No More Learning

The myth
tells us that grace is something accidental in the subject in which we
suppose it to be. It follows that we can attribute this property only to
accidental movements. In an ideal of beauty the necessary movements must
be beautiful, because inasmuch as necessary they form an integral part of
its nature; the idea of Venus once given, the idea of this beauty of
necessary movements is that implicitly comprised in it; but it is not the
same with the beauty of accidental movements; this is an extension of the
former; there can be a grace in the voice, there is none in respiration.

But all this beauty in accidental movements--is it necessarily grace? It
is scarcely necessary to notice that the Greek fable attributes grace
exclusively to humanity. It goes still further, for even the beauty of
form it restricts within the limits of the human species, in which, as we
know, the Greeks included also their gods. But if grace is the exclusive
privilege of the human form, none of the movements which are common to
man with the rest of nature can evidently pretend to it. Thus, for
example, if it were admitted that the ringlets of hair on a beautiful
head undulate with grace, there would also be no reason to deny a grace
of movement to the branches of trees, to the waves of the stream, to the
ears of a field of corn, or to the limbs of animals. No, the goddess of
Cnidus represents exclusively the human species; therefore, as soon as
you see only a physical creature in man, a purely sensuous object, she is
no longer concerned with him. Thus, grace can only be met with in
voluntary movements, and then in those only which express some sentiment
of the moral order. Those which have as principle only animal
sensuousness belong only, however voluntary we may suppose them to be, to
physical nature, which never reaches of itself to grace. If it were
possible to have grace in the manifestations of the physical appetites
and instincts, grace would no longer be either capable or worthy to serve
as the expression of humanity. Yet it is humanity alone which to the
Greek contains all the idea of beauty and of perfection. He never
consents to see separated from the soul the purely sensuous part, and
such is with him that which might be called man's sensuous nature, which
it is equally impossible for him to isolate either from his lower nature
or from his intelligence. In the same way that no idea presents itself
to his mind without taking at once a visible form, and without his
endeavoring to give a bodily envelope even to his intellectual
conceptions, so he desires in man that all his instinctive acts should
express at the same time his moral destination. Never for the Greek is
nature purely physical nature, and for that reason he does not blush to
honor it; never for him is reason purely reason, and for that reason he
has not to tremble in submitting to its rule. The physical nature and
moral sentiments, matter and mind, earth and heaven, melt together with a
marvellous beauty in his poetry. Free activity, which is truly at home
only in Olympus, was introduced by him even into the domain of sense, and
it is a further reason for not attaching blame to him if reciprocally he
transported the affections of the sense into Olympus. Thus, this
delicate sense of the Greeks, which never suffered the material element
unless accompanied by the spiritual principle, recognizes in man no
voluntary movement belonging only to sense which did not at the same time
manifest the moral sentiment of the soul. It follows that for them grace
is one of the manifestations of the soul, revealed through beauty in
voluntary movements; therefore, wherever there is grace, it is the soul
which is the mobile, and it is in her that beauty of movement has its
principle. The mythological allegory thus expresses the thought, "Grace
is a beauty not given by nature, but produced by the subject itself. "

Up to the present time I have confined myself to unfolding the idea of
grace from the Greek myth, and I hope I have not forced the sense: may I
now be permitted to try to what result a philosophical investigation on
this point will lead us, and to see if this subject, as so many others,
will confirm this truth, that the spirit of philosophy can hardly flatter
itself that it can discover anything which has not already been vaguely
perceived by sentiment and revealed in poetry?

Without her girdle, and without the Graces, Venus represents the ideal of
beauty, such as she could have come forth from the hands of nature, and
such as she is made without the intervention of mind endowed with
sentiment and by the virtue alone of plastic forces. It is not without
reason that the fable created a particular divinity to represent this
sort of beauty, because it suffices to see and to feel in order to
distinguish it very distinctly from the other, from that which derives
its origin from the influence of a mind endowed with sentiments.

This first beauty, thus formed by nature solely and in virtue of the laws
of necessity, I shall distinguish from that which is regulated upon
conditions of liberty, in calling it, if allowed, beauty of structure
(architectonic beauty). It is agreed, therefore, to designate under this
name that portion of human beauty which not only has as efficient
principle the forces and agents of physical nature (for we can say as
much for every phenomenon), but which also is determined, so far as it is
beauty solely, by the forces of this nature.

Well-proportioned limbs, rounded contours, an agreeable complexion,
delicacy of skin, an easy and graceful figure, a harmonious tone of
voice, etc. , are advantages which are gifts of nature and fortune: of
nature, which predisposed to this, and developed it herself; of fortune,
which protects against all influence adverse to the work of nature.

Venus came forth perfect and complete from the foam of the sea. Why
perfect? because she is the finished and exactly determined work of
necessity, and on that account she is neither susceptible of variety nor
of progress. In other terms, as she is only a beautiful representation
of the various ends which nature had in view in forming man, and thence
each of her properties is perfectly determined by the idea that she
realizes; hence it follows that we can consider her as definitive and
determined (with regard to its connection with the first conception)
although this conception is subject, in its development, to the
conditions of time.

The architectonic beauty of the human form and its technical perfection
are two ideas, which we must take good care not to confound. By the
latter, the ensemble of particular ends must be understood, such as they
co-ordinate between themselves towards a general and higher end; by the
other, on the contrary, a character suited to the representation of these
ends, as far as these are revealed, under a visible form, to our faculty
of seeing and observing. When, then, we speak of beauty, we neither take
into consideration the justness of the aims of nature in themselves, nor
formally, the degree of adaptation to the principles of art which their
combination could offer. Our contemplative faculties hold to the manner
in which the object appears to them, without taking heed to its logical
constitution. Thus, although the architectonic beauty, in the structure
of man, be determined by the idea which has presided at this structure,
and by the ends that nature proposes for it, the aesthetic judgment,
making abstraction of these ends, considers this beauty in itself; and in
the idea which we form of it, nothing enters which does not immediately
and properly belong to the exterior appearance.

We are, then, not obliged to say that the dignity of man and of his
condition heightens the beauty of his structure. The idea we have of his
dignity may influence, it is true, the judgment that we form on the
beauty of his structure; but then this judgment ceases to be purely
aesthetic. Doubtless, the technical constitution of the human form is an
expression of its destiny, and, as such, it ought to excite our
admiration; but this technical constitution is represented to the
understanding and not to sense; it is a conception and not a phenomenon.
The architectonic beauty, on the contrary, could never be an expression
of the destiny of man, because it addresses itself to quite a different
faculty from that to which it belongs to pronounce upon his destiny.

If, then, man is, amongst all the technical forces created by nature,
that to whom more especially we attribute beauty, this is exact and true
only under one condition, which is, that at once and upon the simple
appearance he justifies this superiority, without the necessity, in order
to appreciate it, that we bring to mind his humanity. For, to recall
this, we must pass through a conception; and then it would no longer be
the sense, but the understanding, that would become the judge of beauty,
which would imply contradiction. Man, therefore, cannot put forward the
dignity of his moral destiny, nor give prominence to his superiority as
intelligence, to increase the price of his beauty. Man, here, is but a
being thrown like others into space--a phenomenon amongst other
phenomena. In the world of sense no account is made of the rank he holds
in the world of ideas; and if he desires in that to hold the first place,
he can only owe it to that in him which belongs to the physical order.

But his physical nature is determined, we know, by the idea of his
humanity; from which it follows that his architectonic beauty is so also
mediately. If, then he is distinguished by superior beauty from all
other creatures of the sensuous world, it is incontestable that he owes
this advantage to his destiny as man, because it is in it that the reason
is of the differences which in general separate him from the rest of the
sensuous world. But the beauty of the human form is not due to its being
the expression of this superior destiny, for if it were so, this form
would necessarily cease to be beautiful, from the moment it began to
express a less high destiny, and the contrary to this form would be
beautiful as soon as it could be admitted that it expresses this higher
destination. However, suppose that at the sight of a fine human face we
could completely forget that which it expresses, and put in its place,
without chancing anything of its outside, the savage instincts of the
tiger, the judgment of the eyesight would remain absolutely the same, and
the tiger would be for it the chef-d'oeuvre of the Creator.

The destiny of man as intelligence contributes, then, to the beauty of
his structure only so far as the form that represents this destiny, the
expression that makes it felt, satisfies at the same time the conditions
which are prescribed in the world of sense to the manifestations of the
beautiful; which signifies that beauty ought always to remain a pure
effect of physical nature, and that the rational conception which had
determined the technical utility of the human structure cannot confer
beauty, but simply be compatible with beauty.

It could be objected, it is true, that in general all which is manifested
by a sensuous representation is produced by the forces of nature, and
that consequently this character cannot be exclusively an indication of
the beautiful. Certainly, and without doubt, all technical creations are
the work of nature; but it is not by the fact of nature that they are
technical, or at least that they are so judged to be. They are technical
only through the understanding, and thus their technical perfection has
already its existence in the understanding, before passing into the world
of sense, and becoming a sensible phenomenon. Beauty, on the contrary,
has the peculiarity, that the sensuous world is not only its theatre, but
the first source from whence it derives its birth, and that it owes to
nature not only its expression, but also its creation. Beauty is
absolutely but a property of the world of sense; and the artist, who has
the beautiful in view, would not attain to it but inasmuch as he
entertains this illusion, that his work is the work of nature.

In order to appreciate the technical perfection of the human body, we
must bear in mind the ends to which it is appropriated; this being quite
unnecessary for the appreciation of its beauty. Here the senses require
no aid, and of themselves judge with full competence; however they would
not be competent judges of the beautiful, if the world of sense (the
senses have no other object) did not contain all the conditions of beauty
and was therefore competent to produce it. The beauty of man, it is
true, has for mediate reason the idea of his humanity, because all his
physical nature is founded on this idea; but the senses, we know, hold to
immediate phenomena, and for them it is exactly the same as if this
beauty were a simple effect of nature, perfectly independent.

From what we have said, up to the present time, it would appear that the
beautiful can offer absolutely no interest to the understanding, because
its principle belongs solely to the world of sense, and amongst all our
faculties of knowledge it addresses itself only to our senses. And in
fact, the moment that we sever from the idea of the beautiful, as a
foreign element, all that is mixed with the idea of technical perfection,
almost inevitably, in the judgment of beauty, it appears that nothing
remains to it by which it can become the object of an intellectual
pleasure. And nevertheless, it is quite as incontestable that the
beautiful pleases the understanding, as it is beyond doubt that the
beautiful rests upon no property of the object that could not be
discovered but by the understanding.

To solve this apparent contradiction, it must be remembered that the
phenomena can in two different ways pass to the state of objects of the
understanding and express ideas. It is not always necessary that the
understanding draws these ideas from phenomena; it can also put them into
them. In the two cases, the phenomena will be adequate to a rational
conception, with this simple difference, that, in the first case, the
understanding finds it objectively given, and to a certain extent only
receives it from the object because it is necessary that the idea should
be given to explain the nature and often even the possibility of the
object; whilst in the second case, on the contrary, it is the
understanding which of itself interprets, in a manner to make of it the
expression of its idea, that which the phenomenon offers us, without any
connection with this idea, and thus treats by a metaphysical process that
which in reality is purely physical. There, then, in the association of
the idea with the object there is an objective necessity; here, on the
contrary, a subjective necessity at the utmost. It is unnecessary to say
that, in my mind, the first of these two connections ought to be
understood of technical perfection, the second, of the beautiful.

As then in the second case it is a thing quite contingent for the
sensuous object that there should or should not be outside of it an
object which perceives it--an understanding that associates one of its
own ideas with it, consequently, the ensemble of these objective
properties ought to be considered as fully independent of this idea; we
have perfectly the right to reduce the beautiful, objectively, to the
simple conditions of physical nature, and to see nothing more in beauty
than effect belonging purely to the world of sense. But as, on the other
side, the understanding makes of this simple fact of the world of sense a
transcendent usage, and in lending it a higher signification inasmuch as
he marks it, as it were, with his image, we have equally the right to
transport the beautiful, subjectively, into the world of intelligence.
It is in this manner that beauty belongs at the same time to the two
worlds--to one by the right of birth, to the other by adoption; it takes
its being in the world of sense, it acquires the rights of citizenship in
the world of understanding. It is that which explains how it can be that
taste, as the faculty for appreciating the beautiful, holds at once the
spiritual element and that of sense; and that these two natures,
incompatible one with the other, approach in order to form in it a happy
union. It is this that explains how taste can conciliate respect for the
understanding with the material element, and with the rational principle
the favor and the sympathy of the senses, how it can ennoble the
perceptions of the senses so as to make ideas of them, and, in a certain
measure, transform the physical world itself into a domain of the ideal.

At all events, if it is accidental with regard to the object, that the
understanding associates, at the representation of this object, one of
its own ideas with it, it is not the less necessary for the subject which
represents it to attach to such a representation such an idea. This
idea, and the sensuous indication which corresponds to it in the object,
ought to be one with the other in such relation, that the understanding
be forced to this association by its own immutable laws; the
understanding then must have in itself the reason which leads it to
associate exclusively a certain phenomenon with a certain determined
idea, and, reciprocally, the object should have in itself the reason for
which it exclusively provokes that idea and not another. As to knowing
what the idea can be which the understanding carries into the beautiful,
and by what objective property the object gifted with beauty can be
capable of serving as symbol to this idea, is then a question much too
grave to be solved here in passing, and I reserve this examination for an
analytical theory of the beautiful.

The architectonic beauty of man is then, in the way I have explained it,
the visible expression of a rational conception, but it is so only in the
same sense and the same title as are in general all the beautiful
creations of nature. As to the degree, I agree that it surpasses all the
other beauties; but with regard to kind, it is upon the same rank as they
are, because it also manifests that which alone is perceptible of its
subject, and it is only when we represent it to ourselves that it
receives a super-sensuous value.

If the ends of creation are marked in man with more of success and of
beauty than in the organic beings, it is to some extent a favor which the
intelligence, inasmuch as it dictated the laws of the human structure,
has shown to nature charged to execute those laws. The intelligence, it
is true, pursues its end in the technique of man with a rigorous
necessity, but happily its exigencies meet and accord with the necessary
laws of nature so well, that one executes the order of the other whilst
acting according to its own inclination.

But this can only be true respecting the architectonic beauty of man,
where the necessary laws of physical nature are sustained by another
necessity, that of the teleological principle which determines them. It
is here only that the beautiful could be calculated by relation to the
technique of the structure, which can no longer take place when the
necessity is on one side alone, and the super-sensuous cause which
determines the phenomenon takes a contingent character. Thus, it is
nature alone who takes upon herself the architectonic beauty of man,
because here, from the first design, she had been charged once for all by
the creating intelligence with the execution of all that man needs in
order to arrive at the ends for which he is destined, and she has in
consequence no change to fear in this organic work which she
accomplishes.

But man is moreover a person--that is to say, a being whose different
states can have their cause in himself, and absolutely their last cause;
a being who can be modified by reason that he draws from himself. The
manner in which he appears in the world of sense depends upon the manner
in which he feels and wills, and, consequently, upon certain states which
are freely determined by himself, and not fatally by nature.

If man were only a physical creature, nature, at the same time that she
establishes the general laws of his being, would determine also the
various causes of application. But here she divides her empire with free
arbitration; and, although its laws are fixed, it is the mind that
pronounces upon particular cases.

The domain of mind extends as far as living nature goes, and it finishes
only at the point at which organic life loses itself in unformed matter,
at the point at which the animal forces cease to act. It is known that
all the motive forces in man are connected one with the other, and this
makes us understand how the mind, even considered as principle of
voluntary movement, can propagate its action through all organisms. It
is not only the instruments of the will, but the organs themselves upon
which the will does not immediately exercise its empire, that undergo,
indirectly at least, the influence of mind; the mind determines then, not
only designedly when it acts, but again, without design, when it feels.

From nature in herself (this result is clearly perceived from what
precedes) we must ask nothing but a fixed beauty, that of the phenomena
that she alone has determined according to the law of necessity. But
with free arbitration, chance (the accidental), interferes in the work of
nature, and the modifications that affect it thus under the empire of
free will are no longer, although all behave according to its own laws,
determined by these laws. From thence it is to the mind to decide the
use it will make of its instruments, and with regard to that part of
beauty which depends on this use, nature has nothing further to command,
nor, consequently, to incur any responsibility.

And thus man by reason that, making use of his liberty, he raises himself
into the sphere of pure intelligences, would find himself in danger of
sinking, inasmuch as he is a creature of sense, and of losing in the
judgment of taste that which he gains at the tribunal of reason. This
moral destiny, therefore, accomplished by the moral action of man, would
cost him a privilege which was assured to him by this same moral destiny
when only indicated in his structure; a purely sensuous privilege, it is
true, but one which receives, as we have seen, a signification and a
higher value from the understanding. No; nature is too much enamored
with harmony to be guilty of so gross a contradiction, and that which is
harmonious in the world of the understanding could not be rendered by a
discord in the world of sense.

As soon, then, as in man the person, the moral and free agent, takes upon
himself to determine the play of phenomena, and by his intervention takes
from nature the power to protect the beauty of her work, he then, as it
were, substitutes himself for nature, and assumes in a certain measure,
with the rights of nature, a part of the obligations incumbent on her.
When the mind, taking possession of the sensuous matter subservient to
it, implicates it in his destiny and makes it depend on its own
modifications, it transforms itself to a certain point into a sensuous
phenomenon, and, as such, is obliged to recognize the law which regulates
in general all the phenomena. In its own interest it engages to permit
that nature in its service, placed under its dependence, shall still
preserve its character of nature, and never act in a manner contrary to
its anterior obligations. I call the beautiful an obligation of
phenomena, because the want which corresponds to it in the subject has
its reason in the understanding itself, and thus it is consequently
universal and necessary. I call it an anterior obligation because the
senses, in the matter of beauty, have given their judgment before the
understanding commences to perform its office.

Thus it is now free arbitration which rules the beautiful. If nature has
furnished the architectonic beauty, the soul in its turn determines the
beauty of the play, and now also we know what we must understand by charm
and grace. Grace is the beauty of the form under the influence of free
will; it is the beauty of this kind of phenomena that the person himself
determines. The architectonic beauty does honor to the author of nature;
grace does honor to him who possesses it. That is a gift, this is a
personal merit.

Grace can be found only in movement, for a modification which takes place
in the soul can only be manifested in the sensuous world as movement.
But this does not prevent features fixed and in repose also from
possessing grace. There immobility is, in its origin, movement which,
from being frequently repeated, at length becomes habitual, leaving
durable traces.

But all the movements of man are not capable of grace. Grace is never
otherwise than beauty of form animated into movement by free will; and
the movements which belong only to physical nature could not merit the
name. It is true that an intellectual man, if he be keen, ends by
rendering himself master of almost all the movements of the body; but
when the chain which links a fine lineament to a moral sentiment
lengthens much, this lineament becomes the property of the structure, and
can no longer be counted as a grace. It happens, ultimately, that the
mind moulds the body, and that the structure is forced to modify itself
according to the play that the soul imprints upon the organs, so
entirely, that grace finally is transformed--and the examples are not
rare--into architectonic beauty. As at one time an antagonistic mind
which is ill at ease with itself alters and destroys the most perfect
beauty of structure, until at last it becomes impossible to recognize
this magnificent chef-d'oeuvre of nature in the state to which it is
reduced under the unworthy hands of free will, so at other times the
serenity and perfect harmony of the soul come to the aid of the hampered
technique, unloose nature and develop with divine splendor the beauty of
form, enveloped until then, and oppressed.

The plastic nature of man has in it an infinity of resources to retrieve
the negligencies and repair the faults that she may have committed. To
this end it is sufficient that the mind, the moral agent, sustain it, or
even withhold from troubling it in the labor of rebuilding.

Since the movements become fixed (gestures pass to a state of lineament),
are themselves capable of grace, it would perhaps appear to be rational
to comprehend equally under this idea of beauty some apparent or
imitative movements (the flamboyant lines for example, undulations). It
is this which Mendelssohn upholds. But then the idea of grace would be
confounded with the ideal of beauty in general, for all beauty is
definitively but a property of true or apparent movement (objective or
subjective), as I hope to demonstrate in an analysis of beauty. With
regard to grace, the only movements which can offer any are those which
respond at the same time to a sentiment.

The person (it is known what I mean by the expression) prescribes the
movements of the body, either through the will, when he desires to
realize in the world of sense an effect of which he has proposed the
idea, and in that case the movements are said to be voluntary or
intentional; or, on the other hand, they take place without its will
taking any part in it--in virtue of a fatal law of the organism--but on
the occasion of a sentiment, in the latter case, I say that the movements
are sympathetic. The sympathetic movement, though it may be involuntary
and provoked by a sentiment, ought not to be confounded with those purely
instinctive movements that proceed from physical sensibility. Physical
instinct is not a free agent, and that which it executes is not an act of
the person; I understand then here exclusively, by sympathetic movements,
those which accompany a sentiment, a disposition of the moral order.

The question that now presents itself is this: Of these two kinds of
movement, having their principle in the person, which is capable of
grace?

That which we are rigorously forced to distinguish in philosophic
analysis is not always separated also in the real. Thus it is rare that
we meet intentional movements without sympathetic movements, because the
will determines the intentional movements only after being decided itself
by the moral sentiments which are the principle of the sympathetic
movements. When a person speaks, we see his looks, his lineaments, his
hands, often the whole person all together speaks to us; and it is not
rare that this mimic part of the discourse is the most eloquent. Still
more there are cases where an intentional movement can be considered at
the same time as sympathetic; and it is that which happens when something
involuntary mingles with the voluntary act which determines this
movement.

I will explain: the mode, the manner in which a voluntary movement is
executed, is not a thing so exactly determined by the intention which is
proposed by it that it cannot be executed in several different ways.
Well, then, that which the will or intention leaves undetermined can be
sympathetically determined by the state of moral sensibility in which the
person is found to be, and consequently can express this state. When I
extend the arm to seize an object, I execute, in truth, an intention, and
the movement I make is determined in general by the end that I have in
view; but in what way does my arm approach the object? how far do the
other parts of my body follow this impulsion? What will be the degree of
slowness or of the rapidity of the movement? What amount of force shall
I employ? This is a calculation of which my will, at the instant, takes
no account, and in consequence there is a something left to the
discretion of nature.

But nevertheless, though that part of the movement is not determined by
the intention itself, it must be decided at length in one way or the
other, and the reason is that the manner in which my moral sensibility is
affected can have here decisive influence: it is this which will give the
tone, and which thus determines the mode and the manner of the movement.
Therefore this influence, which exercises upon the voluntary movement the
state of moral sensibility in which the subject is found, represents
precisely the involuntary part of this movement, and it is there then
that we must seek for grace.

A voluntary movement, if it is not linked to any sympathetic movement--or
that which comes to the same thing, if there is nothing involuntary mixed
up with it having for principle the moral state of sensibility in which
the subject happens to be--could not in any manner present grace, for
grace always supposes as a cause a disposition of the soul. Voluntary
movement is produced after an operation of the soul, which in consequence
is already completed at the moment in which the movement takes place.

The sympathetic movement, on the contrary, accompanies this operation of
the soul, and the moral state of sensibility which decides it to this
operation. So that this movement ought to be considered as simultaneous
with regard to both one and the other.

From that alone it results that voluntary movement not proceeding
immediately from the disposition of the subject could not be an
expression of this disposition also. For between the disposition and the
movement itself the volition has intervened, which, considered in itself,
is something perfectly indifferent. This movement is the work of the
volition, it is determined by the aim that is proposed; it is not the
work of the person, nor the product of the sentiments that affect it.

The voluntary movement is united but accidentally with the disposition
which precedes it; the concomitant movement, on the contrary, is
necessarily linked to it. The first is to the soul that which the
conventional signs of speech are to the thoughts which they express. The
second, on the contrary, the sympathetic movement or concomitant, is to
the soul that which the cry of passion is to the passion itself. The
involuntary movement is, then, an expression of the mind, not by its
nature, but only by its use. And in consequence we are not authorized to
say that the mind is revealed in a voluntary movement; this movement
never expresses more than the substance of the will (the aim), and not
the form of the will (the disposition). The disposition can only
manifest itself to us by concomitant movements.

It follows that we can infer from the words of a man the kind of
character he desires to have attributed to him; but if we desire to know
what is in reality his character we must seek to divine it in the mimic
expression which accompanies his words, and in his gestures, that is to
say, in the movements which he did not desire. If we perceive that this
man wills even the expression of his features, from the instant we have
made this discovery we cease to believe in his physiognomy and to see in
it an indication of his sentiments.

It is true that a man, by dint of art and of study, can at last arrive at
this result, to subdue to his will even the concomitant movements; and,
like a clever juggler, to shape according to his pleasure such or such a
physiognomy upon the mirror from which his soul is reflected through
mimic action. But then, with such a man all is dissembling, and art
entirely absorbs nature. The true grace, on the contrary, ought always
to be pure nature, that is to say, involuntary (or at least appear to be
so), to be graceful. The subject even ought not to appear to know that
it possesses grace.

By which we can also see incidentally what we must think of grace, either
imitated or learned (I would willingly call it theatrical grace, or the
grace of the dancing-master). It is the pendant of that sort of beauty
which a woman seeks from her toilet-table, reinforced with rouge, white
paint, false ringlets, pads, and whalebone. Imitative grace is to true
grace what beauty of toilet is to architectonic beauty. One and the
other could act in absolutely the same manner upon the senses badly
exercised, as the original of which they wish to be the imitation; and at
times even, if much art is put into it, they might create an illusion to
the connoisseur. But there will be always some indication through which
the intention and constraint will betray it in the end, and this
discovery will lead inevitably to indifference, if not even to contempt
and disgust. If we are warned that the architectonic beauty is
factitious, at once, the more it has borrowed from a nature which is not
its own, the more it loses in our eyes of that which belongs to humanity
(so far as it is phenomenal), and then we, who forbid the renunciation
lightly of an accidental advantage, how can we see with pleasure or even
with indifference an exchange through which man sacrifices a part of his
proper nature in order to substitute elements taken from inferior nature?
How, even supposing we could forgive the illusion produced, how could we
avoid despising the deception? If we are told that grace is artificial,
our heart at once closes; our soul, which at first advanced with so much
vivacity to meet the graceful object, shrinks back. That which was mind
has suddenly become matter. Juno and her celestial beauty has vanished,
and in her place there is nothing but a phantom of vapour.

Although grace ought to be, or at least ought to appear, something
involuntary, still we seek it only in the movements that depend more or
less on the will. I know also that grace is attributed to a certain
mimic language, and we say a pleasing smile, a charming blush, though the
smile and the blush are sympathetic movements, not determined by the
will, but by moral sensibility. But besides that, the first of these
movements is, after all, in our power, and that it is not shown that in
the second there is, properly speaking, any grace, it is right to say, in
general, that most frequently when grace appears it is on the occasion of
a voluntary movement. Grace is desired both in language and in song; it
is asked for in the play of the eyes and of the mouth, in the movements
of the hands and the arms whenever these movements are free and
voluntary; it is required in the walk, in the bearing, and attitude, in a
word, in all exterior demonstrations of man, so far as they depend on his
will. As to the movements which the instinct of nature produces in us,
or which an overpowering affection excites, or, so to speak, is lord
over; that which we ask of these movements, in origin purely physical,
is, as we shall see presently, quite another thing than grace. These
kinds of movements belong to nature, and not to the person, but it is
from the person alone, as we have seen, that all grace issues.

If, then, grace is a property that we demand only from voluntary
movements, and if, on the other hand, all voluntary element should be
rigorously excluded from grace, we have no longer to seek it but in that
portion of the intentional movements to which the intention of the
subject is unknown, but which, however, does not cease to answer in the
soul to a moral cause.

We now know in what kind of movements he must ask for grace; but we know
nothing more, and a movement can have these different characters, without
on that account being graceful; it is as yet only speaking (or mimic).

I call speaking (in the widest sense of the word) every physical
phenomenon which accompanies and expresses a certain state of the soul;
thus, in this acceptation, all the sympathetic movements are speaking,
including those which accompany the simple affections of the animal
sensibility.

The aspect, even, under which the animals present themselves, can be
speaking, as soon as they outwardly show their inward dispositions. But,
with them, it is nature alone which speaks, and NOT LIBERTY. By the
permanent configuration of animals through their fixed and architectonic
features, nature expresses the aim she proposed in creating them; by
their mimic traits she expresses the want awakened and the want
satisfied. Necessity reigns in the animal as well as in the plant,
without meeting the obstacle of a person. The animals have no
individuality farther than each of them is a specimen by itself of a
general type of nature, and the aspect under which they present
themselves at such or such an instant of their duration is only a
particular example of the accomplishment of the views of nature under
determined natural conditions.

To take the word in a more restricted sense, the configuration of man
alone is speaking, and it is itself so only in those of the phenomena
that accompany and express the state of its moral sensibility.

I say it is only in this sort of phenomena; for, in all the others, man
is in the same rank as the rest of sensible beings. By the permanent
configuration of man, by his architectonic features, nature only
expresses, just as in the animals and other organic beings, her own
intention. It is true the intention of nature may go here much further,
and the means she employs to reach her end may offer in their combination
more of art and complication; but all that ought to be placed solely to
the account of nature, and can confer no advantage on man himself.

In the animal, and in the plant, nature gives not only the destination;
she acts herself and acts alone in the accomplishment of her ends. In
man, nature limits herself in marking her views; she leaves to himself
their accomplishment, it is this alone that makes of him a man.

Alone of all known beings--man, in his quality of person, has the
privilege to break the chain of necessity by his will, and to determine
in himself an entire series of fresh spontaneous phenomena. The act by
which he thus determines himself is properly that which we call an
action, and the things that result from this sort of action are what we
exclusively name his acts. Thus man can only show his personality by his
own acts.

The configuration of the animal not only expresses the idea of his
destination, but also the relation of his present state with this
destination. And as in the animal it is nature which determines and at
the same time accomplishes its destiny, the configuration of the animal
can never express anything else than the work of nature.

If then nature, whilst determining the destiny of man, abandons to the
will of man himself the care to accomplish it, the relation of his
present state with his destiny cannot be a work of nature, but ought to
be the work of the person; it follows, that all in the configuration
which expresses this relation will belong, not to nature, but to the
person, that is to say, will be considered as a personal expression; if
then, the architectonic part of his configuration tells us the views that
nature proposed to herself in creating him, the mimic part of his face
reveals what he has himself done for the accomplishment of these views.

It is not then enough for us, when there is question of the form of man,
to find in it the expression of humanity in general, or even of that
which nature has herself contributed to the individual in particular, in
order to realize the human type in it; for he would have that in common
with every kind of technical configuration. We expect something more of
his face; we desire that it reveal to us at the same time, up to what
point man himself, in his liberty, has contributed towards the aim of
nature; in other words, we desire that his face bear witness to his
character. In the first case we see that nature proposed to create in
him a man; but it is in the second case only that we can judge if he has
become so in reality.

Thus, the face of a man is truly his own only inasmuch as his face is
mimic; but also all that is mimic in his face is entirely his own. For,
if we suppose the case in which the greatest part, and even the totality,
of these mimic features express nothing more than animal sensations or
instincts, and, in consequence, would show nothing more than the animal
in him, it would still remain that it was in his destiny and in his power
to limit, by his liberty, his sensuous nature. The presence of these
kinds of traits clearly witness that he has not made use of this faculty.
We see by that he has not accomplished his destiny, and in this sense
his face is speaking; it is still a moral expression, the same as the
non-accomplishment of an act commanded by duty is likewise a sort of
action.

We must distinguish from these speaking features which are always an
expression of the soul, the features non-speaking or dumb, which are
exclusively the work of plastic nature, and which it impresses on the
human face when it acts independently of all influence of the soul. I
call them dumb, because, like incomprehensible figures put there by
nature, they are silent upon the character.
They mark only distinctive
properties attributed by nature to all the kind; and if at times they are
sufficient to distinguish the individual, they at least never express
anything of the person.

These features are by no means devoid of signification for the
physiognomies, because the physiognomies not only studies that which man
has made of his being, but also that which nature has done for him and
against him.

It is not also easy to determine with precision where the dumb traits or
features end, where the speaking traits commence. The plastic forces on
one side, with their uniform action, and, on the other, the affections
which depend on no law, dispute incessantly the ground; and that which
nature, in its dumb and indefatigable activity, has succeeded in raising
up, often is overturned by liberty, as a river that overflows and spreads
over its banks: the mind when it is gifted with vivacity acquires
influence over all the movements of the body, and arrives at last
indirectly to modify by force the sympathetic play as far as the
architectonic and fixed forms of nature, upon which the will has no hold.
In a man thus constituted it becomes at last characteristic; and it is
that which we can often observe upon certain heads which a long life,
strange accidents, and an active mind have moulded and worked. In these
kinds of faces there is only the generic character which belongs to
plastic nature; all which here forms individuality is the act of the
person himself, and it is this which causes it to be said, with much
reason, that those faces are all soul.

Look at that man, on the contrary, who has made for himself a mechanical
existence, those disciples of the rule. The rule can well calm the
sensuous nature, but not awaken human nature, the superior faculties:
look at those flat and inexpressive physiognomies; the finger of nature
has alone left there its impression; a soul inhabits these bodies, but it
is a sluggish soul, a discreet guest, and, as a peaceful and silent
neighbour who does not disturb the plastic force at its work, left to
itself. Never a thought which requires an effort, never a movement of
passion, hurries the calm cadence of physical life. There is no danger
that the architectonic features ever become changed by the play of
voluntary movements, and never would liberty trouble the functions of
vegetative life. As the profound calm of the mind does not bring about a
notable degeneracy of forces, the expense would never surpass the
receipts; it is rather the animal economy which would always be in
excess. In exchange for a certain sum of well-being which it throws as
bait, the mind makes itself the servant, the punctual major-domo of
physical nature, and places all his glory in keeping his books in order.
Thus will be accomplished that which organic nature can accomplish; thus
will the work of nutrition and of reproduction prosper. So happy a
concord between animal nature and the will cannot but be favorable to
architectonic beauty, and it is there that we can observe this beauty in
all its purity. But the general forces of nature, as every one knows,
are eternally at warfare with the particular or organic forces, and,
however cleverly balanced is the technique of a body, the cohesion and
the weight end always by getting the upper hand. Also architectonic
beauty, so far as it is a simple production of nature, has its fixed
periods, its blossoming, its maturity, and its decline--periods the
revolution of which can easily be accelerated, but not retarded in any
case, by the play of the will, and this is the way in which it most
frequently finishes; little by little matter takes the upper hand over
form, and the plastic principle, which vivified the being, prepares for
itself its tomb under the accumulation of matter.

However, although no dumb trait, considered in an isolated point of view,
can be an expression of the mind, a face composed entirely of these kinds
of features can be characterized in its entireness by precisely the same
reason as a face which is speaking only as an expression of sensuous
nature can be nevertheless characteristic. I mean to say that the mind
is obliged to exercise its activity and to feel conformably to its moral
nature, and it accuses itself and betrays its fault when the face which
it animates shows no trace of this moral activity. If, therefore, the
pure and beautiful expression of the destination of man, which is marked
in his architectonic structure, penetrates us with satisfaction and
respect for the sovereign, reason, who is the author of it, at all events
these two sentiments will not be for us without mixture but in as far as
we see in man a simple creation of nature. But if we consider in him the
moral person, we have a right to demand of his face an expression of the
person, and if this expectation is deceived contempt will infallibly
follow. Simply organic beings have a right to our respect as creatures;
man cannot pretend to it but in the capacity of creator, that is to say,
as being himself the determiner of his own condition. He ought not only,
as the other sensuous creatures, to reflect the rays of a foreign
intelligence, were it even the divine intelligence; man ought, as a sun,
to shine by his own light.

Thus we require of man a speaking expression as soon as he becomes
conscious of his moral destiny; but we desire at the same time that this
expression speak to his advantage, that is to say, it marks in him
sentiments conformable to his moral destiny, and a superior moral
aptitude. This is what reason requires in the human face.

But, on the other side, man, as far as he is a phenomenon, is an object
of sense; there, where the moral sentiment is satisfied, the aesthetic
sentiment does not understand its being made a sacrifice, and the
conformity with an idea ought not to lessen the beauty of the phenomenon.
Thus, as much as reason requires an expression of the morality of the
subject in the human face, so much, and with no less rigor, does the eye
demand beauty. As these two requirements, although coming from the
principles of the appreciation of different degrees, address themselves
to the same object, also both one and the other must be given
satisfaction by one and the same cause. The disposition of the soul
which places man in the best state for accomplishing his moral destiny
ought to give place to an expression that will be at the same time the
most advantageous to his beauty as phenomenon; in other terms, his moral
exercise ought to be revealed by grace.

But a great difficulty now presents itself from the idea alone of the
expressive movements which bear witness to the morality of the subject:
it appears that the cause of these movements is necessarily a moral
cause, a principle which resides beyond the world of sense; and from the
sole idea of beauty it is not less evident that its principle is purely
sensuous, and that it ought to be a simple effect of nature, or at the
least appear to be such. But if the ultimate reason of the movements
which offer a moral expression is necessarily without, and the ultimate
reason of the beautiful necessarily within, the sensuous world, it
appears that grace, which ought to unite both of them, contains a
manifest contradiction.

To avoid this contradiction we must admit that the moral cause, which in
our soul is the foundation of grace, brings, in a necessary manner, in
the sensibility which depends on that cause, precisely that state which
contains in itself the natural conditions of beauty. I will explain.
The beautiful, as each sensuous phenomenon, supposes certain conditions,
and, in as far as it is beautiful, these are purely conditions of the
senses; well, then, in that the mind (in virtue of a law that we cannot
fathom), from the state in which it is, itself prescribes to physical
nature which accompanies it, its own state, and in that the state of
moral perfection is precisely in it the most favorable for the
accomplishment of the physical conditions of beauty, it follows that it
is the mind which renders beauty possible; and there its action ends.
But whether real beauty comes forth from it, that depends upon the
physical conditions alluded to, and is consequently a free effect of
nature. Therefore, as it cannot be said that nature is properly free in
the voluntary movements, in which it is employed but as a means to attain
an end, and as, on the other side, it cannot be said that it is free in
its involuntary movements, which express the moral, the liberty with
which it manifests itself, dependent as it is on the will of the subject,
must be a concession that the mind makes to nature; and, consequently, it
can be said that grace is a favor in which the moral has desired to
gratify the sensuous element; the same as the architectonic beauty may be
considered as nature acquiescing to the technical form.

May I be permitted a comparison to clear up this point? Let us suppose a
monarchical state administered in such a way that, although all goes on
according to the will of one person, each citizen could persuade himself
that he governs and obeys only his own inclination, we should call that
government a liberal government.

But we should look twice before we should thus qualify a government in
which the chief makes his will outweigh the wishes of the citizens, or a
government in which the will of the citizens outweighs that of the chief.
In the first case, the government would be no more liberal; in the
second, it would not be a government at all.

It is not difficult to make application of these examples to what the
human face could be under the government of the mind. If the mind is
manifested in such a way through the sensuous nature subject to its
empire that it executes its behests with the most faithful exactitude, or
expresses its sentiments in the most perfectly speaking manner, without
going in the least against that which the aesthetic sense demands from it
as a phenomenon, then we shall see produced that which we call grace.
But this is far from being grace, if mind is manifested in a constrained
manner by the sensuous nature, or if sensuous nature acting alone in all
liberty the expression of moral nature was absent. In the first case
there would not be beauty; in the second the beauty would be devoid of
play.

The super-sensuous cause, therefore, the cause of which the principle is
in the soul, can alone render grace speaking, and it is the purely
sensuous cause having its principle in nature which alone can render it
beautiful. We are not more authorized in asserting that mind engenders
beauty than we should be, in the former example, in maintaining that the
chief of the state produces liberty; because we can indeed leave a man in
his liberty, but not give it to him.

But just as when a people feels itself free under the constraint of a
foreign will, it is in a great degree due to the sentiments animating the
prince; and as this liberty would run great risks if the prince took
opposite sentiments, so also it is in the moral dispositions of the mind
which suggests them that we must seek the beauty of free movements. And
now the question which is presented is this one: What then are the
conditions of personal morality which assure the utmost amount of liberty
to the sensuous instruments of the will? and what are the moral
sentiments which agree the best in their expression with the beautiful?

That which is evident is that neither the will, in the intentional
movement, nor the passion, in the sympathetic movement, ought to act as a
force with regard to the physical nature which is subject to it, in order
that this, in obeying it, may have beauty. In truth, without going
further, common sense considers ease to be the first requisite of grace.
It is not less evident that, on another side, nature ought not to act as
a force with regard to mind, in order to give occasion for a fine moral
expression; for there, where physical nature commands alone, it is
absolutely necessary that the character of the man should vanish.

We can conceive three sorts of relation of man with himself: I mean the
sensuous part of man with the reasonable part. From these three
relations we have to seek which is that one which best suits him in the
sensuous world, and the expression of which constitutes the beautiful.
Either man enforces silence upon the exigencies of his sensuous nature,
to govern himself conformably with the superior exigencies of his
reasonable nature; or else, on the contrary, he subjects the reasonable
portion of his being to the sensuous part, reducing himself thus to obey
only the impulses which the necessity of nature imprints upon him, as
well as upon the other phenomena; or lastly, harmony is established
between the impulsions of the one and the laws of the other, and man is
in perfect accord with himself.

If he has the consciousness of his spiritual person, of his pure
autonomy, man rejects all that is sensuous, and it is only when thus
isolated from matter that he feels to the full his moral liberty. But
for that, as his sensuous nature opposes an obstinate and vigorous
resistance to him, he must, on his side, exercise upon it a notable
pressure and a strong effort, without which he could neither put aside
the appetites nor reduce to silence the energetic voice of instinct. A
mind of this quality makes the physical nature which depends on him feel
that it has a master in him, whether it fulfils the orders of the will or
endeavors to anticipate them. Under its stern discipline sensuousness
appears then repressed, and interior resistance will betray itself
exteriorly by the constraint. This moral state cannot, then, be
favorable to beauty, because nature cannot produce the beautiful but as
far as it is free, and consequently that which betrays to us the
struggles of moral liberty against matter cannot either be grace.

If, on the contrary, subdued by its wants, man allows himself to be
governed without reserve by the instinct of nature, it is his interior
autonomy that vanishes, and with it all trace of this autonomy is
exteriorly effaced. The animal nature is alone visible upon his visage;
the eye is watery and languishing, the mouth rapaciously open, the voice
trembling and muffled, the breathing short and rapid, the limbs trembling
with nervous agitation: the whole body by its languor betrays its moral
degradation. Moral force has renounced all resistance, and physical
nature, with such a man, is placed in full liberty. But precisely this
complete abandonment of moral independence, which occurs ordinarily at
the moment of sensuous desire, and more still at the moment of enjoyment,
sets suddenly brute matter at liberty which until then had been kept in
equilibrium by the active and passive forces. The inert forces of nature
commence from thence to gain the upper hand over the living forces of the
organism; the form is oppressed by matter, humanity by common nature.
The eye, in which the soul shone forth, becomes dull, or it protrudes
from its socket with I know not what glassy haggardness; the delicate
pink of the cheeks thickens, and spreads as a coarse pigment in uniform
layers. The mouth is no longer anything but a simple opening, because
its form no longer depends upon the action of forces, but on their
non-resistance; the gasping voice and breathing are no more than an
effort to ease the laborious and oppressed lungs, and which show a simple
mechanical want, with nothing that reveals a soul. In a word, in that
state of liberty which physical nature arrogates to itself from its
chief, we must not think of beauty. Under the empire of the moral agent,
the liberty of form was only restrained, here it is crushed by brutal
matter, which gains as much ground as is abstracted from the will. Man
in this state not only revolts the moral sense, which incessantly claims
of the face an expression of human dignity, but the aesthetic sense,
which is not content with simple matter, and which finds in the form an
unfettered pleasure--the aesthetic sense will turn away with disgust from
such a spectacle, where concupiscence could alone find its gratification.

Of these two relations between the moral nature of man and his physical
nature, the first makes us think of a monarchy, where strict surveillance
of the prince holds in hand all free movement; the second is an
ochlocracy, where the citizen, in refusing to obey his legitimate
sovereign, finds he has liberty quite as little as the human face has
beauty when the moral autonomy is oppressed; nay, on the contrary, just
as the citizens are given over to the brutal despotism of the lowest
classes, so the form is given over here to the despotism of matter. Just
as liberty finds itself between the two extremes of legal oppression and
anarchy, so also we shall find the beautiful between two extremes,
between the expression of dignity which bears witness to the domination
exercised by the mind, and the voluptuous expression which reveals the
domination exercised by instinct.

In other terms, if the beauty of expression is incompatible with the
absolute government of reason over sensuous nature, and with the
government of sensuous nature over the reason, it follows that the third
state (for one could not conceive a fourth)--that in which the reason and
the senses, duty and inclination, are in harmony--will be that in which
the beauty of play is produced. In order that obedience to reason may
become an object of inclination, it must represent for us the principle
of pleasure; for pleasure and pain are the only springs which set the
instincts in motion. It is true that in life it is the reverse that
takes place, and pleasure is ordinarily the motive for which we act
according to reason. If morality itself has at last ceased to hold this
language, it is to the immortal author of the "Critique" to whom we must
offer our thanks; it is to him to whom the glory is due of having
restored the healthy reason in separating it from all systems. But in
the manner in which the principles of this philosopher are ordinarily
expressed by himself and also by others, it appears that the inclination
can never be for the moral sense otherwise than a very suspicious
companion, and pleasure a dangerous auxiliary for moral determinations.
In admitting that the instinct of happiness does not exercise a blind
domination over man, it does not the less desire to interfere in the
moral actions which depend on free arbitration, and by that it changes
the pure action of the will, which ought always to obey the law alone,
never the instinct. Thus, to be altogether sure that the inclination has
not interfered with the demonstrations of the will, we prefer to see it
in opposition rather than in accord with the law of reason; because it
may happen too easily, when the inclination speaks in favor of duty, that
duty draws from the recommendation all its credit over the will. And in
fact, as in practical morals, it is not the conformity of the acts with
the law, but only the conformity of the sentiments with duty, which is
important. We do not attach, and with reason, any value to this
consideration, that it is ordinarily more favorable to the conformity of
acts with the law that inclination is on the side of duty. As a
consequence, this much appears evident: that the assent of sense, if it
does not render suspicious the conformity of the will with duty, at least
does not guarantee it. Thus the sensuous expression of this assent,
expression that grace offers to us, could never bear a sufficient
available witness to the morality of the act in which it is met; and it
is not from that which an action or a sentiment manifests to the eyes by
graceful expression that we must judge of the moral merit of that
sentiment or of that action.

Up to the present time I believe I have been in perfect accord with the
rigorists in morals. I shall not become, I hope, a relaxed moralist in
endeavoring to maintain in the world of phenomena and in the real
fulfilment of the law of duty those rights of sensuous nature which, upon
the ground of pure reason and in the jurisdiction of the moral law, are
completely set aside and excluded.

I will explain. Convinced as I am, and precisely because I am convinced,
that the inclination in associating itself to an act of the will offers
no witness to the pure conformity of this act with the duty, I believe
that we are able to infer from this that the moral perfection of man
cannot shine forth except from this very association of his inclination
with his moral conduct. In fact, the destiny of man is not to accomplish
isolated moral acts, but to be a moral being. That which is prescribed
to him does not consist of virtues, but of virtue, and virtue is not
anything else "than an inclination for duty. " Whatever, then, in the
objective sense, may be the opposition which separates the acts suggested
by the inclination from those which duty determines, we cannot say it is
the same in the subjective sense; and not only is it permitted to man to
accord duty with pleasure, but he ought to establish between them this
accord, he ought to obey his reason with a sentiment of joy. It is not
to throw it off as a burden, nor to cast it off as a too coarse skin.
No, it is to unite it, by a union the most intimate, with his Ego, with
the most noble part of his being, that a sensuous nature has been
associated in him to his purely spiritual nature. By the fact that
nature has made of him a being both at once reasonable and sensuous, that
is to say, a man, it has prescribed to him the obligation not to separate
that which she has united; not to sacrifice in him the sensuous being,
were it in the most pure manifestations of the divine part; and never to
found the triumph of one over the oppression and the ruin of the other.
It is only when he gathers, so to speak, his entire humanity together,
and his way of thinking in morals becomes the result of the united action
of the two principles, when morality has become to him a second nature,
it is then only that it is secure; for, as far as the mind and the duty
are obliged to employ violence, it is necessary that the instinct shall
have force to resist them. The enemy which only is overturned can rise
up again, but the enemy reconciled is truly vanquished. In the moral
philosophy of Kant the idea of duty is proposed with a harshness enough
to ruffle the Graces, and one which could easily tempt a feeble mind to
seek for moral perfection in the sombre paths of an ascetic and monastic
life. Whatever precautions the great philosopher has been able to take
in order to shelter himself against this false interpretation, which must
be repugnant more than all else to the serenity of the free mind, he has
lent it a strong impulse, it seems to me, in opposing to each other by a
harsh contrast the two principles which act upon the human will. Perhaps
it was hardly possible, from the point of view in which he was placed, to
avoid this mistake; but he has exposed himself seriously to it. Upon the
basis of the question there is no longer, after the demonstration he has
given, any discussion possible, at least for the heads which think and
which are quite willing to be persuaded; and I am not at all sure if it
would not be better to renounce at once all the attributes of the human
being than to be willing to reach on this point, by reason, a different
result. But although he began to work without any prejudice when he
searched for the truth, and though all is here explained by purely
objective reasons, it appears that when he put forward the truth once
found he had been guided by a more subjective maxim, which is not
difficult, I believe, to be accounted for by the time and circumstances.

What, in fact, was the moral of his time, either in theory or in its
application? On one side, a gross materialism, of which the shameless
maxims would revolt his soul; impure resting-places offered to the
bastard characters of a century by the unworthy complacency of
philosophers; on the other side, a pretended system of perfectibility,
not less suspicious, which, to realize the chimera of a general
perfection common to the whole universe, would not be embarrassed for a
choice of means. This is what would meet his attention. So he carried
there, where the most pressing danger lay and reform was the most urgent,
the strongest forces of his principles, and made it a law to pursue
sensualism without pity, whether it walks with a bold face, impudently
insulting morality, or dissimulates under the imposing veil of a moral,
praiseworthy end, under which a certain fanatical kind of order know how
to disguise it. He had not to disguise ignorance, but to reform
perversion; for such a cure a violent blow, and not persuasion or
flattery, was necessary; and the more the contrast would be violent
between the true principles and the dominant maxims, the more he would
hope to provoke reflection upon this point. He was the Draco of his
time, because his time seemed to him as yet unworthy to possess a Solon,
neither capable of receiving him. From the sanctuary of pure reason he
drew forth the moral law, unknown then, and yet, in another way, so
known; he made it appear in all its saintliness before a degraded
century, and troubled himself little to know whether there were eyes too
enfeebled to bear the brightness.

But what had the children of the house done for him to have occupied
himself only with the valets? Because strongly impure inclinations often
usurp the name of virtue, was it a reason for disinterested inclinations
in the noblest heart to be also rendered suspicious? Because the moral
epicurean had willingly relaxed the law of reason, in order to fit it as
a plaything to his customs, was it a reason to thus exaggerate harshness,
and to make the fulfilment of duty, which is the most powerful
manifestation of moral freedom, another kind of decorated servitude of a
more specious name? And, in fact, between the esteem and the contempt of
himself has the truly moral man a more free choice than the slave of
sense between pleasure and pain? Is there less of constraint there for a
pure will than here for a depraved will? Must one, by this imperative
form given to the moral law, accuse man and humble him, and make of this
law, which is the most sublime witness of our grandeur, the most crushing
argument for our fragility? Was it possible with this imperative force
to avoid that a prescription which man imposes on himself, as a
reasonable being, and which is obligatory only for him on that account,
and which is conciliatory with the sentiment of his liberty only--that
this prescription, say I, took the appearance of a foreign law, a
positive law, an appearance which could hardly lessen the radical
tendency which we impute to man to react against the law?

It is certainly not an advantage for moral truth to have against itself
sentiments which man can avow without shame. Thus, how can the sentiment
of the beautiful, the sentiment of liberty, accord with the austere mind
of a legislation which governs man rather through fear than trust, which
tends constantly to separate that which nature has united, and which is
reduced to hold us in defiance against a part of our being, to assure its
empire over the rest? Human nature forms a whole more united in reality
than it is permitted to the philosopher, who can only analyze, to allow
it to appear. The reason can never reject as unworthy of it the
affections which the heart recognizes with joy; and there, where man
would be morally fallen, he can hardly rise in his own esteem. If in the
moral order the sensuous nature were only the oppressed party and not an
ally, how could it associate with all the ardor of its sentiments in a
triumph which would be celebrated only over itself? how could it be so
keen a participator in the satisfaction of a pure spirit having
consciousness of itself, if in the end it could not attach itself to the
pure spirit with such closeness that it is not possible even to
intellectual analysis to separate it without violence.

The will, besides, is in more immediate relation with the faculty of
feeling than with the cognitive faculties, and it would be regrettable in
many circumstances if it were obliged, in order to guide itself, to take
advice of pure reason. I prejudge nothing good of a man who dares so
little trust to the voice of instinct that he is obliged each time to
make it appear first before the moral law; he is much more estimable who
abandons himself with a certain security to inclination, without having
to fear being led astray by her. That proves in fact that with him the
two principles are already in harmony--in that harmony which places a
seat upon the perfection of the human being, and which constitutes that
which we understand by a noble soul.

It is said of a man that he has a great soul when the moral sense has
finished assuring itself of all the affections, to the extent of
abandoning without fear the direction of the senses to the will, and
never incurring the risk of finding himself in discord with its
decisions. It follows that in a noble soul it is not this or that
particular action, it is the entire character which is moral. Thus we
can make a merit of none of its actions because the satisfaction of an
instinct could not be meritorious. A noble soul has no other merit than
to be a noble soul. With as great a facility as if the instinct alone
were acting, it accomplishes the most painful duties of humanity, and the
most heroic sacrifice that she obtains over the instinct of nature seems
the effect of the free action of the instinct itself. Also, it has no
idea of the beauty of its act, and it never occurs to it that any other
way of acting could be possible; on the contrary, the moralist formed by
the school and by rule, is always ready at the first question of the
master to give an account with the most rigorous precision of the
conformity of its acts with the moral law. The life of this one is like
a drawing where the pencil has indicated by harsh and stiff lines all
that the rule demands, and which could, if necessary, serve for a student
to learn the elements of art. The life of a noble soul, on the contrary,
is like a painting of Titian; all the harsh outlines are effaced, which
does not prevent the whole face being more true, lifelike and harmonious.

It is then in a noble soul that is found the true harmony between reason
and sense, between inclination and duty, and grace is the expression of
this harmony in the sensuous world. It is only in the service of a noble
soul that nature can at the same time be in possession of its liberty,
and preserve from all alteration the beauty of its forms; for the one,
its liberty would be compromised under the tyranny of an austere soul,
the other, under the anarchical regimen of sensuousness. A noble soul
spreads even over a face in which the architectonic beauty is wanting an
irresistible grace, and often even triumphs over the natural disfavor.
All the movements which proceed from a noble soul are easy, sweet, and
yet animated. The eye beams with serenity as with liberty, and with the
brightness of sentiment; gentleness of heart would naturally give to the
mouth a grace that no affectation, no art, could attain. You trace there
no effort in the varied play of the physiognomy, no constraint in the
voluntary movements--a noble soul knows not constraint; the voice becomes
music, and the limpid stream of its modulations touches the heart. The
beauty of structure can excite pleasure, admiration, astonishment; grace
alone can charm. Beauty has its adorers; grace alone has its lovers: for
we pay our homage to the Creator, and we love man. As a whole, grace
would be met with especially amongst women; beauty, on the contrary, is
met with more frequently in man, and we need not go far without finding
the reason. For grace we require the union of bodily structure, as well
as that of character: the body, by its suppleness, by its promptitude to
receive impressions and to bring them into action; the character, by the
moral harmony of the sentiments. Upon these two points nature has been
more favorable to the woman than to man.

The more delicate structure of the woman receives more rapidly each
impression and allows it to escape as rapidly. It requires a storm to
shake a strong constitution, and when vigorous muscles begin to move we
should not find the ease which is one of the conditions of grace. That
which upon the face of woman is still a beautiful sensation would express
suffering already upon the face of man. Woman has the more tender
nerves; it is a reed which bends under the gentlest breath of passion.
The soul glides in soft and amiable ripples upon her expressive face,
which soon regains the calm and smooth surface of the mirror.

The same also for the character: for that necessary union of the soul
with grace the woman is more happily gifted than man. The character of
woman rises rarely to the supreme ideal of moral purity, and would rarely
go beyond acts of affection; her character would often resist
sensuousness with heroic force. Precisely because the moral nature of
woman is generally on the side of inclination, the effect becomes the
same, in that which touches the sensuous expression of this moral state,
as if the inclination were on the side of duty. Thus grace would be the
expression of feminine virtue, and this expression would often be wanting
in manly virtue.




ON DIGNITY.


As grace is the expression of a noble soul, so is dignity the expression
of elevated feeling.

It has been prescribed to man, it is true, to establish between his two
natures a unison, to form always an harmonious whole, and to act as in
union with his entire humanity. But this beauty of character, this last
fruit of human maturity, is but an ideal to which he ought to force his
conformity with a constant vigilance, but to which, with all his efforts,
he can never attain.

He cannot attain to it because his nature is thus made and it will not
change; the physical conditions of his existence themselves are opposed
to it.

In fact, his existence, so far as he is a sensuous creature, depends on
certain physical conditions; and in order to insure this existence man
ought--because, in his quality of a free being, capable of determining
his modifications by his own will--to watch over his own preservation
himself. Man ought to be made capable of certain acts in order to fulfil
these physical conditions of his existence, and when these conditions are
out of order to re-establish them.

But although nature had to give up to him this care which she reserves
exclusively to herself in those creatures which have only a vegetative
life, still it was necessary that the satisfaction of so essential a
want, in which even the existence of the individual and of the species is
interested, should not be absolutely left to the discretion of man, and
his doubtful foresight. It has then provided for this interest, which in
the foundation concerns it, and it has also interfered with regard to the
form in placing in the determination of free arbitration a principle of
necessity. From that arises natural instinct, which is nothing else than
a principle of physical necessity which acts upon free arbitration by the
means of sensation.

The natural instinct solicits the sensuous faculty through the combined
force of pain and of pleasure: by pain when it asks satisfaction, and by
pleasure when it has found what it asks.

As there is no bargaining possible with physical necessity, man must
also, in spite of his liberty, feel what nature desires him to feel.
According as it awakens in him a painful or an agreeable sensation, there
will infallibly result in him either aversion or desire. Upon this point
man quite resembles the brute; and the stoic, whatever his power of soul,
is not less sensible of hunger, and has no less aversion to it, than the
worm that crawls at his feet.

But here begins the great difference: with the lower creature action
succeeds to desire or aversion quite as of necessity, as the desire to
the sensation, and the expression to the external impression. It is here
a perpetual circle, a chain, the links of which necessarily join one to
the other. With man there is one more force--the will, which, as a
super-sensuous faculty, is not so subject to the law of nature, nor that
of reason, that he remains without freedom to choose, and to guide
himself according to this or to that. The animal cannot do otherwise
than seek to free itself from pain; man can decide to suffer.

The will of man is a privilege, a sublime idea, even when we do not
consider the moral use that he can make of it. But firstly, the animal
nature must be in abeyance before approaching the other, and from that
cause it is always a considerable step towards reaching the moral
emancipation of the will to have conquered in us the necessity of nature,
even in indifferent things, by the exercise in us of the simple will.

The jurisdiction of nature extends as far as the will, but there it
stops, and the empire of reason commences. Placed between these two
jurisdictions, the will is absolutely free to receive the law from one
and the other; but it is not in the same relation with one and the other.
Inasmuch as it is a natural force it is equally free with regard to
nature and with respect to reason; I mean to say it is not forced to pass
either on the side of one or of the other: but as far as it is a moral
faculty it is not free; I mean that it ought to choose the law of reason.
It is not chained to one or the other, but it is obliged towards the law
of reason. The will really then makes use of its liberty even whilst it
acts contrary to reason: but it makes use of it unworthily, because,
notwithstanding its liberty, it is no less under the jurisdiction of
nature, and adds no real action to the operation of pure instinct; for to
will by virtue of desire is only to desire in a different way.

There may be conflict between the law of nature, which works in us
through the instinct, and the law of reason, which comes out of
principles, when the instinct, to satisfy itself, demands of us an action
which disgusts our moral sense. It is, then, the duty of the will to
make the exigencies of the instinct give way to reason. Whilst the laws
of nature oblige the will only conditionally, the laws of reason oblige
absolutely and without conditions.

But nature obstinately maintains her rights, and as it is never by the
result of free choice that she solicits us, she also does not withdraw
any of her exigencies as long as she has not been satisfied. Since, from
the first cause which gave the impulsion to the threshold of the will
where its jurisdiction ends, all in her is rigorously necessary,
consequently she can neither give way nor go back, but must always go
forward and press more and more the will on which depends the
satisfaction of her wants. Sometimes, it is true, we could say that
nature shortens her road and acts immediately as a cause for the
satisfaction of her needs without having in the first instance carried
her request before the will. In such a case, that is to say, if man not
simply allowed instinct to follow a free course, but if instinct took
this course of itself, man would be no more than the brute. But it is
very doubtful whether this case would ever present itself, and if ever it
were really presented it would remain to be seen whether we should not
blame the will itself for this blind power which the instinct would have
usurped.

Thus the appetitive faculty claims with persistence the satisfaction of
its wants, and the will is solicited to procure it; but the will should
receive from the reason the motives by which she determines. What does
the reason permit? What does she prescribe? This is what the will
should decide upon. Well, then, if the will turns towards the reason
before consenting to the request of the instinct, it is properly a moral
act; but if it immediately decides, without consulting the reason, it is
a physical act.

Every time, then, that nature manifests an exigence and seeks to draw the
will along with it by the blind violence of affective movement, it is the
duty of the will to order nature to halt until reason has pronounced.
The sentence which reason pronounces, will it be favorable or the
contrary to the interest of sensuousness? This is, up to the present
time, what the will does not know. Also it should observe this conduct
for all the affective movements without exception, and when it is nature
which has spoken the first, never allow it to act as an immediate cause.
Man would testify only by that to his independence. It is when, by an
act of his will, he breaks the violence of his desires, which hasten
towards the object which should satisfy them, and would dispense entirely
with the co-operation of the will,--it is only then that he reveals
himself in quality of a moral being, that is to say, as a free agent,
which does not only allow itself to experience either aversion or desire,
but which at all times must will his aversions and his desires.

But this act of taking previously the advice of reason is already an
attempt against nature, who is a competent judge in her own cause, and
who will not allow her sentences to be submitted to a new and strange
jurisdiction; this act of the will which thus brings the appetitive
faculty before the tribunal of reason is then, in the proper acceptation
of the word, an act against nature, in that it renders accidental that
which is necessary, in that it attributes to the laws of reason the right
to decide in a cause where the laws of nature can alone pronounce, and
where they have pronounced effectively. Just, in fact, as the reason in
the exercise of its moral jurisdiction is little troubled to know if the
decisions it can come to will satisfy or not the sensuous nature, so the
sensuous in the exercise of the right which is proper to it does not
trouble itself whether its decisions would satisfy pure reason or not.
Each is equally necessary, though different in necessity, and this
character of necessity would be destroyed if it were permitted for one to
modify arbitrarily the decisions of the other. This is why the man who
has the most moral energy cannot, whatever resistance he opposes to
instinct, free himself from sensuousness, or stifle desire, but can only
deny it an influence upon the decisions of his will; he can disarm
instinct by moral means, but he cannot appease it but by natural means.
By his independent force he may prevent the laws of nature from
exercising any constraint over his will, but he can absolutely change
nothing of the laws themselves.

Thus in the affective movements in which nature (instinct) acts the first
and seeks to do without the will, or to draw it violently to its side,
the morality of character cannot manifest itself but by its resistance,
and there is but one means of preventing the instinct from restraining
the liberty of the will: it is to restrain the instinct itself. Thus we
can only have agreement between the law of reason and the affective
phenomena, under the condition of putting both in discord with the
exigencies of instinct.