No More Learning

Each of these works
may be entitled to admiration in the circle to which it belongs; and more
than this, both, fundamentally, may be quite of equal value; but it would
be requiring an impossibility to expect that the work which demands all
the application of the thinker should at the same time offer an easy
recreation to the man who is only a fine wit.

For the same reason I consider that it is hurtful to choose for the
instruction of youth books in which scientific matters are clothed in an
attractive style. I do not speak here of those in which the substance is
sacrificed to the form, but of certain writings really excellent, which
are sufficiently well digested to stand the strictest examination, but
which do not offer their proofs by their very form. No doubt books of
this kind attain their end, they are read; but this is always at the cost
of a more important end, the end for which they ought to be read. In
this sort of reading the understanding is never exercised save in as far
as it agrees with the fancy; it does not learn to distinguish the form
from the substance, nor to act alone as pure understanding. And yet the
exercise of the pure understanding is in itself an essential and capital
point in the instruction of youth; and very often the exercise itself of
thought is much more important than the object on which it is exercised.
If you wish for a matter to be done seriously, be very careful not to
announce it as a diversion. It is preferable, on the contrary, to secure
attention and effort by the very form that is employed, and to use a kind
of violence to draw minds over from the passive to an active state. The
professor ought never to hide from his pupil the exact regularity of the
method; he ought rather to fix his attention on it, and if possible to
make him desire this strictness. The student ought to learn to pursue an
end, and in the interest of that end to put up with a difficult process.
He ought early to aspire to that loftier satisfaction which is the reward
of exertion. In a scientific lecture the senses are altogether set
aside; in an aesthetic address it is wished to interest them. What is
the result? A writing or conversation of the aesthetic class is devoured
with interest; but questions are put as to its conclusions; the hearer is
scarcely able to give an answer. And this is quite natural, as here the
conceptions reach the mind only in entire masses, and the understanding
only knows what it analyzes. The mind during a lecture of this kind is
more passive than active, and the intellect only possesses what it has
produced by its own activity.

However, all this applies only to the vulgarly beautiful, and to a vulgar
fashion of perceiving beauty. True beauty reposes on the strictest
limitation, on the most exact definition, on the highest and most
intimate necessity. Only this limitation ought rather to let itself be
sought for than be imposed violently. It requires the most perfect
conformity to law, but this must appear quite natural. A product that
unites these conditions will fully satisfy the understanding as soon as
study is made of it. But exactly because this result is really
beautiful, its conformity is not expressed; it does not take the
understanding apart to address it exclusively; it is a harmonious unity
which addresses the entire man--all his faculties together; it is nature
speaking to nature.

A vulgar criticism may perhaps find it empty, paltry, and too little
determined. He who has no other knowledge than that of distinguishing,
and no other sense than that for the particular, is actually pained by
what is precisely the triumph of art, this harmonious unity where the
parts are blended in a pure entirety. No doubt it is necessary, in a
philosophical discourse, that the understanding, as a faculty of
analysis, find what will satisfy it; it must obtain single concrete
results; this is the essential that must not by any means be lost sight
of. But if the writer, while giving all possible precision to the
substance of his conceptions, has taken the necessary measures to enable
the understanding, as soon as it will take the trouble, to find of
necessity these truths, I do not see that he is a less good writer
because he has approached more to the highest perfection. Nature always
acts as a harmonious unity, and when she loses this in her efforts after
abstraction, nothing appears more urgent to her than to re-establish it,
and the writer we are speaking of is not less commendable if he obeys
nature by attaching to the understanding what had been separated by
abstraction, and when, by appealing at the same time to the sensuous and
to the spiritual faculties, he addresses altogether the entire man. No
doubt the vulgar critic will give very scant thanks to this writer for
having given him a double task. For vulgar criticism has not the feeling
for this harmony, it only runs after details, and even in the Basilica of
St. Peter would exclusively attend to the pillars on which the ethereal
edifice reposes. The fact is that this critic must begin by translating
it to understand it--in the same way that the pure understanding, left to
itself, if it meets beauty and harmony, either in nature or in art, must
begin by transferring them into its own language--and by decomposing it,
by doing in fact what the pupil does who spells before reading. But it
is not from the narrow mind of his readers that the writer who expresses
his conceptions in the language of the beautiful receives his laws. The
ideal which he carries in himself is the goal at which he aims without
troubling himself as to who follows and who remains behind. Many will
stay behind; for if it be a rare thing to find readers simply capable of
thinking, it is infinitely more rare to meet any who can think with
imagination. Thus our writer, by the force of circumstances, will fall
out, on the one hand, with those who have only intuitive ideas and
feelings, for he imposes on them a painful task by forcing them to think;
and, on the other hand, he aggravates those who only know how to think,
for he asks of them what is absolutely impossible--to give a living,
animated form to conception. But as both only represent true humanity
very imperfectly--that normal humanity which requires the absolute
harmony of these two operations--their contradictory objections have no
weight, and if their judgments prove anything, it is rather that the
author has succeeded in attaining his end. The abstract thinker finds
that the substance of the work is solidly thought; the reader of
intuitive ideas finds his style lively and animated; both consequently
find and approve in him what they are able to understand, and that alone
is wanting which exceeds their capacity.

But precisely for this very reason a writer of this class is not adapted
to make known to an ignorant reader the object of what he treats, or, in
the most proper sense of the word, to teach. Happily also, he is not
required for that, for means will not be wanting for the teaching of
scholars. The professor in the strictest acceptation is obliged to bind
himself to the needs of his scholars; the first thing he has to
presuppose is the ignorance of those who listen to him; the other, on the
other hand, demands a certain maturity and culture in his reader or
audience. Nor is his office confined to impart to them dead ideas; he
grasps the living object with a living energy, and seizes at once on the
entire man--his understanding, his heart, and his will.

We have found that it is dangerous for the soundness of knowledge to give
free scope to the exigencies of taste in teaching, properly so called.
But this does not mean by any means that the culture of this faculty in
the student is a premature thing. He must, on the contrary, be
encouraged to apply the knowledge that he has appropriated in the school
to the field of living development. When once the first point has been
observed, and the knowledge acquired, the other point, the exercise of
taste, can only have useful results. It is certain that it is necessary
to be quite the master of a truth to abandon without danger the form in
which it has been found; a great strength of understanding is required
not to lose sight of your object while giving free play to the
imagination. He who transmits his knowledge under a scholastic form
persuades me, I admit, that he has grasped these truths properly and that
he knows how to support them. But he who besides this is in a condition
to communicate them to me in a beautiful form not only proves that he is
adapted to promulgate them, he shows moreover that he has assimilated
them and that he is able to make their image pass into his productions
and into his acts. There is for the results of thought only one way by
which they can penetrate into the will and pass into life; that is, by
spontaneous imagination, only what in ourselves was already a living act
can become so out of us; and the same thing happens with the creations of
the mind as with those of organic nature, that the fruit issues only from
the flower. If we consider how many truths were living and active as
interior intuitions before philosophy showed their existence, and how
many truths most firmly secured by proofs often remain inactive on the
will and the feelings, it will be seen how important it is for practical
life to follow in this the indications of nature, and when we have
acquired a knowledge scientifically to bring it back again to the state
of a living intuition. It is the only way to enable those whose nature
has forbidden them to follow the artificial path of science to share in
the treasures of wisdom. The beautiful renders us here in relation with
knowledge what, in morals, it does in relation with conduct; it places
men in harmony on results, and on the substance of things, who would
never have agreed on the form and principles.

The other sex, by its very nature and fair destiny, cannot and ought not
to rival ours in scientific knowledge; but it can share truth with us by
the reproduction of things. Man agrees to have his taste offended,
provided compensation be given to his understanding by the increased
value of its possessions. But women do not forgive negligence in form,
whatever be the nature of the conception; and the inner structure of all
their being gives them the right to show a strict severity on this point.
The fair sex, even if it did not rule by beauty, would still be entitled
to its name because it is ruled by beauty, and makes all objects
presented to it appear before the tribunal of feeling, and all that does
not speak to feeling or belies it is lost in the opinion of women. No
doubt through this medium nothing can be made to reach the mind of woman
save the matter of truth, and not truth itself, which is inseparable from
its proofs. But happily woman only needs the matter of truth to reach
her highest perfection, and the few exceptions hitherto seen are not of a
nature to make us wish that the exception should become the rule. As,
therefore, nature has not only dispensed but cut off the other sex from
this task, man must give a double attention to it if he wishes to vie
with woman and be equal to her in what is of great interest in human
life. Consequently he will try to transfer all that he can from the
field of abstraction, where he is master, to that of imagination, of
feeling, where woman is at once a model and a judge. The mind of woman
being a ground that does not admit of durable cultivation, he will try to
make his own ground yield as many flowers and as much fruit as possible,
so as to renew as often as possible the quickly-fading produce on the
other ground, and to keep up a sort of artificial harvest where natural
harvests could not ripen. Taste corrects or hides the natural
differences of the two sexes. It nourishes and adorns the mind of woman
with the productions of that of man, and allows the fair sex to feel
without being previously fatigued by thought, and to enjoy pleasures
without having bought them with labors. Thus, save the restrictions I
have named, it is to the taste that is intrusted the care of form in
every statement by which knowledge is communicated, but under the express
condition that it will not encroach on the substance of things. Taste
must never forget that it carries out an order emanating elsewhere, and
that it is not its own affairs it is treating of. All its parts must be
limited to place our minds in a condition favorable to knowledge; over
all that concerns knowledge itself it has no right to any authority. For
it exceeds its mission, it betrays it, it disfigures the object that it
ought faithfully to transmit, it lays claim to authority out of its
proper province; if it tries to carry out there, too, its own law, which
is nothing but that of pleasing the imagination and making itself
agreeable to the intuitive faculties; if it applies this law not only to
the operation, but also to the matter itself; if it follows this rule not
only to arrange the materials, but also to choose them. When this is the
case the first consideration is not the things themselves, but the best
mode of presenting them so as to recommend them to the senses. The
logical sequence of conceptions of which only the strictness should have
been hidden from us is rejected as a disagreeable impediment. Perfection
is sacrificed to ornament, the truth of the parts to the beauty of the
whole, the inmost nature of things to the exterior impression. Now,
directly the substance is subordinated to form, properly speaking it
ceases to exist; the statement is empty, and instead of having extended
our knowledge we have only indulged in an amusing game.

The writers who have more wit than understanding and more taste than
science, are too often guilty of this deception; and readers more
accustomed to feel than to think are only too inclined to forgive them.
In general it is unsafe to give to the aesthetical sense all its culture
before having exercised the understanding as the pure thinking faculty,
and before having enriched the head with conceptions; for as taste always
looks at the carrying out and not at the basis of things, wherever it
becomes the only arbiter, there is an end of the essential difference
between things. Men become indifferent to reality, and they finish by
giving value to form and appearance only.

Hence arises that superficial and frivolous bel-esprit that we often see
hold sway in social conditions and in circles where men pride themselves,
and not unreasonably, on the finest culture. It is a fatal thing to
introduce a young man into assemblies where the Graces hold sway before
the Muses have dismissed him and owned his majority. Moreover, it can
hardly be prevented that what completes the external education of a young
man whose mind is ripe turns him who is not ripened by study into a fool.
I admit that to have a fund of conceptions, and not form, is only a half
possession. For the most splendid knowledge in a head incapable of
giving them form is like a treasure buried in the earth. But form
without substance is a shadow of riches, and all possible cleverness in
expression is of no use to him who has nothing to express.

Thus, to avoid the graces of education leading us in a wrong road, taste
must be confined to regulating the external form, while reason and
experience determine the substance and the essence of conceptions. If
the impression made on the senses is converted into a supreme criterion,
and if things are exclusively referred to sensation, man will never cease
to be in the service of matter; he will never clear a way for his
intelligence; in short, reason will lose in freedom in proportion as it
allows imagination to usurp undue influence.

The beautiful produces its effect by mere intuition; the truth demands
study. Accordingly, the man who among all his faculties has only
exercised the sense of the beautiful is satisfied even when study is
absolutely required, with a superficial view of things; and he fancies he
can make a mere play of wit of that which demands a serious effort. But
mere intuition cannot give any result. To produce something great it is
necessary to enter into the fundamental nature of things, to distinguish
them strictly, to associate them in different manners, and study them
with a steady attention. Even the artist and the poet, though both of
them labor to procure us only the pleasure of intuition, can only by most
laborious and engrossing study succeed in giving us a delightful
recreation by their works.

I believe this to be the test to distinguish the mere dilettante from the
artist of real genius. The seductive charm exercised by the sublime and
the beautiful, the fire which they kindle in the young imagination, the
apparent ease with which they place the senses under an illusion, have
often persuaded inexperienced minds to take in hand the palette or the
harp, and to transform into figures or to pour out in melody what they
felt living in their heart. Misty ideas circulate in their heads, like a
world in formation, and make them believe that they are inspired. They
take obscurity for depth, savage vehemence for strength, the undetermined
for the infinite, what has not senses for the super-sensuous. And how
they revel in these creations of their brain! But the judgment of the
connoisseur does not confirm this testimony of an excited self-love.
With his pitiless criticism he dissipates all the prestige of the
imagination and of its dreams, and carrying the torch before these
novices he leads them into the mysterious depths of science and life,
where, far from profane eyes, the source of all true beauty flows ever
towards him who is initiated. If now a true genius slumbers in the young
aspirant, no doubt his modesty will at first receive a shock; but soon
the consciousness of real talent will embolden him for the trial. If
nature has endowed him with gifts for plastic art, he will study the
structure of man with the scalpel of the anatomist; he will descend into
the lowest depths to be true in representing surfaces, and he will
question the whole race in order to be just to the individual. If he is
born to be a poet, he examines humanity in his own heart to understand
the infinite variety of scenes in which it acts on the vast theatre of
the world. He subjects imagination and its exuberant fruitfulness to the
discipline of taste, and charges the understanding to mark out in its
cool wisdom the banks that should confine the raging waters of
inspiration. He knows full well that the great is only formed of the
little--from the imperceptible. He piles up, grain by grain, the
materials of the wonderful structure, which, suddenly disclosed to our
eyes, produces a startling effect and turns our head. But if nature has
only intended him for a dilettante, difficulties damp his impotent zeal,
and one of two things happens: either he abandons, if he is modest, that
to which he was diverted by a mistaken notion of his vocation; or, if he
has no modesty, he brings back the ideal to the narrow limits of his
faculties, for want of being able to enlarge his faculties to the vast
proportions of the ideal. Thus the true genius of the artist will be
always recognized by this sign--that when most enthusiastic for the
whole, he preserves a coolness, a patience defying all obstacles, as
regards details. Moreover, in order not to do any injury to perfection,
he would rather renounce the enjoyment given by the completion. For the
simple amateur, it is the difficulty of means that disgusts him and turns
him from his aim; his dreams would be to have no more trouble in
producing than he had in conception and intuition.

I have spoken hitherto of the dangers to which we are exposed by an
exaggerated sensuousness and susceptibility to the beautiful in the form,
and from too extensive aesthetical requirements; and I have considered
these dangers in relation to the faculty of thinking and knowing. What,
then, will be the result when these pretensions of the aesthetical taste
bear on the will? It is one thing to be stopped in your scientific
progress by too great a love of the beautiful, another to see this
inclination become a cause of degeneracy in character itself, and make us
violate the law of duty. In matters of thought the caprices of "taste"
are no doubt an evil, and they must of necessity darken the intelligence;
but these same caprices applied to the maxims of the will become really
pernicious and infallibly deprave the heart. Yet this is the dangerous
extreme to which too refined an aesthetic culture brings us directly we
abandon ourselves exclusively to the feelings for the beautiful, and
directly we raise taste to the part of absolute lawgiver over our will.

The moral destination of man requires that the will should be completely
independent of all influence of sensuous instincts, and we know that
taste labors incessantly at making the link between reason and the senses
continually closer. Now this effort has certainly as its result the
ennobling of the appetites, and to make them more conformable with the
requirements of reason; but this very point may be a serious danger for
morality.

I proceed to explain my meaning. A very refined aesthetical education
accustoms the imagination to direct itself according to laws, even in its
free exercise, and leads the sensuous not to have any enjoyments without
the concurrence of reason; but it soon follows that reason, in its turn,
is required to be directed, even in the most serious operations of its
legislative power, according to the interests of imagination, and to give
no more orders to the will without the consent of the sensuous instincts.
The moral obligation of the will, which is, however, an absolute and
unconditional law, takes unperceived the character of a simple contract,
which only binds each of the contracting parties when the other fulfils
its engagement. The purely accidental agreement of duty with inclination
ends by being considered a necessary condition, and thus the principle of
all morality is quenched in its source.

How does the character become thus gradually depraved? The process may
be explained thus: So long as man is only a savage, and his instincts'
only bear on material things and a coarse egotism determines his actions,
sensuousness can only become a danger to morality by its blind strength,
and does not oppose reason except as a force. The voice of justice,
moderation, and humanity is stifled by the appetites, which make a
stronger appeal. Man is then terrible in his vengeance, because he is
terribly sensitive to insults. He robs, he kills, because his desires
are still too powerful for the feeble guidance of reason. He is towards
others like a wild beast, because the instinct of nature still rules him
after the fashion of animals.

But when to the savage state, to that of nature, succeeds civilization;
when taste ennobles the instincts, and holds out to them more worthy
objects taken from the moral order; when culture moderates the brutal
outbursts of the appetites and brings them back under the discipline of
the beautiful, it may happen that these same instincts, which were only
dangerous before by their blind power, coming to assume an air of dignity
and a certain assumed authority, may become more dangerous than before to
the morality of the character; and that, under the guise of innocence,
nobleness, and purity, they may exercise over the will a tyranny a
hundred times worse than the other.

The man of taste willingly escapes the gross thraldom of the appetites.
He submits to reason the instinct which impels him to pleasure, and he is
willing to take counsel from his spiritual and thinking nature for the
choice of the objects he ought to desire. Now, reason is very apt to
mistake a spiritualized instinct for one of its own instincts, and at
length to give up to it the guidance of the will, and this in proportion
as moral judgment and aesthetic judgment, the sense of the good and the
sense of the beautiful, meet in the same object and in the same decision.

So long as it remains possible for inclination and duty to meet in the
same object and in a common desire, this representation of the moral
sense by the aesthetic sense may not draw after it positively evil
consequences, though, if the matter be strictly considered, the morality
of particular actions does not gain by this agreement. But the
consequences will be quite different when sensuousness and reason have
each of them a different interest. If, for example, duty commands us to
perform an action that revolts our taste, or if taste feels itself drawn
towards an object which reason as a moral judge is obliged to condemn,
then, in fact, we suddenly encounter the necessity of distinguishing
between the requirements of the moral sense and those of the aesthetic
sense, which so long an agreement had almost confounded to such a degree
that they could not be distinguished. We must now determine their
reciprocal rights, and find which of them is the real master in our soul.
But such a long representation of the moral sense by the sense of the
beautiful has made us forget this master. When we have so long practised
this rule of obeying at once the suggestions of taste, and when we have
found the result always satisfactory, taste ends by assuming a kind of
appearance of right. As taste has shown itself irreproachable in the
vigilant watch it has kept over the will, we necessarily come to grant a
certain esteem to its decisions; and it is precisely to this esteem that
inclination, with captious logic, gives weight against the duties of
conscience.

Esteem is a feeling that can only be felt for law, and what corresponds
to it. Whatever is entitled to esteem lays claim to an unconditional
homage. The ennobled inclination which has succeeded in captivating our
esteem will, therefore, no longer be satisfied with being subordinate to
reason; it aspires to rank alongside it. It does not wish to be taken
for a faithless subject in revolt against his sovereign; it wishes to be
regarded as a queen; and, treating reason as its peer, to dictate, like
reason, laws to the conscience. Thus, if we listen to her, she would
weigh by right equally in the scale; and then have we not good reason to
fear that interest will decide?

Of all the inclinations that are decided from the feeling for the
beautiful and that are special to refined minds, none commends itself so
much to the moral sense as the ennobled instinct of love; none is so
fruitful in impressions which correspond to the true dignity of man. To
what an elevation does it raise human nature! and often what divine
sparks does it kindle in the common soul! It is a sacred fire that
consumes every egotistical inclination, and the very principles of
morality are scarcely a greater safeguard of the soul's chastity than
love is for the nobility of the heart. How often it happens while the
moral principles are still struggling that love prevails in their favor,
and hastens by its irresistible power the resolutions that duty alone
would have vainly demanded from weak human nature! Who, then, would
distrust an affection that protects so powerfully what is most excellent
in human nature, and which fights so victoriously against the moral foe
of all morality, egotism?

But do not follow this guide till you have secured a better. Suppose a
loved object be met that is unhappy, and unhappy because of you, and that
it depends only on you to make it happy by sacrificing a few moral
scruples. You may be disposed to say, "Shall I let this loved being
suffer for the pleasure of keeping our conscience pure? Is this
resistance required by this generous, devoted affection, always ready to
forget itself for its object? I grant it is going against conscience to
have recourse to this immoral means to solace the being we love; but can
we be said to love if in presence of this being and of its sorrow we
continue to think of ourselves? Are we not more taken up with ourselves
than with it, since we prefer to see it unhappy rather than consent to be
so ourselves by the reproaches of our conscience? " These are the
sophisms that the passion of love sets against conscience (whose voice
thwarts its interests), making its utterances despicable as suggestions
of selfishness, and representing our moral dignity as one of the
components of our happiness that we are free to alienate. Then, if the
morality of our character is not strongly backed by good principles, we
shall surrender, whatever may be the impetus of our exalted imagination,
to disgraceful acts; and we shall think that we gain a glorious victory
over our self-love, while we are only the despicable victims of this
instinct. A well-known French romance, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," gives
us a striking example of this delusion, by which love betrays a soul
otherwise pure and beautiful. The Presidente de Tourvel errs by
surprise, and seeks to calm her remorse by the idea that she has
sacrificed her virtue to her generosity.

Secondary and imperfect duties, as they are styled, are those that the
feeling for the beautiful takes most willingly under its patronage, and
which it allows to prevail on many occasions over perfect duties. As
they assign a much larger place to the arbitrary option of the subject,
and at the same time as they have the appearance of merit, which gives
them lustre, they commend themselves far more to the aesthetic taste than
perfect or necessary duties, which oblige us strictly and
unconditionally. How many people allow themselves to be unjust that they
may be generous! How many fail in their duties to society that they may
do good to an individual, and reciprocally! How many people forgive a
lie sooner than a rudeness, a crime against humanity rather than an
insult to honor! How many debase their bodies to hasten the perfection
of their minds, and degrade their character to adorn their understanding!
How many do not scruple to commit a crime when they have a laudable end
in view, pursue an ideal of political happiness through all the terrors
of anarchy, tread under foot existing laws to make way for better ones,
and do not scruple to devote the present generation to misery to secure
at this cost the happiness of future generations! The apparent
unselfishness of certain virtues gives them a varnish of purity, which
makes them rash enough to break and run counter to the moral law; and
many people are the dupes of this strange illusion, to rise higher than
morality and to endeavor to be more reasonable than reason.

The man of a refined taste is susceptible, in this respect, of a moral
corruption, from which the rude child of nature is preserved by his very
coarseness. In the latter, the opposite of the demands of sense and the
decrees of the moral law is so strongly marked and so manifest, and the
spiritual element has so small a share in his desires, that although the
appetites exercise a despotic sway over him, they cannot wrest his esteem
from him. Thus, when the savage, yielding to the superior attraction of
sense, gives way to the committal of an unjust action, he may yield to
temptation, but he will not hide from himself that he is committing a
fault, and he will do homage to reason even while he violates its
mandates. The child of civilization, on the contrary, the man of
refinement, will not admit that he commits a fault, and to soothe his
conscience he prefers to impose on it by a sophism. No doubt he wishes
to obey his appetite, but at the same time without falling in his own
esteem. How does he manage this? He begins by overthrowing the superior
authority that thwarts his inclination, and before transgressing the law
he calls in question the competence of the lawgiver. Could it be
expected that a corrupt will should so corrupt the intelligence? The
only dignity that an inclination can assume accrues to it from its
agreement with reason; yet we find that inclination, independent as well
as blind, aspires, at the very moment she enters into contest with
reason, to keep this dignity which she owes to reason alone. Nay,
inclination even aspires to use this dignity she owes to reason against
reason itself.

These are the dangers that threaten the morality of the character when
too intimate an association is attempted between sensuous instincts and
moral instincts, which can never perfectly agree in real life, but only
in the ideal. I admit that the sensuous risks nothing in this
association, because it possesses nothing except what it must give up
directly duty speaks and reason demands the sacrifice. But reason, as
the arbiter of the moral law, will run the more risk from this union if
it receives as a gift from inclination what it might enforce; for, under
the appearance of freedom, the feeling of obligation may be easily lost,
and what reason accepts as a favor may quite well be refused it when the
sensuous finds it painful to grant it. It is, therefore, infinitely
safer for the morality of the character to suspend, at least for a time,
this misrepresentation of the moral sense by the sense of the beautiful.
It is best of all that reason should command by itself without mediation,
and that it should show to the will its true master. The remark is,
therefore, quite justified, that true morality only knows itself in the
school of adversity, and that a continual prosperity becomes easily a
rock of offence to virtue. I mean here by prosperity the state of a man
who, to enjoy the goods of life, need not commit injustice, and who to
conform to justice need not renounce any of the goods of life. The man
who enjoys a continual prosperity never sees moral duty face to face,
because his inclinations, naturally regular and moderate, always
anticipate the mandate of reason, and because no temptation to violate
the law recalls to his mind the idea of law. Entirely guided by the
sense of the beautiful, which represents reason in the world of sense, he
will reach the tomb without having known by experience the dignity of his
destiny. On the other hand, the unfortunate man, if he be at the same
time a virtuous man, enjoys the sublime privilege of being in immediate
intercourse with the divine majesty of the moral law; and as his virtue
is not seconded by any inclination, he bears witness in this lower world,
and as a human being, of the freedom of pure spirits!




REFLECTIONS ON THE USE OF THE VULGAR AND LOW ELEMENTS IN WORKS OF ART.


I call vulgar (common) all that does not speak to the mind, of which all
the interest is addressed only to the senses. There are, no doubt, an
infinite number of things vulgar in themselves from their material and
subject. But as the vulgarity of the material can always be ennobled by
the treatment, in respect of art the only question is that relating to
the vulgarity in form. A vulgar mind will dishonor the most noble matter
by treating it in a common manner. A great and noble mind, on the
contrary, will ennoble even a common matter, and it will do so by
superadding to it something spiritual and discovering in it some aspect
in which this matter has greatness. Thus, for example, a vulgar
historian will relate to us the most insignificant actions of a hero with
a scrupulousness as great as that bestowed on his sublimest exploit, and
will dwell as lengthily on his pedigree, his costume, and his household
as on his projects and his enterprises. He will relate those of his
actions that have the most grandeur in such wise that no one will
perceive that character in them. On the contrary, a historian of genius,
himself endowed with nobleness of mind, will give even to the private
life and the least considerable actions of his hero an interest and a
value that will make them considerable. Thus, again, in the matter of
the plastic arts, the Dutch and Flemish painters have given proof of a
vulgar taste; the Italians, and still more the ancient Greeks, of a grand
and noble taste. The Greeks always went to the ideal; they rejected
every vulgar feature, and chose no common subject.

A portrait painter can represent his model in a common manner or with
grandeur; in a common manner if he reproduce the merely accidental
details with the same care as the essential features, if he neglect the
great to carry out the minutiae curiously. He does it grandly if he know
how to find out and place in relief what is most interesting, and
distinguish the accidental from the necessary; if he be satisfied with
indicating what is paltry, reserving all the finish of the execution for
what is great. And the only thing that is great is the expression of the
soul itself, manifesting itself by actions, gestures, or attitudes.

The poet treats his subject in a common manner when in the execution of
his theme he dwells on valueless facts and only skims rapidly over those
that are important. He treats his theme with grandeur when he associates
with it what is great. For example, Homer treated the shield of Achilles
grandly, though the making of a shield, looking merely at the matter, is
a very commonplace affair.

One degree below the common or the vulgar is the element of the base or
gross, which differs from the common in being not only something
negative, a simple lack of inspiration or nobleness, but something
positive, marking coarse feelings, bad morals, and contemptible manners.
Vulgarity only testifies that an advantage is wanting, whereof the
absence is a matter of regret; baseness indicates the want of a quality
which we are authorized to require in all.
Thus, for example, revenge,
considered in itself, in whatever place or way it manifests itself, is
something vulgar, because it is the proof of a lack of generosity. But
there is, moreover, a base vengeance, when the man, to satisfy it,
employs means exposed to contempt. The base always implies something
gross, or reminds one of the mob, while the common can be found in a
well-born and well-bred man, who may think and act in a common manner if
he has only mediocre faculties. A man acts in a common manner when he is
only taken up with his own interest, and it is in this that he is in
opposition with the really noble man, who, when necessary, knows how to
forget himself to procure some enjoyment for others. But the same man
would act in a base manner if he consulted his interests at the cost of
his honor, and if in such a case he did not even take upon himself to
respect the laws of decency. Thus the common is only the contrary of the
noble; the base is the contrary both of the noble and the seemly. To
give yourself up, unresisting, to all your passions, to satisfy all your
impulses, without being checked even by the rules of propriety, still
less by those of morality, is to conduct yourself basely, and to betray
baseness of the soul.

The artist also may fall into a low style, not only by choosing ignoble
subjects, offensive to decency and good taste, but moreover by treating
them in a base manner. It is to treat a subject in a base manner if
those sides are made prominent which propriety directs us to conceal, or
if it is expressed in a manner that incidentally awakens low ideas. The
lives of the greater part of men can present particulars of a low kind,
but it is only a low imagination that will pick out these for
representation.

There are pictures describing sacred history in which the Apostles, the
Virgin, and even the Christ, are depicted in such wise that they might be
supposed to be taken from the dregs of the populace. This style of
execution always betrays a low taste, and might justly lead to the
inference that the artist himself thinks coarsely and like the mob.

No doubt there are cases where art itself may be allowed to produce base
images: for example, when the aim is to provoke laughter. A man of
polished manners may also sometimes, and without betraying a corrupt
taste, be amused by certain features when nature expresses herself
crudely but with truth, and he may enjoy the contrast between the manners
of polished society and those of the lower orders. A man of position
appearing intoxicated will always make a disagreeable impression on us;
but a drunken driver, sailor, or carter will only be a risible object.
Jests that would be insufferable in a man of education amuse us in the
mouth of the people. Of this kind are many of the scenes of
Aristophanes, who unhappily sometimes exceeds this limit, and becomes
absolutely condemnable. This is, moreover, the source of the pleasure we
take in parodies, when the feelings, the language, and the mode of action
of the common people are fictitiously lent to the same personages whom
the poet has treated with all possible dignity and decency. As soon as
the poet means only to jest, and seeks only to amuse, we can overlook
traits of a low kind, provided he never stirs up indignation or disgust.

He stirs up indignation when he places baseness where it is quite
unpardonable, that is in the case of men who are expected to show
fine moral sense. In attributing baseness to them he will either
outrage truth, for we prefer to think him a liar than to believe that
well-trained men can act in a base manner; or his personages will offend
our moral sense, and, what is worse, excite our imagination. I do not
mean by this to condemn farces; a farce implies between the poet and the
spectator a tacit consent that no truth is to be expected in the piece.
In a farce we exempt the poet from all faithfulness in his pictures; he
has a kind of privilege to tell us untruths. Here, in fact, all the
comic consists exactly in its contrast with the truth, and so it cannot
possibly be true.

This is not all: even in the serious and the tragic there are certain
places where the low element can be brought into play. But in this case
the affair must pass into the terrible, and the momentary violation of
our good taste must be masked by a strong impression, which brings our
passion into play. In other words, the low impression must be absorbed
by a superior tragic impression. Theft, for example, is a thing
absolutely base, and whatever arguments our heart may suggest to excuse
the thief, whatever the pressure of circumstances that led him to the
theft, it is always an indelible brand stamped upon him, and,
aesthetically speaking, he will always remain a base object. On this
point taste is even less forgiving than morality, and its tribunal is
more severe; because an aesthetical object is responsible even for the
accessory ideas that are awakened in us by such an object, while moral
judgment eliminates all that is merely accidental. According to this
view a man who robs would always be an object to be rejected by the poet
who wishes to present serious pictures. But suppose this man is at the
same time a murderer, he is even more to be condemned than before by the
moral law. But in the aesthetic judgment he is raised one degree higher
and made better adapted to figure in a work of art. Continuing to judge
him from the aesthetic point of view, it may be added that he who abases
himself by a vile action can to a certain extent be raised by a crime,
and can be thus reinstated in our aesthetic estimation. This
contradiction between the moral judgment and the aesthetical judgment is
a fact entitled to attention and consideration. It may be explained in
different ways. First, I have already said that, as the aesthetic
judgment depends on the imagination, all the accessory ideas awakened in
us by an object and naturally associated with it, must themselves
influence this judgment. Now, if these accessory ideas are base, they
infallibly stamp this character on the principal object.

In the second place, what we look for in the aesthetic judgment is
strength; whilst in a judgment pronounced in the name of the moral sense
we consider lawfulness. The lack of strength is something contemptible,
and every action from which it may be inferred that the agent lacks
strength is, by that very fact, a contemptible action. Every cowardly
and underhand action is repugnant to us, because it is a proof of
impotence; and, on the contrary, a devilish wickedness can, aesthetically
speaking, flatter our taste, as soon as it marks strength. Now, a theft
testifies to a vile and grovelling mind: a murder has at least on its
side the appearance of strength; the interest we take in it aesthetically
is in proportion to the strength that is manifested in it.

A third reason is, because in presence of a deep and horrible crime we no
longer think of the quality but the awful consequences of the action.
The stronger emotion covers and stifles the weaker one. We do not look
back into the mind of the agent; we look onward into his destiny, we
think of the effects of his action. Now, directly we begin to tremble
all the delicacies of taste are reduced to silence. The principal
impression entirely fills our mind: the accessory and accidental ideas,
in which chiefly dwell all impressions of baseness, are effaced from it.
It is for this reason that the theft committed by young Ruhberg, in the
"Crime through Ambition," [a play of Iffland] far from displeasing on the
stage, is a real tragic effect. The poet with great skill has managed
the circumstances in such wise that we are carried away; we are left
almost breathless. The frightful misery of the family, and especially
the grief of the father, are objects that attract our attention, turn it
aside, from the person of the agent, towards the consequences of his act.
We are too much moved to tarry long in representing to our minds the
stamp of infamy with which the theft is marked. In a word, the base
element disappears in the terrible. It is singular that this theft,
really accomplished by young Ruhberg, inspires us with less repugnance
than, in another piece, the mere suspicion of a theft, a suspicion which
is actually without foundation. In the latter case it is a young officer
who is accused without grounds of having abstracted a silver spoon, which
is recovered later on. Thus the base element is reduced in this case to
a purely imaginary thing, a mere suspicion, and this suffices
nevertheless to do an irreparable injury, in our aesthetical
appreciation, to the hero of the piece, in spite of his innocence. This
is because a man who is supposed capable of a base action did not
apparently enjoy a very solid reputation for morality, for the laws of
propriety require that a man should be held to be a man of honor as long
as he does not show the opposite. If therefore anything contemptible is
imputed to him, it seems that by some part of his past conduct he has
given rise to a suspicion of this kind, and this does him injury, though
all the odious and the base in an undeserved suspicion are on the side of
him who accuses. A point that does still greater injury to the hero of
the piece of which I am speaking is the fact that he is an officer, and
the lover of a lady of condition brought up in a manner suitable to her
rank. With these two titles, that of thief makes quite a revolting
contrast, and it is impossible for us, when we see him near his lady, not
to think that perhaps at that very moment he had the silver spoon in his
pocket. Lastly, the most unfortunate part of the business is, that he
has no idea of the suspicion weighing over him, for if he had a knowledge
of it, in his character of officer, he would exact a sanguinary
reparation. In this case the consequences of the suspicion would change
to the terrible, and all that is base in the situation would disappear.

We must distinguish, moreover, between the baseness of feeling and that
which is connected with the mode of treatment and circumstance. The
former in all respects is below aesthetic dignity; the second in many
cases may perfectly agree with it. Slavery, for example, is abase thing;
but a servile mind in a free man is contemptible. The labors of the
slave, on the contrary, are not so when his feelings are not servile.
Far from this, a base condition, when joined to elevated feelings, can
become a source of the sublime. The master of Epictetus, who beat him,
acted basely, and the slave beaten by him showed a sublime soul. True
greatness, when it is met in a base condition, is only the more brilliant
and splendid on that account: and the artist must not fear to show us his
heroes even under a contemptible exterior as soon as he is sure of being
able to give them, when he wishes, the expression of moral dignity.

But what can be granted to the poet is not always allowed in the artist.
The poet only addresses the imagination; the painter addresses the senses
directly. It follows not only that the impression of the picture is more
lively than that of the poem, but also that the painter, if he employ
only his natural signs, cannot make the minds of his personages as
visible as the poet can with the arbitrary signs at his command: yet it
is only the sight of the mind that can reconcile us to certain exteriors.
When Homer causes his Ulysses to appear in the rags of a beggar
["Odyssey," book xiii. v. 397], we are at liberty to represent his image
to our mind more or less fully, and to dwell on it as long as we like.
But in no case will it be sufficiently vivid to excite our repugnance or
disgust. But if a painter, or even a tragedian, try to reproduce
faithfully the Ulysses of Homer, we turn away from the picture with
repugnance. It is because in this case the greater or less vividness of
the impression no longer depends on our will: we cannot help seeing what
the painter places under our eyes; and it is not easy for us to remove
the accessory repugnant ideas which the picture recalls to our mind.




DETACHED REFLECTIONS ON DIFFERENT QUESTIONS OF AESTHETICS.


All the properties by which an object can become aesthetic, can be
referred to four classes, which, as well according to their objective
differences as according to their different relation with the subject,
produce on our passive and active faculties pleasures unequal not only in
intensity but also in worth; classes which also are of an unequal use for
the end of the fine arts: they are the agreeable, the good, the sublime,
and the beautiful.

Of these four categories, the sublime and the beautiful only belong
properly to art. The agreeable is not worthy of art, and the good is at
least not its end; for the aim of art is to please, and the good, whether
we consider it in theory or in practice, neither can nor ought to serve
as a means of satisfying the wants of sensuousness. The agreeable only
satisfies the senses, and is distinguished thereby from the good, which
only pleases the reason. The agreeable only pleases by its matter, for
it is only matter that can affect the senses, and all that is form can
only please the reason. It is true that the beautiful only pleases
through the medium of the senses, by which it is distinguished from the
good; but it pleases reason, on account of its form, by which it is
essentially distinguished from the agreeable. It might be said that the
good pleases only by its form being in harmony with reason; the beautiful
by its form having some relation of resemblance with reason, and that the
agreeable absolutely does not please by its form. The good is perceived
by thought, the beautiful by intuition, and the agreeable only by the
senses. The first pleases by the conception, the second by the idea, and
the third by material sensation.

The distance between the good and the agreeable is that which strikes the
eyes the most. The good widens our understanding, because it procures
and supposes an idea of its object; the pleasure which it makes us
perceive rests on an objective foundation, even when this pleasure itself
is but a certain state in which we are situated. The, agreeable, on the
contrary, produces no notion of its object, and, indeed, reposes on no
objective foundation. It is agreeable only inasmuch as it is felt by the
subject, and the idea of it completely vanishes the moment an obstruction
is placed on the affectibility of the senses, or only when it is
modified. For a man who feels the cold the agreeable would be a warm
air; but this same man, in the heat of summer, would seek the shade and
coolness; but we must agree that in both cases he has judged well.

On the other hand, that which is objective is altogether independent of
us, and that which to-day appears to us true, useful, reasonable, ought
yet (if this judgment of to-day be admitted as just) to seem to us the
same twenty years hence. But our judgment of the agreeable changes as
soon as our state, with regard to its object, has changed. The agreeable
is therefore not a property of the object; it springs entirely from the
relations of such an object with our senses, for the constitution of our
senses is a necessary condition thereof.

The good, on the contrary, is good in itself, before being represented to
us, and before being felt. The property by which it pleases exists fully
in itself without being in want of our subject, although the pleasure
which we take in it rests on an aptitude for feeling that which is in us.
Thus we can say that the agreeable exists only because it is experienced,
and that the good, on the contrary, is experienced because it exists.

The distinction between the beautiful and the agreeable, great as it is,
moreover, strikes the eye less. The beautiful approaches the agreeable
in this--that it must always be proposed to the senses, inasmuch as it
pleases only as a phenomenon. It comes near to it again in as far as it
neither procures nor supposes any notion of its object. But, on the
other hand, it is widely separated from the agreeable, because it pleases
by the form under which it is produced, and not by the fact of the
material sensation. No doubt it only pleases the reasonable subject in
so far as it is also a sensuous subject; but also it pleases the sensuous
subject only inasmuch as it is at the same time a reasonable subject.
The beautiful is not only pleasing to the individual but to the whole
species; and although it draws its existence but from its relation with
creatures at the same time reasonable and sensuous, it is not less
independent of all empirical limitations of sensuousness, and it remains
identical even when the particular constitution of the individual is
modified. The beautiful has exactly in common with the good that by
which it differs from the agreeable, and it differs from the good exactly
in that in which it approximates to the agreeable.

By the good we must understand that in which reason recognizes a
conformity with her theoretical and practical laws. But the same object
can be perfectly conformable to the theoretical reason, and not be the
less in contradiction in the highest degree with the practical reason.
We can disapprove of the end of an enterprise, and yet admire the skill
of the means and their relation with the end in view. We can despise the
pleasures which the voluptuous man makes the end of his life, and
nevertheless praise the skill which he exhibits in the choice of his
means, and the logical result with which he carries out his principles.
That which pleases us only by its form is good, absolutely good, and
without any conditions, when its form is at the same time its matter.
The good is also an object of sensuousness, but not of an immediate
sensuousness, as the agreeable, nor moreover of a mixed sensuousness, as
the beautiful. It does not excite desire as the first, nor inclination
as the second. The simple idea of the good inspires only esteem.

The difference separating the agreeable, the good, and the beautiful
being thus established, it is evident that the same object can be ugly,
defective, even to be morally rejected, and nevertheless be agreeable and
pleasing to the senses; that an object can revolt the senses, and yet be
good, i. e. , please the reason; that an object can from its inmost nature
revolt the moral senses, and yet please the imagination which
contemplates it, and still be beautiful. It is because each one of these
ideas interests different faculties, and interests differently.

But have we exhausted the classification of the aesthetic attributes?
No, there are objects at the same time ugly, revolting, and horrifying to
the senses, which do not please the understanding, and of no account to
the moral judgment, and these objects do not fail to please; certainly to
please to such a degree, that we would willingly sacrifice the pleasure
of these senses and that of the understanding to procure for us the
enjoyment of these objects. There is nothing more attractive in nature
than a beautiful landscape, illuminated by the purple light of evening.
The rich variety of the objects, the mellow outlines, the play of lights
infinitely varying the aspect, the light vapors which envelop distant
objects,--all combine in charming the senses; and add to it, to increase
our pleasure, the soft murmur of a cascade, the song of the nightingales,
an agreeable music. We give ourselves up to a soft sensation of repose,
and whilst our senses, touched by the harmony of the colors, the forms,
and the sounds, experience the agreeable in the highest, the mind is
rejoiced by the easy and rich flow of the ideas, the heart by the
sentiments which overflow in it like a torrent. All at once a storm
springs up, darkening the sky and all the landscape, surpassing and
silencing all other noises, and suddenly taking from us all our
pleasures. Black clouds encircle the horizon; the thunder falls with a
deafening noise. Flash succeeds flash. Our sight and hearing is
affected in the most revolting manner. The lightning only appears to
render to us more visible the horrors of the night: we see the electric
fluid strike, nay, we begin to fear lest it may strike us. Well, that
does not prevent us from believing that we have gained more than lost by
the change; I except, of course, those whom fear has bereft of all
liberty of judgment. We are, on the one hand, forcibly drawn towards
this terrible spectacle, which on the other wounds and repulses our
senses, and we pause before it with a feeling which we cannot properly
call a pleasure, but one which we often like much more than pleasure.
But still, the spectacle that nature then offers to us is in itself
rather destructive than good (at all events we in no way need to think of
the utility of a storm to take pleasure in this phenomenon), is in itself
rather ugly than beautiful, for the darkness, hiding from us all the
images which light affords, cannot be in itself a pleasant thing; and
those sudden crashes with which the thunder shakes the atmosphere, those
sudden flashes when the lightning rends the cloud--all is contrary to one
of the essential conditions of the beautiful, which carries with it
nothing abrupt, nothing violent. And moreover this phenomenon, if we
consider only our senses, is rather painful than agreeable, for the
nerves of our sight and those of our hearing are each in their turn
painfully strained, then not less violently relaxed, by the alternations
of light and darkness, of the explosion of the thunder, and silence. And
in spite of all these causes of displeasure, a storm is an attractive
phenomenon for whomsoever is not afraid of it.

Another example. In the midst of a green and smiling plain there rises a
naked and barren hillock, which hides from the sight a part of the view.
Each one would wish that this hillock were removed which disfigures the
beauty of all the landscape. Well, let us imagine this hillock rising,
rising still, without indeed changing at all its shape, and preserving,
although on a greater scale, the same proportions between its width and
height. To begin with, our impression of displeasure will but increase
with the hillock itself, which will the more strike the sight, and which
will be the more repulsive. But continue; raise it up twice as high as a
tower, and insensibly the displeasure will efface itself to make way for
quite another feeling. The hill has at last become a mountain, so high a
mountain that it is quite impossible for our eyes to take it in at one
look. There is an object more precocious than all this smiling plain
which surrounds it, and the impression that it makes on us is of such a
nature that we should regret to exchange it for any other impression,
however beautiful it might be. Now, suppose this mountain to be leaning,
and of such an inclination that we could expect it every minute to crash
down, the previous impression will be complicated with another
impression: terror will be joined to it: the object itself will be but
still more attractive. But suppose it were possible to prop up this
leaning mountain with another mountain, the terror would disappear, and
with it a good part of the pleasure we experienced. Suppose that there
were beside this mountain four or five other mountains, of which each one
was a fourth or a fifth part lower than the one which came immediately
after; the first impression with which the height of one mountain
inspired us will be notably weakened. Something somewhat analogous would
take place if the mountain itself were cut into ten or twelve terraces,
uniformly diminishing; or again if it were artificially decorated with
plantations. We have at first subjected one mountain to no other
operation than that of increasing its size, leaving it otherwise just as
it was, and without altering its form; and this simple circumstance has
sufficed to make an indifferent or even disagreeable object satisfying to
the eyes. By the second operation, this enlarged object has become at
the same time an object of terror; and the pleasure which we have found
in contemplating it has but been the greater. Finally, by the last
operation which we have made, we have diminished the terror which its
sight occasioned, and the pleasure has diminished as much. We have
diminished subjectively the idea of its height, whether by dividing the
attention of the spectator between several objects, or in giving to the
eyes, by means of these smaller mountains, placed near to the large one,
a measure by which to master the height of the mountain all the more
easily. The great and the terrible can therefore be of themselves in
certain cases a source of aesthetic pleasure.

There is not in the Greek mythology a more terrible, and at the same time
more hideous, picture than the Furies, or Erinyes, quitting the infernal
regions to throw themselves in the pursuit of a criminal. Their faces
frightfully contracted and grimacing, their fleshless bodies, their heads
covered with serpents in the place of hair--revolt our senses as much as
they offend our taste. However, when these monsters are represented to
us in the pursuit of Orestes, the murderer of his mother, when they are
shown to us brandishing the torches in their hands, and chasing their
prey, without peace or truce, from country to country, until at last, the
anger of justice being appeased, they engulf themselves in the abyss of
the infernal regions; then we pause before the picture with a horror
mixed with pleasure. But not only the remorse of a criminal which is
personified by the Furies, even his unrighteous acts nay, the real
perpetration of a crime, are able to please us in a work of art. Medea,
in the Greek tragedy; Clytemnestra, who takes the life of her husband;
Orestes, who kills his mother, fill our soul with horror and with
pleasure. Even in real life, indifferent and even repulsive or frightful
objects begin to interest us the moment that they approach the monstrous
or the terrible. An altogether vulgar and insignificant man will begin
to please us the moment that a violent passion, which indeed in no way
upraises his personal value, makes him an object of fear and terror, in
the same way that a vulgar, meaningless object becomes to us the source
of aesthetic pleasure the instant we have enlarged it to the point where
it threatens to overstep our comprehension. An ugly man is made still
more ugly by passion, and nevertheless it is in bursts of this passion,
provided that it turns to the terrible and not to the ridiculous, that
this man will be to us of the most interest. This remark extends even to
animals. An ox at the plow, a horse before a carriage, a dog, are common
objects; but excite this bull to the combat, enrage this horse who is so
peaceable, or represent to yourself this dog a prey to madness; instantly
these animals are raised to the rank of aesthetic objects, and we begin
to regard them with a feeling which borders on pleasure and esteem. The
inclination to the pathetic--an inclination common to all men--the
strength of the sympathetic sentiment--this force which in mature makes
us wish to see suffering, terror, dismay, which has so many attractions
for us in art, which makes us hurry to the theatre, which makes us take
so much pleasure in the picturing of great misfortune,--all this bears
testimony to a fourth source of aesthetic pleasure, which neither the
agreeable, nor the good, nor the beautiful are in a state to produce.

All the examples that I have alleged up to the present have this in
common--that the feeling they excite in us rests on something objective.
In all these phenomena we receive the idea of something "which oversteps,
or which threatens to overstep, the power of comprehension of our senses,
or their power of resistance"; but not, however, going so far as to
paralyze these two powers, or so far as to render us incapable of
striving, either to know the object, or to resist the impression it makes
on us. There is in the phenomena a complexity which we cannot retrace to
unity without driving the intuitive faculty to its furthest limits.

We have the idea of a force in comparison with which our own vanishes,
and which we are nevertheless compelled to compare with our own. Either
it is an object which at the same time presents and hides itself from our
faculty of intuition, and which urges us to strive to represent it to
ourselves, without leaving room to hope that this aspiration will be
satisfied; or else it is an object which appears to upraise itself as an
enemy, even against our existence--which provokes us, so to say, to
combat, and makes us anxious as to the issue. In all the alleged
examples there is visible in the same way the same action on the faculty
of feeling. All throw our souls into an anxious agitation and strain its
springs. A certain gravity which can even raise itself to a solemn
rejoicing takes possession of our soul, and whilst our organs betray
evident signs of internal anxiety, our mind falls back on itself by
reflection, and appears to find a support in a higher consciousness of
its independent strength and dignity. This consciousness of ourselves
must always dominate in order that the great and the horrible may have
for us an aesthetic value. It is because the soul before such sights as
these feels itself inspired and lifted above itself that they are
designated under the name of sublime, although the things themselves are
objectively in no way sublime; and consequently it would be more just to
say that they are elevating than to call them in themselves elevated or
sublime.

For an object to be called sublime it must be in opposition with our
sensuousness. In general it is possible to conceive but two different
relations between the objects and our sensuousness, and consequently
there ought to be two kinds of resistance. They ought either to be
considered as objects from which we wish to draw a knowledge, or else
they should be regarded as a force with which we compare our own.
According to this division there are two kinds of the sublime, the
sublime of knowledge and the sublime of force. Moreover, the sensuous
faculties contribute to knowledge only in grasping a given matter, and
putting one by the other its complexity in time and in space.

As to dissecting this complex property and assorting it, it is the
business of the understanding and not of the imagination. It is for the
understanding alone that the diversity exists: for the imagination
(considered simply as a sensuous faculty) there is but an uniformity, and
consequently it is but the number of the uniform things (the quantity and
not the quality) which can give origin to any difference between the
sensuous perception of phenomena. Thus, in order that the faculty of
picturing things sensuously maybe reduced to impotence before an object,
necessarily it is imperative that this object exceeds in its quantity the
capacity of our imagination.




ON SIMPLE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY.


There are moments in life when nature inspires us with a sort of love and
respectful emotion, not because she is pleasing to our senses, or because
she satisfies our mind or our taste (it is often the very opposite that
happens), but merely because she is nature. This feeling is often
elicited when nature is considered in her plants, in her mineral kingdom,
in rural districts; also in the case of human nature, in the case of
children, and in the manners of country people and of the primitive
races. Every man of refined feeling, provided he has a soul, experiences
this feeling when he walks out under the open sky, when he lives in the
country, or when he stops to contemplate the monuments of early ages; in
short, when escaping from factitious situations and relations, he finds
himself suddenly face to face with nature. This interest, which is often
exalted in us so as to become a want, is the explanation of many of our
fancies for flowers and for animals, our preference for gardens laid out
in the natural style, our love of walks, of the country and those who
live there, of a great number of objects proceeding from a remote
antiquity, etc. It is taken for granted that no affectation exists in
the matter, and moreover that no accidental interest comes into play.
But this sort of interest which we take in nature is only possible under
two conditions. First the object that inspires us with this feeling must
be really nature, or something we take for nature; secondly this object
must be in the full sense of the word simple, that is, presenting the
entire contrast of nature with art, all the advantage remaining on the
side of nature. Directly this second condition is united to the first,
but no sooner, nature assumes the character of simplicity.

Considered thus, nature is for us nothing but existence in all its
freedom; it is the constitution of things taken in themselves; it is
existence itself according to its proper and immutable laws.

It is strictly necessary that we should have this idea of nature to take
an interest in phenomena of this kind. If we conceive an artificial
flower so perfectly imitated that it has all the appearance of nature and
would produce the most complete illusion, or if we imagine the imitation
of simplicity carried out to the extremest degree, the instant we
discover it is only an imitation, the feeling of which I have been
speaking is completely destroyed. It is, therefore, quite evident that
this kind of satisfaction which nature causes us to feel is not a
satisfaction of the aesthetical taste, but a satisfaction of the moral
sense; for it is produced by means of a conception and not immediately by
the single fact of intuition: accordingly it is by no means determined by
the different degrees of beauty in forms. For, after all, is there
anything so specially charming in a flower of common appearance, in a
spring, a moss-covered stone, the warbling of birds, or the buzzing of
bees, etc. ? What is that can give these objects a claim to our love? It
is not these objects in themselves; it is an idea represented by them
that we love in them. We love in them life and its latent action, the
effects peacefully produced by beings of themselves, existence under its
proper laws, the inmost necessity of things, the eternal unity of their
nature.

These objects which captivate us are what we were, what we must be again
some day. We were nature as they are; and culture, following the way of
reason and of liberty, must bring us back to nature. Accordingly, these
objects are an image of our infancy irrevocably past--of our infancy
which will remain eternally very dear to us, and thus they infuse a
certain melancholy into us; they are also the image of our highest
perfection in the ideal world, whence they excite a sublime emotion in
us.

But the perfection of these objects is not a merit that belongs to them,
because it is not the effect of their free choice. Accordingly they
procure quite a peculiar pleasure for us, by being our models without
having anything humiliating for us. It is like a constant manifestation
of the divinity surrounding us, which refreshes without dazzling us.