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 æsthetic 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 symbolize
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 towards phenomenal natures 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 of 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 or 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 that pure reason is to be
realized in humanity, the best proof given by the analysis is that this
realization is demanded. But, as in the realization of beauty or of
æsthetic unity, there is a real union, mutual substitution of matter and
of form, of passive and of active, by this alone is proved the
compatibility of the two natures, the possible realization 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
super-sensuous, 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 æsthetic reality, and from the ordinary feelings of life to
the perception of the beautiful.