Whatever pains some modern æsthetics give themselves to establish,
contrary to general belief, that the arts of imagination and of feeling
have not pleasure for their object, and to defend them against this
degrading accusation, this belief will not cease: it reposes upon a
solid foundation, and the fine arts would renounce with a bad grace the
beneficent mission which has in all times been assigned to them, to
accept the new employment to which it is generously proposed to raise
them. Without troubling themselves whether they lower themselves in
proposing our pleasure as object, they become rather proud of the
advantages of reaching immediately an aim never attained except
mediately in other routes followed by the activity of the human mind.
That the aim of nature, with relation to man, is the happiness of
man,—although he ought of himself, in his moral conduct, to take no
notice of this aim, —is what, I think, cannot be doubted in general by
any one who admits that nature has an aim. Thus the fine arts have the
same aim as nature, or rather as the Author of nature, namely, to spread
pleasure and render people happy. It procures for us in play what at
other more austere sources of good to man we extract only with
difficulty. It lavishes as a pure gift that which elsewhere is the price
of many hard efforts. With what labor, what application, do we not pay
for the pleasures of the understanding; with what painful sacrifices the
approbation of reason; with what hard privations the joys of sense! And
if we abuse these pleasures, with what a succession of evils do we
expiate excess! Art alone supplies an enjoyment which requires no
appreciable effort, which costs no sacrifice, and which we need not
repay with repentance. But who could class the merit of charming in this
manner with the poor merit of amusing? who would venture to deny the
former of these two aims of the fine arts solely because they have a
tendency higher than the latter.
The praiseworthy object of pursuing everywhere moral good as the supreme
aim, which has already brought forth in art so much mediocrity, has
caused also in theory a similar prejudice. To assign to the fine arts a
really elevated position, to conciliate for them the favor of the State,
the veneration of all men, they are pushed beyond their true domain, and
a vocation is imposed upon them contrary to their nature. It is supposed
that a great service is awarded them by substituting for a frivolous
aim—that of charming—a moral aim; and their influence upon morality,
which is so apparent, necessarily militates in favor of this pretension.
It is found illogical that the art which contributes in so great a
measure to the development of all that is most elevated in man, should
produce but accessorily this effect, and make its chief object an aim so
vulgar as we imagine pleasure to be. But this apparent contradiction it
would be very easy to conciliate if we had a good theory of pleasure,
and a complete system of æsthetic philosophy.
It would result from this theory that a free pleasure, as that which the
fine arts procure for us, rests wholly upon moral conditions, and all
the moral faculties of man are exercised in it. It would further result
that this pleasure is an aim which can never be attained but by moral
means, and consequently that art, to tend and perfectly attain to
pleasure, as to a real aim, must follow the road of healthy morals. Thus
it is perfectly indifferent for the dignity of art whether its aim
should be a moral aim, or whether it should reach only through moral
means; for in both cases it has always to do with the morality, and must
be rigorously in unison with the sentiment of duty; but for the
perfection of art, it is by no means indifferent which of the two should
be the aim and which the means. If it is the aim that is moral, art
loses all that by which it is powerful,—I mean its freedom, and that
which gives it so much influence over us—the charm of pleasure. The play
which recreates is changed into serious occupation, and yet it is
precisely in recreating us that art can the better complete the great
affair—the moral work. It cannot have a salutary influence upon the
morals but in exercising its highest æsthetic action, and it can only
produce the æsthetic effect in its highest degree in fully exercising
its liberty.
It is certain, besides, that all pleasure, the moment it flows from a
moral source, renders man morally better, and then the effect in its
turn becomes cause. The pleasure we find in what is beautiful, or
touching, or sublime, strengthens our moral sentiments, as the pleasure
we find in kindness, in love, etc., strengthens these inclinations. And
just as contentment of mind is the sure lot of the morally excellent
man, so moral excellence willingly accompanies satisfaction of heart.
Thus the moral efficacy of art is, not only because it employs moral
means in order to charm us, but also because even the pleasure which it
procures us is a means of morality.
There are as many means by which art can attain its aim as there are in
general sources from which a free pleasure for the mind can flow. I call
a free pleasure that which brings into play the spiritual forces—reason
and imagination—and which awakens in us a sentiment by the
representation of an idea, in contradistinction to physical or sensuous
pleasure, which places our soul under the dependence of the blind forces
of nature, and where sensation is immediately awakened in us by a
physical cause. Sensual pleasure is the only one excluded from the
domain of the fine arts; and the talent of exciting this kind of
pleasure could never raise itself to the dignity of an art, except in
the case where the sensual impressions are ordered, reinforced or
moderated, after a plan which is the production of art, and which is
recognized by representation. But, in this case even, that alone here
can merit the name of art which is the object of a free pleasure—I mean
good taste in the regulation, which pleases our understanding, and not
physical charms themselves, which alone flatter our sensibility.
The general source of all pleasure, even of sensual pleasure, is
propriety, the conformity with the aim. Pleasure is sensual when this
propriety is manifested by means of some necessary law of nature which
has for physical result the sensation of pleasure. Thus the movement of
the blood, and of the animal life, when in conformity with the aim of
nature, produces in certain organs, or in the entire organism, corporeal
pleasure with all its varieties and all its modes. We feel this
conformity by the means of agreeable sensation, but we arrive at no
representation of it, either clear or confused.
Pleasure is free when we represent to ourselves the conformability, and
when the sensation that accompanies this representation is agreeable.
Thus all the representations by which we have notice that there is
propriety and harmony between the end and the means, are for us the
sources of free pleasure, and consequently can be employed to this end
by the fine arts. Thus, all the representations can be placed under one
of these heads: the good, the true, the perfect, the beautiful, the
touching, the sublime. The good especially occupies our reason; the true
and perfect, our intelligence; the beautiful interests both the
intelligence and the imagination; the touching and the sublime, the
reason and the imagination. It is true that we also take pleasure in the
charm (_Reiz_) or the power called out by action from play, but art uses
charm only to accompany the higher enjoyments which the idea of
propriety gives to us. Considered in itself the charm or attraction is
lost amid the sensations of life, and art disdains it together with all
merely sensual pleasures.
We could not establish a classification of the fine arts only upon the
difference of the sources from which each of them draws the pleasure
which it affords us; for in the same class of the fine arts many sorts
of pleasures may enter, and often all together. But in as far as a
certain sort of pleasure is pursued as a principal aim, we can make of
it, if not a specific character of a class properly so called, at least
the principle and the tendency of a class in the works of art. Thus, for
example, we could take the arts which, above all, satisfy the
intelligence and imagination—consequently those which have as chief
object the true, the perfect, and the beautiful—and unite them under the
name of fine arts (arts of taste, arts of intelligence); those, on the
other hand, which especially occupy the imagination and the reason, and
which, in consequence, have for principal object the good, the sublime,
and the touching, could be limited in a particular class under the
denomination of touching arts (arts of sentiment, arts of the heart).
Without doubt it is impossible to separate absolutely the touching from
the beautiful, but the beautiful can perfectly subsist without the
touching. Thus, although we are not authorized to base upon this
difference of principle a rigorous classification of the liberal arts,
it can at least serve to determine with more of precision the criterion,
and prevent the confusion in which we are inevitably involved, when,
drawing up laws of æsthetic things, we confound two absolutely different
domains, as that of the touching and that of the beautiful.
The touching and the sublime resemble in this point, that both one and
the other produce a pleasure by a feeling at first of displeasure, and
that consequently (pleasure proceeding from suitability, and displeasure
from the contrary) they give us a feeling of suitability which
presupposes an unsuitability.
The feeling of the sublime is composed in part of the feeling of our
feebleness, of our impotence to embrace an object; and, on the other
side, of the feeling of our moral power—of this superior faculty which
fears no obstacle, no limit, and which subdues spiritually that even to
which our physical forces give way. The object of the sublime thwarts,
then, our physical power; and this contrariety (impropriety) must
necessarily excite a displeasure in us. But it is, at the same time, an
occasion to recall to our conscience another faculty which is in us—a
faculty which is even superior to the objects before which our
imagination yields. In consequence, a sublime object, precisely because
it thwarts the senses, is suitable with relation to reason, and it gives
to us a joy by means of a higher faculty, at the same time that it
wounds us in an interior one.
The touching, in its proper sense, designates this mixed sensation, into
which enters at the same time suffering and the pleasure that we find in
suffering. Thus we can only feel this kind of emotion in the case of a
personal misfortune, only when the grief that we feel is sufficiently
tempered to leave some place for that impression of pleasure that would
be felt by a compassionate spectator. The loss of a great good
prostrates for the time, and the remembrance itself of the grief will
make us experience emotion after a year. The feeble man is always the
prey of his grief; the hero and the sage, whatever the misfortune that
strikes them, never experience more than emotion.
Emotion, like the sentiment of the sublime, is composed of two
affections—grief and pleasure. There is, then, at the bottom a
propriety, here as well as there, and under this propriety a
contradiction. Thus it seems that it is a contradiction in nature that
man, who is not born to suffer, is nevertheless a prey to suffering, and
this contradiction hurts us. But the evil which this contradiction does
us is a propriety with regard to our reasonable nature in general,
insomuch as this evil solicits us to act: it is a propriety also with
regard to human society; consequently, even displeasure, which excites
in us this contradiction, ought necessarily to make us experience a
sentiment of pleasure, because this displeasure is a propriety. To
determine in an emotion if it is pleasure or displeasure which triumphs,
we must ask ourselves if it is the idea of impropriety or that of
propriety which affects us the more deeply. That can depend either on
the number of the aims reached or abortive, or on their connection with
the final aim of all.
The suffering of the virtuous man moves us more painfully than that of
the perverse man, because in the first case there is contradiction not
only to the general destiny of man, which is happiness, but also to this
other particular principle, viz., that virtue renders happy; whilst in
the second case there is contradiction only with regard to the end of
man in general. Reciprocally, the happiness of the wicked also offends
us much more than the misfortune of the good man, because we find in it
a double contradiction: in the first place vice itself, and in the
second place, the recompense of vice.
There Is also this other consideration, that virtue is much more able to
recompense itself than vice, when it triumphs, is to punish itself; and
it is precisely for this that the virtuous man in misfortune would much
more remain faithful to the cultus of virtue than the perverse man would
dream of converting himself in prosperity.
But what is above all important in determining in the emotions the
relation of pleasure and displeasure, is to compare the two ends—that
which has been fulfilled and that which has been ignored—and to see
which is the most considerable. There is no propriety which touches us
so nearly as moral propriety, and no superior pleasure to that which we
feel from it. Physical propriety could well be a problem, and a problem
forever unsolvable. Moral propriety is already demonstrated. It alone is
founded upon our reasonable nature and upon internal necessity. It is
our nearest interest, the most considerable, and at the same time, the
most easily recognized, because it is not determined by any external
element but by an internal principle of our reason: it is the palladium
of our liberty.
This moral propriety is never more vividly recognized than when it is
found in conflict with another propriety, and still keeps the upper
hand; then only the moral law awakens in full power, when we find it
struggling against all the other forces of nature, and when all those
forces lose in its presence their empire over a human soul. By these
words, “the other forces of nature,” we must understand all that is not
moral force, all that is not subject to the supreme legislation of
reason: that is to say, feelings, affections, instincts, passions, as
well as physical necessity and destiny. The more redoubtable the
adversary, the more glorious the victory; resistance alone brings out
the strength of the force and renders it visible. It follows that the
highest degree of moral consciousness can only exist in strife, and the
highest moral pleasure is always accompanied by pain.
Consequently, the kind of poetry which secures us a high degree of moral
pleasure, must employ mixed feelings, and please us through pain or
distress,—this is what tragedy does specially; and her realm embraces
all that sacrifices a physical propriety to a moral one; or one moral
propriety to a higher one. It might be possible, perhaps, to form a
measure of moral pleasure, from the lowest to the highest degree, and to
determine by this principle of propriety the degree of pain or pleasure
experienced. Different orders of tragedy might be classified on the same
principle, so as to form a complete exhaustive tabulation of them. Thus,
a tragedy being given, its place could be fixed, and its genus
determined. Of this subject more will be said separately in its proper
place.
A few examples will show how far moral propriety commands physical
propriety in our souls.
Theron and Amanda are both tied to the stake as martyrs, and free to
choose life or death by the terrible ordeal of fire—they select the
latter. What is it which gives such pleasure to us in this scene? Their
position so conflicting with the smiling destiny they reject, the reward
of misery given to virtue—all here awakens in us the feeling of
impropriety: it ought to fill us with great distress. What is nature,
and what are her ends and laws, if all this impropriety shows us moral
propriety in its full light. We here see the triumph of the moral law,
so sublime an experience for us that we might even hail the calamity
which elicits it. For harmony in the world of moral freedom gives us
infinitely more pleasure than all the discords in nature give us pain.
When Coriolanus, obedient to duty as husband, son, and citizen, raises
the siege of Rome, then almost conquered, withdrawing his army, and
silencing his vengeance, he commits a very contradictory act evidently.
He loses all the fruit of previous victories, he runs spontaneously to
his ruin; yet what moral excellence and grandeur he offers! How noble to
prefer any impropriety rather than wound moral sense; to violate natural
interests and prudence in order to be in harmony with the higher moral
law! Every sacrifice of a life is a contradiction, for life is the
condition of all good; but in the light of morality the sacrifice of
life is in a high degree proper, because life is not great in itself,
but only as a means of accomplishing the moral law. If then the
sacrifice of life be the way to do this, life must go. “It is not
necessary for me to live, but it is necessary for Rome to be saved from
famine,” said Pompey, when the Romans embarked for Africa, and his
friends begged him to defer his departure till the gale was over.
But the sufferings of a criminal are as charming to us tragically as
those of a virtuous man; yet here is the idea of moral impropriety. The
antagonism of his conduct to moral law, and the moral imperfection which
such conduct presupposes, ought to fill us with pain. Here there is no
satisfaction in the morality of his person, nothing to compensate for
his misconduct. Yet both supply a valuable object for art; this
phenomenon can easily be made to agree with what has been said.
We find pleasure not only in obedience to morality, but in the
punishment given to its infraction. The pain resulting from moral
imperfection agrees with its opposite, the satisfaction at conformity
with the law. Repentance, even despair, have nobleness morally, and can
only exist if an incorruptible sense of justice exists at the bottom of
the criminal heart, and if conscience maintains its ground against
self-love. Repentance comes by comparing our acts with the moral law,
hence in the moment of repenting the moral law speaks loudly in man. Its
power must be greater than the gain resulting from the crime as the
infraction poisons the enjoyment. Now, a state of mind where duty is
sovereign is morale proper, and therefore a source of moral pleasure.
What, then, sublimer than the heroic despair that tramples even life
underfoot, because it cannot bear the judgment within? A good man
sacrificing his life to conform to the moral law, or a criminal taking
his own life because of the morality he has violated: in both cases our
respect for the moral law is raised to the highest power. If there be
any advantage it is in the case of the latter; for the good man may have
been encouraged in his sacrifice by an approving conscience, thus
detracting from his merit. Repentance and regret at past crimes show us
some of the sublimest pictures of morality in active condition. A man
who violates morality comes back to the moral law by repentance.
But moral pleasure is sometimes obtained only at the cost of moral pain.
Thus one duty may clash with another. Let us suppose Coriolanus encamped
with a Roman army before Antium or Corioli, and his mother a Volscian;
if her prayers move him to desist, we now no longer admire him. His
obedience to his mother would be at strife with a higher duty, that of a
citizen. The governor to whom the alternative is proposed, either of
giving up the town or of seeing his son stabbed, decides at once on the
latter, his duty as father being beneath that of citizen. At first our
heart revolts at this conduct in a father, but we soon pass to
admiration that moral instinct, even combined with inclination, could
not lead reason astray in the empire where it commands. When Timoleon of
Corinth puts to death his beloved but ambitious brother, Timophanes, he
does it because his idea of duty to his country bids him to do so. The
act here inspires horror and repulsion as against nature and the moral
sense, but this feeling is soon succeeded by the highest admiration for
his heroic virtue, pronouncing, in a tumultuous conflict of emotions,
freely and calmly, with perfect rectitude. If we differ with Timoleon
about his duty as a republican, this does not change our view. Nay, in
those cases, where our understanding judges differently, we see all the
more clearly how high we put moral propriety above all other.
But the judgments of men on this moral phenomenon are exceedingly
various, and the reason of it is clear. Moral sense is common to all
men, but differs in strength. To most men it suffices that an act be
partially conformable with the moral law to make them obey it; and to
make them condemn an action it must glaringly violate the law. But to
determine the relation of moral duties with the highest principle of
morals requires an enlightened intelligence and an emancipated reason.
Thus an action which to a few will be a supreme propriety, will seem to
the crowd a revolting impropriety, though both judge morally; an hence
the emotion felt at such actions is by no means uniform. To the mass the
sublimest and highest is only exaggeration, because sublimity is
perceived by reason, and all men have not the same share of it. A vulgar
soul is oppressed or overstretched by those sublime ideas, and the crowd
sees dreadful disorder where a thinking mind sees the highest order.
This is enough about moral propriety as a principle of tragic emotion,
and the pleasure it elicits. It must be added that there are cases where
natural propriety also seems to charm our mind even at the cost of
morality. Thus we are always pleased by the sequence of machinations of
a perverse man, though his means and end are immoral. Such a man deeply
interests us, and we tremble lest his plan fail, though we ought to wish
it to do so. But this fact does not contradict what has been advanced
about moral propriety, and the pleasure resulting from it.
Propriety, the reference of means to an end, is to us, in all cases, a
source of pleasure; even disconnected with morality. We experience this
pleasure unmixed, so long as we do not think of any moral end which
disallows action before us. Animal instincts give us pleasure—as the
industry of bees—without reference to morals; and in like manner human
actions are a pleasure to us when we consider in them only the relation
of means to ends. But if a moral principle be added to these, and
impropriety be discovered, if the idea of moral agent comes in, a deep
indignation succeeds our pleasure, which no intellectual propriety can
remedy. We must not call to mind too vividly that Richard III., Iago,
and Lovelace are _men_; otherwise our sympathy for them infallibly turns
into an opposite feeling. But, as daily experience teaches, we have the
power to direct our attention to different sides of things; and
pleasure, only possible through this abstraction, invites us to exercise
it, and to prolong its exercise.
Yet it is not rare for intelligent perversity to secure our favor by
being the means of procuring us the pleasure of moral propriety. The
triumph of moral propriety will be great in proportion as the snares set
by Lovelace for the virtue of Clarissa are formidable, and as the trials
of an innocent victim by a cruel tyrant are severe. It is a pleasure to
see the craft of a seducer foiled by the omnipotence of the moral sense.
On the other hand, we reckon as a sort of merit the victory of a
malefactor over his moral sense, because it is the proof of a certain
strength of mind and intellectual propriety.
Yet this propriety in vice can never be the source of a perfect
pleasure, except when it is humiliated by morality. In that case it is
an essential part of our pleasure, because it brings moral sense into
stronger relief. The last impression left on us by the author of
Clarissa is a proof of this. The intellectual propriety in the plan of
Lovelace is greatly surpassed by the rational propriety of Clarissa.
This allows us to feel in full the satisfaction caused by both.
When the tragic poet has for object to awaken in us the feeling of moral
propriety, and chooses his means skilfully for that end, he is sure to
charm doubly the connoisseur, by moral and by natural propriety. The
first satisfies the heart, the second the mind. The crowd is impressed
through the heart without knowing the cause of the magic impression.
But, on the other hand, there is a class of connoisseurs on whom that
which affects the heart is entirely lost, and who can only be gained by
the appropriateness of the means; a strange contradiction resulting from
over-refined taste, especially when moral culture remains behind
intellectual. This class of connoisseurs seek only the intellectual side
in touching and sublime themes. They appreciate this in the justest
manner, but you must beware how you appeal to their heart! The
over-culture of the age leads to this shoal, and nothing becomes the
cultivated man so much as to escape by a happy victory this twofold and
pernicious influence. Of all other European nations, our neighbors, the
French, lean most to this extreme, and we, as in all things, strain
every nerve to imitate this model.