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Part V.
Part V.
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 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 need 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, is 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 phaenomenon
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 fullness 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 phaenomenon 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 phaenomena
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 remains
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 impose 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 phaenomena 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 phaenomena 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 though 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 on 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 the 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 in 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 supersensuous, 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 a 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
unsubstantial 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
our judgment disregards this reality; for 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 aesthetical, 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 false,
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 rightly
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 the 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.
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