Do not fear for reality and truth. Even if the elevated idea of æsthetic
appearance become general, it would not become so, as long as man
remains so little cultivated as to abuse it; and if it became general,
this would result from a culture that would prevent all abuse of it. The
pursuit of independent appearance requires more power of abstraction,
freedom of heart, and energy of will than man requires to shut himself
up in reality; and he must have left the latter behind him if he wishes
to attain to æsthetic appearance. Therefore, a man would calculate very
badly who took the road of the ideal to save himself that of reality.
Thus reality would not have much to fear from appearance, as we
understand it; but, on the other hand, appearance would have more to
fear from reality. Chained to matter, man uses appearance for his
purposes before he allows it a proper personality in the art of the
ideal: to come to that point a complete revolution must take place in
his mode of feeling, otherwise he would not be even on the way to the
ideal. Consequently, when we find in man the signs of a pure and
disinterested esteem, we can infer that this revolution has taken place
in his nature, and that humanity has really begun in him. Signs of this
kind are found even in the first and rude attempts that he makes to
embellish his existence, even at the risk of making it worse in its
material conditions. As soon as he begins to prefer form to substance
and to risk reality for appearance (known by him to be such), the
barriers of animal life fall, and he finds himself on a track that has
no end.
Not satisfied with the needs of nature, he demands the superfluous.
First, only the superfluous of matter, to secure his enjoyment beyond
the present necessity; but afterwards he wishes a superabundance in
matter, an æsthetical supplement to satisfy the impulse for the formal,
to extend enjoyment beyond necessity. By piling up provisions simply for
a future use, and anticipating their enjoyment in the imagination, he
outsteps the limits of the present moment, but not those of time in
general. He enjoys more; he does not enjoy differently. But as soon as
he makes form enter into his enjoyment, and he keeps in view the forms
of the objects which satisfy his desires, he has not only increased his
pleasure in extent and intensity, but he has also ennobled it in mode
and species.
No doubt nature has given more than is necessary to unreasoning beings;
she has caused a gleam of freedom to shine even in the darkness of
animal life. When the lion is not tormented by hunger, and when no wild
beast challenges him to fight, his unemployed energy creates an object
for himself; full of ardor, he fills the re-echoing desert with his
terrible roars, and his exuberant force rejoices in itself, showing
itself without an object. The insect flits about rejoicing in life in
the sunlight, and it is certainly not the cry of want that makes itself
heard in the melodious song of the bird; there is undeniably freedom in
these movements, though it is not emancipation from want in general, but
from a determinate external necessity.
The animal _works_, when a privation is the motor of its activity, and
it _plays_ when the plenitude of force is this motor, when an exuberant
life is excited to action. Even in inanimate nature a luxury of strength
and a latitude of determination are shown, which in this material sense
might be styled play. The tree produces numberless germs that are
abortive without developing, and it sends forth more roots, branches,
and leaves, organs of nutrition, than are used for the preservation of
the species. Whatever this tree restores to the elements of its
exuberant life, without using it or enjoying it, may be expended by life
in free and joyful movements. It is thus that nature offers in her
material sphere a sort of prelude to the limitless, and that even there
she suppresses partially the chains from which she will be completely
emancipated in the realm of form. The constraint of superabundance or
_physical play_ answers as a transition from the constraint of
necessity, or of _physical seriousness_, to æsthetical play; and before
shaking off, in the supreme freedom of the beautiful, the yoke of any
special aim, nature already approaches, at least remotely, this
independence, by the _free movement_ which is itself its own end and
means.
The imagination, like the bodily organs, has in man its free movement
and its material play, a play in which, without any reference to form,
it simply takes pleasure in its arbitrary power and in the absence of
all hinderance. These plays of fancy, inasmuch as form is not mixed up
with them, and because a free succession of images makes all their
charm, though confined to man, belong exclusively to animal life, and
only prove one thing—that he is delivered from all external sensuous
constraint—without our being entitled to infer that there is in it an
independent plastic force.
From this play of _free association_ of ideas, which is still quite
material in nature and is explained by simple natural laws, the
imagination, by making the attempt of creating a free form, passes at
length at a jump to the æsthetic play: I say at one leap, for quite a
new force enters into action here; for here, for the first time, the
legislative mind is mixed with the acts of a blind instinct, subjects
the arbitrary march of the imagination to its eternal and immutable
unity, causes its independent permanence to enter in that which is
transitory, and its infinity in the sensuous. Nevertheless, as long as
rude nature, which knows of no other law than running incessantly from
change to change, will yet retain too much strength, it will oppose
itself by its different caprices to this necessity; by its agitation to
this permanence; by its manifold needs to this independence, and by its
insatiability to this sublime simplicity. It will be also troublesome to
recognize the instinct of play in its first trials, seeing that the
sensuous impulsion, with its capricious humor and its violent appetites,
constantly crosses. It is on that account that we see the taste, still
coarse, seize that which is new and startling, the disordered, the
adventurous and the strange, the violent and the savage, and fly from
nothing so much as from calm and simplicity. It invents grotesque
figures, it likes rapid transitions, luxurious forms, sharply-marked
changes, acute tones, a pathetic song. That which man calls beautiful at
this time is that which excites him, that which gives him matter; but
that which excites him to give his personality to the object, that which
gives matter to a _possible plastic operation_, for otherwise it would
not be the beautiful for him. A remarkable change has therefore taken
place in the form of his judgments; he searches for these objects, not
because they affect him, but because they furnish him with the occasion
of acting; they please him, not because they answer to a want, but
because they satisfy a law which speaks in his breast, although quite
low as yet.
Soon it will not be sufficient for things to please him; he will wish to
please: in the first place, it is true, only by that which belongs to
him; afterwards by that which he is. That which he possesses, that which
he produces, ought not merely to bear any more the traces of servitude,
nor to mark out the end, simply and scrupulously, by the form.
Independently of the use to which it is destined, the object ought also
to reflect the enlightened intelligence which imagines it, the hand
which shaped it with affection, the mind free and serene which chose it
and exposed it to view. Now, the ancient German searches for more
_magnificent_ furs, for more _splendid_ antlers of the stag, for more
elegant drinking-horns; and the Caledonian chooses the prettiest shells
for his festivals. The arms themselves ought to be no longer only
objects of terror, but also of pleasure; and the skilfully-worked
scabbard will not attract less attention than the homicidal edge of the
sword. The instinct of play, not satisfied with bringing into the sphere
of the necessary an æsthetic superabundance for the future more free, is
at last completely emancipated from the bonds of duty, and the beautiful
becomes of itself an object of man’s exertions. He adorns himself. The
free pleasure comes to take a place among his wants, and the useless
soon becomes the best part of his joys. Form, which from the outside
gradually approaches him, in his dwelling, his furniture, his clothing,
begins at last to take possession of the man himself, to transform him,
at first exteriorly, and afterwards in the interior. The disordered
leaps of joy become the dance, the formless gesture is changed into an
amiable and harmonious pantomime, the confused accents of feeling are
developed, and begin to obey measures and adapt themselves to song.
When, like the flight of cranes, the Trojan army rushes on to the field
of battle with thrilling cries, the Greek army approaches in silence and
with a noble and measured step. On the one side we see but the
exuberance of a blind force, on the other the triumph of form, and the
simple majesty of law.
Now, a nobler necessity binds the two sexes mutually, and the interests
of the heart contribute in rendering durable an alliance which was at
first capricious and changing like the desire that knits it. Delivered
from the heavy fetters of desire, the eye, now calmer, attends to the
form, the soul contemplates the soul, and the interested exchange of
pleasure becomes a generous exchange of mutual inclination. Desire
enlarges and rises to love, in proportion as it sees humanity dawn in
its object; and, despising the vile triumphs gained by the senses, man
tries to win a nobler victory over the will. The necessity of pleasing
subjects the powerful nature to the gentle laws of taste; pleasure may
be stolen, but love must be a gift. To obtain this higher recompense, it
is only through the form and not through matter that it can carry on the
contest. It must cease to act on feeling as a force, to appear in the
intelligence as a simple phenomenon; it must respect liberty, as it is
liberty it wishes to please. The beautiful reconciles the contrast of
different natures in its simplest and purest expression. It also
reconciles the eternal contrast of the two sexes in the whole complex
framework of society, or at all events it seeks to do so; and, taking as
its model the free alliance it has knit between manly strength and
womanly gentleness, it strives to place in harmony, in the moral world,
all the elements of gentleness and of violence. Now, at length, weakness
becomes sacred, and an unbridled strength disgraces; the injustice of
nature is corrected by the generosity of chivalrous manners. The being
whom no power can make tremble, is disarmed by the amiable blush of
modesty, and tears extinguish a vengeance that blood could not have
quenched. Hatred itself hears the delicate voice of honor, the
conqueror’s sword spares the disarmed enemy, and a hospitable hearth
smokes for the stranger on the dreaded hillside where murder alone
awaited him before.
In the midst of the formidable realm of forces, and of the sacred empire
of laws, the æsthetic impulse of form creates by degrees a third and a
joyous realm, that of play and of the appearance, where she emancipates
man from fetters, in all his relations, and from all that is named
constraint, whether physical or moral.
If in the dynamic state of rights men mutually move and come into
collision as forces, in the moral (ethical) state of duties, man opposes
to man the majesty of the laws, and chains down his will. In this realm
of the beautiful or the æsthetic state, man ought to appear to man only
as a form, and an object of free play. To give freedom through freedom
is the fundamental law of this realm.
The dynamic state can only make society simple possibly by subduing
nature through nature; the moral (ethical) state can only make it
morally necessary by submitting the will of the individual to the
general will. The æsthetic state alone can make it real, because it
carries out the will of all through the nature of the individual. If
necessity alone forces man to enter into society, and if his reason
engraves on his soul social principles, it is beauty only that can give
him a social _character_; taste alone brings harmony into society,
because it creates harmony in the individual. All other forms of
perception divide the man, because they are based exclusively either in
the sensuous or in the spiritual part of his being. It is only the
perception of beauty that makes of him an entirety, because it demands
the co-operation of his two natures. All other forms of communication
divide society, because they apply exclusively either to the receptivity
or to the private activity of its members, and therefore to what
distinguishes men one from the other. The æsthetic communication alone
unites society because it applies to what is common to all its members.
We only enjoy the pleasures of sense as individuals, without the nature
of the race in us sharing in it; accordingly, we cannot generalize our
individual pleasures, because we cannot generalize our individuality. We
enjoy the pleasures of knowledge as a race, dropping the individual in
our judgment; but we cannot generalize the pleasures of the
understanding, because we cannot eliminate individuality from the
judgments of others as we do from our own. Beauty alone can we enjoy
both as individuals and as a race, that is, as representing a race. Good
appertaining to sense can only make one person happy, because it is
founded on inclination, which is always exclusive; and it can only make
a man partially happy, because his real personality does not share in
it. Absolute good can only render a man happy conditionally, for truth
is only the reward of abnegation, and a pure heart alone has faith in a
pure will. Beauty alone confers happiness on all, and under its
influence every being forgets that he is limited.
Taste does not suffer any superior or absolute authority, and the sway
of beauty is extended over appearance. It extends up to the seat of
reason’s supremacy, suppressing all that is material. It extends down to
where sensuous impulse rules with blind compulsion, and form is
undeveloped. Taste ever maintains its power on these remote borders,
where legislation is taken from it. Particular desires must renounce
their egotism, and the agreeable, otherwise tempting the senses, must in
matters of taste adorn the mind with the attractions of grace.
Duty and stern necessity must change their forbidding tone, only excused
by resistance, and do homage to nature by a nobler trust in her. Taste
leads our knowledge from the mysteries of science into the open expanse
of common sense, and changes a narrow scholasticism into the common
property of the human race. Here the highest genius must leave its
particular elevation, and make itself familiar to the comprehension even
of a child. Strength must let the Graces bind it, and the arbitrary lion
must yield to the reins of love. For this purpose taste throws a veil
over physical necessity, offending a free mind by its coarse nudity, and
dissimulating our degrading parentage with matter by a delightful
illusion of freedom. Mercenary art itself rises from the dust; and the
bondage of the bodily, at its magic touch, falls off from the inanimate
and animate. In the æsthetic state the most slavish tool is a free
citizen, having the same rights as the noblest; and the intellect which
shapes the mass to its intent must consult it concerning its
destination. Consequently, in the realm of æsthetic appearance, the idea
of equality is realized, which the political zealot would gladly see
carried out socially. It has often been said that perfect politeness is
only found near a throne. If thus restricted in the material, man has,
as elsewhere appears, to find compensation in the ideal world.
Does such a state of beauty in appearance exist, and where? It must be
in every finely-harmonized soul; but as a fact, only in select circles,
like the pure ideal of the church and state—in circles where manners are
not formed by the empty imitations of the foreign, but by the very
beauty of nature; where man passes through all sorts of complications in
all simplicity and innocence, neither forced to trench on another’s
freedom to preserve his own, nor to show grace at the cost of dignity.