No More Learning

This is, up to the present
time, what the will does not know. Also it should observe this conduct
for all the affective movements without exception, and when it is nature
which has spoken the first, never allow it to act as an immediate cause.
Man would testify only by that to his independence. It is when, by an
act of his will, he breaks the violence of his desires, which hasten
towards the object which should satisfy them, and would dispense entirely
with the co-operation of the will,--it is only then that he reveals
himself in quality of a moral being, that is to say, as a free agent,
which does not only allow itself to experience either aversion or desire,
but which at all times must will his aversions and his desires.

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

Thus in the affective movements in which nature (instinct) acts the first
and seeks to do without the will, or to draw it violently to its side,
the morality of character cannot manifest itself but by its resistance,
and there is but one means of preventing the instinct from restraining
the liberty of the will: it is to restrain the instinct itself. Thus we
can only have agreement between the law of reason and the affective
phenomena, under the condition of putting both in discord with the
exigencies of instinct. And as nature never gives way to moral reasons,
and recalls her claims, and as on her side, consequently, all remains in
the same state, in whatever manner the will acts towards her, it results
that there is no possible accord between the inclination and duty,
between reason and sense; and that here man cannot act at the same time
with all his being and with all the harmony of his nature, but
exclusively with his reasonable nature. Thus in these sorts of actions
we could not find moral beauty, because an action is morally good only as
far as inclination has taken part in it, and here the inclination
protests against much more than it concurs with it. But these actions
have moral grandeur, because all that testifies to a preponderating
authority exercised over the sensuous nature has grandeur, and grandeur
is found only there.

It is, then, in the affective movements that this great soul of which we
speak transforms itself and becomes sublime; and it is the touchstone to
distinguish the soul truly great from what is called a good heart, or
from the virtue of temperament. When in man the inclination is ranged on
the side of morality only because morality itself is happily on the side
of inclination, it will happen that the instinct of nature in the
affective movements will exercise upon the will a full empire, and if a
sacrifice is necessary it is the moral nature, and not the sensuous
nature, that will make it. If, on the contrary, it is reason itself
which has made the inclination pass to the side of duty (which is the
case in the fine character), and which has only confided the rudder to
the sensuous nature, it will be always able to retake it as soon as the
instinct should misuse its full powers. Thus the virtue of temperament
in the affective movements falls back to the state of simple production
of nature, whilst the noble soul passes to heroism and rises to the rank
of pure intelligence.

The rule over the instincts by moral force is the emancipation of mind,
and the expression by which this independence presents itself to the eyes
in the world of phenomena is what is called dignity.

To consider this rigorously: the moral force in man is susceptible of no
representation, for the super-sensuous could not explain itself by a
phenomenon that falls under the sense; but it can be represented
indirectly to the mind by sensuous signs, and this is actually the case
with dignity in the configuration of man.

When the instinct of nature is excited, it is accompanied just as the
heart in its moral emotions is, by certain movements of the body, which
sometimes go before the will, sometimes, even as movements purely
sympathetic, escape altogether its empire. In fact, as neither
sensation, nor the desire, nor aversion, are subject to the free
arbitration of man, man has no right over the physical movements which
immediately depend on it. But the instinct does not confine itself to
simple desire; it presses, it advances, it endeavors to realize its
object; and if it does not meet in the autonomy of the mind an energetic
resistance, it will even anticipate it, it will itself take the
initiative of those sorts of acts over which the will alone has the right
to pronounce. For the instinct of conservation tends without ceasing to
usurp the legislative powers in the domain of the will, and its efforts
go to exercise over man a domination as absolute as over the beast.
There are, then, two sorts of distinct movements, which, in themselves
and by their origin, in each affective phenomenon, arise in man by the
instinct of conservation: those firstly which immediately proceed from
sensation, and which, consequently, are quite involuntary; then those
which in principle could and would be voluntary, but from which the blind
instinct of nature takes all freedom. The first refer to the affection
itself, and are united necessarily with it; the others respond rather to
the cause and to the object of the affections, and are thus accidental
and susceptible of modification, and cannot be mistaken for infallible
signs of the affective phenomena. But as both one and the other, when
once the object is determined, are equally necessary to the instinct of
nature, so they assist, both one and the other, the expression of
affective phenomena; a necessary competition, in order that the
expression should be complete and form a harmonious whole.

If, then, the will is sufficiently independent to repress the aggressions
of instinct and to maintain its rights against this blind force, all the
phenomena which the instinct of nature, once excited, produce, in its
proper domain, will preserve, it is true, their force; but those of the
second kind, those which came out of a foreign jurisdiction, and which it
pretended to subject arbitrarily to its power, these phenomena would not
take place. Thus the phenomena are no longer in harmony; but it is
precisely in their opposition that consists the expression of the moral
force. Suppose that we see a man a prey to the most poignant affection,
manifested by movements of the first kind, by quite involuntary
movements. His veins swell, his muscles contract convulsively, his voice
is stifled, his chest is raised and projects, whilst the lower portion of
the torso is sunken and compressed; but at the same time the voluntary
movements are soft, the features of the face free, and serenity beams
forth from the brow and in the look. If man were only a physical being,
all his traits, being determined only by one and the same principle,
would be in unison one with the other, and would have a similar
expression. Here, for example, they would unite in expressing
exclusively suffering; but as those traits which express calmness are
mixed up with those which express suffering, and as similar causes do not
produce opposite effects, we must recognize in this contrast the presence
and the action of a moral force, independent of the passive affections,
and superior to the impressions beneath which we see sensuous nature give
way. And this is why calmness under suffering, in which properly
consists dignity, becomes--indirectly, it is true, and by means of
reasoning--a representation of the pure intelligence which is in man, and
an expression of his moral liberty. But it is not only under suffering,
in the restricted sense of the word, in the sense in which it marks only
the painful affections, but generally in all the cases in which the
appetitive faculty is strongly interested, that mind ought to show its
liberty, and that dignity ought to be the dominant expression. Dignity
is not less required in the agreeable affections than in the painful
affections, because in both cases nature would willingly play the part of
master, and has to be held in check by the will. Dignity relates to the
form and not to the nature of the affection, and this is why it can be
possible that often an affection, praiseworthy in the main, but one to
which we blindly commit ourselves, degenerates, from the want of dignity,
into vulgarity and baseness; and, on the contrary, a condemnable
affection, as soon as it testifies by its form to the empire of the mind
over the senses, changes often its character and approaches even towards
the sublime.

Thus in dignity the mind reigns over the body and bears itself as ruler:
here it has its independence to defend against imperious impulse, always
ready to do without it, to act and shake off its yoke. But in grace, on
the contrary, the mind governs with a liberal government, for here the
mind itself causes sensuous nature to act, and it finds no resistance to
overcome. But obedience only merits forbearance, and severity is only
justifiable when provoked by opposition.

Thus grace is nothing else than the liberty of voluntary movements, and
dignity consists in mastering involuntary movements. Grace leaves to
sensuous nature, where it obeys the orders of the mind, a certain air of
independence; dignity, on the contrary, submits the sensuous nature to
mind where it would make the pretensions to rule; wherever instinct takes
the initiative and allows itself to trespass upon the attributes of the
will, the will must show it no indulgence, but it must testify to its own
independence (autonomy), in opposing to it the most energetic resistance.
If, on the contrary, it is the will that commences, and if instinct does
but follow it, the free arbitration has no longer to display any rigor,
now it must show indulgence. Such is in a few words the law which ought
to regulate the relation of the two natures of man in what regards the
expression of this relation in the world of phenomena.

It follows that dignity is required, and is seen particularly in passive
affection, whilst grace is shown in the conduct, for it is only in
suffering that the liberty of the soul can be manifested, and only in
action that the liberty of the body can be displayed.

If dignity is an expression of resistance opposed to instinct by moral
liberty, and if the instinct consequently ought to be considered as a
force that renders resistance necessary, it follows that dignity is
ridiculous where you have no force of this kind to resist, and
contemptible where there ought not to be any such force to combat. We
laugh at a comedian, whatever rank or condition he may occupy, who even
in indifferent actions affects dignity. We despise those small souls
who, for having accomplished an ordinary action, and often for having
simply abstained from a base one, plume themselves on their dignity.

Generally, what is demanded of virtue is not properly speaking dignity,
but grace. Dignity is implicitly contained in the idea of virtue, which
even by its nature supposes already the rule of man over his instincts.
It is rather sensuous nature that, in the fulfilment of moral duties, is
found in a state of oppression and constraint, particularly when it
consummates in a painful sacrifice. But as the ideal of perfection in
man does not require a struggle, but harmony between the moral and
physical nature, this ideal is little compatible with dignity, which is
only the expression of a struggle between the two natures, and as such
renders visible either the particular impotence of the individual, or the
impotence common to the species. In the first case, when the want of
harmony between inclination and duty, with regard to a moral act, belongs
to the particular powerlessness of the subject, the act would always lose
its moral value, in as far as that combat is necessary, and, in
consequence, proportionally as there would be dignity in the exterior
expression of this act; for our moral judgment connects each individual
with the common measure of the species, and we do not allow man to be
stopped by other limits than those of human nature.

In the second case, when the action commanded by duty cannot be placed in
harmony with the exigencies of instinct without going against the idea of
human nature, the resistance of the inclination is necessary, and then
only the sight of the combat can convince us of the possibility of
victory. Thus we ask here of the features and attitudes an expression of
this interior struggle, not being able to take upon ourselves to believe
in virtue where there is no trace of humanity. Where then the moral law
commands of us an action which necessarily makes the sensuous nature
suffer, there the matter is serious, and ought not to be treated as play;
ease and lightness in accomplishing this act would be much more likely to
revolt us than to satisfy us; and thus, in consequence, expression is no
longer grace, but dignity. In general, the law which prevails here is,
that man ought to accomplish with grace all the acts that he can execute
in the sphere of human nature; and with dignity all those for the
accomplishment of which he is obliged to go beyond his nature.

In like manner as we ask of virtue to have grace, we ask of inclination
to have dignity. Grace is not less natural to inclination than dignity
to virtue, and that is evident from the idea of grace, which is all
sensuous and favorable to the liberty of physical nature, and which is
repugnant to all idea of constraint. The man without cultivation lacks
not by himself a certain degree of grace, when love or any other
affection of this kind animates him; and where do we find more grace than
in children, who are nevertheless entirely under the direction of
instinct. The danger is rather that inclination should end by making the
state of passion the dominant one, stifling the independence of mind, and
bringing about a general relaxation. Therefore in order to conciliate
the esteem of a noble sentiment--esteem can only be inspired by that
which proceeds from a moral source--the inclination must always be
accompanied by dignity. It is for that reason a person in love desires
to find dignity in the object of this passion. Dignity alone is the
warrant that it is not need which has forced, but free choice which has
chosen, that he is not desired as a thing, but esteemed as a person.

We require grace of him who obliges, dignity of the person obliged: the
first, to set aside an advantage which he has over the other, and which
might wound, ought to give to his actions, though his decision may have
been disinterested, the character of an affective movement, that thus,
from the part which he allows inclination to take, he may have the
appearance of being the one who gains the most: the second, not to
compromise by the dependence in which he put himself the honor of
humanity, of which liberty is the saintly palladium, ought to raise what
is only a pure movement of instinct to the height of an act of the will,
and in this manner, at the moment when he receives a favor, return in a
certain sense another favor.

We must censure with grace, and own our faults with dignity: to put
dignity into our remonstrances is to have the air of a man too penetrated
by his own advantage: to put grace into our confessions is to forget the
inferiority in which our fault has placed us. Do the powerful desire to
conciliate affection? Their superiority must be tempered by grace. The
feeble, do they desire to conciliate esteem? They must through dignity
rise above their powerlessness. Generally it is thought that dignity is
suitable to the throne, and every one knows that those seated upon it
desire to find in their councillors, their confessors, and in their
parliaments--grace. But that which may be good and praiseworthy in a
kingdom is not so always in the domain of taste. The prince himself
enters into this domain as soon as he descends from his throne (for
thrones have their privileges), and the crouching courtier places himself
under the saintly and free probation of this law as soon as he stands
erect and becomes again a man. The first we would counsel to supplement
from the superfluity of the second that which he himself needs, and to
give him as much of his dignity as he requires to borrow grace from him.

Although dignity and grace have each their proper domain in which they
are manifest, they do not exclude each other. They can be met with in
the same person, and even in the same state of that person. Further, it
is grace alone which guarantees and accredits dignity, and dignity alone
can give value to grace.

Dignity alone, wherever met with, testifies that the desires and
inclinations are restrained within certain limits. But what we take for
a force which moderates and rules, may it not be rather an obliteration
of the faculty of feeling (hardness)? Is it really the moral autonomy,
and may it not be rather the preponderance of another affection, and in
consequence a voluntary interested effort that restrains the outburst of
the present affection? This is what grace alone can put out of doubt in
joining itself to dignity. It is grace, I mean to say, that testifies to
a peaceful soul in harmony with itself and a feeling heart.

In like manner grace by itself shows a certain susceptibility of the
feeling faculty, and a certain harmony of sentiment. But may this not be
a certain relaxation of the mind which allows so much liberty to sensuous
nature and which opens the heart to all impressions? Is it indeed the
moral which has established this harmony between the sentiments? It is
dignity alone which can in its turn guarantee this to us in joining
itself to grace; I mean it is dignity alone which attests in the subject
an independent force, and at the moment when the will represses the
license of involuntary movement, it is by dignity that it makes known
that the liberty of voluntary movements is a simple concession on its
part.

If grace and dignity, still supported, the one by architectonic beauty
and the other by force, were united in the same person, the expression of
human nature would be accomplished in him: such a person would be
justified in the spiritual world and set at liberty in the sensuous
world. Here the two domains touch so closely that their limits are
indistinguishable. The smile that plays on the lips; this sweetly
animated look; that serenity spread over the brow--it is the liberty of
the reason which gleams forth in a softened light. This noble majesty
impressed on the face is the sublime adieu of the necessity of nature,
which disappears before the mind. Such is the ideal of human beauty
according to which the antique conceptions were formed, and we see it in
the divine forms of a Niobe, of the Apollo Belvedere, in the winged
Genius of the Borghese, and in the Muse of the Barberini palace. There,
where grace and dignity are united, we experience by turns attraction and
repulsion; attraction as spiritual creatures, and repulsion as being
sensuous creatures.

Dignity offers to us an example of subordination of sensuous nature to
moral nature--an example which we are bound to imitate, but which at the
same time goes beyond the measure of our sensuous faculty. This
opposition between the instincts of nature and the exigencies of the
moral law, exigencies, however, that we recognize as legitimate, brings
our feelings into play and awakens a sentiment that we name esteem, which
is inseparable from dignity.

With grace, on the contrary, as with beauty in general, reason finds its
demands satisfied in the world of sense, and sees with surprise one of
its own ideas presented to it, realized in the world of phenomena. This
unexpected encounter between the accident of nature and the necessity of
reason awakens in us a sentiment of joyous approval (contentment) which
calms the senses, but which animates and occupies the mind, and it
results necessarily that we are attracted by a charm towards the sensuous
object. It is this attraction which we call kindliness, or love--a
sentiment inseparable from grace and beauty.

The attraction--I mean the attraction (stimulus) not of love but of
voluptuousness--proposes to the senses a sensuous object that promises to
these the satisfaction of a want, that is to say a pleasure; the senses
are consequently solicited towards this sensuous object, and from that
springs desire, a sentiment which increases and excites the sensuous
nature, but which, on the contrary, relaxes the spiritual nature.

We can say of esteem that it inclines towards its object; of love, that
it approaches with inclination towards its object; of desire, that it
precipitates itself upon its object; with esteem, the object is reason,
and the subject is sensuous nature; with love, the object is sensuous,
and the subject is moral nature; with desire, the object and the subject
are purely sensuous.

With love alone is sentiment free, because it is pure in its principle,
and because it draws its source from the seat of liberty, from the breast
of our divine nature. Here, it is not the weak and base part of our
nature that measures itself with the greater and more noble part; it is
not the sensibility, a prey to vertigo, which gazes up at the law of
reason. It is absolute greatness which is reflected in beauty and in
grace, and satisfied in morality; it becomes the legislator even, the god
in us who plays with his own image in the world of sense. Thus love
consoles and dilates the heart, whilst esteem strains it; because here
there is nothing which could limit the heart and compress its impulses,
there being nothing higher than absolute greatness; and sensibility, from
which alone hinderance could come, is reconciled, in the breast of beauty
and of grace, with the ideas even of the mind. Love has but to descend;
esteem aspires with effort towards an object placed above it. This is
the reason that the wicked love nothing, though they are obliged to
esteem many things. This is why the well-disposed man can hardly esteem
without at once feeling love for the object. Pure spirit can only love,
but not esteem; the senses know only esteem, but not love.

The culpable man is perpetually a prey to fear, that he may meet in the
world of sense the legislator within himself; and sees an enemy in all
that bears the stamp of greatness, of beauty, and of perfection: the man,
on the contrary, in whom a noble soul breathes, knows no greater pleasure
than to meet out of himself the image or realization of the divine that
is in him; and to embrace in the world of sense a symbol of the immortal
friend he loves. Love is at the same time the most generous and the most
egotistical thing in nature; the most generous, because it receives
nothing and gives all--pure mind being only able to give and not receive;
the most egotistical, for that which he seeks in the subject, that which
he enjoys in it, is himself and never anything else.

But precisely because he who loves receives from the beloved object
nothing but that which he has himself given, it often happens that he
gives more than he has received.

The exterior senses believe to have discovered in the object that which
the internal sense alone contemplates in it, in the end believing what is
desired with ardor, and the riches belonging to the one who loves hide
the poverty of the object loved. This is the reason why love is subject
to illusion, whilst esteem and desire are never deceived. As long as the
super-excitement of the internal senses overcomes the internal senses,
the soul remains under the charm of this Platonic love, which gives place
only in duration to the delights enjoyed by the immortals. But as soon
as internal sense ceases to share its visions with the exterior sense,
these take possession of their rights and imperiously demand that which
is its due--matter. It is the terrestrial Venus who profits by the fire
kindled by the celestial Venus, and it is not rare to find the physical
instinct, so long sacrificed, revenge itself by a rule all the more
absolute. As external sense is never a dupe to illusion, it makes this
advantage felt with a brutal insolence over its noble rival; and it
possesses audacity to the point of asserting that it has settled an
account that the spiritual nature had left under sufferance.

Dignity prevents love from degenerating into desire, and grace, from
esteem turning into fear. True beauty, true grace, ought never to cause
desire. Where desire is mingled, either the object wants dignity, or he
who considers it wants morality in his sentiments. True greatness ought
never to cause fear. If fear finds a place, you may hold for certain
either that the object is wanting in taste and grace, or that he who
considers it is not at peace with his conscience.

Attraction, charm, grace: words commonly employed as synonyms, but which
are not, or ought not to be so, the idea they express being capable of
many determinations, requiring different designations.

There is a kind of grace which animates, and another which calms the
heart. One touches nearly the sphere of the senses, and the pleasure
which is found in these, if not restrained by dignity, would easily
degenerate into concupiscence; we may use the word attraction [Reiz] to
designate this grace. A man with whom the feelings have little
elasticity does not find in himself the necessary force to awaken his
affections: he needs to borrow it from without and to seek from
impressions which easily exercise the phantasy, by rapid transition from
sentiment to action, in order to establish in himself the elasticity he
had lost. It is the advantage that he will find in the society of an
attractive person, who by conversation and look would stir his
imagination and agitate this stagnant water.

The calming grace approaches more nearly to dignity, inasmuch as it
manifests itself through the moderation which it imposes upon the
impetuosity of the movements. It is to this the man addresses himself
whose imagination is over-excited; it is in this peaceful atmosphere that
the heart seeks repose after the violence of the storm. It is to this
that I reserve especially the appellation of grace. Attraction is not
incompatible with laughter, jest, or the sting of raillery; grace agrees
only with sympathy and love.

Dignity has also its degrees and its shades. If it approaches grace and
beauty, it takes the name of nobleness; if, on the contrary, it inclines
towards the side of fear, it becomes haughtiness.

The utmost degree of grace is ravishing charm. Dignity, in its highest
form, is called majesty. In the ravishing we love our Ego, and we feel
our being fused with the object. Liberty in its plenitude and in its
highest enjoyment tends to the complete destruction of liberty, and the
excitement of the mind to the delirium of the voluptuousness of the
senses. Majesty, on the contrary, proposes to us a law, a moral ideal,
which constrains us to turn back our looks upon ourselves. God is there,
and the sentiment we have of His presence makes us bend our eyes upon the
ground. We forget all that is without ourselves, and we feel but the
heavy burden of our own existence.

Majesty belongs to what is holy. A man capable of giving us an idea of
holiness possesses majesty, and if we do not go so far as to kneel, our
mind at least prostrates itself before him. But the mind recoils at once
upon the slightest trace of human imperfection which he discovers in the
object of his adoration, because that which is only comparatively great
cannot subdue the heart.

Power alone, however terrible or without limit we may suppose it to be,
can never confer majesty. Power imposes only upon the sensuous being;
majesty should act upon the mind itself, and rob it of its liberty. A
man who can pronounce upon me a sentence of death has neither more nor
less of majesty for me the moment I am what I ought to be. His advantage
over me ceases as soon as I insist on it. But he who offers to me in his
person the image of pure will, before him I would prostrate myself, if it
is possible, for all eternity.

Grace and dignity are too high in value for vanity and stupidity not to
be excited to appropriate them by imitation. There is only one means of
attaining this: it is to imitate the moral state of which they are the
expression. All other imitation is but to ape them, and would be
recognized directly through exaggeration.

Just as exaggeration of the sublime leads to inflation, and affectation
of nobleness to preciosity, in the same manner affectation of grace ends
in coquetry, and that of dignity to stiff solemnity, false gravity.

There where true grace simply used ease and provenance, affected grace
becomes effeminacy. One is content to use discreetly the voluntary
movements, and not thwart unnecessarily the liberty of nature; the other
has not even the heart to use properly the organs of will, and, not to
fall into hardness and heaviness, it prefers to sacrifice something of
the aim of movement, or else it seeks to reach it by cross ways and
indirect means. An awkward and stiff dancer expends as much force as if
he had to work a windmill; with his feet and arms he describes lines as
angular as if he were tracing figures with geometrical precision; the
affected dancer, on the other hand, glides with an excess of delicacy, as
if he feared to injure himself on coming in contact with the ground, and
his feet and hands describe only lines in sinuous curves. The other sex,
which is essentially in possession of true grace, is also that one which
is more frequently culpable of affected grace, but this affectation is
never more distasteful than when used as a bait to desire. The smile of
true grace thus gives place to the most repulsive grimace; the fine play
of look, so ravishing when it displays a true sentiment, is only
contortion; the melodious inflections of the voice, an irresistible
attraction from candid lips, are only a vain cadence, a tremulousness
which savors of study: in a word, all the harmonious charms of woman
become only deception, an artifice of the toilet.

If we have many occasions to observe the affected grace in the theatre
and in the ball-room, there is also often occasion of studying the
affected dignity in the cabinet of ministers and in the study-rooms of
men of science (notably at universities). True dignity is content to
prevent the domination of the affections, to keep the instinct within
just limits, but there only where it pretends to be master in the
involuntary movements; false dignity regulates with an iron sceptre even
the voluntary movements, it oppresses the moral movements, which were
sacred to true dignity, as well as the sensual movements, and destroys
all the mimic play of the features by which the soul gleams forth upon
the face. It arms itself not only against rebel nature, but against
submissive nature, and ridiculously seeks its greatness in subjecting
nature to its yoke, or, if this does not succeed, in hiding it. As if it
had vowed hatred to all that is called nature, it swathes the body in
long, heavy-plaited garments, which hide the human structure; it
paralyzes the limbs in surcharging them with vain ornaments, and goes
even the length of cutting the hair to replace this gift of nature by an
artificial production. True dignity does not blush for nature, but only
for brute nature; it always has an open and frank air; feeling gleams in
its look; calm and serenity of mind is legible upon the brow in eloquent
traits. False gravity, on the contrary, places its dignity in the lines
of its visage; it is close, mysterious, and guards its features with the
care of an actor; all the muscles of its face are tormented, all natural
and true expression disappears, and the entire man is like a sealed
letter.

But false dignity is not always wrong to keep the mimic play of its
features under sharp discipline, because it might betray more than would
be desired, a precaution true dignity has not to consider. True dignity
wishes only to rule, not to conceal nature; in false dignity, on the
contrary, nature rules the more powerfully within because it is
controlled outwardly. [Art can make use of a proper solemnity. Its
object is only to prepare the mind for something important. When the
poet is anxious to produce a great impression he tunes the mind to
receive it. ]




ON THE NECESSARY LIMITATIONS IN THE USE OF BEAUTY OF FORM.


The abuse of the beautiful and the encroachments of imagination, when,
having only the casting vote, it seeks to grasp the law-giving sceptre,
has done great injury alike in life and in science. It is therefore
highly expedient to examine very closely the bounds that have been
assigned to the use of beautiful forms. These limits are embodied in the
very nature of the beautiful, and we have only to call to mind how taste
expresses its influence to be able to determine how far it ought to
extend it.

The following are the principal operations of taste; to bring the
sensuous and spiritual powers of man into harmony, and to unite them in a
close alliance. Consequently, whenever such an intimate alliance between
reason and the senses is suitable and legitimate, taste may be allowed
influence. But taste reaches the bounds which it is not permitted to
pass without defeating its end or removing us from our duty, in all cases
where the bond between mind and matter is given up for a time, where we
must act for the time as purely creatures of reason, whether it be to
attain an end or to perform a duty. Cases of this kind do really occur,
and they are even incumbent on us in carrying out our destiny.

For we are destined to obtain knowledge and to act from knowledge. In
both cases a certain readiness is required to exclude the senses from
that which the spirit does, because feelings must be abstracted from
knowledge, and passion or desire from every moral act of the will.

When we know, we take up an active attitude, and our attention is
directed to an object, to a relation between different representations.
When we feel, we have a passive attitude, and our attention--if we may
call that so, which is no conscious operation of the mind--is only
directed to our own condition, as far as it is modified by the impression
received. Now, as we only feel and do not know the beautiful, we do not
distinguish any relation between it and other objects, we do not refer
its representation to other representations, but to ourselves who have
experienced the impression. We learn or experience nothing in the
beautiful object, but we perceive a change occasioned by it in our own
condition, of which the impression produced is the expression.
Accordingly our knowledge is not enlarged by judgments of taste, and no
knowledge, not even that of beauty, is obtained by the feeling of beauty.
Therefore, when knowledge is the object, taste can give us no help, at
least directly and immediately; on the contrary, knowledge is shut out as
long as we are occupied with beauty.

But it may be objected, What is the use then of a graceful embodiment of
conceptions, if the object of the discussion or treatise, which is simply
and solely to produce knowledge, is rather hindered than benefited by
ornament? To convince the understanding this gracefulness of clothing
can certainly avail as little as the tasteful arrangement of a banquet
can satisfy the appetite of the guests, or the outward elegance of a
person can give a clue to his intrinsic worth. But just as the appetite
is excited by the beautiful arrangement of the table, and attention is
directed to the elegant person in question, by the attractiveness of the
exterior, so also we are placed in a favorable attitude to receive truth
by the charming representation given of it; we are led to open our souls
to its reception, and the obstacles are removed from our minds which
would have otherwise opposed the difficult pursuit of a long and strict
concatenation of thought. It is never the contents, the substance, that
gains by the beauty of form; nor is it the understanding that is helped
by taste in the act of knowing. The substance, the contents, must
commend themselves to the understanding directly, of themselves; whilst
the beautiful form speaks to the imagination, and flatters it with an
appearance of freedom.

But even further limitations are necessary in this innocent subserviency
to the senses, which is only allowed in the form, without changing
anything in the substance. Great moderation must be always used, and
sometimes the end in view may be completely defeated according to the
kind of knowledge and degree of conviction aimed at in imparting our
views to others. There is a scientific knowledge, which is based on
clear conceptions and known principles; and a popular knowledge, which is
founded on feelings more or less developed. What may be very useful to
the latter is quite possibly adverse to the former.

When the object in view is to produce a strict conviction on principles,
it is not sufficient to present the truth only in respect to its contents
or subject; the test of the truth must at the same time be contained in
the manner of its presentation. But this can mean nothing else than that
not only the contents, but also the mode of stating them, must be
according to the laws of thought. They must be connected in the
presentation with the same strict logical sequence with which they are
chained together in the seasonings of the understanding; the stability of
the representation must guarantee that of the ideas. But the strict
necessity with which the understanding links together reasonings and
conclusions, is quite antagonistic to the freedom granted to imagination
in matters of knowledge. By its very nature, the imagination strives
after perceptions, that is, after complete and completely determinate
representations, and is indefatigably active to represent the universal
in one single case, to limit it in time and space, to make of every
conception an individual, and to give a body to abstractions. Moreover,
the imagination likes freedom in its combinations, and admits no other
law in them than the accidental connection with time and space; for this
is the only connection that remains to our representations, if we
separate from them in thought all that is conception, all that binds them
internally and substantially together. The understanding, following a
diametrically opposite course, only occupies itself with part
representations or conceptions, and its effort is directed to distinguish
features in the living unity of a perception. The understanding proceeds
on the same principles in putting together and taking to pieces, but it
can only combine things by part-representations, just as it can separate
them; for it only unites, according to their inner relations, things that
first disclosed themselves in their separation.
The understanding observes a strict necessity and conformity with laws in
its combinations, and it is only the consistent connection of ideas that
satisfies it. But this connection is destroyed as often as the
imagination insinuates entire representations (individual cases) in this
chain of abstractions, and mixes up the accidents of time with the strict
necessity of a chain of circumstances. Accordingly, in every case where
it is essential to carry out a rigidly accurate sequence of reasoning,
imagination must forego its capricious character; and its endeavor to
obtain all possible sensuousness in conceptions, and all freedom in their
combination, must be made subordinate and sacrificed to the necessity of
the understanding. From this it follows that the exposition must be so
fashioned as to overthrow this effort of the imagination by the exclusion
of all that is individual and sensuous. The poetic impulse of
imagination must be curbed by distinctness of expression, and its
capricious tendency to combine must be limited by a strictly legitimate
course of procedure. I grant that it will not bend to this yoke without
resistance; but in this matter reliance is properly placed on a certain
amount of self-denial, and on an earnest determination of the hearer or
reader not to be deterred by the difficulties accompanying the form, for
the sake of the subject-matter. But in all cases where no sufficient
dependence can be placed on this self-denial, or where the interest felt
in the subject-matter is insufficient to inspire courage for such an
amount of exertion, it is necessary to resign the idea of imparting
strictly scientific knowledge; and to gain instead greater latitude in
the form of its presentation. In such a case it is expedient to abandon
the form of science, which exercises too great violence over the
imagination, and can only be made acceptable through the importance of
the object in view. Instead of this, it is proper to choose the form of
beauty, which, independent of the contents or subject, recommends itself
by its very appearance. As the matter cannot excuse the form in this
case, the form must trespass on the matter.

Popular instruction is compatible with this freedom. By the term popular
speakers or popular writers I imply all those who do not direct their
remarks exclusively to the learned. Now, as these persons do not address
any carefully trained body of hearers or readers, but take them as they
find them, they must only assume the existence of the general conditions
of thought, only the universal impulses that call attention, but no
special gift of thinking, no acquaintance with distinct conceptions, nor
any interest in special subjects. These lecturers and authors must not
be too particular as to whether their audience or readers assign by their
imagination a proper meaning to their abstractions, or whether they will
furnish a proper subject-matter for the universal conceptions to which
the scientific discourse is limited. In order to pursue a safer, easier
course, these persons will present along with their ideas the perceptions
and separate cases to which they relate, and they leave it to the
understanding of the reader to form a proper conception impromptu.
Accordingly, the faculty of imagination is much more mixed up with a
popular discourse, but only to reproduce, to renew previously received
representations, and not to produce, to express its own self-creating
power. Those special cases or perceptions are much too certainly
calculated for the object on hand, and much too closely applied to the
use that is to be made of them, to allow the imagination ever to forget
that it only acts in the service of the understanding. It is true that a
discourse of this popular kind holds somewhat closer to life and the
world of sense, but it does not become lost in it. The mode of
presenting the subject is still didactic; for in order to be beautiful it
is still wanting in the two most distinguished features of beauty,
sensuousness of expression and freedom of movement.

The mode of presenting a theme may be called free when the understanding,
while determining the connection of ideas, does so with so little
prominence that the imagination appears to act quite capriciously in the
matter, and to follow only the accident of time. The presentation of a
subject becomes sensuous when it conceals the general in the particular,
and when the fancy gives the living image (the whole representation),
where attention is merely concerned with the conception (the part
representation). Accordingly, sensuous presentation is, viewed in one
aspect, rich, for in cases where only one condition is desired, a
complete picture, an entirety of conditions, an individual is offered.
But viewed in another aspect it is limited and poor, because it only
confines to a single individual and a single case what ought to be
understood of a whole sphere. It therefore curtails the understanding in
the same proportion that it grants preponderance to the imagination; for
the completer a representation is in substance, the smaller it is in
compass.

It is the interest of the imagination to change objects according to its
caprice; the interest of the understanding is to unite its
representations with strict logical necessity.

To satisfy the imagination, a discourse must have a material part, a
body; and these are formed by the perceptions, from which the
understanding separates distinct features or conceptions. For though we
may attempt to obtain the highest pitch of abstraction, something
sensuous always lies at the ground of the thought. But imagination
strives to pass unfettered and lawless from one conception to another
conception, and seeks not to be bound by any other connection than that
of time. So when the perceptions that constitute the bodily part of a
discourse have no concatenation as things, when they appear rather to
stand apart as independent limbs and separate unities, when they betray
the utter disorder of a sportive imagination, obedient to itself alone,
then the clothing has aesthetic freedom and the wants of the fancy are
satisfied. A mode of presentation such as this might be styled an
organic product, in which not only the whole lives, but also each part
has its individual life. A merely scientific presentation is a
mechanical work, when the parts, lifeless in themselves, impart by their
connection an artificial life to the whole.

On the other hand, a discourse, in order to satisfy the understanding and
to produce knowledge, must have a spiritual part, it must have
significance, and it receives this through the conceptions, by means of
which those perceptions are referred to one another and united into a
whole. The problem of satisfying the understanding by conformity with
law, while the imagination is flattered by being set free from
restrictions, is solved thus: by obtaining the closest connection between
the conceptions forming the spiritual part of the discourse, while the
perceptions, corresponding to them and forming the sensuous part of the
discourse, appear to cohere merely through an arbitrary play of the
fancy.

If an inquiry be instituted into the magic influence of a beautiful
diction, it will always be found that it consists in this happy relation
between external freedom and internal necessity. The principal features
that contribute to this freedom of the imagination are the
individualizing of objects and the figurative or inexact expression of a
thing; the former employed to give force to its sensuousness, the latter
to produce it where it does not exist. When we express a species or kind
by an individual, and portray a conception in a single case, we remove
from fancy the chains which the understanding has placed upon her and
give her the power to act as a creator. Always grasping at completely
determinate images, the imagination obtains and exercises the right to
complete according to her wish the image afforded to her, to animate it,
to fashion it, to follow it in all the associations and transformations
of which it is capable. She may forget for a moment her subordinate
position, and act as an independent power, only self-directing, because
the strictness of the inner concatenation has sufficiently guarded
against her breaking loose from the control of the understanding. An
inexact or figurative expression adds to the liberty, by associating
ideas which in their nature differ essentially from one another, but
which unite in subordination to the higher idea. The imagination adheres
to the concrete object, the understanding to this higher idea, and thus
the former finds movement and variety even where the other verifies a
most perfect continuity. The conceptions are developed according to the
law of necessity, but they pass before the imagination according to the
law of liberty.

Thought remains the same; the medium that represents it is the only thing
that changes. It is thus that an eloquent writer knows how to extract
the most splendid order from the very centre of anarchy, and that he
succeeds in erecting a solid structure on a constantly moving ground, on
the very torrent of imagination.

If we compare together scientific statement or address, popular address,
and fine language, it is seen directly that all three express the idea
with an equal faithfulness as regards the matter, and consequently that
all three help us to acquire knowledge, but that as regards the mode and
degree of this knowledge a very marked difference exists between them.
The writer who uses the language of the beautiful rather represents the
matter of which he treats as possible and desirable than indulges in
attempts to convince us of its reality, and still less of its necessity.
His thought does in fact only present itself as an arbitrary creation of
the imagination, which is never qualified, in itself, to guarantee the
reality of what it represents. No doubt the popular writer leads us to
believe that the matter really is as he describes it, but does not
require anything more firm; for, though he may make the truth of a
proposition credible to our feelings, he does not make it absolutely
certain. Now, feeling may always teach us what is, but not what must be.
The philosophical writer raises this belief to a conviction, for he
proves by undeniable reasons that the matter is necessarily so.

Starting from the principle that we have just established, it will not be
difficult to assign its proper part and sphere to each of the three forms
of diction. Generally it may be laid down as a rule that preference
ought to be given to the scientific style whenever the chief
consideration is not only the result, but also the proofs. But when the
result merely is of the most essential importance the advantage must be
given to popular elocution and fine language. But it may be asked in
what cases ought popular elocution to rise to a fine, a noble style?
This depends on the degree of interest in the reader, or which you wish
to excite in his mind.

The purely scientific statement may incline either to popular discourse
or to philosophic language, and according to this bias it places us more
or less in possession of some branch of knowledge. All that popular
elocution does is to lend us this knowledge for a momentary pleasure or
enjoyment. The first, if I may be allowed the comparison, gives us a
tree with its roots, though with the condition that we wait patiently for
it to blossom and bear fruit. The other, or fine diction, is satisfied
with gathering its flowers and fruits, but the tree that bore them does
not become our property, and when once the flowers are faded and the
fruit is consumed our riches depart. It would therefore be equally
unreasonable to give only the flower and fruit to a man who wishes the
whole tree to be transplanted into his garden, and to offer the whole
tree with its fruit in the germ to a man who only looks for the ripe
fruit. The application of the comparison is self-evident, and I now only
remark that a fine ornate style is as little suited to the professor's
chair as the scholastic style to a drawing-room, the pulpit, or the bar.

The student accumulates in view of an ulterior end and for a future use;
accordingly the professor ought to endeavor to transmit the full and
entire property of the knowledge that he communicates to him. Now,
nothing belongs to us as our own but what has been communicated to the
understanding. The orator, on the other hand, has in view an immediate
end, and his voice must correspond with an immediate want of the public.
His interest is to make his knowledge practically available as soon as
possible; and the surest way is to hand it over to the senses, and to
prepare it for the use of sensation. The professor, who only admits
hearers on certain conditions, and who is entitled to suppose in his
hearers the dispositions of mind in which a man ought to be to receive
the truth, has only in view in his lecture the object of which he is
treating; while the orator, who cannot make any conditions with his
audience, and who needs above everything sympathy, to secure it on his
side, must regulate his action and treatment according to the subjects on
which he turns his discourse. The hearers of the professor have already
attended his lectures, and will attend them again; they only want
fragments that will form a whole after having been linked to the
preceding lectures. The audience of the orator is continually renewed;
it comes unprepared, and perhaps will not return; accordingly in every
address the orator must finish what he wishes to do; each of his
harangues must form a whole and contain expressly and entirely his
conclusion.

It is not therefore surprising that a dogmatic composition or address,
however solid, should not have any success either in conversation or in
the pulpit, nor that a fine diction, whatever wit it may contain, should
not bear fruit in a professor's chair. It is not surprising that the
fashionable world should not read writings that stand out in relief in
the scientific world, and that the scholar and the man of science are
ignorant of works belonging to the school of worldly people that are
devoured greedily by all lovers of the beautiful. 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.