The depicting of suffering, in the shape of simple suffering, is never
the end of art, but it is of the greatest importance as a means of
attaining its end. The highest aim of art is to represent the
super-sensuous, and this is effected in particular by tragic art,
because it represents by sensible marks the moral man, maintaining
himself in a state of passion, independently of the laws of nature. The
principle of freedom in man becomes conscious of itself only by the
resistance it offers to the violence of the feelings. Now the resistance
can only be measured by the strength of the attack. In order, therefore,
that the intelligence may reveal itself in man as a force independent of
nature, it is necessary that nature should have first displayed all her
power before our eyes. The _sensuous_ being must be profoundly and
strongly _affected, passion_ must be in play, that the _reasonable_
being may be able to testify his independence and manifest himself in
_action_.
It is impossible to know if the empire which man has over his affections
is the effect of a moral force, till we have acquired the certainty that
it is not an effect of insensibility There is no merit in mastering the
feelings which only lightly and transitorily skim over the surface of
the soul. But to resist a tempest which stirs up the whole of sensuous
nature, and to preserve in it the freedom of the soul, a faculty of
resistance is required infinitely superior to the act of natural force.
Accordingly it will not be possible to represent moral freedom, except
by expressing passion, or suffering nature, with the greatest vividness;
and the hero of tragedy must first have justified his claim to be a
sensuous being before aspiring to our homage as a reasonable being, and
making us believe in his strength of mind.
Therefore the _pathetic_ is the first condition required most strictly
in a tragic author, and he is allowed to carry his description of
suffering as far as possible, without prejudice to the _highest end of
his art_, that is, without moral freedom being oppressed by it. He must
give in some sort to his hero, as to his reader, their full _load_ of
suffering, without which the question will always be put whether the
resistance opposed to suffering is an act of the soul, something
_positive_, or whether it is not rather a purely _negative_ thing, a
simple deficiency.
The latter case is offered in the purer French tragedy, where it is very
rare, or perhaps unexampled, for the author to place before the reader
suffering nature, and where generally, on the contrary, it is only the
poet who warms up and declaims, or the comedian who struts about on
stilts. The icy tone of declamation extinguishes all nature here, and
the French tragedians, with their superstitious worship of _decorum_,
make it quite impossible for them to paint human nature truly. Decorum,
wherever it is, even in its proper place, always falsifies the
expression of nature, and yet this expression is rigorously required by
art. In a French tragedy, it is difficult for us to believe that the
hero ever suffers, for he explains the state of his soul, as the coolest
man would do, and always thinking of the effect he is making on others,
he never lets nature pour forth freely. The kings, the princesses, and
the heroes of Corneille or Voltaire never forget their _rank_ even in
the most violent excess of passion; and they part with their _humanity_
much sooner than with their _dignity_. They are like those kings and
emperors of our old picturebooks, who go to bed with their crowns on.
What a difference from the Greeks and those of the moderns who have been
inspired with their spirit, in poetry! Never does the Greek poet blush
at nature; he leaves to the sensuous all its rights, and yet he is quite
certain never to be subdued by it. He has too much depth and too much
rectitude in his mind not to distinguish the accidental, which is the
principal point with false taste, from the really necessary; but all
that is not humanity itself is accidental in man. The Greek artist who
has to represent a Laocoon, a Niobe, and a Philoctetes, does not care
for the king, the princess, or the king’s son; he keeps to the _man_.
Accordingly the skilful statuary sets aside the drapery, and shows us
nude figures, though he knows quite well it is not so in real life. This
is because drapery is to him an accidental thing, and because the
necessary ought never to be sacrificed to the accidental. It is also
because, if decency and physical necessities have their laws, these laws
are not those of art. The statuary ought to show us, and wishes to show
us, the _man_ himself; drapery conceals him, therefore he sets that
aside, and with reason.
The Greek sculptor rejects drapery as a useless and embarrassing load,
to make way for _human nature_; and in like manner the Greek poet
emancipates the human personages he brings forward from the equally
useless constraint of decorum, and all those icy laws of propriety,
which put nothing but what is artificial in man, and conceal nature in
it. Take Homer and the tragedians; suffering nature speaks the language
of truth and ingenuousness in their pages, and in a way to penetrate to
the depths of our hearts. All the passions play their part freely, nor
do the rules of propriety compress any feeling with the Greeks. The
heroes are just as much under the influence of suffering as other men,
and what makes them heroes is the very fact that they feel suffering
strongly and deeply, without suffering overcoming them. They love life
as ardently as others; but they are not so ruled by this feeling as to
be unable to give up life when the duties of honor or humanity call on
them to do so. Philoctetes filled the Greek stage with his lamentations;
Hercules himself, when in fury, does not keep under his grief.
Iphigenia, on the point of being sacrificed, confesses with a touching
ingenuousness that she grieves to part with the light of the sun. Never
does the Greek place his glory in being insensible or indifferent to
suffering, but rather in _supporting_ it, though feeling it in its
fulness. The very gods of the Greeks must pay their tribute to nature,
when the poet wishes to make them approximate to humanity. Mars, when
wounded, roars like ten thousand men together, and Venus, scratched by
an iron lance, mounts again to Olympus, weeping, and cursing all
battles.
This lively susceptibility on the score of suffering, this warm,
ingenuous nature, showing itself uncovered and in all truth in the
monuments of Greek art, and filling us with such deep and lively
emotions—this is a model presented for the imitation of all artists; it
is a law which Greek genius has laid down for the fine arts. It is
always and eternally nature which has the first rights over man; she
ought never to be fettered, because man, before being anything else, is
a sensuous creature. After the rights of nature come those of _reason_,
because man is a rational, sensuous being, a moral person, and because
it is a duty for this person not to let himself be ruled by nature, but
to rule her. It is only after satisfaction has been given in the _first
place_ to _nature_, and after reason in the _second place_ has made its
rights acknowledged, that it is permitted for decorum in the third place
to make good its claims, to impose on man, in the expression of his
moral feelings and of his sensations, considerations towards society,
and to show in it the social being, the civilized man. The first law of
the tragic art was to represent suffering nature. The second law is to
represent the resistance of morality opposed to suffering.
Affection, as affection, is an unimportant thing; and the portraiture of
affection, considered, in itself, would be without æsthetic value; for,
I repeat it, nothing that only interests sensuous nature is worthy of
being represented by art. Thus not only the affections that do nothing
but enervate and soften man, but in general all affections, even those
that are exalted, ecstatic, whatever may be their nature, are beneath
the dignity of tragic art.
The soft emotions, only producing tenderness, are of the nature of the
_agreeable_, with which the fine arts are not concerned. They only
caress the senses, while relaxing and creating languidness, and only
relate to external nature, not at all to the inner nature of man. A good
number of our romances and of our tragedies, particularly those that
bear the name of dramas—a sort of compromise between tragedy and
comedy—a good number also of those highly-appreciated family portraits,
belong to this class. The only effect of these works is to empty the
lachrymal duct, and soothe the overflowing feelings; but the mind comes
back from them empty, and the moral being, the noblest part of our
nature, gathers no new strength whatever from them, “It is thus,” says
Kant, “that many persons feel themselves _edified_ by a sermon that has
nothing _edifying_ in it.” It seems also that modern music only aims at
interesting the sensuous, and in this it flatters the taste of the day,
which seeks to be agreeably tickled, but not to be startled, nor
strongly moved and elevated. Accordingly we see music prefer all that is
_tender_; and whatever be the noise in a concert-room, silence is
immediately restored, and every one is all ears directly a sentimental
passage is performed. Then an expression of sensibility common to
animalism shows itself commonly on all faces; the eyes are swimming with
intoxication, the open mouth is all desire, a voluptuous trembling takes
hold of the entire body, the breath is quick and full, in short, all the
symptoms of intoxication appear. This is an evident proof that the
senses swim in delight, but that the mind or the principle of freedom in
man has become a prey to the violence of the sensuous impression. Real
taste, that of noble and manly minds, rejects all these emotions as
unworthy of art, because they only please the _senses_, with which art
has nothing in common.
But, on the other hand, real taste excludes all extreme affections,
which only put sensuousness to the _torture_, without giving the mind
any compensation. These affections oppress moral liberty by _pain_, as
the others by voluptuousness; consequently they can excite aversion, and
not the emotion that would alone be worthy of art. Art ought to charm
the mind and give satisfaction to the feeling of moral freedom. This man
who is a prey to his pain is to me simply a tortured animate being, and
not a man tried by suffering. For a moral resistance to painful
affections is already required of man—a resistance which can alone allow
the principle of moral freedom, the intelligence, to make itself known
in it.
If it is so, the poets and the artists are poor adepts in their art when
they seek to reach the pathetic only by the sensuous force of affection
and by representing suffering in the most vivid manner. They forget that
suffering in itself can never be the last end of imitation, nor the
immediate source of the pleasure we experience in tragedy. The pathetic
only has æsthetic value in as far as it is sublime. Now, effects that
only allow us to infer a purely sensuous cause, and that are founded
only on the affection experienced by the faculty of sense, are never
sublime, whatever energy they may display, for everything sublime
proceeds _exclusively_ from the reason.
I imply by passion the affections of pleasure as well as the painful
affections, and to represent passion only, without coupling with it the
expression of the super-sensuous faculty which resists it, is to fall
into what is properly called _vulgarity_; and the opposite is called
_nobility_. Vulgarity and nobility are two ideas which, wherever they
are applied, have more or less relation with the super-sensuous share a
man takes in a work. There is nothing noble but what has its source in
the reason; all that issues from sensuousness alone is _vulgar_ or
_common_. We say of a man that he acts in a _vulgar_ manner when he is
satisfied with obeying the suggestions of his sensuous instinct; that he
acts suitably when he only obeys his instinct in conformity with the
laws; that he acts _nobly_ when he obeys reason only, without having
regard to his instincts. We say of a physiognomy that it is _common_
when it does not show any trace of the spiritual man, the intelligence;
we say it has expression when it is the mind which has determined its
features: and that it is noble when a pure spirit has determined them.
If an architectural work is in question we qualify it as _common_ if it
aims at nothing but a physical end; we name it noble if, independently
of all physical aim, we find in it at the same time the expression of a
conception.
Accordingly, I repeat it, correct taste disallows all painting of the
affections, however energetic, which rests satisfied with expressing
physical suffering and the physical resistance opposed to it by the
subject, without making visible at the same time the superior principle
of the nature of man, the presence of a super-sensuous faculty. It does
this in virtue of the principle developed farther back, namely, that it
is not suffering in itself, but only the resistance opposed to
suffering, that is pathetic and deserving of being represented. It is
for this reason that all the absolutely extreme degrees of the
affections are forbidden to the artist as well as to the poet. All of
these, in fact, oppress the force that resists from within: or rather,
all betray of themselves, and without any necessity of other symptoms,
the oppression of this force, because no affection can reach this last
degree of intensity as long as the intelligence in man makes any
resistance.
Then another question presents itself. How is this principle of
resistance, this super-sensuous force, manifested in the phenomenon of
the affections? Only in one way, by mastering or, more commonly, by
combating affection. I say _affection_, for sensuousness can also fight,
but this combat of sensuousness is not carried on with the affection,
but with the _cause_ that produces it; a contest which has no moral
character, but is all physical, the same combat that the earthworm,
trodden under foot, and the wounded bull engage in, without thereby
exciting the pathetic. When suffering man seeks to give an expression to
his feelings, to remove his enemy, to shelter the suffering limb, he
does all this in common with the animals, and instinct alone takes the
initiative here, without the will being applied to. Therefore, this is
not an act that emanates from the man himself, nor does it show him as
an intelligence. Sensuous nature will always fight the enemy that makes
it suffer, but it will never fight against itself.
On the other hand, the contest with affection is a contest with
sensuousness, and consequently presupposes something that is distinct
from sensuous nature. Man can defend himself with the help of common
sense and his muscular strength against the object that makes him
suffer; against suffering itself he has no other arms than those of
reason.
These ideas must present themselves to the eye in the portraiture of the
affections, or be awakened by this portraiture in order that the
pathetic may exist. But it is impossible to represent ideas, in the
proper sense of the word, and positively, as nothing corresponds to pure
ideas in the world of sense. But they can be always represented
negatively and in an indirect way if the sensuous phenomenon by which
they are manifested has some character of which you would seek in vain
the conditions in _physical nature_. All phenomena of which the ultimate
principle cannot be derived from the world of sense are an indirect
representation of the upper-sensuous element.
And how does one succeed in representing something that is above nature
without having recourse to supernatural means? What can this phenomenon
be which is accomplished by natural forces—otherwise it would not be a
phenomenon—and yet which cannot be derived from physical causes without
a contradiction? This is the problem; how can the artist solve it?
It must be remembered that the phenomena observable in a man in a state
of passion are of two kinds. They are either phenomena connected simply
with animal nature, and which, therefore, only obey the physical law,
without the will being able to master them, or the independent force in
him being able to exercise an immediate influence over them. It is the
instinct which immediately produces these phenomena, and they obey
blindly the laws of instinct. To this kind belong, for example, the
organs of the circulation of the blood, of respiration, and all the
surface of the skin. But, moreover, the other organs, and those subject
to the will, do not always await the decision of the will; and often
instinct itself sets them immediately, in play, especially when the
physical state is threatened with pain or with danger. Thus, the
movements of my arm depend, it is true, on my will; but if I place my
hand, without knowing it, on a burning body, the movement by which I
draw it back is certainly not a voluntary act, but a purely instinctive
phenomenon. Nay more, speech is assuredly subject to the empire of the
will, and yet instinct can also dispose of this organ according to its
whim, and even of this and of the mind, without consulting beforehand
the will, directly a sharp pain, or even an energetic affection, takes
us by surprise. Take the most impassible stoic and make him see suddenly
something very wonderful, or a terrible and unexpected object. Fancy
him, for example, present when a man slips and falls to the bottom of an
abyss. A shout, a resounding cry, and not only inarticulate, but a
distinct word will escape his lips, and nature will have acted in him
before the will: a certain proof that there are in man phenomena which
cannot be referred to his person as an intelligence, but only to his
instinct as a natural force.
But there is also in man a _second_ order of phenomena, which are
subject to the influence and empire of the will, or which may be
considered at all events as being of such a kind that will might _always
have prevented_ them, consequently phenomena for which the _person_ and
not instinct is responsible. It is the office of instinct to watch with
a blind zeal over the interests of the senses; but it is the office of
the _person_ to hold instinct in proper bounds, out of respect for the
moral law. Instinct in itself does not hold account of any law; but the
person ought to watch that instinct may not infringe in any way on the
decrees of reason. It is therefore evident that it is not for instinct
alone to determine unconditionally all the phenomena that take place in
man in the state of affection, and that on the contrary the will of man
can place limits to instinct. When instinct only determines all
phenomena in man, there is nothing more that can recall the _person_;
there is only a physical creature before you, and consequently an
animal; for every physical creature subject to the sway of instinct is
nothing else. Therefore, if you wish to represent the person itself, you
must propose to yourself in man certain phenomena that have been
determined in opposition to instinct, or at least that have not been
determined by instinct. That they have not been determined by instinct
is sufficient to refer them to a higher source, the moment we see that
instinct would no doubt have determined them in another way if its force
had not been broken by some obstacle.
We are now in a position to point out in what way the super-sensuous
element, the moral and independent force of man, his Ego in short, can
be represented in the phenomena of the affections. I understand that
this is possible if the parts which only obey physical nature, those
where will either disposes nothing at all, or only under certain
circumstances, betray the presence of suffering; and if those, on the
contrary, that escape the blind sway of instinct, that only obey
physical nature, show no trace, or only a very feeble trace, of
suffering, and consequently appear to have a certain degree of freedom.
Now this want of harmony between the features imprinted on animal nature
in virtue of the laws of physical necessity, and those determined with
the spiritual and independent faculty of man, is precisely the point by
which that super-sensuous principle is discovered in man capable of
placing limits to the effects produced by physical nature, and therefore
distinct from the latter. The purely animal part of man obeys the
physical law, and consequently may show itself oppressed by the
affection. It is, therefore, in this part that all the strength of
passion shows itself, and it answers in some degree as a measure to
estimate the resistance—that is to say, of the energy of the moral
faculty in man—which can only be judged according to the force of the
attack. Thus in proportion as the affection manifests itself with
decision and violence in the field of _animal nature_, without being
able to exercise the same power in the field of _human nature_, so in
proportion the latter makes itself manifestly known—in the same
proportion the moral independence of man shows itself gloriously: the
portraiture becomes pathetic and the pathetic sublime.
The statues of the ancients make this principle of æsthetics sensible to
us; but it is difficult to reduce to conceptions and express in words
what the very inspection of ancient statues makes the senses feel in so
lively a manner. The group of Laocoon and his children can give to a
great extent the measure of what the plastic art of the ancients was
capable of producing in the matter of pathos. Winckelmann, in his
“History of Art,” says: “Laocoon is nature seized in the highest degree
of suffering, under the features of a man who seeks to gather up against
pain all the strength of which the mind is conscious. Hence while his
suffering swells his muscles and stretches his nerves, the mind, armed
with an interior force shows itself on his contracted brow, and the
breast rises, because the breathing is broken, and because there is an
internal struggle to keep in the expression of pain, and press it back
into his heart. The sigh of anguish he wishes to keep in, his very
breath which he smothers, exhaust the lower part of his trunk, and works
into his flanks, which make us judge in some degree of the palpitations
of his visceral organs. But his own suffering appears to occasion less
anguish than the pain of his children, who turn their faces toward their
father, and implore him, crying for help. His father’s heart shows
itself in his eyes, full of sadness, and where pity seems to swim in a
troubled cloud. His face expresses lament, but he does not cry; his eyes
are turned to heaven, and implore help from on high. His mouth also
marks a supreme sadness, which depresses the lower lip and seems to
weigh upon it, while the upper lip, contracted from the top to the
bottom, expresses at once both physical suffering and that of the soul.
Under the mouth there is an expression of indignation that seems to
protest against an undeserved suffering, and is revealed in the
nostrils, which swell out and enlarge and draw upwards. Under the
forehead, the struggle between pain and moral strength, united as it
were in a single point, is represented with great truth, for, while pain
contracts and raises the eyebrows, the effort opposed to it by the will
draws down towards the upper eyelid all the muscles above it, so that
the eyelid is almost covered by them. The artist, not being able to
embellish nature, has sought at least to develop its means, to increase
its effect and power. Where is the greatest amount of pain is also the
highest beauty. The left side, which the serpent besets with his furious
bites, and where he instils his poison, is that which appears to suffer
the most intensely, because sensation is there nearest to the heart. The
legs strive to raise themselves as if to shun the evil; the whole body
is nothing but movement, and even the traces of the chisel contribute to
the illusion; we seem to see the shuddering and icy-cold skin.”
How great is the truth and acuteness of this analysis! In what a
superior style is this struggle between spirit and the suffering of
nature developed! How correctly the author has seized each of the
phenomena in which the animal element and the human element manifest
themselves, the constraint of nature and the independence of reason! It
is well known that Virgil has described this same scene in his “Æneid,”
but it did not enter into the plan of the epic poet to pause as the
sculptor did, and describe the moral nature of Laocoon; for this recital
is in Virgil only an episode; and the object he proposes is sufficiently
attained by the simple description of the physical phenomenon, without
the necessity on his part of looking into the soul of the unhappy
sufferer, as his aim is less to inspire us with pity than to fill us
with terror. The duty of the poet from this point of view was purely
negative; I mean he had only to avoid carrying the picture of physical
suffering to such a degree that all expression of human dignity or of
moral resistance would cease, for if he had done this indignation and
disgust would certainly be felt. He, therefore, preferred to confine
himself to the representation of the _least_ of the suffering, and he
found it advisable to dwell at length on the formidable nature of the
two serpents, and on the rage with which they attack their victims,
rather than on the feelings of Laocoon. He only skims over those
feelings, because his first object was to represent a chastisement sent
by the gods, and to produce an impression of terror that nothing could
diminish. If he had, on the contrary, detained our looks on the person
of Laocoon himself with as much perseverance as the statuary, instead of
on the chastizing deity, the suffering man would have become the hero of
the scene, and the episode would have lost its propriety in connection
with the whole piece.
The narrative of Virgil is well known through the excellent commentary
of Lessing. But Lessing only proposed to make evident by this example
the limits that separate partial description from painting, and not to
make the notion of the pathetic issue from it. Yet the passage of Virgil
does not appear to me less valuable for this latter object, and I crave
permission to bring it forward again under this point of view:—
Ecce auterm gemini Tenedo tranquilla per alta
(Horresco referens) immensis orbibus angues
Incumbunt pelago, pariterque ad litora tendunt;
Pectora quorum inter fluctus arrecta jubæque
Sanguinæ exsuperant undas; pars cætera pontum
Pone legit, sinuatque immensa volumine terga.
Fit sonitus spumante salo, jamque arva tenebant,
Ardentes oculos suffecti sanguine et igni,
Sibila lambebant linguis vibrantibus ora!
_Æneid_, ii. 203–211.
We find here realized the first of the three conditions of the sublime
that have been mentioned further back,—a very powerful natural force,
armed for destruction, and ridiculing all resistance. But that this
strong element may at the same time be _terrible_, and thereby
_sublime_, two distinct operations of the mind are wanted; I mean two
representations that we produce in ourselves by our own activity.
_First_, we recognize this irresistible natural force as terrible by
comparing it with the weakness of the faculty of resistance that the
physical man can oppose to it; and, _secondly_, it is by referring it to
our will, and recalling to our consciousness that the will is absolutely
independent of all influence of physical nature, that this force becomes
to us a sublime object. But it is _we ourselves_ who represent these two
relations; the poet has only given us an object armed with a great force
seeking to manifest itself. If this object makes us _tremble_, it is
only because we in thought suppose ourselves, or some one like us,
engaged with this force. And if trembling in this way, we experience the
feeling of the sublime, it is because our consciousness tells us that,
if we are the victims of this force, we should have nothing to fear,
from the freedom of our Ego, for the _autonomy_ of the determinations of
our will. In short the description up to here is sublime, but quite a
contemplative, intuitive sublimity:—
Diffugimus visu exsangues, illi agmine certo
Laocoonta petunt....—_Æneid_, ii. 212–213.
Here the force is presented to us as _terrible_ also; and contemplative
sublimity passes into the pathetic. We see that force enter really into
strife with man’s impotence. Whether it concerns Laocoon or ourselves is
only a question of degree. The instinct of sympathy excites and
frightens in us the instinct of preservation: there are the monsters,
they are darting—on ourselves; there is no more safety, flight is vain.
It is no more in our power to measure this force with ours, and to refer
it or not to our own existence. This happens without our co-operation,
and is given us by the object itself. Accordingly our fear has not, as
in the preceding moment, a purely subjective ground, residing in our
soul; it has an objective ground, residing in the object. For, even if
we recognize in this entire scene a simple fiction of the imagination,
we nevertheless distinguish in this fiction a conception communicated to
us from without, from another conception that we produce spontaneously
in ourselves.
Thus the mind loses a part of her freedom, inasmuch as she receives now
from without that which she produced before her own activity. The idea
of danger puts on an appearance of objective reality, and affection
becomes now a serious affair.
If we were only sensuous creatures, obeying no other instinct than that
of self-preservation, we should stop here, and we should remain in a
state of mere and pure affection. But there is something in us which
takes no part in the affections of sensuous nature, and whose activity
is not directed according to physical conditions. According, then, as
this independently acting principle (the disposition, the moral faculty)
has become to a degree developed in the soul, there is left more or less
space for passive nature, and there remains more or less of the
independent principle in the affection.
In the truly moral soul the terrible trial (of the imagination) passes
quickly and readily into the sublime. In proportion as imagination loses
its liberty, reason makes its own prevail, and the soul ceases not to
enlarge within when it thus finds _outward_ limits. Driven from all the
intrenchments which would give physical protection to sensuous
creatures, we seek refuge in the stronghold of our moral liberty, and we
arrive by that means at an absolute and unlimited safety, at the very
moment when we seem to be deprived in the world of phenomena of a
relative and precarious rampart. But precisely because it was necessary
to have arrived at the physical oppression before having recourse to the
assistance of our moral nature, we can only buy this high sentiment of
our liberty through suffering. An ordinary soul confines itself entirely
to this suffering, and never comprehends in the sublime or the pathetic
anything beyond the terrible. An independent soul, on the contrary,
precisely seizes this occasion to rise to the feeling of his moral
force, in all that is most magnificent in this force, and from every
terrible object knows how to draw out the sublime.
The moral man (the father[6]) is here attacked before the physical man,
and that has a grand effect. All the affections become more æsthetic
when we receive them second-hand; there is no stronger sympathy than
that we feel for sympathy. [7] The moment had arrived when the hero
himself had to be recommended to our respect as a moral personage, and
the poet seized upon that moment. We already know by his description all
the force, all the rage of the two monsters who menace Laocoon, and we
know how all resistance would be in vain. If Laocoon were only a common
man he would better understand his own interests, and, like the rest of
the Trojans, he would find safety in rapid flight. But there is a heart
in that breast; the danger to his children holds him back, and decides
him to meet his fate. This trait alone renders him worthy of our pity.
At whatever moment the serpents had assailed him, we should have always
been touched and troubled. But because it happens just at the moment
when as father he shows himself so worthy of respect, his fate appears
to us as the result of having fulfilled his duty as parent, of his
tender disquietude for his children. It is this which calls forth our
sympathy in the highest degree. It appears, in fact, as if he
deliberately devoted himself to destruction, and his death becomes an
act of the will.
Thus there are two conditions in every kind of the pathetic: 1st.
Suffering, to interest our sensuous nature; 2d. Moral liberty, to
interest our spiritual nature. All portraiture in which the expression
of suffering nature is wanting remains without æsthetic action, and our
heart is untouched. All portraiture in which the expression of moral
aptitude is wanting, even did it possess all the sensuous force
possible, could not attain to the pathetic, and would infallibly revolt
our feelings. Throughout moral liberty we require the human being who
suffers; throughout all the sufferings of human nature we always desire
to perceive the independent spirit, or the capacity for independence.
But the independence of the spiritual being in the state of suffering
can manifest itself in two ways. Either negatively, when the moral man
does not receive the law from the physical man, and his state exercises
no influence over his manner of feeling; or positively, when the moral
man is a ruler over the physical being, and his manner of feeling
exercises an influence upon his state. In the first case, it is the
sublime of disposition; in the second, it is the sublime of action.
The sublime of disposition is seen in all character independent of the
accidents of fate. “A noble heart struggling against adversity,” says
Seneca, “is a spectacle full of attraction even for the gods.” Such for
example is that which the Roman Senate offered after the disaster of
Cannæ. Lucifer even, in Milton, when for the first time he contemplates
hell—which is to be his future abode—penetrates us with a sentiment of
admiration by the force of soul he displays:—
“Hail, horrors, hail.
Infernal world, and thou, profoundest Hell;
Receive thy new possessor!—one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time;
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell....
Here at least
We shall be free,” &c.
The reply of Medea in the tragedy belongs also to this order of the
sublime.
The sublime of disposition makes itself seen, it is visible to the
spectator, because it rests upon co-existence, the simultaneous; the
sublime action, on the contrary, is _conceived only by the thought_,
because the impression and the act are successive, and the intervention
of the mind is necessary to infer from a free determination the idea of
previous suffering.
It follows that the first alone can be expressed by the plastic arts,
because these arts give but that which is simultaneous; but the poet can
extend his domain over one and the other. Even more; when the plastic
art has to represent a sublime action, it must necessarily bring it back
to sublimity.
In order that the sublimity of action should take place, not only must
the suffering of man have no influence upon the moral constitution, but
rather the opposite must be the case. The affection is the work of his
moral character. This can happen in two ways: either mediately, or
according to the law of liberty, when out of respect for such and such a
duty it decides from free choice to suffer—in this case, the idea of
duty determines as a motive, and its suffering is a voluntary act—or
immediately, and according to the necessity of nature, when he expiates
by a moral suffering the violation of duty; in this second case, the
idea of duty determines him as a _force_, and his suffering is no longer
an _effect_. Regulus offers us an example of the first kind, when, to
keep his word, he gives himself up to the vengeance of the
Carthaginians; and he would serve as an example of the second class, if,
having betrayed his trust, the consciousness of this crime would have
made him miserable. In both cases suffering has a moral course, but with
this difference, that on the one part Regulus shows us its moral
character, and that, on the other, he only shows us that he was made to
have such a character. In the first case he is in our eyes a morally
great person; in the second he is only æsthetically great.
This last distinction is important for the tragic art; it consequently
deserves to be examined more closely.
Man is already a sublime object, but only in the æsthetic sense, when
the _state_ in which he is gives us an idea of his human destination,
even though we might not find this destination realized in his _person_.
He only becomes sublime to us in a moral point of view, when he acts,
moreover, as a person, in a manner conformable with this destination; if
our respect bears not only on his moral faculty, but on the use he makes
of this faculty; if dignity, in his case, is due, not only to his moral
aptitude, but to the real morality of his conduct. It is quite a
different thing to direct our judgment and attention to the moral
faculty generally, and to the possibility of a will absolutely free, and
to be directing it to the use of this faculty, and to the reality of
this absolute freedom of willing.
It is, I repeat, quite a different thing; and this difference is
connected not only with the objects to which we may have to direct our
judgment, but to the very criterion of our judgment. The same object can
displease us if we appreciate it in a moral point of view, and be very
attractive to us in the æsthetical point of view. But even if the moral
judgment and the æsthetical judgment were both satisfied, this object
would produce this effect on one and the other in quite a different way.
It is not morally satisfactory because it has an æsthetical value, nor
has it an æsthetical value because it satisfies us morally. Let us take,
as example, Leonidas and his devotion at Thermopylæ. Judged from the
moral point of view, this action represents to me the moral law carried
out notwithstanding all the repugnance of instinct. Judged from the
æsthetic point of view, it gives me the idea of the moral faculty,
independent of every constraint of instinct. The act of Leonidas
_satisfies_ the moral sense, the reason; it enraptures the æsthetical
sense, the imagination.
Whence comes this difference in the feelings in connection with the same
object? I account for it thus:—
In the same way that our being consists of two principles and natures,
so also and consequently our feelings are divided into two kinds,
entirely different. As reasonable beings we experience a feeling of
approbation or of disapprobation; as sensuous creatures we experience
pleasure or displeasure. The two feelings, approbation and pleasure,
repose on satisfaction: one on a satisfaction given to a requirement of
reason—reason has only requirements, and not wants. The other depends on
a satisfaction given to a sensuous want—sense only knows of wants, and
cannot prescribe anything. These two terms—requirements of reason, wants
of the senses—are mutually related, as absolute necessity and the
necessity of nature. Accordingly, both are included in the idea of
necessity, but with this difference, that the necessity of reason is
unconditional, and the necessity of sense only takes place under
conditions. But, for both, satisfaction is a purely contingent thing.
Accordingly every feeling, whether of pleasure or approbation, rests
definitively on an agreement between the contingent and the necessary.
If the necessary has thus an imperative character, the feeling
experienced will be that of approbation. If necessity has the character
of a want, the feeling experienced will be that of pleasure, and both
will be strong in proportion as the satisfaction will be contingent.
Now, underlying every moral judgment there is a requirement of reason
which requires us to act conformably with the moral law, and it is an
absolute necessity that we should wish what is good. But as the will is
free, it is physically an accidental thing that we should do in fact
what is good. If we actually do it, this agreement between the
contingent in the use of free will and the imperative demand of reason
gives rise to our assent or approbation, which will be greater in
proportion as the resistance of the inclinations made this use that we
make of our free will more accidental and more doubtful. Every æsthetic
judgment, on the contrary, refers the object to the necessity which
cannot help willing imperatively, but only desires that there should be
an agreement between the accidental and its own interest. Now what is
the interest of imagination? It is to emancipate itself from all laws,
and to play its part freely. The obligation imposed on the will by the
moral law, which prescribes its object in the strictest manner, is by no
means favorable to this need of independence. And as the moral
obligation of the will is the object of the moral judgment, it is clear
that in this mode of judging, the imagination could not find its
interest. But a moral obligation imposed on the will cannot be
conceived, except by supposing this same will absolutely independent of
the moral instincts and from their constraint. Accordingly the
_possibility_ of the moral act requires liberty, and therefore agrees
here in the most perfect manner with the interest of imagination. But as
imagination, through the medium of its wants, cannot give orders to the
will of the individual, as reason does by its imperative character, it
follows that the faculty of freedom, in relation to imagination, is
something accidental, and consequently that the agreement between the
accidental and the necessary (conditionally necessary) must excite
pleasure. Therefore, if we bring to bear a _moral_ judgment on this act
of Leonidas, we shall consider it from a point of view where its
accidental character strikes the eye less than its necessary side. If,
on the other hand, we apply the _æsthetical_ judgment to it, this is
another point of view, where its character of necessity strikes us less
forcibly than its accidental character. It is a duty for every will to
act thus, directly it is a free will; but the fact that there is a free
will that makes this act possible is a favor of nature in regard to this
faculty, to which freedom is a necessity. Thus an act of virtue judged
by the moral sense—by reason—will give us as its only satisfaction the
feeling of approbation, because reason can never find _more_, and seldom
finds _as much_ as it requires. This same act, judged, on the contrary,
by the æsthetic sense—by imagination—will give us a positive pleasure,
because the imagination, never requiring the end to agree with the
demand, must be surprised, enraptured, at the real satisfaction of this
demand as at a happy chance. Our reason will merely approve, and only
approve, of Leonidas actually taking this heroic resolution; but that he
_could_ take this resolution is what delights and enraptures us.
This distinction between the two sorts of judgments becomes more evident
still, if we take an example where the moral sense and the æsthetic
sense pronounce a different verdict. Suppose we take the act of
Peregrinus Proteus burning himself at Olympia. Judging this act morally,
I cannot give it my approbation, inasmuch as I see it determined by
impure motives, to which Proteus sacrifices the _duty_ of respecting his
own existence. But in the æsthetic judgment this same act delights me;
it delights me precisely because it testifies to a power of will capable
of resisting even the most potent of _instincts_, that of
self-preservation. Was it a moral feeling, or only a more powerful
sensuous attraction, that silenced the instinct of self-preservation in
this enthusiast. It matters little, when I appreciate the act from an
æsthetic point of view. I then drop the individual, I take away the
relation of his will to the law that ought to govern him; I think of
human will in general, considered as a common faculty of the race, and I
regard it in connection with all the forces of nature. We have seen that
in a moral point of view, the preservation of our being seemed to us a
duty, and therefore we were offended at seeing Proteus violate this
duty. In an æsthetic point of view the self-preservation only appears as
an interest, and therefore the sacrifice of this interest pleases us.
Thus the operation that we perform in the judgments of the second kind
is precisely the inverse of that which we perform in those of the first.
In the former we oppose the individual, a sensuous and limited being,
and his personal will, which can be effected pathologically, to the
absolute law of the will in general, and of unconditional duty which
binds every spiritual being; in the second case, on the contrary, we
oppose the _faculty_ of willing, absolute volition, and the spiritual
force as an infinite thing, to the solicitations of nature and the
impediments of sense. This is the reason why the æsthetical judgment
leaves us free, and delights and enraptures us. It is because the mere
conception of this faculty of willing in an absolute manner, the mere
idea of this moral aptitude, gives us in itself a consciousness of a
manifest advantage over the sensuous. It is because the mere possibility
of emancipating ourselves from the impediments of nature is in itself a
satisfaction that flatters our thirst for freedom. This is the reason
why moral judgment, on the contrary, makes us experience a feeling of
constraint that humbles us. It is because in connection with each
voluntary act we appreciate in this manner, we feel, as regards the
absolute law that ought to rule the will in general, in a position of
inferiority more or less decided, and because the constraint of the will
thus limited to a single determination, which duty requires of it at all
costs, contradicts the instinct of freedom which is the property of
imagination. In the former case we soared from the real to the possible,
and from the individual to the species; in the latter, on the contrary,
we descend from the possible to the real, and we shut up the species in
the narrow limits of the individual. We cannot therefore be surprised if
the æsthetical judgment enlarges the heart, while the moral judgment
constrains and straitens it.
It results, therefore, from all that which precedes, that the moral
judgment and the æsthetic, far from mutually corroborating each other,
impede and hinder each other, because they impress on the soul two
directions entirely opposite. In fact, this observance of rule which
reason requires of us as moral judge is incompatible with the
independence which the imagination calls for as æsthetic judge. It
follows that an object will have so much the less æsthetic value the
more it has the character of a moral object, and if the poet were
obliged notwithstanding that to choose it, he would do well in treating
of it, not to call the attention of our reason to the rule of the will,
but that of our imagination to the power of the will. In his own
interest it is necessary for the poet to enter on this path, for with
our liberty his empire finishes. We belong to him only inasmuch as we
look beyond ourselves; we escape from him the moment we re-enter into
our innermost selves, and that is what infallibly takes place the moment
an object ceases to be a phenomenon in our consideration, and takes the
character of a law which judges us.
Even in the manifestation of the most sublime virtue, the poet can only
employ for his own views that which in those acts belongs to force. As
to the direction of the force, he has no reason to be anxious. The poet,
even when he places before our eyes the most perfect models of morality,
has not, and ought not to have, any other end than that of rejoicing our
soul by the contemplation of this spectacle. Moreover, nothing can
rejoice our soul except that which improves our personality, and nothing
can give us a spiritual joy except that which elevates the spiritual
faculty. But in what way can the morality of another improve our own
personality, and raise our spiritual force? That this other one
accomplishes really his duty results from an accidental use which he
makes of his liberty, and which for that very reason can prove nothing
to us. We only have in common with him the faculty to conform ourselves
equally to duty; the moral power which he exhibits reminds us also of
our own, and that is why we then feel something which upraises our
spiritual force. Thus it is only the idea of the possibility of an
absolutely free will which makes the real exercise of this will in us
charming to the æsthetic feeling.
We shall be still more convinced when we think how little the poetic
force of impression which is awakened in us by an act or a moral
character is dependent on their historic reality. The pleasure which we
take in considering an ideal character will in no way be lessened when
we come to think that this character is nothing more than a poetic
fiction; for it is on the poetic truth, and not on historic truth, that
every æsthetic impression of the feelings rest. Moreover, poetic truth
does not consist in that this or that thing has effectually taken place,
but in that it may have happened, that is to say, that the thing is in
itself possible. Thus the æsthetic force is necessarily obliged to rest
in the first place in the idea of possibility.
Even in real subjects, for which the actors are borrowed from history,
it is not the reality of the simple possibility of the fact, but that
which is guaranteed to us by its very reality which constitutes the
poetic element. That these personages have indeed existed, and that
these events have in truth taken place, is a circumstance which can, it
is true, in many cases add to our pleasure, but that which it adds to it
is like a foreign addition, much rather unfavorable than advantageous to
the poetical impression.
It was long thought that a great service was rendered to German poetry
by recommending German poets to treat of national themes. Why, it was
asked, did Greek poetry have so much power over the mind? Because it
brought forward national events and immortalized domestic exploits. No
doubt the poetry of the ancients may have been indebted to this
circumstance for certain effects of which modern poetry cannot boast;
but do these effects belong to art and the poet? It is small glory for
the Greek genius if it had only this accidental advantage over modern
genius; still more if it were necessary for the poets, in order to gain
this advantage, to obtain it by this conformity of their invention with
real history! It is only a barbarous taste that requires this stimulant
of a national interest to be captivated by beautiful things; and it is
only a scribbler who borrows from matter a force to which he despairs of
giving a form.
Poetry ought not to take its course through the frigid region of memory;
it ought never to convert learning into its interpreter, nor private
interest its advocate with the popular mind. It ought to go straight to
the heart, because it has come from the heart; and aim at the man in the
citizen, not the citizen in the man.
Happily, true genius does not make much account of all these counsels
that people are so anxious to give her with better intentions than
competence. Otherwise, Sulzer and his school might have made German
poetry adopt a very equivocal style. It is no doubt a very honorable aim
in a poet to moralize the man, and excite the patriotism of the citizen,
and the Muses know better than any one how well the arts of the sublime
and of the beautiful are adapted to exercise this influence. But that
which poetry obtains excellently by indirect means it would accomplish
very badly as an immediate end. Poetry is not made to serve in man for
the accomplishment of a particular matter, nor could any instrument be
selected less fitted to cause a particular object to succeed, or to
carry out special projects and details. Poetry acts on the whole of
human nature, and it is only by its general influence on the character
of a man that it can influence particular acts. Poetry can be for man
what love is for the hero. It can neither counsel him, nor strike for
him, nor do anything for him in short; but it can form a hero in him,
call him to great deeds, and arm him with a strength to be all that he
ought to be.
Thus the degree of æsthetical energy with which sublime feelings and
sublime acts take possession of our souls, does not rest at all on the
interest of reason, which requires every action to be _really_
conformable with the idea of good. But it rests on the interest of the
imagination, which requires conformity with good should be possible, or,
in other terms, that no feeling, however strong, should oppress the
freedom of the soul. Now this possibility is found in every act that
testifies with energy to liberty, and to the force of the will; and if
the poet meets with an action of this kind, it matters little where, he
has a subject suitable for his art. To _him_, and to the interest we
have in him, it is quite the same, to take his hero in one class of
characters or in another, among the good or the wicked, as it often
requires as much strength of character to do evil conscientiously and
persistently as to do good. If a proof be required that in our æsthetic
judgments we attend more to the force than to its direction, to its
freedom than to its lawfulness, this is sufficient for our evidence. We
prefer to see force and freedom manifest themselves at the cost of moral
regularity, rather than regularity at the cost of freedom and strength.
For directly one of those cases offers itself, in which the general law
agrees with the instincts which by their strength threaten to carry away
the will, the æsthetic value of the character is increased, if he be
capable of resisting these instincts. A vicious person begins to
interest us as soon as he must risk his happiness and life to carry out
his perverse designs; on the contrary, a virtuous person loses in
proportion as he finds it useful to be virtuous. Vengeance, for
instance, is certainly an ignoble and a vile affection, but this does
not prevent it from becoming æsthetical, if to satisfy it we must endure
painful sacrifice. Medea slaying her children aims at the heart of
Jason, but at the same time she strikes a heavy blow at her own heart,
and her vengeance æsthetically becomes sublime directly we see in her a
tender mother.
In this sense the æsthetic judgment has more of truth than is ordinarily
believed. The vices which show a great force of will evidently announce
a greater aptitude for real moral liberty than do virtues which borrow
support from inclination; seeing that it only requires of the man who
persistently does evil to gain a single victory over himself, one simple
upset of his maxims, to gain ever after to the service of virtue his
whole plan of life, and all the force of will which he lavished on evil.
And why is it we receive with dislike medium characters, whilst we at
times follow with trembling admiration one which is altogether wicked?
It is evident, that with regard to the former, we renounce all hope, we
cannot even conceive the possibility of finding absolute liberty of the
will; whilst with the other, on the contrary, each time he displays his
faculties, we feel that one single act of the will would suffice to
raise him up to the fullest height of human dignity.
Thus, in the æsthetic judgment, that which excites our interest is not
morality itself, but liberty alone; and moral purity can only please our
imagination when it places in relief the forces of the will. It is then
manifestly to confound two very distinct orders of ideas, to require in
æsthetic things so exact a morality, and, in order to stretch the domain
of reason, to exclude the imagination from its own legitimate sphere.
Either it would be necessary to subject it entirely, then there would be
an end to all æsthetic effect; or it would share the realm of reason,
then morality would not gain much. For if we pretend to pursue at the
same time two different ends, there would be risk of missing both one
and the other. The liberty of the imagination would be fettered by too
great respect for the moral law; and violence would be done to the
character of _necessity_ which is in the reason, in missing the
_liberty_ which belongs to the imagination.