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 favored 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 fulness, 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 _æsthetic_.