No More Learning

The renaissance introduces new ideas into civilization; it resuscitates
the traditions of antique science and seeks to unite them to the truths
of Christianity. The art of the middle ages, as a vessel of too limited
capacity, is broken by the new flood poured into it. These different
ideas are stirred up and in conflict in the sixteenth century; they
became co-ordinate and attain to an admirable expression in the following
age.

In the eighteenth century there is a new invasion of ideas; all is
examined and questioned; religion, government, society, all becomes a
matter of discussion for the school called philosophical. Poetry
appeared dying out, history drying up, till a truer spirit was breathed
into the literary atmosphere by the criticism of Lessing, the philosophy
of Kant, and the poetry of Klopstock. It was at this transition period
that Schiller appeared, retaining throughout his literary career much of
the revolutionary and convulsive spirit of his early days, and faithfully
reflecting much of the dominant German philosophy of his time.

Part of the nineteenth century seems to take in hand the task of
reconstructing the moral edifice and of giving back to thought a larger
form. The literary result of its effects is the renaissance of lyrical
poetry with an admirable development in history.

Schiller's most brilliant works were in the former walk, his histories
have inferior merit, and his philosophical writings bespeak a deep
thinking nature with great originality of conception, such as naturally
results from a combination of high poetic inspiration with much
intellectual power.

Schiller, like all great men of genius, was a representative man of his
country and of his age. A German, a Protestant free-thinker, a
worshipper of the classical, he was the expression of these aspects of
national and general thought.

The religious reformation was the work of the North. The instinct of
races came in it to complicate the questions of dogmas. The awakening of
individual nationalities was one of the characters of the epoch.

The nations compressed in the severe unity of the Middle Ages escaped in
the Reformation from the uniform mould that had long enveloped them, and
tended to that other unity, still very distant, which must spring from
the spontaneous view of the same truth by all men, result from the free
and original development of each nation, and, as in a vast concert, unite
harmonious dissonances. Europe, without being conscious of its aim,
seized greedily at the means--insurrection; the only thought was to
overthrow, without yet thinking of a reconstruction. The sixteenth
century was the vanguard of the eighteenth. At all times the North had
fretted under the antipathetic yoke of the South. Under the Romans,
Germany, though frequently conquered, had never been subdued. She had
invaded the Empire and determined its fall. In the Middle Ages the
struggle had continued; not only instincts, but ideas, were in conflict;
force and spirit, violence and polity, feudalism and the Catholic
hierarchy, hereditary and elective forms, represented the opposition of
two races. In the sixteenth century the schism long anticipated took
place. The Catholic dogma had hitherto triumphed over all outbreaks--
over Arnaldo of Brescia, the Waldenses, and Wickliffe. But Luther
appeared, and the work was accomplished: Catholic unity was broken.

And this breaking with authority went on fermenting in the nations till
its last great outburst at the French Revolution; and Schiller was born
at this convulsive period, and bears strong traces of his parentage in
his anti-dogmatic spirit.

Yet there is another side to Germanism which is prone to the ideal and
the mystical, and bears still the trace of those lovely legends of
mediaeval growth to which we have adverted. For Christianity was not a
foreign and antagonistic importation in Germany; rather, the German
character obtained its completeness through Christianity. The German
found himself again in the Church of Christ, only raised, transfigured,
and sanctified. The apostolic representation of the Church as the bride
of Christ has found its fullest and truest correspondence in that of
Germany. Hence when the German spirit was thoroughly espoused to the
Christian spirit, we find that character of love, tenderness, and depth
so characteristic of the early classics of German poetry, and reappearing
in glorious afterglow in the second classics, in Klopstock, Herder, and,
above all, Schiller.

It is this special instinct for the ideal and mystical in German nature
that has enabled spirits born of negation and revolution, like Schiller,
to unite with those elements the most genial and creative inspirations of
poetry.




VOCABULARY OF TERMINOLOGY.


Absolute, The. A conception, or, more strictly, in Kantian language, an
idea of the pure reason, embracing the fundamental and necessary yet free
ground of all things.

Antinomy. The conflict of the laws of pure reason; as in the question of
free will and necessity.

Autonomy (autonomous). Governing itself by the spontaneous action of
free will.

Aesthetics. The science of beauty; as ethics of duty.

Cognition (knowledge; Germanice, "Erkenntniss") is either an intuition or
a conception. The former has an immediate relation to the object, and is
singular and individual; the latter has but a mediate relation, by means
of a characteristic mark, which may be common to several things.

Cognition is an objective perception.

Conception. A conception is either empirical or pure. A pure
conception, in so far as it has its origin in the understanding alone,
and is not the conception of a pure sensuous image, is called notio.

Conceptions are distinguished on the one hand from sensation and
perception, and on the other hand from the intuitions of pure reason or
ideas. They are distinctly the product of thought and of the
understanding, except when quite free from empirical elements.

Feeling (Gefuehl). That part of our nature which relates to passion and
instinct. Feelings are connected both with our sensuous nature, our
imagination, and the pure reason.

Form. See Matter.

Ideas. The product of the pure reason (Vernunft) or intuitive faculty.
Wherever the absolute is introduced in thought we have ideas. Perfection
in all its aspects is an idea, virtue and wisdom in their perfect purity
and ideas. Kant remarks ("Critique of Pure Reason," Meiklejohn's
translation, p. 256): "It is from the understanding alone that pure and
transcendental conceptions take their origin; the reason does not
properly give birth to any conception, but only frees the conception of
the understanding from the unavoidable limitation of possible experience.
A conception formed from notions which transcend the possibility of
experience is an idea or a conception of reason. "

Intuition (Anschauung) as used by Kant, is external or internal.
External, sensuous intuition is identical with perception; internal
intuition gives birth to ideas.

Matter and Form. "These two conceptions are at the foundation of all
other reflection, being inseparably connected with every mode of
exercising the understanding. By the former is implied that which can be
determined in general; the second implies its determination, both in a
transcendental sense, abstraction being made of any difference in that
which is given, and of the mode in which it is determined. That which in
the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation, I term its matter; but that
which effects that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under
certain relations, I call its form. "--Kant, "Critique," op. cit.

Objective. What is inherent or relative to an object, or not Myself,
except in the case when I reflect on myself, in which case my states of
mind are objective to my thoughts. In a popular sense objective means
external, as contrasted with the subjective or internal.

Perception, if it relates only to the subject as a modification of its
state, is a sensation. An objective perception is a cognition
(Erkenntniss).

Phenomena (Erscheinnngen). The undetermined object of an empirical
intuition is called phenomenon.

Reason (pure; Germanice, "Vernunft"). The source of ideas of moral
feelings and of conceptions free from all elements taken up from
experience.

Representation (Vorstellung). All the products of the mind are styled
representations (except emotions and mere sensations) and the term is
applied to the whole genus.

Representation with consciousness is perceptio.

Sensation. The capacity of receiving representations through the mode in
which we are affected by objects is called sensibility. By means of
sensibility objects are given to us, and it alone furnishes with
intentions meaning sensuous intuitions. By the understanding they are
thought, and from it arise conceptions.

Subjective. What has its source in and relation to the personality, to
Myself, I, or the Ego; opposed to the objective, or what is inherent in
and relative to the object. Not myself, except in the case when my
states of mind are the object of my own reflection.

Supersensuous. Contrasted with and opposed to the sensuous. What is
exclusively related to sense or imparted through the sensuous ideas is
supersensuous. See Transcendental.

Transcendental. What exceeds the limits of sense and empirical
observation. "I apply the term transcendental to all knowledge which is
not so much occupied with objects as with the mode of our cognition of
these objects, so far as this mode of cognition is possible a priori. "
Kant's "Critique," op. cit. p. 16.

Understanding (Verstand). The thought of faculty, the source of
conceptions and notions (Begriffe) of the laws of logic, the categories,
and judgment.






LETTERS ON THE AESTHETICAL EDUCATION OF MAN.




LETTER I.


By your permission I lay before you, in a series of letters, the results
of my researches upon beauty and art. I am keenly sensible of the
importance as well as of the charm and dignity of this undertaking. I
shall treat a subject which is closely connected with the better portion
of our happiness and not far removed from the moral nobility of human
nature. I shall plead this cause of the beautiful before a heart by
which her whole power is felt and exercised, and which will take upon
itself the most difficult part of my task in an investigation where one
is compelled to appeal as frequently to feelings as to principles.

That which I would beg of you as a favor, you generously impose upon me
as a duty; and, when I solely consult my inclination, you impute to me a
service. The liberty of action you prescribe is rather a necessity for
me than a constraint. Little exercised in formal rules, I shall scarcely
incur the risk of sinning against good taste by any undue use of them; my
ideas, drawn rather from within than from reading or from an intimate
experience with the world, will not disown their origin; they would
rather incur any reproach than that of a sectarian bias, and would prefer
to succumb by their innate feebleness than sustain themselves by borrowed
authority and foreign support.

In truth, I will not keep back from you that the assertions which follow
rest chiefly upon Kantian principles; but if in the course of these
researches you should be reminded of any special school of philosophy,
ascribe it to my incapacity, not to those principles. No; your liberty
of mind shall be sacred to me; and the facts upon which I build will be
furnished by your own sentiments; your own unfettered thought will
dictate the laws according to which we have to proceed.

With regard to the ideas which predominate in the practical part of
Kant's system, philosophers only disagree, whilst mankind, I am confident
of proving, have never done so. If stripped of their technical shape,
they will appear as the verdict of reason pronounced from time immemorial
by common consent, and as facts of the moral instinct which nature, in
her wisdom, has given to man in order to serve as guide and teacher until
his enlightened intelligence gives him maturity. But this very technical
shape which renders truth visible to the understanding conceals it from
the feelings; for, unhappily, understanding begins by destroying the
object of the inner sense before it can appropriate the object. Like the
chemist, the philosopher finds synthesis only by analysis, or the
spontaneous work of nature only through the torture of art. Thus, in
order to detain the fleeting apparition, he must enchain it in the
fetters of rule, dissect its fair proportions into abstract notions, and
preserve its living spirit in a fleshless skeleton of words. Is it
surprising that natural feeling should not recognize itself in such a
copy, and if in the report of the analyst the truth appears as paradox?

Permit me therefore to crave your indulgence if the following researches
should remove their object from the sphere of sense while endeavoring to
draw it towards the understanding. That which I before said of moral
experience can be applied with greater truth to the manifestation of "the
beautiful. " It is the mystery which enchants, and its being is
extinguished with the extinction of the necessary combination of its
elements.




LETTER II.


But I might perhaps make a better use of the opening you afford me if I
were to direct your mind to a loftier theme than that of art. It would
appear to be unseasonable to go in search of a code for the aesthetic
world, when the moral world offers matter of so much higher interest, and
when the spirit of philosophical inquiry is so stringently challenged by
the circumstances of our times to occupy itself with the most perfect of
all works of art--the establishment and structure of a true political
freedom.

It is unsatisfactory to live out of your own age and to work for other
times. It is equally incumbent on us to be good members of our own age
as of our own state or country. If it is conceived to be unseemly and
even unlawful for a man to segregate himself from the customs and manners
of the circle in which he lives, it would be inconsistent not to see that
it is equally his duty to grant a proper share of influence to the voice
of his own epoch, to its taste and its requirements, in the operations in
which he engages.

But the voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all
events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course
of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens
to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to
leave reality, it has to raise itself boldly above necessity and
neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its
prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and
not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that
prevails, and lends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke. Utility is
the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all
subjects are subservient. In this great balance on utility, the
spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all
encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The
very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one
promise after another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed in
proportion as the limits of science are enlarged.

The eyes of the philosopher as well as of the man of the world are
anxiously turned to the theatre of political events, where it is presumed
the great destiny of man is to be played out. It would almost seem to
betray a culpable indifference to the welfare of society if we did not
share this general interest. For this great commerce in social and moral
principles is of necessity a matter of the greatest concern to every
human being, on the ground both of its subject and of its results. It
must accordingly be of deepest moment to every man to think for himself.
It would seem that now at length a question that formerly was only
settled by the law of the stronger is to be determined by the calm
judgment of the reason, and every man who is capable of placing himself
in a central position, and raising his individuality into that of his
species, can look upon himself as in possession of this judicial faculty
of reason; being moreover, as man and member of the human family, a party
in the case under trial and involved more or less in its decisions. It
would thus appear that this great political process is not only engaged
with his individual case, it has also to pronounce enactments, which he
as a rational spirit is capable of enunciating and entitled to pronounce.

It is evident that it would have been most attractive to me to inquire
into an object such as this, to decide such a question in conjunction
with a thinker of powerful mind, a man of liberal sympathies, and a heart
imbued with a noble enthusiasm for the weal of humanity. Though so
widely separated by worldly position, it would have been a delightful
surprise to have found your unprejudiced mind arriving at the same result
as my own in the field of ideas. Nevertheless, I think I can not only
excuse, but even justify by solid grounds, my step in resisting this
attractive purpose and in preferring beauty to freedom. I hope that I
shall succeed in convincing you that this matter of art is less foreign
to the needs than to the tastes of our age; nay, that, to arrive at a
solution even in the political problem, the road of aesthetics must be
pursued, because it is through beauty that we arrive at freedom. But I
cannot carry out this proof without my bringing to your remembrance the
principles by which the reason is guided in political legislation.




LETTER III.


Man is not better treated by nature in his first start than her other
works are; so long as he is unable to act for himself as an independent
intelligence she acts for him. But the very fact that constitutes him a
man is that he does not remain stationary, where nature has placed him,
that he can pass with his reason, retracing the steps nature had made him
anticipate, that he can convert the work of necessity into one of free
solution, and elevate physical necessity into a moral law.

When man is raised from his slumber in the senses he feels that he is a
man; he surveys his surroundings and finds that he is in a state. He was
introduced into this state by the power of circumstances, before he could
freely select his own position. But as a moral being he cannot possibly
rest satisfied with a political condition forced upon him by necessity,
and only calculated for that condition; and it would be unfortunate if
this did satisfy him. In many cases man shakes off this blind law of
necessity, by his free spontaneous action, of which among many others we
have an instance, in his ennobling by beauty and suppressing by moral
influence the powerful impulse implanted in him by nature in the passion
of love. Thus, when arrived at maturity, he recovers his childhood by an
artificial process, he founds a state of nature in his ideas, not given
him by any experience, but established by the necessary laws and
conditions of his reason, and he attributes to this ideal condition an
object, an aim, of which he was not cognizant in the actual reality of
nature. He gives himself a choice of which he was not capable before,
and sets to work just as if he were beginning anew, and were exchanging
his original state of bondage for one of complete independence, doing
this with complete insight and of his free decision. He is justified in
regarding this work of political thraldom as non-existing, though a wild
and arbitrary caprice may have founded its work very artfully; though it
may strive to maintain it with great arrogance and encompass it with a
halo of veneration. For the work of blind powers possesses no authority
before which freedom need bow, and all must be made to adapt itself to
the highest end which reason has set up in his personality. It is in
this wise that a people in a state of manhood is justified in exchanging
a condition of thraldom for one of moral freedom.

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

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

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




LETTER IV.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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




LETTER V.


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

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

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

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

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




LETTER VI.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




LETTER VII.


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

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

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




LETTER VIII.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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




LETTER IX.


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

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

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

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

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

But the minds set on fire by this ideal have not all received an equal
share of calm from the creative genius--that great and patient temper
which is required to impress the ideal on the dumb marble, or to spread
it over a page of cold, sober letters, and then intrust it to the
faithful hands of time.