While we were only engaged in deducing the universal idea of beauty from
the conception of human nature in general, we had only to consider in
the latter the limits established essentially in itself, and inseparable
from the notion of the finite. Without attending to the contingent
restrictions that human nature may undergo in the real world of
phenomena, we have drawn the conception of this nature directly from
reason, as a source of every necessity, and the ideal of beauty has been
given us at the same time with the ideal of humanity.
But now we are coming down from the region of ideas to the scene of
reality, to find man in a _determinate state_, and consequently in
limits which are not derived from the pure conception of humanity, but
from external circumstances and from an accidental use of his freedom.
But, although the limitation of the idea of humanity may be very
manifold in the individual, the contents of this idea suffice to teach
us that we can only depart from it by _two_ opposite roads. For if the
perfection of man consist in the harmonious energy of his sensuous and
spiritual forces, he can only lack this perfection through the want of
harmony and the want of energy. Thus, then, before having received on
this point the testimony of experience, reason suffices to assure us
that we shall find the real and consequently limited man in a state of
tension or relaxation according as the exclusive activity of isolated
forces troubles the harmony of his being, or as the unity of his nature
is based on the uniform relaxation of his physical and spiritual forces.
These opposite limits are, as we have now to prove, suppressed by the
beautiful, which re-establishes harmony in man when excited, and energy
in man when relaxed; and which, in this way, in conformity with the
nature of the beautiful, restores the state of limitation to an absolute
state, and makes of man a whole, complete in himself.
Thus the beautiful by no means belies in reality the idea which we have
made of it in speculation; only its action is much less free in it than
in the field of theory, where we were able to apply it to the pure
conception of humanity. In man, as experience shows him to us, the
beautiful finds a matter, already damaged and resisting, which robs him
in _ideal_ perfection of what it communicates to him of its _individual_
mode of being. Accordingly in reality the beautiful will always appear a
peculiar and limited species, and not as the pure genus; in excited
minds in a state of tension it will lose its freedom and variety; in
relaxed minds, it will lose its vivifying force: but we, who have become
familiar with the true character of this contradictory phenomenon,
cannot be led astray by it. We shall not follow the great crowd of
critics, in determining their conception by separate experiences, and to
make _them_ answerable for the deficiencies which man shows under their
influence. We know rather that it is man who transfers the imperfections
of his individuality over to them, who stands perpetually in the way of
their perfection by his subjective limitation, and lowers their absolute
ideal to two limited forms of phenomena.
It was advanced that soft beauty is for an unstrung mind, and the
energetic beauty for the tightly strung mind. But I apply the term
unstrung to a man when he is rather under the pressure of feelings than
under the pressure of conceptions. Every _exclusive_ sway of one of his
two fundamental impulses is for man a state of compulsion and violence,
and freedom only exists in the co-operation of his two natures.
Accordingly, the man governed preponderately by feelings, or sensuously
unstrung, is emancipated and set free by matter. The soft and graceful
beauty, to satisfy this twofold problem, must therefore show herself
under two aspects—in two distinct forms. First, as a form in repose, she
will tone down savage life, and pave the way from feeling to thought.
She will, secondly, as a living image, equip the abstract form with
sensuous power, and lead back the conception to intuition and law to
feeling. The former service she does to the man of nature, the second to
the man of art. But because she does not in both cases hold complete
sway over her matter, but depends on that which is furnished either by
formless nature or unnatural art, she will in both cases bear traces of
her origin, and lose herself in one place in material life and in
another in mere abstract form.
To be able to arrive at a conception how beauty can become a means to
remove this twofold relaxation, we must explore its source in the human
mind. Accordingly, make up your mind to dwell a little longer in the
region of speculation, in order then to leave it forever, and to advance
with securer footing on the ground of experience.