No More Learning

This is the reason why, in ages
assumed to be refined, it is not a rare thing to see gentleness
degenerate into effeminacy, politeness into platitude, correctness
into empty sterility, liberal ways into arbitrary caprice, ease into
frivolity, calm into apathy, and, lastly, a most miserable
caricature treads on the heels of the noblest, the most beautiful
type of humanity. Gentle and graceful beauty is therefore a want to
the man who suffers the constraint of matter and of forms, for he is
moved by grandeur and strength long before he becomes sensible to
harmony and grace. Energetic beauty is a necessity to the man who is
under the indulgent sway of taste, for in his state of refinement he
is only too much disposed to make light of the strength that he
retained in his state of rude savagism.

I think I have now answered and also cleared up the contradiction
commonly met in the judgments of men respecting the influence of the
beautiful, and the appreciation of aesthetic culture. This
contradiction is explained directly we remember that there are two
sorts of experimental beauty, and that on both hands an affirmation
is extended to the entire race, when it can only be proved of one of
the species. This contradiction disappears the moment we distinguish
a twofold want in humanity to which two kinds of beauty correspond.
It is therefore probable that both sides would make good their
claims if they come to an understanding respecting the kind of
beauty and the form of humanity that they have in view.

Consequently in the sequel of my researches I shall adopt the course
that nature herself follows with man considered from the point of
view of sesthetics, and setting out from the two kinds of beauty, I
shall rise to the idea of the genus. I shall examine the effects
produced on man by the gentle and graceful beauty when its springs
of action are in full play, and also those produced by energetic
beauty when they are relaxed. I shall do this to confound these two
sorts of beauty in the unity of the beau-ideal, in the same way that
the two opposite forms and modes of being of humanity are absorbed
in the unity of the ideal man.

LETTER XVII.

While we were only engaged in deducing the universal idea of beauty
from the conception of human nature in general, we had only to
consider in the latter the limits established essentially in itself,
and inseparable from the notion of the finite. Without attending to
the contingent restrictions that human nature may undergo in the
real world of phenomena, we have drawn the conception of this nature
directly from reason, as a source of every necessity, and the ideal
of beauty has been given us at the same time with the ideal of
humanity.

But now we are coming down from the region of ideas to the scene of
reality, to find man in a DETERMINATE STATE, and consequently in
limits which are not derived from the pure conception of humanity,
but from external circumstances and from an accidental use of his
freedom. But although the limitation of the idea of humanity may be
very manifold in the individual, the contents of this idea suffice
to teach us that we can only depart from it by TWO opposite roads.
For if the perfection of man consist in the harmonious energy of his
sensuous and spiritual forces, he can only lack this perfection
through the want of harmony and the want of energy. Thus then,
before having received on this point the testimony of experience,
reason suffices to assure us that we shall find the real and
consequently limited man in a state of tension or relaxation,
according as the exclusive activity of isolated forces troubles the
harmony of his being, or as the unity of his nature is based on the
uniform relaxation of his physical and spiritual forces. These
opposite limits are, as we have now to prove, suppressed by the
beautiful, which re-establishes harmony in man when excited, and
energy in man when relaxed; and which, in this way, in conformity
with the nature of the beautiful, restores the state of limitation
to an absolute state, and makes of man a whole, complete in himself.

Thus the beautiful by no means belies in reality the idea which we
have made of it in speculation; only its action is much less free in
it than in the field of theory, where we were able to apply it to
the pure conception of humanity. In man, as experience shows him to
us, the beautiful finds a matter, already damaged and resisting,
which robs him in IDEAL perfection of what it communicates to him of
its individual mode of being. Accordingly in reality the beautiful
will always appear a peculiar and limited species, and not as the
pure genus; in excited minds in the state of tension, it will lose
its freedom and variety; in relaxed minds, it will lose its
vivifying force; but we, who have become familiar with the true
character of this contradictory phenomenon, cannot be led astray by
it. We shall not follow the great crowd of critics, in determining
their conception by separate experiences, and to make them
answerable for the deficiencies which man shows under their
influence. We know rather that it is man who transfers the
imperfections of his individuality over to them, who stands
perpetually in the way of their perfection by his subjective
limitation, and lowers their absolute ideal to two limited forms of
phenomena.

It was advanced that soft beauty is for an unstrung mind, and the
energetic beauty for the tightly strung mind. But I apply the term
unstrung to a man when he is rather under the pressure of feelings
than under the pressure of conceptions. Every exclusive sway of one
of his two fundamental impulses is for man a state of compulsion and
violence, and freedom only exists in the co-operation of his two
natures. Accordingly, the man governed preponderately by feelings,
or sensuously unstrung, is emancipated and set free by matter. The
soft and graceful beauty, to satisfy this twofold problem, must
therefore show herself under two aspects--in two distinct forms.
First as a form in repose, she will tone down savage life, and pave
the way from feeling to thought. She will, secondly, as a living
image equip the abstract form with sensuous power, and lead back the
conception to intuition and law to feeling. The former service she
does to the man of nature, the second to the man of art. But because
she does not in both cases hold complete sway over her matter, but
depends on that which is furnished either by formless nature or
unnatural art, she will in both cases bear traces of her origin, and
lose herself in one place in material life and in another in mere
abstract form.

To be able to arrive at a conception how beauty can become a means
to remove this twofold relaxation, we must explore its source in the
human mind. Accordingly, make up your mind to dwell a little longer
in the region of speculation, in order then to leave it for ever,
and to advance with securer footing on the ground of experience.

LETTER XVIII.

By beauty the sensuous man is led to form and to thought; by beauty
the spiritual man is brought back to matter and restored to the
world of sense. From this statement it would appear to follow that
between matter and form, between passivity and activity, there must
be a middle state, and that beauty plants us in this state. It
actually happens that the greater part of mankind really form this
conception of beauty as soon as they begin to reflect on its
operations, and all experience I seems to point to this conclusion.
But, on the other hand, nothing is more unwarrantable and
contradictory than such a conception, because the aversion of matter
and form, the passive and the active, feeling and thought, is
eternal and I cannot be mediated in any way. How can we remove this
contradiction? Beauty weds the two opposed conditions of feeling and
thinking, and yet there is absolutely no medium between them. The
former is immediately certain through experience, the other through
the reason.

This is the point to which the whole question of beauty leads, and
if we succeed in settling this point in a satisfactory way, we have
at length found the clue that will conduct us through the whole
labyrinth of aesthetics.

But this requires two very different operations, which must
necessarily support each other in this inquiry. Beauty it is said,
weds two conditions with one another which are opposite to each
other, and can never be one. We must start from this opposition; we
must grasp and recognise them in their entire purity and strictness,
so that both conditions are separated in the most definite matter;
otherwise we mix, but we do not unite them. Secondly, it is usual to
say, beauty unites those two opposed conditions, and therefore
removes the opposition. But because both conditions remain eternally
opposed to one another, they cannot be united in any other way than
by being suppressed. Our second business is therefore to make this
connection perfect, to carry them out with such purity and
perfection that both conditions disappear entirely in a third one,
and no trace of separation remains in the whole; otherwise we
segregate, but do not unite. All the disputes that have ever
prevailed and still prevail in the philosophical world respecting
the conception of beauty have no other origin than their commencing
without a sufficiently strict distinction, or that it is not carried
out fully to a pure union. Those philosophers who blindly follow
their feeling in reflecting on this topic can obtain no other
conception of beauty, because they distinguish nothing separate in
the totality of the sensuous impression. Other philosophers, who
take the understanding as their exclusive guide, can never obtain a
conception of beauty, because they never see anything else in the
whole than the parts, and spirit and matter remain eternally
separate, even in their most perfect unity. The first fear to
suppress beauty dynamically, that is, as a working power, if they
must separate what is united in the feeling. The others fear to
suppress beauty logically, that is, as a conception, when they have
to hold together what in the understanding is separate. The former
wish to think of beauty as it works; the latter wish it to work as
it is thought. Both therefore must miss the truth; the former
because they try to follow infinite nature with their limited
thinking power; the others, because they wish to limit unlimited
nature according to their laws of thought The first fear to rob
beauty of its freedom by a too strict dissection, the others fear to
destroy the distinctness of the conception by a too violent union.
But the former do not reflect that the freedom in which they very
properly place the essence of beauty is not lawlessness, but harmony
of laws; not caprice, but the highest internal necessity. The others
do not remember that distinctness, which they with equal right
demand from beauty, does not consist in the exclusion of certain
realities, but the absolute including of all; that is not therefore
limitation, but infinitude. We shall avoid the quicksands on which
both have made shipwreck if we begin from the two elements in which
beauty divides itself before the understanding, but then afterwards
rise to a pure aesthetic unity by which it works on feeling, and in
which both those conditions completely disappear.

LETTER XIX

Two principal and different states of passive and active capacity of
being determined [Footnote: Bestimmbarkeit] can be distinguished in
man; in like manner two states of passive and active determination.
[Footnote: Bestimmung. ] The explanation of this proposition leads us
most readily to our end.

The condition of the state of man before destination or direction is
given him by the impressions of the senses is an unlimited capacity
of being determined. The infinite of time and space is given to his
imagination for its free use; and, because nothing is settled in
this kingdom of the possible, and therefore nothing is excluded from
it, this state of absence of determination can be named an empty
infiniteness, which must not by any means be confounded with an
infinite void.

Now it is necessary that his sensuous nature should be modified, and
that in the indefinite series of possible determinations one alone
should become real. One perception must spring up in it. That which,
in the previous state of determinableness, was only an empty potency
becomes now an active force, and receives contents; but at the same
time, as an active force it receives a limit, after having been, as
a simple power, unlimited. Reality exists now, but the infinite has
disappeared. To describe a figure in space, we are obliged to limit
infinite space; to represent to ourselves a change in time, we are
obliged to divide the totality of time. Thus we only arrive at
reality by limitation, at the positive, at a real position, by
negation or exclusion; to determination, by the suppression of our
free determinableness.

But mere exclusion would never beget a reality, nor would a mere
sensuous impression ever give birth to a perception, if there were
not something from which it was excluded, if by an absolute act of
the mind the negation were not referred to something positive, and
if opposition did not issue out of non-position. This act of the
mind is styled judging or thinking, and the result is named thought.

Before we determine a place in space, there is no space for us; but
without absolute space we could never determine a place. The same is
the case with time. Before we have an instant, there is no time to
us; but without infinite time--eternity--we should never have a
representation of the instant. Thus, therefore, we can only arrive
at the whole by the part, to the unlimited through limitation; but
reciprocally we only arrive at the part through the whole, at
limitation through the unlimited.

It follows from this, that when it is affirmed of beauty that it
mediates for man, the transition from feeling to thought, this must
not be understood to mean that beauty can fill up the gap that
separates feeling from thought, the passive from the active. This
gap is infinite; and, without the interposition of a new and
independent faculty, it is impossible for the general to issue from
the individual, the necessary from the contingent. Thought is the
immediate act of this absolute power, which, I admit, can only be
manifested in connection with sensuous impressions, but which in
this manifestation depends so little on the sensuous that it reveals
itself specially in an opposition to it. The spontaneity or autonomy
with which it acts excludes every foreign influence; and it is not
in as far as it helps thought--which comprehends a manifest
contradiction--but only in as far as it procures for the
intellectual faculties the freedom to manifest themselves in
conformity with their proper laws. It does it only because the
beautiful can become a means of leading man from matter to form,
from feeling to laws, from a limited existence to an absolute
existence.

But this assumes that the freedom of the intellectual faculties can
be balked, which appears contradictory to the conception of an
autonomous power. For a power which only receives the matter of its
activity from without can only be hindered in its action by the
privation of this matter, and consequently by way of negation; it is
therefore a misconception of the nature of the mind, to attribute to
the sensuous passions the power of oppressing positively the freedom
of the mind. Experience does indeed present numerous examples where
the rational forces appear compressed in proportion to the violence
of the sensuous forces. But instead of deducing this spiritual
weakness from the energy of passion, this passionate energy must
rather be explained by the weakness of the human mind. For the sense
can only have a sway such as this over man when the mind has
spontaneously neglected to assert its power.

Yet in trying by these explanations to move one objection, I appear
to have exposed myself to another, and I have only saved the
autonomy of the mind at the cost of its unity. For how can the mind
derive at the same time from itself the principles of inactivity and
of activity, if it is not itself divided, and if it is not in
opposition with itself?

Here we must remember that we have before us, not the infinite mind,
but the finite. The finite mind is that which only becomes active
through the passive, only arrives at the absolute through
limitation, and only acts and fashions in as far as it receives
matter. Accordingly, a mind of this nature must associate with the
impulse towards form or the absolute, an impulse towards matter or
limitation, conditions without which it could not have the former
impulse nor satisfy it. How can two such opposite tendencies exist
together in the same being? This is a problem that can no doubt
embarrass the metaphysician, but not the transcendental philosopher.
The latter does not presume to explain the possibility of things,
but he is satisfied with giving a solid basis to the knowledge that
makes us understand the possibility of experience. And as experience
would be equally impossible without this autonomy in the mind, and
without the absolute unity of the mind, it lays down these two
conceptions as two conditions of experience equally necessary
without troubling itself any more to reconcile them. Moreover, this
immanence of two fundamental impulses does not in any degree
contradict the absolute unity of the mind, as soon as the mind
itself, its selfhood, is distinguished from these two motors. No
doubt, these two impulses exist and act in it, but itself is neither
matter nor form, nor the sensuous nor reason, and this is a point
that does not seem always to have occurred to those who only look
upon the mind as itself acting when its acts are in harmony with
reason, and who declare it passive when its acts contradict reason.

Arrived at its development, each of these two fundamental impulsions
tends of necessity and by its nature to satisfy itself; but
precisely because each of them has a necessary tendency, and both
nevertheless have an opposite tendency, this twofold constraint
mutually destroys itself, and the will preserves an entire freedom
between them both. It is therefore the will that conducts itself
like a power--as the basis of reality--with respect to both these
impulses; but neither of them can by itself act as a power with
respect to the other. A violent man, by his positive tendency to
justice, which never fails in him, is turned away from injustice;
nor can a temptation of pleasure, however strong, make a strong
character violate its principles. There is in man no other power
than his will; and death alone, which destroys man, or some
privation of self-consciousness, is the only thing that can rob man
of his internal freedom.

An external necessity determines our condition, our existence in
time, by means of the sensuous. The latter is quite involuntary,
and directly it is produced in us, we are necessarily passive. In
the same manner an internal necessity awakens our personality in
connection with sensations, and by its antagonism with them; for
consciousness cannot depend on the will, which presupposes it. This
primitive manifestation of personality is no more a merit to us
than its privation is a defect in us. Reason can only be required
in a being who is self-conscious, for reason is an absolute
consecutiveness and universality of consciousness; before this is
the case, he is not a man, nor can any act of humanity be expected
from him. The metaphysician can no more explain the limitation
imposed by sensation on a free and autonomous mind than the natural
philosopher can understand the infinite, which is revealed in
consciousness in connection with these limits. Neither abstraction
nor experience can bring us back to the source whence issue our
ideas of necessity and of universality; this source is concealed in
its origin in time from the observer, and its super-sensuous origin
from the researches of the metaphysician. But, to sum up in a few
words, consciousness is there, and, together with its immutable
unity, the law of all that is for man is established, as well as of
all that is to be by man, for his understanding and his activity.
The ideas of truth and of right present themselves inevitable,
incorruptible, immeasurable, even in the age of sensuousness; and
without our being able to say why or how, we see eternity in time,
the necessary following the contingent. It is thus that, without any
share on the part of the subject, the sensation and self-consciousness
arise, and the origin of both is beyond our volition, as it is out
of the sphere of our knowledge.

But as soon as these two faculties have passed into action, and man
has verified by experience, through the medium of sensation, a
determinate existence, and through the medium of consciousness, its
absolute existence, the two fundamental impulses exert their
influence directly their object is given. The sensuous impulse is
awakened with the experience of life--with the beginning of the
individual; the rational impulsion with the experience of law--with
the beginning of his personality; and it is only when these two
inclinations have come into existence that the human type is
realised. Up to that time, everything takes place in man according
to the law of necessity; but now the hand of nature lets him go, and
it is for him to keep upright humanity which nature places as a germ
in his heart. And thus we see that directly the two opposite and
fundamental impulses exercise their influence in him, both lose
their constraint, and the autonomy of two necessities gives birth to
freedom. LETTER XX.

That freedom Is an active and not a passive principle results from
its very conception; but that liberty itself should be an effect of
nature (taking this word in its widest sense), and not the work of
man, and therefore that it can be favoured or thwarted by natural
means, is the necessary consequence of that which precedes. It
begins only when man is complete, and when these two fundamental
impulsions have been developed. It will then be wanting whilst he is
incomplete, and while one of these impulsions is excluded, and it
will be re-established by all that gives back to man his integrity.

Thus it is possible, both with regard to the entire species as to
the individual, to remark the moment when man is yet incomplete, and
when one of the two exclusions acts solely in him. We know that man
commences by life simply, to end by form; that he is more of an
individual than a person, and that he starts from the limited or
finite to approach the infinite. The sensuous impulsion comes into
play therefore before the rational impulsion, because sensation
precedes consciousness; and in this priority of sensuous impulsion
we find the key of the history of the whole of human liberty.

There is a moment, in fact, when the instinct of life, not yet
opposed to the instinct of form, acts as nature and as necessity;
when the sensuous is a power because man has not begun; for even in
man there can be no other power than his will. But when man shall
have attained to the power of thought, reason, on the contrary, will
be a power, and moral or logical necessity will take the place of
physical necessity. Sensuous power must then be annihilated before
the law which must govern it can be established. It is not enough
that something shall begin which as yet was not; previously
something must end which had begun. Man cannot pass immediately from
sensuousness to thought. He must step backwards, for it is only when
one determination is suppressed that the contrary determination can
take place. Consequently, in order to exchange passive against
active liberty, a passive determination against an active, he must
be momentarily free from all determination, and must traverse a
state of pure determinability. He has then to return in some degree
to that state of pure negative indetermination in which he was
before his senses were affected by anything. But this state was
absolutely empty of all contents, and now the question is to
reconcile an equal determination and a determinability equally
without limit, with the greatest possible fulness, because from this
situation something positive must immediately follow. The
determination which man received by sensation must be preserved,
because he should not lose the reality; but at the same time, in so
far as finite, it should be suppressed, because a determinability
without limit would take place. The problem consists then in
annihilating the determination of the mode of existence, and yet at
the same time in preserving it, which is only possible in one way:
in opposing to it another. The two sides of a balance are in
equilibrium when empty; they are also in equilibrium when their
contents are of equal weight.

Thus, to pass from sensation to thought, the soul traverses a medium
position, in which sensibility and reason are at the same time
active, and thus they mutually destroy their determinant power, and
by their antagonism produce a negation. This medium situation in
which the soul is neither physically nor morally constrained, and
yet is in both ways active, merits essentially the name of a free
situation; and if we call the state of sensuous determination
physical, and the state of rational determination logical or moral,
that state of real and active determination should be called the
aesthetic.

LETTER XXI.

I have remarked in the beginning of the foregoing letter that there
is a twofold condition of determinableness and a twofold condition
of determination. And now I can clear up this proposition.

The mind can be determined--is determinate--only in as far as it is
not determined; it is, however, determinable also, in as far as it
is not exclusively determined; that is, if it is not confined in its
determination. The former is only a want of determination--it is
without limits, because it is without reality; but the latter, the
aesthetic determinableness, has no limits, because it unites all
reality.

The mind is determined, inasmuch as it is only limited; but it is
also determined because it limits itself of its own absolute
capacity. It is situated in the former position when it feels, in
the second when it thinks. Accordingly the aesthetic constitution is
in relation to determinableness what thought is in relation to
determination. The latter is a negative from internal and infinite
completeness, the former a limitation from internal infinite power.
Feeling and thought come into contact in one single point, the mind
is determined in both conditions, the man becomes something and
exists--either as individual or person--by exclusion; in other cases
these two faculties stand infinitely apart. Just in the same manner,
the aesthetic determinableness comes in contact with the mere want
of determination in a single point, by both excluding every distinct
determined existence, by thus being in all other points nothing and
all, and hence by being infinitely different. Therefore, if the
latter, in the absence of determination from deficiency, is
represented as an empty infiniteness, the aesthetic freedom of
determination, which forms the proper counterpart to the former, can
be considered, as a completed infiniteness; a representation which
exactly agrees with the teachings of the previous investigations.

Man is therefore nothing in the aesthetic state, if attention is
given to the single result, and not to the whole faculty, and if we
regard only the absence or want of every special determination. We
must therefore do justice to those who pronounce the beautiful, and
the disposition in which it places the mind, as entirely indifferent
and unprofitable, in relation to knowledge and feeling. They are
perfectly right; for it is certain that beauty gives no separate,
single result, either for the understanding or for the will; it does
not carry out a single intellectual or moral object; it discovers no
truth, does not help us to fulfil a single duty, and, in one word,
is equally unfit to found the character or to clear the head.
Accordingly, the personal worth of a man, or his dignity, as far as
this can only depend on himself, remains entirely undetermined by
aesthetic culture, and nothing further is attained than that, on the
part of nature, it is made profitable for him to make of himself
what he will; that the freedom to be what he ought to be is restored
perfectly to him.

But by this, something infinite is attained. But as soon as we
remember that freedom is taken from man by the one-sided compulsion
of nature in feeling, and by the exclusive legislation of the reason
in thinking, we must consider the capacity restored to him by the
aesthetical disposition, as the highest of all gifts, as the gift of
humanity. I admit that he possesses this capacity for humanity,
before every definite determination in which he may be placed. But
as a matter of fact, he loses it with every determined condition,
into which he may come, and if he is to pass over to an opposite
condition, humanity must be in every case restored to him by the
aesthetic life.

It is therefore not only a poetical license, but also
philosophically correct, when beauty is named our second creator.
Nor is this inconsistent with the fact that she only makes it
possible for us to attain and realise humanity, leaving this to our
free will. For in this she acts in common with our original creator,
nature, which has imparted to us nothing further than this capacity
for humanity, but leaves the use of it to our own determination of
will.

LETTER XXII.

Accordingly, if the aesthetic disposition of the mind must be looked
upon in one respect as nothing--that is, when we confine our view to
separate and determined operations--it must be looked upon in
another respect as a state of the highest reality, in as far as we
attend to the absence of all limits and the sum of powers which are
commonly active in it. Accordingly we cannot pronounce them, again,
to be wrong who describe the aesthetic state to be the most
productive in relation to knowledge and morality. They are perfectly
right, for a state of mind which comprises the whole of humanity in
itself must of necessity include in itself also--necessarily and
potentially--every separate expression of it. Again, a disposition
of mind that removes all limitation from the totality of human
nature must also remove it from every social expression of the same.
Exactly because its "aesthetic disposition" does not exclusively
shelter any separate function of humanity, it is favourable to all
without distinction, nor does it favour any particular functions,
precisely because it is the foundation of the possibility of all.
All other exercises give to the mind some special aptitude, but for
that very reason give it some definite limits; only the aesthetical
leads him to the unlimited. Every other condition, in which we can
live, refers us to a previous condition, and requires for its
solution a following condition; only the aesthetic is a complete
whole in itself, for it unites in itself all conditions of its
source and of its duration. Here alone we feel ourselves swept out
of time, and our humanity expresses itself with purity and integrity
as if it had not yet received any impression or interruption from
the operation of external powers.

That which flatters our senses in immediate sensation opens our weak
and volatile spirit to every impression, but makes us in the same
degree less apt for exertion. That which stretches our thinking
power and invites to abstract conceptions strengthens our mind for
every kind of resistance, but hardens it also in the same
proportion, and deprives us of susceptibility in the same ratio that
it helps us to greater mental activity. For this very reason, one as
well as the other brings us at length to exhaustion, because matter
cannot long do without the shaping, constructive force, and the
force cannot do without the constructible material. But on the other
hand, if we have resigned ourselves to the enjoyment of genuine
beauty, we are at such a moment of our passive and active powers in
the same degree master, and we shall turn with ease from grave to
gay, from rest to movement, from submission to resistance, to
abstract thinking and intuition.

This high indifference and freedom of mind, united with power and
elasticity, is the disposition in which a true work of art ought to
dismiss us, and there is no better test of true aesthetic
excellence. If after an enjoyment of this kind we find ourselves
specially impelled to a particular mode of feeling or action, and
unfit for other modes, this serves as an infallible proof that we
have not experienced any pure aesthetic effect, whether this is
owing to the object, to our own mode of feeling--as generally
happens--or to both together.

As in reality no purely aesthetical effect can be met with--for man
can never leave his dependence on material forces--the excellence of
a work of art can only consist in its greater approximation to its
ideal of aesthetic purity, and however high we may raise the freedom
of this effect, we shall always leave it with a particular
disposition and a particular bias. Any class of productions or
separate work in the world of art is noble and excellent in
proportion to the universality of the disposition and the unlimited
character of the bias thereby presented to our mind. This truth can
be applied to works in various branches of art, and also to
different works in the same branch. We leave a grand musical
performance with our feelings excited, the reading of a noble poem
with a quickened imagination, a beautiful statue or building with an
awakened understanding; but a man would not choose an opportune
moment who attempted to invite us to abstract thinking after a high
musical enjoyment, or to attend to a prosaic affair of common life
after a high poetical enjoyment, or to kindle our imagination and
astonish our feelings directly after inspecting a fine statue or
edifice. The reason of this is that music, BY ITS MATTER, even when
most spiritual, presents a greater affinity with the senses than is
permitted by aesthetic liberty; it is because even the most happy
poetry, having FOR TIS MEDIUM the arbitrary and contingent play of
the imagination, always shares in it more than the intimate
necessity of the really beautiful allows; it is because the best
sculpture touches on severe science BY WHAT IS DETERMINATE IN ITS
CONCEPTION. However, these particular affinities are lost in
proportion as the works of these three kinds of art rise to a
greater elevation, and it is a natural and necessary consequence of
their perfection, that, without confounding their objective limits,
the different arts come to resemble each other more and more, in the
action WHICH THEY EXERCISE ON THE MIND. At its highest degree of
ennobling, music ought to become a form, and act on us with the calm
power of an antique statue; in its most elevated perfection, the
plastic art ought to become music and move us by the immediate
action exercised on the mind by the senses; in its most complete
developmentment, poetry ought both to stir us powerfully like music
and like plastic art to surround us with a peaceful light. In each
art, the perfect style consists exactly in knowing how to remove
specific limits, while sacrificing at the same time the particular
advantages of the art, and to give it by a wise use of what belongs
to it specially a more general character.

Nor is it only the limits inherent in the specific character of each
kind of art that the artist ought to overstep in putting his hand to
the work; he must also triumph over those which are inherent in the
particular subject of which he treats. In a really beautiful work of
art, the substance ought to be inoperative, the form should do
everything; for by the form, the whole man is acted on; the
substance acts on nothing but isolated forces. Thus, however vast
and sublime it may be, the substance always exercises a restrictive
action on the mind, and true aesthetic liberty can only be expected
from the form. Consequently the true search of the master consists
in destroying matter by the form; and the triumph of art is great in
proportion as it overcomes matter and maintains its sway over those
who enjoy its work. It is great particularly in destroying matter
when most imposing, ambitious, and attractive, when therefore matter
has most power to produce the effect proper to it, or, again, when
it leads those who consider it more closely to enter directly into
relation with it. The mind of the spectator and of the hearer must
remain perfectly free and intact; it must issue pure and entire from
the magic circle of the artist, as from the hands of the Creator.
The most frivolous subject ought to be treated in such a way that we
preserve the faculty to exchange it immediately for the most serious
work. The arts which have passion for their object, as a tragedy for
example, do not present a difficulty here; for, in the first place
these arts are not entirely free, because they are in the service of
a particular end (the pathetic), and then no connoisseur will deny
that even in this class a work is perfect in proportion as amidst
the most violent storms of passion it respects the liberty of the
soul. There is a fine art of passion, but an impassioned fine art is
a contradiction in terms, for the infallible effect of the beautiful
is emancipation from the passions. The idea of an instructive fine
art (didactic art) or improving (moral) art is no less contradictory,
for nothing agrees less with the idea of the beautiful than to give
a determinate tendency to the mind.

However, from the fact that a work produces effects only by its
substance, it must not always be inferred that there is a want of
form in this work; this conclusion may quite as well testify to a
want of form in the observer. If his mind is too stretched or too
relaxed, if it is only accustomed to receive things either by the
senses or the intelligence, even in the most perfect combination, it
will only stop to look at the parts, and it will only see matter in
the most beautiful form. Only sensible of the coarse elements, he
must first destroy the aesthetic organisation of a work to find
enjoyment in it, and carefully disinter the details which genius has
caused to vanish, with infinite art, in the harmony of the whole.
The interest he takes in the work is either solely moral or
exclusively physical; the only thing wanting to it is to be exactly
what it ought to be--aesthetical. The readers of this class enjoy a
serious and pathetic poem as they do a sermon; a simple and playful
work, as an inebriating draught; and if on the one hand they have so
little taste as to demand edification from a tragedy or from an
epos, even such as the "Messias," on the other hand they will be
infallibly scandalised by a piece after the fashion of Anacreon and
Catullus.

LETTER XXIII.

I take up the thread of my researches, which I broke off only to
apply the principles I laid down to practical art and the
appreciation of its works.

The transition from the passivity of sensuousness to the activity of
thought and of will can be effected only by the intermediary state
of aesthetic liberty; and though in itself this state decides
nothing respecting our opinions and our sentiments, and therefore
leaves our intellectual and moral value entirely problematical, it
is, however, the necessary condition without which we should never
attain to an opinion or a sentiment.
In a word, there is no other
way to make a reasonable being out of a sensuous man than by making
him first aesthetic.

But, you might object: Is this mediation absolutely indispensable?
Could not truth and duty, one or the other, in themselves and by
themselves, find access to the sensuous man? To this I reply: Not
only is it possible, but it is I absolutely necessary that they owe
solely to themselves their determining force, and nothing would be
more contradictory to our preceding affirmations than to appear to
defend the contrary opinion. It has been expressly proved that the
beautiful furnishes no result, either for the comprehension or for
the will; that it mingles with no operations, either of thought or
of resolution; and that it confers this double power without
determining anything with regard to the real exercise of this power.
Here all foreign help disappears, and the pure logical form, the
idea, would speak immediately to the intelligence, as the pure moral
form, the law, immediately to the will.

But that the pure form should be capable of it, and that there is in
general a pure form for sensuous man, is that, I maintain, which
should be rendered possible by the aesthetic disposition of the
soul. Truth is not a thing which can be received from without like
reality or the visible existence of objects. It is the thinking
force, in his own liberty and activity, which produces it, and it is
just this liberty proper to it, this liberty which we seek in vain
in sensuous man. The sensuous man is already determined physically,
and thenceforth he has no longer his free determinability; he must
necessarily first enter into possession of this lost determinability
before he can exchange the passive against an active determination.
Therefore, in order to recover it, he must either lose the passive
determination that he had, or he should enclose already in Himself
the active determination to which he should pass. If he confined
himself to lose passive determination, he would at the same time
lose with it the possibility of an active determination, because
thought needs a body, and form can only be realised through matter.
He must therefore contain already in himself the active
determination that he may be at once both actively and passively
determined, that is to say, he becomes necessarily aesthetic.

Consequently, by the aesthetic disposition of the soul the proper
activity of reason is already revealed in the sphere of
sensuousness, the power of sense is already broken within its own
boundaries, and the ennobling of physical man carried far enough,
for spiritual man has only to develop himself according to the laws
of liberty. The transition from an aesthetic state to a logical and
moral state (from the beautiful to truth and duty) is then
infinitely more easy than the transition from the physical state to
the aesthetic state (from life pure and blind to form). This
transition man can effectuate alone by his liberty, whilst he has
only to enter into possession of himself not to give it himself; but
to separate the elements of his nature, and not to enlarge it.
Having attained to the aesthetic disposition, man will give to his
judgments and to his actions a universal value as soon as he desires
it This passage from brute nature to beauty, in which an entirely
new faculty would awaken in him, nature would render easier, and his
will has no power over a disposition which, we know, itself gives
birth to the will. To bring the aesthetic man to profound views, to
elevated sentiments, he requires nothing more than important
occasions; to obtain the same thing from the sensuous man, his
nature must at first be changed. To make of the former a hero, a
sage, it is often only necessary to meet with a sublime situation,
which exercises upon the faculty of the will the more immediate
action; for the second, it must first be transplanted under another
sky.

One of the most important tasks of culture, then, is to submit man
to form, even in a purely physical life, and to render it aesthetic
as far as the domain of the beautiful can be extended, for it is
alone in the aesthetic state, and not in the physical state, that
the moral state can be developed. If in each particular case man
ought to possess the power to make his judgment and his will the
judgment of the entire species; if he ought to find in each limited
existence the transition to an infinite existence; if, lastly, he
ought from every dependent situation to take his flight to rise to
autonomy and to liberty, it must be observed that at no moment is he
only individual and solely obeys the law of nature. To be apt and
ready to raise himself from the narrow circle of the ends of nature,
to rational ends, in the sphere of the former he must already have
exercised himself in the second; he must already have realised his
physical destiny with a certain liberty that belongs only to
spiritual nature, that is to say, according to the laws of the
beautiful.

And that he can effect without thwarting in the least degree his
physical aim. The exigencies of nature with regard to him turn only
upon what he does--upon the substance of his acts; but the ends of
nature in no degree determine the way in which he acts, the form of
his actions. On the contrary, the exigencies of reason have
rigorously the form of his activity for its object. Thus, so much as
it is necessary for the moral destination of man, that he be purely
moral, that he shows an absolute personal activity, so much is he
indifferent that his physical destination be entirely physical, that
he acts in a manner entirely passive. Henceforth with regard to this
last destination, it entirely depends on him to fulfil it solely as
a sensuous being and natural force (as a force which acts only as it
diminishes) or, at the same time, as absolute force, as a rational
being. To which of these does his dignity best respond? Of this,
there can be no question. It is as disgraceful and contemptible for
him to do under sensuous impulsion that which he ought to have
determined merely by the motive of duty, as it is noble and
honourable for him to incline towards conformity with laws, harmony,
independence; there even where the vulgar man only satisfies a
legitimate want. In a word, in the domain of truth and morality,
sensuousness must have nothing to determine; but in the sphere of
happiness, form may find a place, and the instinct of play prevail.

Thus then, in the indifferent sphere of physical life, man ought to
already commence his moral life; his own proper activity ought
already to make way in passivity, and his rational liberty beyond
the limits of sense; he ought already to impose the law of his will
upon his inclinations; he ought--if you will permit me the
expression--to carry into the domain of matter the war against
matter, in order to be dispensed from combatting this redoubtable
enemy upon the sacred field of liberty; he ought to learn to have
nobler desires, not to be forced to have sublime volitions. This is
the fruit of aesthetic culture, which submits to the laws of the
beautiful, in which neither the laws of nature nor those of reason
suffer, which does not force the will of man, and which by the form
it gives to exterior life already opens internal life.

LETTER XXIV.

Accordingly three different moments or stages of development can be
distinguished, which the individual man, as well as the whole race,
must of necessity traverse in a determinate order if they are to
fulfil the circle of their determination. No doubt, the separate
periods can be lengthened or shortened, through accidental causes
which are inherent either in the influence of external things or
under the free caprice of men; but neither of them can be
overstepped, and the order of their sequence cannot be inverted
either by nature or by the will. Man, in his PHYSICAL condition,
suffers only the power of nature; he gets rid of this power in the
aesthetical condition, and he rules them in the moral state.

What is man before beauty liberates him from free pleasure, and the
serenity of form tames down the savageness of life? Eternally
uniform in his aims, eternally changing in his judgments, self-
seeking without being himself, unfettered without being free, a
slave without serving any rule. At this period, the world is to him
only destiny, not yet an object; all has existence for him only in
as far as it procures existence to him; a thing that neither seeks
from nor gives to him is non-existent. Every phenomenon stands out
before him, separate and cut off, as he finds himself in the series
of beings. All that is, is to him through the bias of the moment;
every change is to him an entirely fresh creation, because with the
necessary IN HIM, the necessary OUT OF HIM is wanting, which binds
together all the changing forms in the universe, and which holds
fast the law on the theatre of his action, while the individual
departs. It is in vain that nature lets the rich variety of her
forms pass before him; he sees in her glorious fulness nothing but
his prey, in her power and greatness nothing but his enemy. Either
he encounters objects, and wishes to draw them to himself in desire,
or the objects press in a destructive manner upon him, and he
thrusts them away in dismay and terror. In both cases his relation
to the world of sense is immediate CONTACT; and perpetually anxious
through its pressure, restless and plagued by imperious wants, he
nowhere finds rest except in enervation, and nowhere limits save in
exhausted desire.

"True, his is the powerful breast and the mighty hand of the
Titans. . .
A certain inheritance; yet the god welded
Round his forehead a brazen band;
Advice, moderation, wisdom, and patience,--
Hid it from his shy, sinister look.
Every desire is with him a rage,
And his rage prowls around limitless. "--"Iphigenia in Tauris"

Ignorant of his own human dignity, he is far removed from honouring
it in others, and conscious of his own savage greed, he fears it in
every creature that he sees like himself. He never sees others in
himself, only himself in others, and human society, instead of
enlarging him to the race, only shuts him up continually closer in
his individuality. Thus limited, he wanders through his sunless
life, till favouring nature rolls away the load of matter from his
darkened senses, reflection separates him from things, and objects
show themselves at length in the after-glow of the consciousness.

It is true we cannot point out this state of rude nature as we have
here portrayed it in any definite people and age. It is only an
idea, but an idea with which experience agrees most closely in
special features. It may be said that man was never in this animal
condition, but he has not, on the other hand, ever entirely escaped
from it. Even in the rudest subjects, unmistakable traces of
rational freedom can be found, and even in the most cultivated,
features are not wanting that remind us of that dismal natural
condition. It is possible for man, at one and the same time, to
unite the highest and the lowest in his nature; and if his DIGNITY
depends on a strict separation of one from the other, his HAPPINESS
depends on a skilful removal of this separation. The culture which
is to bring his dignity into agreement with his happiness will
therefore have to provide for the greatest purity of these two
principles in their most intimate combination.

Consequently the first appearance of reason in man is not the
beginning of humanity. This is first decided by his freedom, and
reason begins first by making his sensuous dependence boundless; a
phenomenon that does not appear to me to have been sufficiently
elucidated, considering its importance and universality. We know
that the reason makes itself known to man by the demand for the
absolute--the self-dependent and necessary. But as this want of the
reason cannot be satisfied in any separate or single state of his
physical life, he is obliged to leave the physical entirely and to
rise from a limited reality to ideas. But although the true meaning
of that demand of the reason is to withdraw him from the limits of
time and to lead him up from the world of sense to an ideal world,
yet this same demand of reason, by a misapplication--scarcely to be
avoided in this age, prone to sensuousness--can direct him to
physical life, and, instead of making man free, plunge him in the
most terrible slavery.

Facts verify this supposition. Man raised on the wings of
imagination leaves the narrow limits of the present, in which mere
animality is enclosed, in order to strive on to an unlimited future.
But while the limitless is unfolded to his dazed IMAGINATION, his
heart has not ceased to live in the separate, and to serve the
moment. The impulse towards the absolute seizes him suddenly in the
midst of his animality, and as in this cloddish condition all his
efforts aim only at the material and temporal, and are limited by
his individuality, he is only led by that demand of the reason to
extend his individuality into the infinite, instead of to abstract
from it. He will be led to seek instead of form an inexhaustible
matter, instead of the unchangeable an everlasting change and an
absolute securing of his temporal existence. The same impulse which,
directed to his thought and action, ought to lead to truth and
morality, now directed to his passion and emotional state, produces
nothing but an unlimited desire and an absolute want. The first
fruits, therefore, that he reaps in the world of spirits, are cares
and fear--both operations of the reason; not of sensuousness, but of
a reason that mistakes its object and applies its categorical
imperative to matter. All unconditional systems of happiness are
fruits of this tree, whether they have for their object the present
day or the whole of life, or what does not make them any more
respectable, the whole of eternity, for their object. An unlimited
duration of existence and of well-being is only an ideal of the
desires; hence a demand which can only be put forth by an animality
striving up to the absolute. Man, therefore, without gaining
anything for his humanity by a rational expression of this sort,
loses the happy limitation of the animal over which he now only
possesses the unenviable superiority of losing the present for an
endeavour after what is remote, yet without seeking in the limitless
future anything but the present.

But even if the reason does not go astray in its object, or err in
the question, sensuousness will continue to falsify the answer for a
long time. As soon as man has begun to use his understanding and to
knit together phenomena in cause and effect, the reason, according
to its conception, presses on to an absolute knitting together and
to an unconditional basis. In order merely to be able to put forward
this demand man must already have stepped beyond the sensuous, but
the sensuous uses this very demand to bring back the fugitive.

In fact it is now that he ought to abandon entirely the world of
sense in order to take his flight into the realm of ideas; for the
intelligence temains eternally shut up in the finite and in the
contingent, and does not cease putting questions without reaching
the last link of the chain. But as the man with whom we are engaged
is not yet capable of such an abstraction, and does not find it in
the sphere of sensuous knowledge, and because he does not look for
it in pure reason, he will seek for it below in the region of
sentiment, and will appear to find it. No doubt the sensuous shows
him nothing that has its foundation in itself, and that legislates
for itself, but it shows him something that does not care for
foundation or law; therefore thus not being able to quiet the
intelligence by showing it a final cause, he reduces it to silence
by the conception which desires no cause; and being incapable of
understanding the sublime necessity of reason, he keeps to the blind
constraint of matter. As sensuousness knows no other end than its
interest, and is determined by nothing except blind chance, it makes
the former the motive of its actions, and the latter the master of
the world.

Even the divine part in man, the moral law, in its first
manifestation in the sensuous cannot avoid this perversion, As this
moral law is only prohibited and combats in man the interest of
sensuous egotism, it must appear to him as something strange until
he has come to consider this self-love as the stranger, and the
voice of reason as his true self. Therefore he confines himself to
feeling the fetters which the latter imposes on him, without having
the consciousness of the infinite emancipation which it procures for
him. Without suspecting in himself the dignity of lawgiver, he only
experiences the constraint and the impotent revolt of a subject
fretting under the yoke, because in this experience the sensuous
impulsion precedes the moral impulsion, he gives to the law of
necessity a beginning in him, a positive origin, and by the most
unfortunate of all mistakes he converts the immutable and the
eternal in himself into a transitory accident He makes up his mind
to consider the notions of the just and the unjust as statutes which
have been introduced by a will, and not as having in themselves an
eternal value. Just as in the explanation of certain natural
phenomena he goes beyond nature and seeks out of her what can only
be found in her, in her own laws; so also in the explanation of
moral phenomena he goes beyond reason and makes light of his
humanity, seeking a god in this way. It is not wonderful that a
religion which he has purchased at the cost of his humanity shows
itself worthy of this origin, and that he only considers as absolute
and eternally binding laws that have never been binding from all
eternity. He has placed himself in relation with, not a holy being,
but a powerful. Therefore the spirit of his religion, of the homage
that he gives to God, is a fear that abases him, and not a
veneration that elevates him in his own esteem.

Though these different aberrations by which man departs from the
ideal of his destination cannot all take place at the same time,
because several degrees have to be passed over in the transition
from the obscure of thought to error, and from the obscure of will
to the corruption of the will; these degrees are all, without
exception, the consequence of his physical state, because in all the
vital impulsion sways the formal impulsion. Now, two cases may
happen: either reason may not yet have spoken in man, and the
physical may reign over him with a blind necessity, or reason may
not be sufficiently purified from sensuous impressions, and the
moral may still be subject to the physical; in both cases the only
principle that has a real power over him is a material principle,
and man, at least as regards his ultimate tendency, is a sensuous
being. The only difference is, that in the former case he is an
animal without reason, and in the second case a rational animal. But
he ought to be neither one nor the other: he ought to be a man.
Nature ought not to rule him exclusively; nor reason conditionally.
The two legislations ought to be completely independent and yet
mutually complementary.

LETTER XXV.

Whilst man, in his first physical condition, is only passively
affected by the world of sense, he is still entirely identified with
it; and for this reason the external world, as yet, has no objective
existence for him. When he begins in his aesthetic state of mind to
regard the world objectively, then only is his personality severed
from it, and the world appears to him an objective reality, for the
simple reason that he has ceased to form an identical portion of it.

That which first connects man with the surrounding universe is the
power of reflective contemplation. Whereas desire seizes at once its
object, reflection removes it to a distance and renders it
inalienably her own by saving it from the greed of passion. The
necessity of sense which he obeyed during the period of mere
sensations, lessens during the period of reflection; the senses are
for the time in abeyance; even ever-fleeting time stands still
whilst the scattered rays of consciousness are gathering and shape
themselves; an image of the infinite is reflected upon the
perishable ground. As soon as light dawns in man, there is no longer
night outside of him; as soon as there is peace within him the storm
lulls throughout the universe, and the contending forces of nature
find rest within prescribed limits. Hence we cannot wonder if
ancient traditions allude to these great changes in the inner man as
to a revolution in surrounding nature, and symbolise thought
triumphing over the laws of time, by the figure of Zeus, which
terminates the reign of Saturn.

As long as man derives sensations from a contact with nature, he is
her slave; but as soon as he begins to reflect upon her objects and
laws he becomes her lawgiver. Nature, which previously ruled him as
a power, now expands before him as an object. What is objective to
him can have no power over him, for in order to become objective it
has to experience his own power. As far and as long as he impresses
a form upon matter, he cannot be injured by its effect; for a spirit
can only be injured by that which deprives it of its freedom.
Whereas he proves his own freedom by giving a form to the formless;
where the mass rules heavily and without shape, and its undefined
outlines are for ever fluctuating between uncertain boundaries, fear
takes up its abode; but man rises above any natural terror as soon
as he knows how to mould it, and transform it into an object of his
art. As soon as he upholds his independence toward phaenomenal
nature, he maintains his dignity toward her as a thing of power and
with a noble freedom he rises against his gods. They throw aside the
mask with which they had kept him in awe during his infancy, and to
his surprise his mind perceives the reflection of his own image. The
divine monster of the Oriental, which roams about changing the world
with the blind force of a beast of prey, dwindles to the charming
outline of humanity in Greek fable; the empire of the Titans is
crushed, and boundless force is tamed by infinite form.

But whilst I have been merely searching for an issue from the
material world and a passage into the world of mind, the bold flight
of my imagination has already taken me into the very midst of the
latter world. The beauty of which we are in search we have left
behind by passing from the life of mere sensations to the pure form
and to the pure object. Such a leap exceeds the condition of human
nature; in order to keep pace with the latter we must return to the
world of sense. Beauty is indeed the sphere of unfettered
contemplation and reflection; beauty conducts us into the world of
ideas, without however taking us from the world of sense, as occurs
when a truth is perceived and acknowledged. This is the pure product
of a process of abstraction from everything material and accidental,
a pure object free from every subjective barrier, a pure state of
self-activity without any admixture of passive sensations. There is
indeed a way back to sensation from the highest abstraction; for
thought teaches the inner sensation, and the idea of logical and
moral unity passes into a sensation of sensual accord. But if we
delight in knowledge we separate very accurately our own conceptions
from our sensations; we look upon the latter as something
accidental, which might have been omitted without the knowledge
being impaired thereby, without truth being less true. It would,
however, be a vain attempt to suppress this connection of the
faculty of feeling with the idea of beauty, consequently, we shall
not succeed in representing to ourselves one as the effect of the
other, but we must look upon them both together and reciprocally as
cause and effect. In the pleasure which we derive from knowledge we
readily distinguish the passage from the active to the passive
state, and we clearly perceive that the first ends when the second
begins. On the contrary, from the pleasure which we take in beauty,
this transition from the active to the passive is not perceivable,
and reflection is so intimately blended with feeling that we believe
we feel the form immediately. Beauty is then an object to us, it is
true, because reflection is the condition of the feeling which we
have of it; but it is also a state of our personality (our Ego),
because the feeling is the condition of the idea we conceive of it:
beauty is therefore doubtless form, because we contemplate it, but
it is equally life because we feel it. In a word, it is at once our
state and our act. And precisely because it is at the same time both
a state and an act, it triumphantly proves to us that the passive
does not exclude the active, neither matter nor form, neither the
finite nor the infinite; and that consequently the physical
dependence to which man is necessarily devoted does not in any way
destroy his moral liberty. This is the proof of beauty, and I ought
to add that this ALONE can prove it. In fact, as in the possession
of truth or of logical unity, feeling is not necessarily one with
the thought, but follows it accidentally; it is a fact which only
proves that a sensitive nature can succeed a rational nature, and
vice versa; not that they co-exist, that they exercise a reciprocal
action one over the other, and lastly that they ought to be united
in an absolute and necessary manner. From this exclusion of feeling
as long as there is thought, and of thought so long as there is
feeling, we should on the contrary conclude that the two natures are
incompatible, so that in order to demonstrate that pure reason is to
be realised in humanity, the best proof given by the analysis is
that this realisation is demanded. But, as in the realisation of
beauty or of aesthetic unity, there is a real union, mutual
substitution of matter and of form, of passive and of active, by
this alone is proved the compatibility of the two natures, the
possible realisation of the infinite in the finite, and consequently
also the possibility of the most sublime humanity.

Henceforth we need no longer be embarrassed to find a transition
from dependent feeling to moral liberty, because beauty reveals to
us the fact that they can perfectly co-exist, and that to show
himself a spirit, man need not escape from matter. But if on one
side he is free, even in his relation with a visible world, as the
fact of beauty teaches, and if on the other side freedom is
something absolute and super-sensuous, as its idea necessarily
implies, the question is no longer how man succeeds in raising
himself from the finite to the absolute, and opposing himself in his
thought and will to sensuality, as this has already been produced in
the fact of beauty. In a word, we have no longer to ask how he
passes from virtue to truth, which is already included in the
former, but how he opens a way for himself from vulgar reality to
aesthetic reality, and from the ordinary feelings of life to the
perception of the beautiful.

LETTER XXVI.

I have shown in the previous letters that it is only the aesthetic
disposition of the soul that gives birth to liberty, it cannot
therefore be derived from liberty nor have a moral origin. It must
be a gift of nature; the favour of chance alone can break the bonds
of the physical state and bring the savage to duty. The germ of the
beautiful will find an equal difficulty in developing itself in
countries where a severe nature forbids man to enjoy himself, and in
those where a prodigal nature dispenses him from all effort; where
the blunted senses experience no want, and where violent desire can
never be satisfied. The delightful flower of the beautiful will
never unfold itself in the case of the Troglodyte hid in his cavern
always alone, and never finding humanity outside himself; nor among
nomads, who, travelling in great troops, only consist of a
multitude, and have no individual humanity. It will only flourish in
places where man converses peacefully with himself in his cottage,
and with the whole race when he issues from it. In those climates
where a limpid ether opens the senses to the lightest impression,
whilst a life-giving warmth developes a luxuriant nature, where even
in the inanimate creation the sway of inert matter is overthrown,
and the victorious form ennobles even the most abject natures; in
this joyful state and fortunate zone, where activity alone leads to
enjoyment, and enjoyment to activity, from life itself issues a holy
harmony, and the laws of order develope life, a different result
takes place. When imagination incessantly escapes from reality, and
does not abandon the simplicity of nature in its wanderings: then
and there only the mind and the senses, the receptive force and the
plastic force, are developed in that happy equilibrium which is the
soul of the beautiful and the condition of humanity.

What phaenomenon accompanies the initiation of the savage into
humanity? However far we look back into history the phaenomenon is
identical among all people who have shaken off the slavery of the
animal state, the love of appearance, the inclination for dress and
for games.

Extreme stupidity and extreme intelligence have a certain affinity
in only seeking the real and being completely insensible to mere
appearance. The former is only drawn forth by the immediate presence
of an object in the senses, and the second is reduced to a quiescent
state only by referring conceptions to the facts of experience. In
short, stupidity cannot rise above reality, nor the intelligence
descend below truth. Thus, in as far as the want of reality and
attachment to the real are only the consequence of a want and a
defect, indifference to the real and an interest taken in
appearances are a real enlargement of humanity and a decisive step
towards culture. In the first place it is the proof of an exterior
liberty, for as long as necessity commands and want solicits, the
fancy is strictly chained down to the real; it is only when want is
satisfied that it developes without hindrance. But it is also the
proof of an internal liberty, because it reveals to us a force
which, independent of an external substratum, sets itself in motion,
and has sufficient energy to remove from itself the solicitations of
nature. The reality of things is effected by things, the appearance
of things is the work of man, and a soul that takes pleasure in
appearance does not take pleasure in what it receives but in what it
makes.

It is self-evident that I am speaking of aesthetical evidence
different from reality and truth, and not of logical appearance
identical with them. Therefore if it is liked it is because it is an
appearance, and not because it is held to be something better than
it is: the first principle alone is a play whilst the second is a
deception. To give a value to the appearance of the first kind can
never injure truth, because it is never to be feared that it will
supplant it--the only way in which truth can be injured. To despise
this appearance is to despise in general all the fine arts of which
it is the essence. Nevertheless, it happens sometimes that the
understanding carries its zeal for reality as far as this
intolerance, and strikes with a sentence of ostracism all the arts
relating to beauty in appearance, because it is only an appearance.
However, the intelligence only shows this vigorous spirit when it
calls to mind the affinity pointed out further back. I shall find
some day the occasion to treat specially of the limits of beauty in
its appearance.

It is nature herself which raises man from reality to appearance by
endowing him with two senses which only lead him to the knowledge of
the real through appearance. In the eye and the ear the organs of
the senses are already freed from the persecutions of nature, and
the object with which we are immediately in contact through the
animal senses is remoter from us. What we see by the eye differs
from what we feel; for the understanding to reach objects overleaps
the light which separates us from them. In truth, we are passive to
an object; in sight and hearing the object is a form we create.
While still a savage, man only enjoys through touch merely aided by
sight and sound. He either does not rise to perception through
sight, or does not rest there. As soon as he begins to enjoy through
sight, vision has an independent value, he is aesthetically free,
and the instinct of play is developed.

The instinct of play likes appearance, and directly it is awakened
it is followed by the formal imitative instinct which treats
appearance as an independent thing. Directly man has come to
distinguish the appearance from the reality, the form from the body,
he can separate, in fact he has already done so. Thus the faculty of
the art of imitation is given with the faculty of form in general.
The inclination that draws us to it reposes on another tendency I
have not to notice here. The exact period when the aesthetic
instinct, or that of art, developes, depends entirely on the
attraction that mere appearance has for men.

As every real existence proceeds from nature as a foreign power,
whilst every appearance comes in the first place from man as a
percipient subject, he only uses his absolute sight in separating
semblance from essence, and arranging according to subjective law.
With an unbridled liberty he can unite what nature has severed,
provided he can imagine his union, and he can separate what nature
has united, provided this separation can take place in his
intelligence. Here nothing can be sacred to him but his own law: the
only condition imposed upon him is to respect the border which
separates his own sphere from the existence of things or from the
realm of nature.

This human right of ruling is exercised by man in the art of
appearance; and his success in extending the empire of the
beautiful, and guarding the frontiers of truth, will be in
proportion with the strictness with which he separates form from
substance: for if he frees appearance from reality he must also do
the converse.

But man possesses sovereign power only in the world of appearance,
in the unstibstantial realm of imagination, only by abstaining from
giving being to appearance in theory, and by giving it being in
practice. It follows that the poet transgresses his proper limits
when he attributes being to his ideal, and when he gives this ideal
aim as a determined existence. For he can only reach this result by
exceeding his right as a poet, that of encroaching by the ideal on
the field of experience, and by pretending to determine real
existence in virtue of a simple possibility, or else he renounces
his right as poet by letting experience encroach on the sphere of
the ideal, and by restricting possibility to the conditions of
reality.

It is only by being frank or disclaiming all reality, and by being
independent or doing without reality, that the appearance is
aesthetical. Directly it apes reality or needs reality for effect it
is nothing more than a vile instrument for material ends, and can
prove nothing for the freedom of the mind. Moreover, the object in
which we find beauty need not be unreal if pur judgment disregards
this reality; nor if it regards this the judgment is no longer
aesthetical. A beautiful woman if living would no doubt please us as
much and rather more than an equally beautiful woman seen in
painting; but what makes the former please men is not her being an
independent appearance; she no longer pleases the pure aesthetic
feeling. In the painting, life must only attract as an appearance,
and reality as an idea. But it is certain that to feel in a living
object only the pure appearance, requires a greatly higher aesthetic
culture than to do without life in the appearance.

When the frank and independent appearance is found in man
separately, or in a whole people, it may be inferred they have mind,
taste, and all prerogatives connected with them. In this case, the
ideal will be seen to govern real life, honour triumphing over
fortune, thought over enjoyment, the dream of immortality over a
transitory existence.

In this case public opinion will no longer be feared and an olive
crown will be more valued than a purple mantle. Impotence and
perversity alone have recourse to false and paltry semblance, and
individuals as well as nations who lend to reality the support of
appearance, or to the aesthetical appearance the support of reality,
show their moral unworthiness and their aesthetical impotence.
Therefore, a short and conclusive answer can be given to this
question--How far will appearance be permitted in the moral world?
It will run thus in proportion as this appearance will be
sesthetical, that is, an appearance that does not try to make up for
reality, nor requires to be made up for by it. The aesthetical
appearance can never endanger the truth of morals: wherever it seems
to do so the appearance is not aesthetical. Only a stranger to the
fashionable world can take the polite assurances, which are only a
form, for proofs of affection, and say he has been deceived; but
only a clumsy fellow in good society calls in the aid of duplicity
and flatters to become amiable. The former lacks the pure sense for
independent appearance; therefore he can only give a value to
appearance by truth. The second lacks reality, and wishes to replace
it by appearance. Nothing is more common than to hear depreciators
of the times utter these paltry complaints--that all solidity has
disappeared from the world, and that essence is neglected for
semblance. Though I feel by no means called upon to defend this age
against these reproaches, I must say that the wide application of
these criticisms shows that they attach blame to the age, not only
on the score of the falsez but also of the frank appearance. And
even the exceptions they admit in favour of the beautiful have for
their object less the independent appearance than the needy
appearance. Not only do they attack the artificial colouring that
hides truth and replaces reality, but also the beneficent appearance
that fills a vacuum and clothes poverty; and they even attack the
ideal appearance that ennobles a vulgar reality. Their strict sense
of truth is rightlyl offended by the falsity of manners;
unfortunately, they class politeness in this category. It displeases
them that the noisy and showy so often eclipse true merit, but they
are no less shocked that appearance is also demanded from merit, and
that a real substance does not dispense with an agreeable form. They
regret the cordiality, the energy, and solidity of ancient times;
they would restore with them ancient coarseness, heaviness, and the
old Gothic profusion. By judgments of this kind they show an esteem
for the matter itself unworthy of humanity, which ought only to
value tne matter inasmuch as it can receive a form and enlarge the
empire of ideas. Accordingly, the taste of the age need not much
fear these criticisms, if it can clear itself before better judges.
Our defect is not to grant a value to aesthetic appearance (we do
not do this enough): a severe judge of the beautiful might rather
reproach us with not having arrived at pure appearance, with not
having separated clearly enough existence from the phaenomenon, and
thus established their limits. We shall deserve this reproach so
long as we cannot enjoy the beautiful in living nature without
desiring it; as long as we cannot admire the beautiful in the
imitative arts without having an end in view; as long as we do not
grant to imagination an absolute legislation of its own; and as long
as we do not inspire it with care for its dignity by the esteem we
testify for its works.

LETTER XXVII.