But I might perhaps make a better use of the opening you afford me if I
were to direct your mind to a loftier theme than that of art. It would
appear to be unseasonable to go in search of a code for the æsthetic
world, when the moral world offers matter of so much higher interest,
and when the spirit of philosophical inquiry is so stringently
challenged by the circumstances of our times to occupy itself with the
most perfect of all works of art—the establishment and structure of a
true political freedom.
It is unsatisfactory to live out of your own age and to work for other
times. It is equally incumbent on us to be good members of our own age
as of our own state or country. If it is conceived to be unseemly and
even unlawful for a man to segregate himself from the customs and
manners of the circle in which he lives, it would be inconsistent not to
see that it is equally his duty to grant a proper share of influence to
the voice of his own epoch, to its taste and its requirements, in the
operations in which he engages.
But the voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all
events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course
of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens
to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to
leave reality, it has to raise itself boldly above necessity and
neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its
prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and
not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that
prevails, and lends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke. _Utility_
is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all
subjects are subservient. In this great balance on utility, the
spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all
encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The
very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one
promise after another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed in
proportion as the limits of science are enlarged.
The eyes of the philosopher as well as of the man of the world are
anxiously turned to the theatre of political events, where it is
presumed the great destiny of man is to be played out. It would almost
seem to betray a culpable indifference to the welfare of society if we
did not share this general interest. For this great commerce in social
and moral principles is of necessity a matter of the greatest concern to
every human being, on the ground both of its subject and of its results.
It must accordingly be of deepest moment to every man to think for
himself. It would seem that now at length a question that formerly was
only settled by the law of the stronger is to be determined by the calm
judgment of the reason, and every man who is capable of placing himself
in a central position, and raising his individuality into that of his
species, can look upon himself as in possession of this judicial faculty
of reason; being moreover, as man and member of the human family, a
party in the case under trial and involved more or less in its
decisions. It would thus appear that this great political process is not
only engaged with his individual case, it has also to pronounce
enactments, which he as a rational spirit is capable of enunciating and
entitled to pronounce.
It is evident that it would have been most attractive to me to inquire
into an object such as this, to decide such a question in conjunction
with a thinker of powerful mind, a man of liberal sympathies, and a
heart imbued with a noble enthusiasm for the weal of humanity. Though so
widely separated by worldly position, it would have been a delightful
surprise to have found your unprejudiced mind arriving at the same
result as my own in the field of ideas. Nevertheless, I think I can not
only excuse, but even justify by solid grounds, my step in resisting
this attractive purpose and in preferring beauty to freedom. I hope that
I shall succeed in convincing you that this matter of art is less
foreign to the needs than to the tastes of our age; nay, that, to arrive
at a solution even in the political problem, the road of æsthetics must
be pursued, because it is through beauty that we arrive at freedom. But
I cannot carry out this proof without my bringing to your remembrance
the principles by which the reason is guided in political legislation.