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Part IV.
Part IV.
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 phaenomena, 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
phaenomenon, 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 phaenomena.
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 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 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 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^1 can be distinguished in man; in like manner two states of
passive and active determination.^2 The explanation of this proposition leads
us most readily to our end.
[Footnote 1: Bestimmbarkeit.]
[Footnote 2: Bestimmung.]
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 not 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 remove 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 fullness, 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 determinable - 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 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 the 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 dependance 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 its 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
development, 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 ost 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.
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