluous. Men base this maxim on daily
experience, which shows us almost always clearness of intellect, delicacy
of feeling, liberality and even dignity of conduct, associated with a
cultivated taste, while an uncultivated taste is almost always
accompanied by the opposite qualities. With considerable assurance, the
most civilized nation of antiquity is cited as an evidence of this, the
Greeks, among whom the perception of the beautiful attained its highest
development, and, as a contrast, it is usual to point to nations in a
partial savage state, and partly barbarous, who expiate their
insensibility to the beautiful by a coarse, or, at all events, a hard,
austere character. Nevertheless, some thinkers are tempted occasionally
to deny either the fact itself or to dispute the legitimacy of the
consequences that are derived from it. They do not entertain so
unfavorable an opinion of that savage coarseness which is made a reproach
in the case of certain nations; nor do they form so advantageous an
opinion of the refinement so highly lauded in the case of cultivated
nations. Even as far back as in antiquity there were men who by no means
regarded the culture of the liberal arts as a benefit, and who were
consequently led to forbid the entrance of their republic to imagination.

I do not speak of those who calumniate art because they have never been
favored by it. These persons only appreciate a possession by the trouble
it takes to acquire it, and by the profit it brings: and how could they
properly appreciate the silent labor of taste in the exterior and
interior man? How evident it is that the accidental disadvantages
attending liberal culture would make them lose sight of its essential
advantages? The man deficient in form despises the grace of diction as a
means of corruption, courtesy in the social relations as dissimulation,
delicacy and generosity in conduct as an affected exaggeration. He
cannot forgive the favorite of the Graces for having enlivened all
assemblies as a man of the world, of having directed all men to his views
like a statesman, and of giving his impress to the whole century as a
writer: while he, the victim of labor, can only obtain with all his
learning, the least attention or overcome the least difficulty. As he
cannot learn from his fortunate rival the secret of pleasing, the only
course open to him is to deplore the corruption of human nature, which
adores rather the appearance than the reality.

But there are also opinions deserving respect, that pronounce themselves
adverse to the effects of the beautiful, and find formidable arms in
experience, with which to wage war against it. "We are free to admit"--
such is their language--"that the charms of the beautiful can further
honorable ends in pure hands; but it is not repugnant to its nature to
produce, in impure hands, a directly contrary effect, and to employ in
the service of injustice and error the power that throws the soul of man
into chains. It is exactly because taste only attends to the form and
never to the substance; it ends by placing the soul on the dangerous
incline, leading it to neglect all reality and to sacrifice truth and
morality to an attractive envelope. All the real difference of things
vanishes, and it is only the appearance that determines the value! How
many men of talent"--thus these arguers proceed--"have been turned aside
from all effort by the seductive power of the beautiful, or have been led
away from all serious exercise of their activity, or have been induced to
use it very feebly? How many weak minds have been impelled to quarrel
with the organizations of society, simply because it has pleased the
imagination of poets to present the image of a world constituted
differently, where no propriety chains down opinion and no artifice holds
nature in thraldom? What a dangerous logic of the passions they have
learned since the poets have painted them in their pictures in the most
brilliant colors, and since, in the contest with law and duty, they have
commonly remained masters of the battle-field. What has society gained
by the relations of society, formerly under the sway of truth, being now
subject to the laws of the beautiful, or by the external impression
deciding the estimation in which merit is to be held? We admit that all
virtues whose appearance produces an agreeable effect are now seen to
flourish, and those which, in society, give a value to the man who
possesses them. But, as a compensation, all kinds of excesses are seen
to prevail, and all vices are in vogue that can be reconciled with a
graceful exterior. " It is certainly a matter entitled to reflection
that, at almost all the periods of history when art flourished and taste
held sway, humanity is found in a state of decline; nor can a single
instance be cited of the union of a large diffusion of aesthetic culture
with political liberty and social virtue, of fine manners associated with
good morals, and of politeness fraternizing with truth and loyalty of
character and life.

As long as Athens and Sparta preserved their independence, and as long as
their institutions were based on respect for the laws, taste did not
reach its maturity, art remained in its infancy, and beauty was far from
exercising her empire over minds. No doubt, poetry had already taken a
sublime flight, but it was on the wings of genius, and we know that
genius borders very closely on savage coarseness, that it is a light
which shines readily in the midst of darkness, and which therefore often
argues against rather than in favor of the taste of time. When the
golden age of art appears under Pericles and Alexander, and the sway of
taste becomes more general, strength and liberty have abandoned Greece;
eloquence corrupts the truth, wisdom offends it on the lips of Socrates,
and virtue in the life of Phocion. It is well known that the Romans had
to exhaust their energies in civil wars, and, corrupted by Oriental
luxury, to bow their heads under the yoke of a fortunate despot, before
Grecian art triumphed over the stiffness of their character. The same
was the case with the Arabs: civilization only dawned upon them when the
vigor of their military spirit became softened under the sceptre of the
Abbassides. Art did not appear in modern Italy till the glorious Lombard
League was dissolved, Florence submitting to the Medici; and all those
brave cities gave up the spirit of independence for an inglorious
resignation. It is almost superfluous to call to mind the example of
modern nations, with whom refinement has increased in direct proportion
to the decline of their liberties. Wherever we direct our eyes in past
times, we see taste and freedom mutually avoiding each other. Everywhere
we see that the beautiful only founds its sway on the ruins of heroic
virtues.

And yet this strength of character, which is commonly sacrificed to
establish aesthetic culture, is the most powerful spring of all that is
great and excellent in man, and no other advantage, however great, can
make up for it. Accordingly, if we only keep to the experiments hitherto
made, as to the influence of the beautiful, we cannot certainly be much
encouraged in developing feelings so dangerous to the real culture of
man. At the risk of being hard and coarse, it will seem preferable to
dispense with this dissolving force of the beautiful rather than see
human nature a prey to its enervating influence, notwithstanding all its
refining advantages. However, experience is perhaps not the proper
tribunal at which to decide such a question; before giving so much weight
to its testimony, it would be well to inquire if the beauty we have been
discussing is the power that is condemned by the previous examples. And
the beauty we are discussing seems to assume an idea of the beautiful
derived from a source different from experience, for it is this higher
notion of the beautiful which has to decide if what is called beauty by
experience is entitled to the name.

This pure and rational idea of the beautiful--supposing it can be placed
in evidence--cannot be taken from any real and special case, and must, on
the contrary, direct and give sanction to our judgment in each special
case. It must therefore be sought for by a process of abstraction, and
it ought to be deduced from the simple possibility of a nature both
sensuous and rational; in short, beauty ought to present itself as a
necessary condition of humanity. It is therefore essential that we
should rise to the pure idea of humanity, and as experience shows us
nothing but individuals, in particular cases, and never humanity at
large, we must endeavor to find in their individual and variable mode of
being the absolute and the permanent, and to grasp the necessary
conditions of their existence, suppressing all accidental limits. No
doubt this transcendental procedure will remove us for some time from the
familiar circle of phenomena, and the living presence of objects, to keep
us on the unproductive ground of abstract idea; but we are engaged in the
search after a principle of knowledge solid enough not to be shaken by
anything, and the man who does not dare to rise above reality will never
conquer this truth.




LETTER XI.


If abstraction rises to as great an elevation as possible, it arrives at
two primary ideas, before which it is obliged to stop and to recognize
its limits. It distinguishes in man something that continues, and
something that changes incessantly. That which continues it names his
person; that which changes his position, his condition.

The person and the condition, I and my determinations, which we represent
as one and the same thing in the necessary being, are eternally distinct
in the finite being. Notwithstanding all continuance in the person, the
condition changes; in spite of all change of condition the person
remains. We pass from rest to activity, from emotion to indifference,
from assent to contradiction, but we are always we ourselves, and what
immediately springs from ourselves remains. It is only in the absolute
subject that all his determinations continue with his personality. All
that Divinity is, it is because it is so; consequently it is eternally
what it is, because it is eternal.

As the person and the condition are distinct in man, because he is a
finite being, the condition cannot be founded on the person, nor the
person on the condition. Admitting the second case, the person would
have to change; and in the former case, the condition would have to
continue. Thus in either supposition, either the personality or the
quality of a finite being would necessarily cease. It is not because we
think, feel, and will that we are; it is not because we are that we
think, feel, and will. We are because we are. We feel, think, and will
because there is out of us something that is not ourselves.

Consequently the person must have its principle of existence in itself,
because the permanent cannot be derived from the changeable, and thus we
should be at once in possession of the idea of the absolute being,
founded on itself; that is to say, of the idea of freedom. The condition
must have a foundation, and as it is not through the person, and is not
therefore absolute, it must be a sequence and a result; and thus, in the
second place, we should have arrived at the condition of every
independent being, of everything in the process of becoming something
else: that is, of the idea of tine. "Time is the necessary condition of
all processes, of becoming (Werden);" this is an identical proposition,
for it says nothing but this: "That something may follow, there must be a
succession. "

The person which manifested itself in the eternally continuing Ego, or I
myself, and only in him, cannot become something or begin in time,
because it is much rather time that must begin with him, because the
permanent must serve as basis to the changeable. That change may take
place, something must change; this something cannot therefore be the
change itself. When we say the flower opens and fades, we make of this
flower a permanent being in the midst of this transformation; we lend it,
in some sort, a personality, in which these two conditions are
manifested. It cannot be objected that man is born, and becomes
something; for man is not only a person simply, but he is a person
finding himself in a determinate condition. Now our determinate state of
condition springs up in time, and it is thus that man, as a phenomenon or
appearance, must have a beginning, though in him pure intelligence is
eternal. Without time, that is, without a becoming, he would not be a
determinate being; his personality would exist virtually no doubt, but
not in action. It is not by the succession of its perceptions that the
immutable Ego or person manifests himself to himself.

Thus, therefore, the matter of activity, or reality, that the supreme
intelligence draws from its own being, must be received by man; and he
does, in fact, receive it, through the medium of perception, as something
which is outside him in space, and which changes in him in time. This
matter which changes in him is always accompanied by the Ego, the
personality, that never changes; and the rule prescribed for man by his
rational nature is to remain immutably himself in the midst of change, to
refer all perceptions to experience, that is, to the unity of knowledge,
and to make of each of its manifestations of its modes in time the law of
all time. The matter only exists in as far as it changes: he, his
personality, only exists in as far as he does not change. Consequently,
represented in his perfection, man would be the permanent unity, which
remains always the same, among the waves of change.

Now, although an infinite being, a divinity could not become (or be
subject to time), still a tendency ought to be named divine which has for
its infinite end the most characteristic attribute of the divinity; the
absolute manifestation of power--the reality of all the possible--and the
absolute unity of the manifestation (the necessity of all reality). It
cannot be disputed that man bears within himself, in his personality, a
predisposition for divinity. The way to divinity--if the word "way" can
be applied to what never leads to its end--is open to him in every
direction.

Considered in itself, and independently of all sensuous matter, his
personality is nothing but the pure virtuality of a possible infinite
manifestation; and so long as there is neither intuition nor feeling, it
is nothing more than a form, an empty power. Considered in itself, and
independently of all spontaneous activity of the mind, sensuousness can
only make a material man; without it, it is a pure form; but it cannot in
any way establish a union between matter and it. So long as he only
feels, wishes, and acts under the influence of desire, he is nothing more
than the world, if by this word we point out only the formless contents
of time. Without doubt, it is only his sensuousness that makes his
strength pass into efficacious acts, but it is his personality alone that
makes this activity his own. Thus, that he may not only be a world, he
must give form to matter, and in order not to be a mere form, he must
give reality to the virtuality that he bears in him. He gives matter to
form by creating time, and by opposing the immutable to change, the
diversity of the world to the eternal unity of the Ego. He gives a form
to matter by again suppressing time, by maintaining permanence in change,
and by placing the diversity of the world under the unity of the Ego.

Now from this source issue for man two opposite exigencies, the two
fundamental laws of sensuous-rational nature. The first has for its
object absolute reality; it must make a world of what is only form,
manifest all that in it is only a force. The second law has for its
object absolute formality; it must destroy in him all that is only world,
and carry out harmony in all changes. In other terms, he must manifest
all that is internal, and give form to all that is external. Considered
in its most lofty accomplishment, this twofold labor brings back to the
idea of humanity, which was my starting-point.




LETTER XII.


This twofold labor or task, which consists in making the necessary pass
into reality in us and in making out of us reality subject to the law of
necessity, is urged upon us as a duty by two opposing forces, which are
justly styled impulsions or instincts, because they impel us to realize
their object. The first of these impulsions, which I shall call the
sensuous instinct, issues from the physical existence of man, or from
sensuous nature; and it is this instinct which tends to enclose him in
the limits of time, and to make of him a material being; I do not say to
give him matter, for to do that a certain free activity of the
personality would be necessary, which, receiving matter, distinguishes it
from the Ego, or what is permanent. By matter I only understand in this
place the change or reality that fills time. Consequently the instinct
requires that there should be change, and that time should contain
something. This simply filled state of time is named sensation, and it
is only in this state that physical existence manifests itself.

As all that is in time is successive, it follows by that fact alone that
something is: all the remainder is excluded. When one note on an
instrument is touched, among all those that it virtually offers, this
note alone is real. When man is actually modified, the infinite
possibility of all his modifications is limited to this single mode of
existence. Thus, then, the exclusive action of sensuous impulsion has
for its necessary consequence the narrowest limitation. In this state
man is only a unity of magnitude, a complete moment in time; or, to speak
more correctly, he is not, for his personality is suppressed as long as
sensation holds sway over him and carries time along with it.

This instinct extends its domains over the entire sphere of the finite in
man, and as form is only revealed in matter, and the absolute by means of
its limits, the total manifestation of human nature is connected on a
close analysis with the sensuous instinct. But though it is only this
instinct that awakens and develops what exists virtually in man, it is
nevertheless this very instinct which renders his perfection impossible.
It binds down to the world of sense by indestructible ties the spirit
that tends higher, and it calls back to the limits of the present,
abstraction which had its free development in the sphere of the infinite.
No doubt, thought can escape it for a moment, and a firm will
victoriously resist its exigencies: but soon compressed nature resumes
her rights to give an imperious reality to our existence, to give it
contents, substance, knowledge, and an aim for our activity.

The second impulsion, which may be named the formal instinct, issues from
the absolute existence of man, or from his rational nature, and tends to
set free, and bring harmony into the diversity of its manifestations, and
to maintain personality notwithstanding all the changes of state. As
this personality, being an absolute and indivisible unity, can never be
in contradiction with itself, as we are ourselves forever, this
impulsion, which tends to maintain personality, can never exact in one
time anything but what it exacts and requires forever. It therefore
decides for always what it decides now, and orders now what it orders
forever. Hence it embraces the whole series of times, or what comes to
the same thing, it suppresses time and change. It wishes the real to be
necessary and eternal, and it wishes the eternal and the necessary to be
real; in other terms, it tends to truth and justice.

If the sensuous instinct only produces accidents, the formal instinct
gives laws, laws for every judgment when it is a question of knowledge,
laws for every will when it is a question of action. Whether, therefore,
we recognize an object or conceive an objective value to a state of the
subject, whether we act in virtue of knowledge or make of the objective
the determining principle of our state; in both cases we withdraw this
state from the jurisdiction of time, and we attribute to it reality for
all men and for all time, that is, universality and necessity. Feeling
can only say: "That is true for this subject and at this moment," and
there may come another moment, another subject, which withdraws the
affirmation from the actual feeling. But when once thought pronounces
and says: "That is," it decides forever and ever, and the validity of its
decision is guaranteed by the personality itself, which defies all
change. Inclination can only say: "That is good for your individuality
and present necessity"; but the changing current of affairs will sweep
them away, and what you ardently desire to-day will form the object of
your aversion to-morrow. But when the moral feeling says: "That ought to
be," it decides forever. If you confess the truth because it is the
truth, and if you practise justice because it is justice, you have made
of a particular case the law of all possible cases, and treated one
moment of your life as eternity.

Accordingly, when the formal impulse holds sway and the pure object acts
in us, the being attains its highest expansion, all barriers disappear,
and from the unity of magnitude in which man was enclosed by a narrow
sensuousness, he rises to the unity of idea, which embraces and keeps
subject the entire sphere of phenomena. During this operation we are no
longer in time, but time is in us with its infinite succession. We are
no longer individuals but a species; the judgment of all spirits is
expressed by our own, and the choice of all hearts is represented by our
own act.




LETTER XIII.


On a first survey, nothing appears more opposed than these two
impulsions; one having for its object change, the other immutability, and
yet it is these two notions that exhaust the notion of humanity, and a
third fundamental impulsion, holding a medium between them, is quite
inconceivable. How then shall we re-establish the unity of human nature,
a unity that appears completely destroyed by this primitive and radical
opposition?

I admit these two tendencies are contradictory, but it should be noticed
that they are not so in the same objects. But things that do not meet
cannot come into collision. No doubt the sensuous impulsion desires
change; but it does not wish that it should extend to personality and its
field, nor that there should be a change of principles. The formal
impulsion seeks unity and permanence, but it does not wish the condition
to remain fixed with the person, that there should be identity of
feeling. Therefore these two impulsions are not divided by nature, and
if, nevertheless, they appear so, it is because they have become divided
by transgressing nature freely, by ignoring themselves, and by
confounding their spheres. The office of culture is to watch over them
and to secure to each one its proper limits; therefore culture has to
give equal justice to both, and to defend not only the rational impulsion
against the sensuous, but also the latter against the former. Hence she
has to act a twofold part: first, to protect sense against the attacks of
freedom; secondly, to secure personality against the power of sensations.