“Man is never obliged to say, _I must—must_” says the Jew Nathan[5] to
the dervish; and this expression is true in a wider sense than man might
be tempted to suppose. The will is the specific character of man, and
reason itself is only the eternal rule of his will. All nature acts
reasonably; all our prerogative is to act reasonably, with consciousness
and with will. All other objects obey necessity; man is the being who
wills.
It is exactly for this reason that there is nothing more inconsistent
with the dignity of man than to suffer violence, for violence effaces
him. He who does violence to us disputes nothing less than our humanity;
he who submits in a cowardly spirit to the violence abdicates his
quality of man. But this pretension to remain absolutely free from all
that is violence seems to imply a being in possession of a force
sufficiently great to keep off all other forces. But if this pretension
is found in a being who, in the order of forces, cannot claim the first
rank, the result is an unfortunate contradiction between his instinct
and his power.
Man is precisely in this case. Surrounded by numberless forces, which
are all superior to him and hold sway over him, he aspires by his nature
not to have to suffer any injury at their hands. It is true that by his
intelligence he adds artificially to his natural forces, and that up to
a certain point he actually succeeds in reigning physically over
everything that is physical. The proverb says, “there is a remedy for
everything except death;” but this exception, if it is one in the
strictest acceptation of the term, would suffice to entirely ruin the
very idea of our nature. Never will man be the cause that wills, if
there is a case, _a single case_, in which, with or without his consent,
he is forced to what he does not wish. This single terrible exception,
to be or to do what is necessary and not what he wishes, this idea will
pursue him as a phantom; and as we see in fact among the greater part of
men, it will give him up a prey to the blind terrors of imagination. His
boasted liberty is nothing, if there is a single point where he is under
constraint and bound. It is education that must give back liberty to
man, and help him to complete the whole idea of his nature. It ought,
therefore, to make him capable of making his will prevail, for, I repeat
it, man is the being who wills.
It is possible to reach this end in two ways: either _really_, by
opposing force to force, by commanding nature, as nature yourself; or by
the _idea_, issuing from nature, and by thus destroying in relation to
self the very idea of violence. All that helps man really to hold sway
over nature is what is styled physical education. Man cultivates his
understanding and develops his physical force, either to convert the
forces of nature, according to their proper laws, into the instruments
of his will, or to secure himself against their effects when he cannot
direct them. But the forces of nature can only be directed or turned
aside up to a certain point; beyond that point they withdraw from the
influence of man and place him under theirs.
Thus beyond the point in question his freedom would be lost, were he
only susceptible of physical education. But he must be man in the full
sense of the term, and consequently he must have nothing to endure, in
any case, _contrary_ to his will. Accordingly, when he can no longer
oppose to the physical forces any proportional physical force, only one
resource remains to him to avoid suffering any violence: that is, to
cause to _cease entirely that relation_ which is so fatal to him. It is,
in short, to _annihilate_ as an _idea_ the violence he is obliged to
suffer in fact. The education that fits man for this is called moral
education.
The man fashioned by moral education, and he only, is entirely free. He
is either superior to nature as a power, or he is in harmony with her.
None of the actions that she brings to bear upon him is violence, for
before reaching him it has become an _act of his own will_, and dynamic
nature could never touch him, because he spontaneously keeps away from
all to which she can reach. But to attain to this state of mind, which
morality designates as resignation to necessary things, and religion
styles absolute submission to the counsels of Providence, to reach this
by an effort of his free will and with reflection, a certain clearness
is required in thought, and a certain energy in the will, superior to
what man commonly possesses in active life. Happily for him, man finds
here not only in his rational nature a moral aptitude that can be
developed by the understanding, but also in his reasonable and sensible
nature—that is, in his human nature—an _æsthetic_ tendency which seems
to have been placed there expressly: a faculty awakens of itself in the
presence of certain sensuous objects, and which, after our feelings are
purified, can be cultivated to such a point as to become a powerful
ideal development. This aptitude, I grant, is _idealistic_ in its
principle and in its essence, but one which even the realist allows to
be seen clearly enough in his conduct, though he does not acknowledge
this in theory. I am now about to discuss this faculty.
I admit that the sense of the beautiful, when it is developed by
culture, suffices of itself even to make us, in a certain sense,
independent of nature as far as it is a force. A mind that has ennobled
itself sufficiently to be more sensible of the form than of the matter
of things, contains in itself a plenitude of existence that nothing
could make it lose, especially as it does not trouble itself about the
possession of the things in question, and finds a very liberal pleasure
in the mere contemplation of the phenomenon. As this mind has no want to
appropriate the objects in the midst of which it lives, it has no fear
of being deprived of them. But it is nevertheless necessary that these
phenomena should have a body, through which they manifest themselves;
and, consequently, as long as we feel the want even only of finding a
beautiful appearance or a beautiful phenomenon, this want implies that
of the existence of certain objects; and it follows that our
satisfaction still depends on nature, considered as a force, because it
is nature who disposes of all existence in a sovereign manner. It is a
different thing, in fact, to feel in yourself the want of objects
endowed with beauty and goodness, or simply to require that the objects
which surround us are good and beautiful. This last desire is compatible
with the most perfect freedom of the soul; but it is not so with the
other. We are entitled to require that the object before us should be
beautiful and good, but we can only wish that the beautiful and the good
should be realized objectively before us. Now the disposition of mind
is, _par excellence_, called grand and sublime, in which no attention is
given to the question of knowing if the beautiful, the good, and the
perfect exist; but when it is rigorously required that that which exists
should be good, beautiful and perfect, this character of mind is called
sublime, because it contains in it positively all the characteristics of
a fine mind without sharing its negative features.
A sign by which beautiful and good minds, but having weaknesses, are
recognized, is the aspiring always to find their moral ideal realized in
the world of facts, and their being painfully affected by all that
places an obstacle to it. A mind thus constituted is reduced to a sad
state of dependence in relation to chance, and it may always be
predicted of it, without fear of deception, that it will give too large
a share to the matter in moral and æsthetical things, and that it will
not sustain the more critical trials of character and taste. Moral
imperfections ought not to be to us a cause of _suffering_ and of pain:
suffering and pain bespeak rather an ungratified wish than an
unsatisfied moral want. An unsatisfied moral want ought to be
accompanied by a more manly feeling, and fortify our mind and confirm it
in its energy rather than make us unhappy and pusillanimous.
Nature has given to us two genii as companions in our life in this lower
world. The one, amiable and of good companionship, shortens the troubles
of the journey by the gayety of its plays. It makes the chains of
necessity light to us, and leads us amidst joy and laughter, to the most
perilous spots, where we must act as pure spirits and strip ourselves of
all that is body, on the knowledge of the true and the practice of duty.
Once when we are there, it abandons us, for its realm is limited to the
world of sense; its earthly wings could not carry it beyond. But at this
moment the other companion steps upon the stage, silent and grave, and
with his powerful arm carries us beyond the precipice that made us
giddy.
In the former of these genii we recognize the feeling of the beautiful,
in the other the feeling of the sublime. No doubt the beautiful itself
is already an expression of liberty. This liberty is not the kind that
raises us above the power of nature, and that sets us free from all
bodily influence, but it is only the liberty which we enjoy as men,
without issuing from the limits of nature. In the presence of beauty we
feel ourselves free, because the sensuous instincts are in harmony with
the laws of reason. In presence of the sublime we feel ourselves
sublime, because the sensuous instincts have no influence over the
jurisdiction of reason, because it is then the pure spirit that acts in
us as if it were not absolutely subject to any other laws than its own.
The feeling of the sublime is a mixed feeling. It is at once a _painful
state_, which in its paroxysm is manifested by a kind of shudder, and a
_joyous state_, that may rise to rapture, and which, without being
property a pleasure, is greatly preferred to every kind of pleasure by
delicate souls. This union of two contrary sensations in one and the
same feeling proves in a peremptory manner our moral independence. For
as it is absolutely impossible that the same object should be with us in
two opposite relations, it follows that it is we _ourselves_ who sustain
two different relations with the object. It follows that these two
opposed natures should be united in us, which, on the idea of this
object, are brought into play in two perfectly opposite ways. Thus we
experience by the feeling of the beautiful that the state of our
spiritual nature is not necessarily determined by the state of our
sensuous nature; that the laws of nature are not necessarily our laws;
and that there is in us an autonomous principle independent of all
sensuous impressions.
The sublime object may be considered in two lights. We either represent
it to our _comprehension_, and we try in vain to make an image or idea
of it, or we refer it to our _vital force_, and we consider it as a
power before which ours is nothing. But though in both cases we
experience in connection with this object the painful feeling of _our
limits_, yet we do not seek to avoid it; on the contrary we are
attracted to it by an irresistible force. Could this be the case if the
limits of our imagination were at the same time those of our
comprehension? Should we be willingly called back to the feeling of the
omnipotence of the forces of nature if we had not in us something that
cannot be a prey of these forces. We are pleased with the spectacle of
the sensuous infinite, because we are able to attain by thought what the
senses can no longer embrace and what the understanding cannot grasp.
The sight of a terrible object transports us with enthusiasm, because we
are capable of willing what the instincts reject with horror, and of
rejecting what they desire. We willingly allow our imagination to find
something in the world of phenomena that passes beyond it; because,
after all, it is only one sensuous force that triumphs over another
sensuous force, but nature, notwithstanding all her infinity, cannot
attain to the absolute grandeur which is in ourselves. We submit
willingly to physical necessity both our well-being and our existence.
This is because the very power reminds us that there are in us
principles that escape its empire. Man is in the hands of nature, but
the will of man is in his own hands.
Nature herself has actually used a sensuous means to teach us that we
are something more than mere sensuous natures. She has even known how to
make use of our sensations to put us on the track of this discovery—that
we are by no means subject as slaves to the violence of the sensations.
And this is quite a different effect from that which can be produced by
the beautiful; I mean the beautiful of the _real_ world, for the sublime
itself is surpassed by the _ideal_. In the presence of beauty, reason
and sense are in harmony, and it is only on account of this harmony that
the beautiful has attraction for us. Consequently, beauty alone could
never teach us that our destination is to act as pure intelligences, and
that we are capable of showing ourselves such. In the presence of the
sublime, on the contrary, reason and the sensuous are not in harmony,
and it is precisely this contradiction between the two which makes the
charm of the sublime,—its irresistible action on our minds. Here the
physical man and the moral man separate in the most marked manner; for
it is exactly in the presence of objects that make us feel at once how
limited the former is that the other makes the experience of its force.
The very thing that lowers one to the earth is precisely that which
raises the other to the infinite.
Let us imagine a man endowed with all the virtues of which the union
constitutes a _fine_ character. Let us suppose a man who finds his
delight in practising justice, beneficence, moderation, constant, and
good faith. All the duties whose accomplishment is prescribed to him by
circumstances are only a play to him, and I admit that fortune favors
him in such wise that none of the actions which his good heart may
demand of him will be hard to him. Who would not be charmed with such a
delightful harmony between the instincts of nature and the prescriptions
of reason? and who could help admiring such a man? Nevertheless, though
he may inspire us with affection, are we quite sure that he is really
virtuous? or in general that he has anything that corresponds to the
idea of virtue? If this man had only in view to obtain agreeable
sensations, unless he were mad he could not act in another possible way;
and he would have to be his own enemy to wish to be vicious. Perhaps the
principle of his actions is pure, but this is a question to be discussed
between himself and his conscience. For _our_ part, we see nothing of
it; we do not see him do anything more than a simply clever man would do
who had no other god than pleasure. Thus all his virtue is a phenomenon
that is explained by reasons derived from the sensuous order, and we are
by no means driven to seek for reasons beyond the world of sense.
Let us suppose that this same man falls suddenly under misfortune. He is
deprived of his possessions: his reputation is destroyed; he is chained
to his bed by sickness and suffering; he is robbed by death of all those
he loves; he is forsaken in his distress by all in whom he had trusted.
Let us under these circumstances again seek him, and demand the practice
of the same virtues under trial as he formerly had practised during the
period of his prosperity. If he is found to be absolutely the same as
before, if his poverty has not deteriorated his benevolence, or
ingratitude his kindly offices of good will, or bodily suffering his
equanimity, or adversity his joy in the happiness of others; if his
change of fortune is perceptible in externals, but not in his habits, in
the matter, but not in the form of his conduct; then, doubtless, his
virtue could not be explained by any reason drawn from the physical
order; _the idea of nature_—which always necessarily supposes that
actual phenomena rest upon some anterior phenomenon, as effects upon
cause—this idea no longer suffices to enable us to comprehend this man;
because there is nothing more contradictory than to admit that effect
can remain the same when the cause has changed to its contrary. We must
then give up all natural explanation or thought of finding the reason of
his acts in his condition; we must of necessity go beyond the physical
order, and seek the principle of his conduct in quite another world, to
which the reason can indeed raise itself with its ideas, but which the
understanding cannot grasp by its conceptions. It is this revelation of
the absolute moral power which is subjected to no condition of nature,
it is this which gives to the melancholy feeling that seizes our heart
at the sight of such a man that peculiar, inexpressible charm, which no
delight of the senses, however refined, could arouse in us to the same
extent as the sublime.
Thus the sublime opens to us a road to overstep the limits of the world
of sense, in which the feeling of the beautiful would forever imprison
us. It is not little by little (for between absolute dependence and
absolute liberty there is no possible transition), it is suddenly and by
a shock that the sublime wrenches our spiritual and independent nature
away from the net which feeling has spun round us, and which enchains
the soul the more tightly because of its subtle texture. Whatever may be
the extent to which feeling has gained a mastery over men by the latent
influence of a softening taste, when even it should have succeeded in
penetrating into the most secret recesses of moral jurisdiction under
the deceptive envelope of spiritual beauty, and there poisoning the
holiness of principle at its source—one single sublime emotion often
suffices to break all this tissue of imposture, at one blow to give
freedom to the fettered elasticity of spiritual nature, to reveal its
true destination, and to oblige it to conceive, for one instant at
least, the feeling of its liberty. Beauty, under the shape of the divine
Calypso, bewitched the virtuous son of Ulysses, and the power of her
charms held him long a prisoner in her island. For long he believed he
was obeying an immortal divinity, whilst he was only the slave of sense;
but suddenly an impression of the sublime in the form of Mentor seizes
him; he remembers that he is called to a higher destiny—he throws
himself into the waves, and is free.
The sublime, like the beautiful, is spread profusely throughout nature,
and the faculty to feel both one and the other has been given to all
men; but the germ does not develop equally; it is necessary that art
should lend its aid. The aim of nature supposes already that we ought
spontaneously to advance towards the beautiful, although we still avoid
the sublime: for the beautiful is like the nurse of our childhood, and
it is for her to refine our soul in withdrawing it from the rude state
of nature. But though she is our first affection, and our faculty of
feeling is first developed for her, nature has so provided,
nevertheless, that this faculty ripens slowly and awaits its full
development until the understanding and the heart are formed. If taste
attains its full maturity before truth and morality have been
established in our heart by a better road than that which taste would
take, the sensuous world would remain the limit of our aspirations. We
should not know, either in our ideas or in our feelings, how to pass
beyond the world of sense, and all that imagination failed to represent
would be without reality to us. But happily it enters into the plan of
nature, that taste, although it first comes into bloom, is the last to
ripen of all the faculties of the mind. During this interval, man has
time to store up in his mind a provision of ideas, a treasure of
principles in his heart, and then to develop especially, in drawing from
reason, his feeling for the great and the sublime.
As long as man was only the slave of physical necessity, while he had
found no issue to escape from the narrow circle of his appetites, and
while he as yet felt none of that superior liberty which connects him
with the _angels_, nature, so far as she is _incomprehensible_, could
not fail to impress him with the insufficiency of his imagination, and
again, as far as she is a destructive force, to recall his physical
powerlessness. He is forced then to pass timidly towards one, and to
turn away with affright from the other. But scarcely has free
contemplation assured him against the blind oppression of the forces of
nature—scarcely has he recognized amidst the tide of phenomena something
permanent in his own being—than at once the coarse agglomeration of
nature that surrounds him begins to speak in another language to his
heart, and the relative grandeur which is without becomes for him a
mirror in which he contemplates the absolute greatness which is within
himself. He approaches without fear, and with a thrill of pleasure,
those pictures which terrified his imagination, and intentionally makes
an appeal to the whole strength of that faculty by which we represent
the infinite perceived by the senses, in order if she fails in this
attempt, to feel all the more vividly how much these ideas are superior
to all that the highest sensuous faculty can give. The sight of a
distant infinity—of heights beyond vision, this vast ocean which is at
his feet, that other ocean still more vast which stretches above his
head, transport and ravish his mind beyond the narrow circle of the
real, beyond this narrow and oppressive prison of physical life. The
simple majesty of nature offers him a less circumscribed measure for
estimating its grandeur, and, surrounded by the grand outlines which it
presents to him, he can no longer bear anything mean in his way of
thinking. Who can tell how many luminous ideas, how many heroic
resolutions, which would never have been conceived in the dark study of
the imprisoned man of science, nor in the saloons where the people of
society elbow each other, have been inspired on a sudden during a walk,
only by the contact and the generous struggle of the soul with the great
spirit of nature? Who knows if it is not owing to a less frequent
intercourse with this sublime spirit that we must partially attribute
the narrowness of mind so common to the dwellers in towns, always bent
under the minutiæ which dwarf and wither their soul, whilst the soul of
the nomad remains open and free as the firmament beneath which he
pitches his tent?
But it is not only the unimaginable or the sublime in quantity, it is
also the incomprehensible, that which escapes the understanding and that
which _troubles_ it, which can serve to give us an idea of the
super-sensuous infinity. As soon as this element attains the grandiose
and announces itself to us as the work of nature (for otherwise it is
only despicable), it then aids the soul to represent to itself the
ideal, and imprints upon it a noble development. Who does not love the
eloquent disorder of natural scenery to the insipid regularity of a
French garden? Who does not admire in the plains of Sicily the
marvellous combat of nature with herself—of her creative force and her
destructive power? Who does not prefer to feast his eyes upon the wild
streams and waterfalls of Scotland, upon its misty mountains, upon that
romantic nature from which Ossian drew his inspiration—rather than to
grow enthusiastic in this stiff Holland, before the laborious triumph of
patience over the most stubborn of elements? No one will deny that in
the rich grazing-grounds of Holland, things are not better ordered for
the wants of physical man than upon the perfid crater of Vesuvius, and
that the understanding which likes to comprehend and arrange all things,
does not find its requirements rather in the regularly planted
farm-garden than in the uncultivated beauty of natural scenery. But man
has requirements which go beyond those of natural life and comfort or
well-being; he has another destiny than merely to comprehend the
phenomena which surround him.
In the same manner as for the observant traveller, the strange wildness
of nature is so attractive in physical nature—thus, and for the same
reason, every soul capable of enthusiasm finds even in the regretable
anarchy found in the moral world a source of singular pleasure. Without
doubt he who sees the grand economy of nature only from the impoverished
light of the understanding; he who has never any other thought than to
reform its defiant disorder and to substitute harmony, such a one could
not find pleasure in a world which seems given up to the caprice of
chance rather than governed according to a wise ordination, and where
merit and fortune are for the most part in opposition. He desires that
the whole world throughout its vast space should be ruled like a house
well regulated; and when this much-desired regularity is not found, he
has no other resource than to defer to a future life, and to another and
better nature, the satisfaction which is his due, but which neither the
present nor the past afford him. On the contrary, he renounces willingly
the pretension of restoring this chaos of phenomena to one single
notion; he regains on another side, and with interest, what he loses on
this side. Just this want of connection, this anarchy, in the phenomena,
making them useless to the understanding, is what makes them valuable to
reason. The more they are disorderly the more they represent the freedom
of nature. In a sense, if you suppress all connection, you have
independence. Thus, under the idea of liberty, reason brings back to
_unity of thought_ that which the understanding could not bring to unity
of notion. It thus shows its superiority over the understanding, as a
faculty subject to the conditions of a sensuous order. When we consider
of what value it is to a rational being to be independent of natural
laws, we see how much man finds in the liberty of sublime objects as a
set-off against the checks of his cognitive faculty. Liberty, with all
its drawbacks, is everywhere vastly more attractive to a noble soul than
good social order without it—than society like a flock of sheep, or a
machine working like a watch. This mechanism makes of man only a
product; liberty makes him the citizen of a better world.
It is only thus viewed that history is sublime to me. The world, as a
historic object, is only the strife of natural forces; with one another
and with man’s freedom. History registers more actions referable to
nature than to free will; it is only in a few cases, like Cato and
Phocion, that reason has made its power felt. If we expect a treasury of
knowledge in history how we are deceived! All attempts of philosophy to
reconcile what the moral world demands with what the real world gives is
belied by experience, and nature seems as illogical in history as she is
logical in the organic kingdoms.
But if we give up explanation it is different. Nature, in being
capricious and defying logic, in pulling down great and little, in
crushing the noblest works of man, taking centuries to form—nature, by
deviating from intellectual laws, proves that you cannot explain nature
by nature’s laws _themselves_, and this sight drives the mind to the
world of ideas, to the absolute.
But though nature as a sensuous activity drives us to the ideal, it
throws us still more into the world of ideas by the terrible. Our
highest aspiration is to be in good relations with physical nature,
without violating morality. But it is not always convenient to serve two
masters; and though duty and the appetites should never be at strife,
physical necessity is peremptory, and nothing can save men from evil
destiny. Happy is he who learns to bear what he cannot change! There are
cases where fate overpowers all ramparts, and where the only resistance
is, like a pure spirit, to throw freely off all interest of sense, and
strip yourself of your body. Now this force comes from sublime emotions,
and a frequent commerce with destructive nature. Pathos is a sort of
artificial misfortune, and brings us to the spiritual law that commands
our soul. Real misfortune does not always choose its time opportunely,
while pathos finds us armed at all points. By frequently renewing this
exercise of its own activity the mind controls the sensuous, so that
when real misfortune comes, it can treat it as an artificial suffering,
and make it a sublime emotion. Thus pathos takes away some of the
malignity of destiny, and wards off its blows.
Away then with that false theory which supposes falsely a harmony
binding well-being and well doing. Let evil destiny show its face. Our
safety is not in blindness, but in facing our dangers. What can do so
better than familiarity with the splendid and terrible evolution of
events, or than pictures showing man in conflict with chance; evil
triumphant, security deceived—pictures shown us throughout history, and
placed before us by tragedy? Whoever passes in review the terrible fate
of Mithridates, of Syracuse, and Carthage, cannot help keeping his
appetite in check, at least for a time, and, seeing the vanity of
things, strive after that which is permanent. The capacity of the
sublime is one of the noblest aptitudes of man. Beauty is useful, but
does not go beyond man. The sublime applies to the pure spirit. The
sublime must be joined to the beautiful to complete the _æsthetic
education_, and to enlarge man’s heart beyond the sensuous world.
Without the beautiful there would be an eternal strife between our
natural and rational destiny. If we only thought of our vocation as
spirits we should be strangers to this sphere of life. Without the
sublime, beauty would make us forget our dignity. Enervated—wedded to
this transient state, we should lose sight of our true country. We are
only perfect citizens of nature when the sublime is wedded to the
beautiful.
Many things in nature offer man the beautiful and sublime. But here
again he is better served at second-hand. He prefers to have them
ready-made in art rather than seek them painfully in nature. This
instinct for imitation in art has the advantage of being able to make
those points essential that nature has made secondary. While nature
_suffers_ violence in the organic world, or exercises violence, working
with power upon man, though she can only be æsthetical as an object of
pure contemplation, art, plastic art, is fully free, because it throws
off all accidental restrictions and leaves the mind free, because it
imitates the appearance, not the reality of objects. As all sublimity
and beauty consists in the appearance, and not in the value of the
object, it follows that art has all the advantages of nature without her
shackles.