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Part III.
Part III.
Letter XII.
This twofold labour or task, which consists in making the necessary pass
into reality in us and in making out of us reality subject to the law of
necessity, is urged upon us as a duty by two opposing forces, which are justly
styled impulsions or instincts, because they impel us to realise their object.
The first of these impulsions, which I shall call the sensuous instinct,
issues from the physical existence of man, or from sensuous nature; and it is
this instinct which tends to enclose him in the limits of time and to make of
him a material being; I do not say to give him matter, for to dot that a
certain free activity of the personality would be necessary, which, receiving
matter, distinguishes it from the Ego, or what is permanent. By matter I only
understand in this place the change or reality that fills time. Consequently
the instinct requires that there should be change, and that time should
contain something. This simply filled state of time is named sensation, and it
is only in this state that physical existence manifests itself.
As all that is in time is successive, it follows by that fact alone that
something is: all the remainder is excluded. When one note on an instrument is
touched, among all those that it virtually offers, this note alone is real.
When man is actually modified, the infinite possibility of all his
modifications is limited to this single mode of existence. Thus, then, the
exclusive action of sensuous impulsion has for its necessary consequence the
narrowest limitation. In this state man is only a unity of magnitude, a
complete moment in time; or, to speak more correctly, he is not, for his
personality is suppressed as long as sensation holds sway over him and carries
time along with it.
This instinct extends its domains over the entire sphere of the finite in
man, and as form is only revealed in matter, and the absolute by means of its
limits, the total manifestation of human nature is connected on a close
analysis with the sensuous instinct. But though it is only this instinct that
awakens and develops what exists virtually in man, it is nevertheless this
very instinct which renders his perfection impossible. It binds down to the
world of sense by indestructible ties the spirit that tends higher and it
calls back to the limits of the present, abstraction which had its free
development in the sphere of the infinite. No doubt, thought can escape it for
a moment, and a firm will victoriously resists its exigencies; but soon
compressed nature resumes her rights to give an imperious reality to our
existence, to give it contents, substance, knowledge, and an aim for our
activity.
The second impulsion, which may be named the formal instinct, issues from
the absolute existence of man, or from his rational nature, and tends to set
free, and bring harmony into the diversity of its manifestations, and to
maintain personality notwithstanding all the changes of state. As this
personality, being an absolute and indivisible unity, can never be in
contradiction with itself, as we are ourselves for ever, this impulsion, which
tends to maintain personality, can never exact in one time anything but what
it exacts and requires for ever. It therefore decides for always what it
decides now, and orders now what it orders for ever. Hence it embraces the
whole series of times, or what comes to the same thing, it suppresses time and
change. It wishes the real to be necessary and eternal, and it wishes the
eternal and the necessary to be real; in other terms, it tends to truth and
justice.
If the sensuous instinct only produces accidents, the formal instinct
gives laws, laws for every judgment when it is a question of knowledge, laws
for every will when it is a question of action. Whether, therefore, we
recognise an object or conceive an objective value to a state of the subject,
whether we act in virtue of knowledge or make of the objective the determining
principle of our state; in both cases we withdraw this state from the
jurisdiction of time, and we attribute to it reality for all men and for all
time, that this, universality and necessity. Feeling can only say: "That is
true for this subject and at this moment," and there may come another moment,
another subject, which withdraws the affirmation from the actual feeling. But
when once thought pronounces and says: "That is," it decides for ever and
ever, and the validity of its decision is guaranteed by the personality
itself, which defies all change. Inclination can only say: "That is good for
your individuality and present necessity;" but the changing current of affairs
will sweep them away, and what you ardently desire today will form the
object of your aversion tomorrow. But when the moral feeling says: "That ought
to be," it decides for ever. If you confess the truth because it is the truth,
and if you practice justice because it is justice, you have made of a
particular case the law of all possible cases, and treated one moment of your
life as eternity.
Accordingly, when the formal impulse holds sway and the pure object acts
in us, the being attains its highest expansion, all barriers disappear, and
from the unity of magnitude in which man was enclosed by a narrow
sensuousness, he rises to the unity of idea, which embraces and keeps subject
the entire sphere of phaenomena. During this operation we are no longer in
time, but time is in us with its infinite succession. We are no longer
individuals but a species; the judgment of all spirits is expressed by our
own, and the choice of all hearts is represented by our own act.
Letter XIII.
On a first survey, nothing appears more opposed than these two
impulsions; one having for its object change, the other immutability, and yet
it is these two notions that exhaust the notion of humanity, and a third
fundamental impulsion, holding a medium between them, is quite inconceivable.
How then shall we re-establish the unity of human nature, a unity that
appears completely destroyed by this primitive and radical opposition?
I admit these two tendencies are contradictory, but it should be noticed
that they are not so in the same objects. But things that do not meet cannot
come into collision. No doubt the sensuous impulsion desires change; but it
does not wish that it should extend to personality and its field, nor that
there should be a change of principles. The formal impulsion seeks unity and
permanence, but it does not wish the condition to remain fixed with the
person, that there should be identity of feeling. Therefore these two
impulsions are not divided by nature, and if, nevertheless, they appear so, it
is because they have become divided by transgressing nature freely, by
ignoring themselves, and by confounding their spheres. The office of culture
is to watch over them and to secure to each one its proper limits; therefore
culture has to give equal justice to both, and to defend not only the rational
impulsion against the sensuous, but also the latter against the former. Hence
she has to act a twofold part: first, to protect sense against the attacks of
freedom; secondly, to secure personality against the power of sensations. One
of these ends is attained by the cultivation of the sensuous, the other by
that of the reason.
Since the world is developed in time, or change, the perfection of the
faculty that places men in relation with the world will necessarily be the
greatest possible mutability and extensiveness. Since personality is
permanence in change, the perfection of this faculty, which must be opposed to
change, will be the greatest possible freedom of action (autonomy) and
intensity. The more the receptivity is developed under manifold aspects, the
more it is movable and offers surfaces to phaenomena, the larger is the part
of the world seized upon by man, and the more virtualities he develops in
himself. Again, in proportion as man gains strength and depth, and depth and
reason gain in freedom, in that proportion man takes in a larger share of the
world, and throws out forms outside himself. Therefore his culture will
consist, first, in placing his receptivity on contact with the world in the
greatest number of points possible, and in raising passivity to the highest
exponent on the side of feeling; secondly, in procuring for the determining
faculty the greatest possible amount of independence, in relation to the
receptive power, and in raising activity to the highest degree on the side of
reason. By the union of these two qualities man will associate the highest
degree of self-spontaneity (autonomy) and of freedom with the fullest
plenitude of existence and instead of abandoning himself to the world so as to
get lost in it, he will rather absorb it in himself, with all the infinitude
of its phaenomena, and subject it to the unity of his reason.
But man can invert this relation, and thus fail in attaining his
destination in two ways. He can hand over to the passive force the intensity
demanded by the active force; he can encroach by material impulsion on the
formal impulsion, and convert the receptive into the determining power. He can
attribute to the active force the extensiveness belonging to the passive
force, he can encroach by the formal impulsion on the material impulsion, and
substitute the determining for the receptive power. In the former case, he
will never be an Ego, a personality; in the second case, he will never be a
Non-Ego, and hence in both cases he will be neither the one nor the other,
consequently he will be nothing.
In fact, if the sensuous impulsion becomes determining, if the senses
become law-givers, and if the world stifles personality, he loses as object
what he gains in force. It may be said of man that when he is only the
contents of time, he is not and consequently he has no other contents. His
condition is destroyed at the same time as his personality, because these are
two correlative ideas, because change presupposes permanence, and a limited
reality implies an infinite reality. If the formal impulsion becomes
receptive, that is, if thought anticipates sensation, and the person
substitutes itself in the place of the world, it loses as a subject and
autonomous force what it gains as object, because immutability implies change,
and that to manifest itself also absolute reality requires limits. As soon as
man is only form, he has no form, and the personality vanishes with the
condition. In a word, it is only inasmuch as he is spontaneous, autonomous,
that there is reality out of him, that he is also receptive; and it is only
inasmuch as he is receptive that there is reality in him that he is a thinking
force.
Consequently these two impulsions require limits, and looked upon as
forces, they need tempering; the former that it may not encroach on the field
of legislation, the latter that it may not invade the ground of feeling. But
this tempering and moderating the sensuous impulsion ought not to be the
effect of physical impotence or of a blunting of sensations, which is always a
matter for contempt. It must be a free act, an activity of the person, which
by its moral intensity moderates the sensuous intensity, and by the sway of
impressions takes from them in depth what it gives them in surface or breadth.
The character must place limits to temperament, for the senses have only the
right to lose elements if it be to the advantage of the mind. In its turn, the
tempering of the formal impulsion must not result from moral impotence, from a
relaxation of thought and will, which would degrade humanity. It is necessary
that the glorious source of this second tempering should be the fullness of
sensations; it is necessary that sensuousness itself should defend its field
with a victorious arm and resist the violence that the invading activity of
the mind would do to it. In a word, it is necessary that the material
impulsion should be contained in the limits of propriety by personality, and
the formal impulsion by receptivity or nature.
Letter XIV.
We have been brought to the idea of such a correlation between the two
impulsions that the action of the one establishes and limits at the same time
the action of the other, and that each of them, taken in isolation, does
arrive at its highest manifestation just because the other is active.
No doubt this correlation of the two impulsions is simply a problem
advanced by reason, and which man will only be able to solve in the perfection
of his being. It is in the strictest signification of the term: the idea of
his humanity; accordingly, it is an infinite to which he can approach nearer
and nearer in the course of time, but without ever reaching it. "He ought not
to aim at form to the injury of reality, nor to reality to the detriment of
the form. He must rather seek the absolute being by means of a determinate
being, and the determinate being by means of an infinite being. He must set
the world before him because he is a person, and he must be a person because
he has the world before him. He must feel because he has a consciousness of
himself, and he must have a consciousness of himself because he feels." It is
only in conformity with this idea that he is a man in the full sense of the
word; but he cannot be convinced of this so long as he gives himself up
exclusively to one of these two impulsions, or only satisfies them one after
the other. For as long as he only feels, his absolute personality and
existence remain a mystery to him, and as long as he only thinks, his
condition or existence in time escapes him. But if there were cases in which
he could have at once this twofold experience in which he would have the
consciousness of his freedom and the feeling of his existence together, in
which he would simultaneously feel as matter and know himself as spirit, in
such cases, and in such only, would he have a complete intuition of his
humanity, and the object that would procure him this intuition would be a
symbol of his accomplished destiny, and consequently serve to express the
infinite to him - since this destination can only be fulfilled in the fullness
of time.
Presuming that cases of this kind could present themselves in experience,
they would awake in him a new impulsion, which, precisely because the two
other impulsions would co-operate in it, would be opposed to each of them
taken in isolation, and might, with good grounds, be taken for a new
impulsion. The sensuous impulsion requires that there should be change, that
time should have contents; the formal impulsion requires that time should be
suppressed, that there should be no change. Consequently, the impulsion in
which both of the others act in concert - allow me to call it the instinct of
play, till I explain the term - the instinct of play would have as its object
to suppress time in time to conciliate the state of transition or becoming
with the absolute being, change with identity.
The sensuous instinct wishes to be determined, it wishes to receive an
object; the formal instinct wishes to determine itself, it wishes to produce
an object. Therefore the instinct of play will endeavor to receive as it would
itself have produced, and to produce as it aspires to receive.
The sensuous impulsion excludes from its subject all autonomy and
freedom; the formal impulsion excludes all dependence and passivity. But the
exclusion of freedom is physical necessity; the exclusion of passivity is
moral necessity. Thus the two impulsions subdue the mind: the former to the
laws of nature, the latter to the laws of reason. It results from this that
the instinct of play, which unites the double action of the two other
instincts, will content the mind at once morally and physically. Hence, as it
suppresses all that is contingent, it will also suppress all coercion, and
will set man free physically and morally. When we welcome with effusion some
one who deserves our contempt, we feel painfully that nature is constrained.
When we have a hostile feeling against a person who commands our esteem, we
feel painfully the constraint of reason. But if this person inspires us with
interest, and also wins our esteem, the constraint of feeling vanishes
together with the constraint of reason, and we begin to love him, that is to
say, to play, to take recreation, at once with our inclination and our esteem.
Moreover, as the sensuous impulsion controls us physically, and the
formal impulsion morally, the former makes our formal constitution contingent,
and the latter makes our material constitution contingent, that is to say,
there is contingence in the agreement of our happiness with our perfection,
and reciprocally. The instinct of play, in which both act in concert, will
render both our formal and our material constitution contingent; accordingly,
our perfection and our happiness in like manner. And on the other hand,
exactly because it makes both of them contingent, and because the contingent
disappears with necessity, it will suppress this contingence in both, and will
thus give form to matter and reality to form. In proportion that it will
lessen the dynamic influence of feeling and passion, it will place them in
harmony with rational ideas, and by taking from the laws of reason their moral
constraint, it will reconcile them with the interest of the senses.
Letter XV.
I approach continually nearer to the end to which I lead you, by a path
offering few attractions. Be pleased to follow me a few steps further, and a
large horizon will open up to you and a delightful prospect will reward you
for the labour of the way.
The object of the sensuous instinct, expressed in a universal conception,
is named Life in the widest acceptation: a conception that expresses all
material existence and all that is immediately present in the senses. The
object of the formal instinct, expressed in a universal conception, is called
shape or form, as well in an exact as in an inexact acceptation; a conception
that embraces all formal qualities of things and all relations of the same to
the thinking powers. The object of the play instinct, represented in a general
statement, may therefore bear the name of living form; a term that serves to
describe all aesthetic qualities of phaenomena, and what people style, in the
widest sense, beauty.
Beauty is neither extended to the whole field of all living things nor
merely enclosed in this field. A marble block, though it is and remains
lifeless, can nevertheless become a living form by the architect and sculptor;
a man, though he lives and has a form, is far from being a living form on that
account. For this to be the case, it is necessary that his form should be
life, and that his life should be a form. As long as we only think of his
form, it is lifeless, a mere abstraction; as long as we only feel his life, it
is without form, a mere impression. It is only when his form lives in our
feeling, and his life in our understanding, he is the living form, and this
will everywhere be the case where we judge him to be beautiful.
But the genesis of beauty is by no means declared because we know how to
point out the component parts, which in their combination produce beauty. For
to this end it would be necessary to comprehend that combination itself, which
continues to defy our exploration, as well as all mutual operation between the
finite and the infinite. The reason, on transcendental grounds, makes the
following demand: There shall be a communion between the formal impulse and
the material impulse - that is, there shall be a play instinct - because it is
only the unity of reality with the form, of the accidental with the necessary,
of the passive state with freedom, that the conception of humanity is
completed. Reason is obliged to make this demand, because her nature impels
her to completeness and to the removal of all bounds; while every exclusive
activity of one or the other impulse leaves human nature incomplete and places
a limit in it. Accordingly, as soon as reason issues the mandate, "a humanity
shall exist," it proclaims at the same time the law, "there shall be a
beauty." Experience can answer us if there is a beauty, and we shall know it
as soon as she has taught us if a humanity can exist. But neither reason nor
experience can tell us how beauty can be, and how a humanity is possible.
We know that man is neither exclusively matter nor exclusively spirit.
Accordingly, beauty, as the consummation of humanity, can neither be
exclusively mere life, as has been asserted by sharp-sighted observers, who
kept too close to the testimony of experience, and to which the taste of the
time would gladly degrade it; Nor can beauty be merely form, as has been
judged by speculative sophists, who departed too far from experience, and by
philosophic artists, who were led too much by the necessity of art in
explaining beauty; it is rather the common object of both impulses, that is,
of the play instinct. The use of language completely justifies this name, as
it is wont to qualify with the word play what is neither subjectively nor
objectively accidental, and yet does not impose necessity either externally or
internally. As the mind in the intuition of the beautiful finds itself in a
happy medium between law and necessity, it is, because it divides itself
between both, emancipated from the pressure of both. The formal impulse and
the material impulse are equally earnest in their demands, because one relates
in its cognition to things in their reality and the other to their necessity;
because in action the first is directed to the preservation of life, the
second to the preservation of dignity, and therefore both to truth and
perfection. But life becomes more indifferent when dignity is mixed up with
it, and duty on longer coerces when inclination attracts. In like manner the
mind takes in the reality of things, material truth, more freely and
tranquilly as soon as it encounters formal truth, the law of necessity; nor
does the mind find itself strung by abstraction as soon as immediate intuition
can accompany it. In one word, when the mind comes into communion with ideas,
all reality loses its serious value because it becomes small; and as it comes
in contact with feeling, necessity parts also with its serious value because
it is easy.
But perhaps the objection has for some time occurred to you, Is not the
beautiful degraded by this, that it is made a mere play? and is it not reduced
to the level of frivolous objects which have for ages passed under that name?
Does it not contradict the conception of the reason and the dignity of beauty,
which is nevertheless regarded as an instrument of culture, to confine it to
the work of being a mere play? and does it not contradict the empirical
conception of play, which can coexist with the exclusion of all taste, to
confine it merely to beauty?
But what is meant by a mere play, when we know that in all conditions of
humanity that very thing is play, and only that is play which makes man
complete and develops simultaneously his twofold nature? What you style
limitation, according to your representation of the matter, according to my
views, which I have justified by proofs, I name enlargement. Consequently, I
should have said exactly the reverse: man is serious only with the agreeable,
with the good, and with the perfect, but he plays with beauty. In saying this
we must not indeed think of the plays that are in vogue in real life, and
which commonly refer only to his material state. But in real life we should
also seek in vain for the beauty of which we are here speaking. The actually
present beauty is worthy of the really, of the actually, present play-
impulse; but by the ideal of beauty, which is set up by the reason, an ideal
of the play-instinct is also presented, which man ought to have before his
eyes in all his plays.
Therefore, no error will ever be incurred if we seek the ideal of beauty
on the same road on which we satisfy our play-impulse. We can immediately
understand why the ideal form of a Venus, of a Juno, and of an Apollo, is to
be sought not at Rome, but in Greece, if we contrast the Greek population,
delighting in the bloodless athletic contests of boxing, racing, and
intellectual rivalry at Olympia, with the Roman people gloating over the agony
of a gladiator. Now the reason pronounces that the beautiful must not only be
life and form, but a living form, that is, beauty, inasmuch as it dictates to
man the twofold law of absolute formality and absolute reality. Reason also
utters the decision that man shall only play with beauty, and he shall only
play with beauty.
For, to speak out once for all, man only plays when in the full meaning
of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays. This
proposition, which at this moment perhaps appears paradoxical, will receive a
great and deep meaning if we have advanced far enough to apply it to the
twofold seriousness of duty and of destiny. I promise you that the whole
edifice of aesthetic art and the still more difficult art of life will be
supported by this principle. But this proposition is only unexpected in
science; long ago it lived and worked in art and in the feeling of the Greeks,
her most accomplished masters; only they removed to Olympus what ought to have
been preserved on earth. Influenced by the truth of this principle, they
effaced from the brow of their gods the earnestness and labour which furrow
the cheeks of mortals, and also the hollow lust that smoothes the empty face.
They set free the ever serene from the chains of every purpose, of every duty,
of every care, and they made indolence and indifference the envied condition
of the godlike race; merely human appellations for the freest and highest
mind. As well the material pressure of natural laws as the spiritual pressure
of moral laws lost itself in its higher idea of necessity, which embraced at
the same time both worlds, and out of the union of these two necessities
issued true freedom. Inspired by this spirit, the Greeks also effaced from the
features of their ideal, together with desire or inclination, all traces of
volition, or, better still, they made both unrecognisable, because they knew
how to wed them both in the closest alliance. It is neither charm nor is it
dignity which speaks from the glorious face of the Juno Ludovici; it is
neither of these, for it is both at once. While the female god challenges our
veneration, the godlike woman at the same times kindles our love. But while in
ecstasy we give ourselves up to the heavenly beauty, the heavenly self-repose
awes us back. The whole form rests and dwells in itself - a fully complete
creation in itself - and as if she were out of space, without advance or
resistance; it shows no force contending with force, no opening through which
time could break in. Irresistibly carried away and attracted by her womanly
charm, kept off at a distance by her godly dignity, we also find ourselves at
length in the state of the greatest repose, and the result is a wonderful
impression, for which the understanding has no idea and language no name.
Letter XVI.
From the antagonism of the two impulsions, and from the association of
two opposite principles, we have seen beauty to result, of which the highest
ideal must therefore be sought in the most perfect union and equilibrium
possible of the reality and of the form. But this equilibrium remains always
an idea that reality can never completely reach. In reality, there will always
remain a preponderance of one of these elements over the other, and the
highest point to which experience can reach will consist in an oscillation
between two principles, when sometimes reality and at others form will have
the advantage. Ideal beauty is therefore eternally one and indivisible,
because there can only be one single equilibrium; on the contrary,
experimental beauty will be eternally double, because in the oscillation the
equilibrium may be destroyed in two ways - this side and that.
I have called attention in the foregoing letters to a fact that can also
be rigorously deduced from the considerations that have engaged our attention
to the present point; this fact is that an exciting and also a moderating
action may be expected from the beautiful. The tempering action is directed to
keep within proper limits the sensuous and the formal impulsions; the
exciting, to maintain both of them in their full force. But these two modes of
action of beauty ought to be completely identified in the idea. The beautiful
ought to temper while uniformly exciting the two natures, and it ought also to
excite while uniformly moderating them. This result flows at once from the
idea of a correlation, in virtue of which the two terms mutually imply each
other, and are the reciprocal condition one of the other, a correlation of
which the purest product is beauty. But experience does not offer an example
of so perfect a correlation. In the field of experience it will always happen
more or less that excess on the one side will give rise to deficiency on the
other, and deficiency will give birth to excess. It results from this that
what in the beau-ideal is only distinct in the idea, is different in reality
in empirical beauty. The beau-ideal, though simple and indivisible,
discloses, when viewed in two different aspects, on the one hand a property of
gentleness and grace, and on the other an energetic property; in experience
there is a gentle and graceful beauty, and there is an energetic beauty. It is
so, and it will be always so, so long as the absolute is enclosed in the
limits of time, and the ideas of reason have to be realised in humanity. For
example, the intellectual man has the idea of virtue, of truth, and of
happiness; but the active man will only practise virtues, will only grasp
truths, and enjoy happy days. The business of physical and moral education is
to bring back this multiplicity to unity, to put morality in the place of
manners, science in the place of knowledge; the business of aesthetic
education is to make out of beauties the beautiful.
Energetic beauty can no more preserve a man from a certain residue of
savage violence and harshness than graceful beauty can secure him against a
certain degree of effeminacy and weakness. As it is the effect of the
energetic beauty to elevate the mind in a physical and moral point of view and
to augment its momentum, it only too often happens that the resistance of the
temperament and of the character diminishes the aptitude to receive
impressions, that the delicate part of humanity suffers an oppression which
ought only to affect its grosser part, and that this course nature
participates in an increase of force that ought only to turn to the account of
free personality. It is for this reason that at the periods when we find much
strength and abundant sap in humanity, true greatness of thought is seen
associated with what is gigantic and extravagant, and the sublimest feeling is
found coupled with the most horrible excess of passion. It is also the reason
why, in the periods distinguished for regularity and form, nature is as often
oppressed as it is governed, as often outraged as it is surpassed. And as the
action of gentle and graceful beauty is to relax the mind in the moral sphere
as well as the physical, it happens quite as easily that the energy of
feelings is extinguished with the violence of desires, and that character
shares in the loss of strength which ought only to affect the passions. 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
aesthetics, 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.
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