As soon, then, as in man the person, the moral and free agent, takes upon

himself to determine the play of phenomena, and by his intervention takes

from nature the power to protect the beauty of her work, he then, as it

were, substitutes himself for nature, and assumes in a certain measure,

with the rights of nature, a part of the obligations incumbent on her.

When the mind, taking possession of the sensuous matter subservient to

it, implicates it in his destiny and makes it depend on its own

modifications, it transforms itself to a certain point into a sensuous

phenomenon, and, as such, is obliged to recognize the law which regulates

in general all the phenomena. In its own interest it engages to permit

that nature in its service, placed under its dependence, shall still

preserve its character of nature, and never act in a manner contrary to

its anterior obligations. I call the beautiful an obligation of

phenomena, because the want which corresponds to it in the subject has

its reason in the understanding itself, and thus it is consequently

universal and necessary. I call it an anterior obligation because the

senses, in the matter of beauty, have given their judgment before the

understanding commences to perform its office.

Thus it is now free arbitration which rules the beautiful. If nature has

furnished the architectonic beauty, the soul in its turn determines the

beauty of the play, and now also we know what we must understand by charm

and grace. Grace is the beauty of the form under the influence of free

will; it is the beauty of this kind of phenomena that the person himself

determines. The architectonic beauty does honor to the author of nature;

grace does honor to him who possesses it. That is a gift, this is a

personal merit.

Grace can be found only in movement, for a modification which takes place

in the soul can only be manifested in the sensuous world as movement.

But this does not prevent features fixed and in repose also from

possessing grace. There immobility is, in its origin, movement which,

from being frequently repeated, at length becomes habitual, leaving

durable traces.

But all the movements of man are not capable of grace. Grace is never

otherwise than beauty of form animated into movement by free will; and

the movements which belong only to physical nature could not merit the

name. It is true that an intellectual man, if he be keen, ends by

rendering himself master of almost all the movements of the body; but

when the chain which links a fine lineament to a moral sentiment

lengthens much, this lineament becomes the property of the structure, and

can no longer be counted as a grace. It happens, ultimately, that the

mind moulds the body, and that the structure is forced to modify itself

according to the play that the soul imprints upon the organs, so

entirely, that grace finally is transformed--and the examples are not

rare--into architectonic beauty. As at one time an antagonistic mind

which is ill at ease with itself alters and destroys the most perfect

beauty of structure, until at last it becomes impossible to recognize

this magnificent chef-d'oeuvre of nature in the state to which it is

reduced under the unworthy hands of free will, so at other times the

serenity and perfect harmony of the soul come to the aid of the hampered

technique, unloose nature and develop with divine splendor the beauty of

form, enveloped until then, and oppressed.

The plastic nature of man has in it an infinity of resources to retrieve

the negligencies and repair the faults that she may have committed. To

this end it is sufficient that the mind, the moral agent, sustain it, or

even withhold from troubling it in the labor of rebuilding.

Since the movements become fixed (gestures pass to a state of lineament),

are themselves capable of grace, it would perhaps appear to be rational

to comprehend equally under this idea of beauty some apparent or

imitative movements (the flamboyant lines for example, undulations). It

is this which Mendelssohn upholds. But then the idea of grace would be

confounded with the ideal of beauty in general, for all beauty is

definitively but a property of true or apparent movement (objective or

subjective), as I hope to demonstrate in an analysis of beauty. With

regard to grace, the only movements which can offer any are those which

respond at the same time to a sentiment.

The person (it is known what I mean by the expression) prescribes the

movements of the body, either through the will, when he desires to

realize in the world of sense an effect of which he has proposed the

idea, and in that case the movements are said to be voluntary or

intentional; or, on the other hand, they take place without its will

taking any part in it--in virtue of a fatal law of the organism--but on

the occasion of a sentiment, in the latter case, I say that the movements

are sympathetic. The sympathetic movement, though it may be involuntary

and provoked by a sentiment, ought not to be confounded with those purely

instinctive movements that proceed from physical sensibility. Physical

instinct is not a free agent, and that which it executes is not an act of

the person; I understand then here exclusively, by sympathetic movements,

those which accompany a sentiment, a disposition of the moral order.

The question that now presents itself is this: Of these two kinds of

movement, having their principle in the person, which is capable of

grace?

That which we are rigorously forced to distinguish in philosophic

analysis is not always separated also in the real. Thus it is rare that

we meet intentional movements without sympathetic movements, because the

will determines the intentional movements only after being decided itself

by the moral sentiments which are the principle of the sympathetic

movements. When a person speaks, we see his looks, his lineaments, his

hands, often the whole person all together speaks to us; and it is not

rare that this mimic part of the discourse is the most eloquent. Still

more there are cases where an intentional movement can be considered at

the same time as sympathetic; and it is that which happens when something

involuntary mingles with the voluntary act which determines this

movement.

I will explain: the mode, the manner in which a voluntary movement is

executed, is not a thing so exactly determined by the intention which is

proposed by it that it cannot be executed in several different ways.

Well, then, that which the will or intention leaves undetermined can be

sympathetically determined by the state of moral sensibility in which the

person is found to be, and consequently can express this state. When I

extend the arm to seize an object, I execute, in truth, an intention, and

the movement I make is determined in general by the end that I have in

view; but in what way does my arm approach the object? how far do the

other parts of my body follow this impulsion? What will be the degree of

slowness or of the rapidity of the movement? What amount of force shall

I employ? This is a calculation of which my will, at the instant, takes

no account, and in consequence there is a something left to the

discretion of nature.

But nevertheless, though that part of the movement is not determined by

the intention itself, it must be decided at length in one way or the

other, and the reason is that the manner in which my moral sensibility is

affected can have here decisive influence: it is this which will give the

tone, and which thus determines the mode and the manner of the movement.

Therefore this influence, which exercises upon the voluntary movement the

state of moral sensibility in which the subject is found, represents

precisely the involuntary part of this movement, and it is there then

that we must seek for grace.

A voluntary movement, if it is not linked to any sympathetic movement--or

that which comes to the same thing, if there is nothing involuntary mixed

up with it having for principle the moral state of sensibility in which

the subject happens to be--could not in any manner present grace, for

grace always supposes as a cause a disposition of the soul. Voluntary

movement is produced after an operation of the soul, which in consequence

is already completed at the moment in which the movement takes place.

The sympathetic movement, on the contrary, accompanies this operation of

the soul, and the moral state of sensibility which decides it to this

operation. So that this movement ought to be considered as simultaneous

with regard to both one and the other.

From that alone it results that voluntary movement not proceeding

immediately from the disposition of the subject could not be an

expression of this disposition also. For between the disposition and the

movement itself the volition has intervened, which, considered in itself,

is something perfectly indifferent. This movement is the work of the

volition, it is determined by the aim that is proposed; it is not the

work of the person, nor the product of the sentiments that affect it.

The voluntary movement is united but accidentally with the disposition

which precedes it; the concomitant movement, on the contrary, is

necessarily linked to it. The first is to the soul that which the

conventional signs of speech are to the thoughts which they express. The

second, on the contrary, the sympathetic movement or concomitant, is to

the soul that which the cry of passion is to the passion itself. The

involuntary movement is, then, an expression of the mind, not by its

nature, but only by its use. And in consequence we are not authorized to

say that the mind is revealed in a voluntary movement; this movement

never expresses more than the substance of the will (the aim), and not

the form of the will (the disposition). The disposition can only

manifest itself to us by concomitant movements.

It follows that we can infer from the words of a man the kind of

character he desires to have attributed to him; but if we desire to know

what is in reality his character we must seek to divine it in the mimic

expression which accompanies his words, and in his gestures, that is to

say, in the movements which he did not desire. If we perceive that this

man wills even the expression of his features, from the instant we have

made this discovery we cease to believe in his physiognomy and to see in

it an indication of his sentiments.

It is true that a man, by dint of art and of study, can at last arrive at

this result, to subdue to his will even the concomitant movements; and,

like a clever juggler, to shape according to his pleasure such or such a

physiognomy upon the mirror from which his soul is reflected through

mimic action. But then, with such a man all is dissembling, and art

entirely absorbs nature. The true grace, on the contrary, ought always

to be pure nature, that is to say, involuntary (or at least appear to be

so), to be graceful. The subject even ought not to appear to know that

it possesses grace.

By which we can also see incidentally what we must think of grace, either

imitated or learned (I would willingly call it theatrical grace, or the

grace of the dancing-master). It is the pendant of that sort of beauty

which a woman seeks from her toilet-table, reinforced with rouge, white

paint, false ringlets, pads, and whalebone. Imitative grace is to true

grace what beauty of toilet is to architectonic beauty. One and the

other could act in absolutely the same manner upon the senses badly

exercised, as the original of which they wish to be the imitation; and at

times even, if much art is put into it, they might create an illusion to

the connoisseur. But there will be always some indication through which

the intention and constraint will betray it in the end, and this

discovery will lead inevitably to indifference, if not even to contempt

and disgust. If we are warned that the architectonic beauty is

factitious, at once, the more it has borrowed from a nature which is not

its own, the more it loses in our eyes of that which belongs to humanity

(so far as it is phenomenal), and then we, who forbid the renunciation

lightly of an accidental advantage, how can we see with pleasure or even

with indifference an exchange through which man sacrifices a part of his

proper nature in order to substitute elements taken from inferior nature?

How, even supposing we could forgive the illusion produced, how could we

avoid despising the deception? If we are told that grace is artificial,

our heart at once closes; our soul, which at first advanced with so much

vivacity to meet the graceful object, shrinks back. That which was mind

has suddenly become matter. Juno and her celestial beauty has vanished,

and in her place there is nothing but a phantom of vapour.

Although grace ought to be, or at least ought to appear, something

involuntary, still we seek it only in the movements that depend more or

less on the will. I know also that grace is attributed to a certain

mimic language, and we say a pleasing smile, a charming blush, though the

smile and the blush are sympathetic movements, not determined by the

will, but by moral sensibility. But besides that, the first of these

movements is, after all, in our power, and that it is not shown that in

the second there is, properly speaking, any grace, it is right to say, in

general, that most frequently when grace appears it is on the occasion of

a voluntary movement. Grace is desired both in language and in song; it

is asked for in the play of the eyes and of the mouth, in the movements

of the hands and the arms whenever these movements are free and

voluntary; it is required in the walk, in the bearing, and attitude, in a

word, in all exterior demonstrations of man, so far as they depend on his

will. As to the movements which the instinct of nature produces in us,

or which an overpowering affection excites, or, so to speak, is lord

over; that which we ask of these movements, in origin purely physical,

is, as we shall see presently, quite another thing than grace. These

kinds of movements belong to nature, and not to the person, but it is

from the person alone, as we have seen, that all grace issues.

If, then, grace is a property that we demand only from voluntary

movements, and if, on the other hand, all voluntary element should be

rigorously excluded from grace, we have no longer to seek it but in that

portion of the intentional movements to which the intention of the

subject is unknown, but which, however, does not cease to answer in the

soul to a moral cause.

We now know in what kind of movements he must ask for grace; but we know

nothing more, and a movement can have these different characters, without

on that account being graceful; it is as yet only speaking (or mimic).

I call speaking (in the widest sense of the word) every physical

phenomenon which accompanies and expresses a certain state of the soul;

thus, in this acceptation, all the sympathetic movements are speaking,

including those which accompany the simple affections of the animal

sensibility.

The aspect, even, under which the animals present themselves, can be

speaking, as soon as they outwardly show their inward dispositions. But,

with them, it is nature alone which speaks, and NOT LIBERTY. By the

permanent configuration of animals through their fixed and architectonic

features, nature expresses the aim she proposed in creating them; by

their mimic traits she expresses the want awakened and the want

satisfied. Necessity reigns in the animal as well as in the plant,

without meeting the obstacle of a person. The animals have no

individuality farther than each of them is a specimen by itself of a

general type of nature, and the aspect under which they present

themselves at such or such an instant of their duration is only a

particular example of the accomplishment of the views of nature under

determined natural conditions.

To take the word in a more restricted sense, the configuration of man

alone is speaking, and it is itself so only in those of the phenomena

that accompany and express the state of its moral sensibility.

I say it is only in this sort of phenomena; for, in all the others, man

is in the same rank as the rest of sensible beings. By the permanent

configuration of man, by his architectonic features, nature only

expresses, just as in the animals and other organic beings, her own

intention. It is true the intention of nature may go here much further,

and the means she employs to reach her end may offer in their combination

more of art and complication; but all that ought to be placed solely to

the account of nature, and can confer no advantage on man himself.

In the animal, and in the plant, nature gives not only the destination;

she acts herself and acts alone in the accomplishment of her ends. In

man, nature limits herself in marking her views; she leaves to himself

their accomplishment, it is this alone that makes of him a man.

Alone of all known beings--man, in his quality of person, has the

privilege to break the chain of necessity by his will, and to determine

in himself an entire series of fresh spontaneous phenomena. The act by

which he thus determines himself is properly that which we call an

action, and the things that result from this sort of action are what we

exclusively name his acts. Thus man can only show his personality by his

own acts.

The configuration of the animal not only expresses the idea of his

destination, but also the relation of his present state with this

destination. And as in the animal it is nature which determines and at

the same time accomplishes its destiny, the configuration of the animal

can never express anything else than the work of nature.

If then nature, whilst determining the destiny of man, abandons to the

will of man himself the care to accomplish it, the relation of his

present state with his destiny cannot be a work of nature, but ought to

be the work of the person; it follows, that all in the configuration

which expresses this relation will belong, not to nature, but to the

person, that is to say, will be considered as a personal expression; if

then, the architectonic part of his configuration tells us the views that

nature proposed to herself in creating him, the mimic part of his face

reveals what he has himself done for the accomplishment of these views.

It is not then enough for us, when there is question of the form of man,

to find in it the expression of humanity in general, or even of that

which nature has herself contributed to the individual in particular, in

order to realize the human type in it; for he would have that in common

with every kind of technical configuration. We expect something more of

his face; we desire that it reveal to us at the same time, up to what

point man himself, in his liberty, has contributed towards the aim of

nature; in other words, we desire that his face bear witness to his

character. In the first case we see that nature proposed to create in

him a man; but it is in the second case only that we can judge if he has

become so in reality.

Thus, the face of a man is truly his own only inasmuch as his face is

mimic; but also all that is mimic in his face is entirely his own. For,

if we suppose the case in which the greatest part, and even the totality,

of these mimic features express nothing more than animal sensations or

instincts, and, in consequence, would show nothing more than the animal

in him, it would still remain that it was in his destiny and in his power

to limit, by his liberty, his sensuous nature. The presence of these

kinds of traits clearly witness that he has not made use of this faculty.

We see by that he has not accomplished his destiny, and in this sense

his face is speaking; it is still a moral expression, the same as the

non-accomplishment of an act commanded by duty is likewise a sort of

action.

We must distinguish from these speaking features which are always an

expression of the soul, the features non-speaking or dumb, which are

exclusively the work of plastic nature, and which it impresses on the

human face when it acts independently of all influence of the soul. I

call them dumb, because, like incomprehensible figures put there by

nature, they are silent upon the character. They mark only distinctive

properties attributed by nature to all the kind; and if at times they are

sufficient to distinguish the individual, they at least never express

anything of the person.

These features are by no means devoid of signification for the

physiognomies, because the physiognomies not only studies that which man

has made of his being, but also that which nature has done for him and

against him.

It is not also easy to determine with precision where the dumb traits or

features end, where the speaking traits commence. The plastic forces on

one side, with their uniform action, and, on the other, the affections

which depend on no law, dispute incessantly the ground; and that which

nature, in its dumb and indefatigable activity, has succeeded in raising

up, often is overturned by liberty, as a river that overflows and spreads

over its banks: the mind when it is gifted with vivacity acquires

influence over all the movements of the body, and arrives at last

indirectly to modify by force the sympathetic play as far as the

architectonic and fixed forms of nature, upon which the will has no hold.

In a man thus constituted it becomes at last characteristic; and it is

that which we can often observe upon certain heads which a long life,

strange accidents, and an active mind have moulded and worked. In these

kinds of faces there is only the generic character which belongs to

plastic nature; all which here forms individuality is the act of the

person himself, and it is this which causes it to be said, with much

reason, that those faces are all soul.

Look at that man, on the contrary, who has made for himself a mechanical

existence, those disciples of the rule. The rule can well calm the

sensuous nature, but not awaken human nature, the superior faculties:

look at those flat and inexpressive physiognomies; the finger of nature

has alone left there its impression; a soul inhabits these bodies, but it

is a sluggish soul, a discreet guest, and, as a peaceful and silent

neighbour who does not disturb the plastic force at its work, left to

itself. Never a thought which requires an effort, never a movement of

passion, hurries the calm cadence of physical life. There is no danger

that the architectonic features ever become changed by the play of

voluntary movements, and never would liberty trouble the functions of

vegetative life. As the profound calm of the mind does not bring about a

notable degeneracy of forces, the expense would never surpass the

receipts; it is rather the animal economy which would always be in

excess. In exchange for a certain sum of well-being which it throws as

bait, the mind makes itself the servant, the punctual major-domo of

physical nature, and places all his glory in keeping his books in order.

Thus will be accomplished that which organic nature can accomplish; thus

will the work of nutrition and of reproduction prosper. So happy a

concord between animal nature and the will cannot but be favorable to

architectonic beauty, and it is there that we can observe this beauty in

all its purity. But the general forces of nature, as every one knows,

are eternally at warfare with the particular or organic forces, and,

however cleverly balanced is the technique of a body, the cohesion and

the weight end always by getting the upper hand. Also architectonic

beauty, so far as it is a simple production of nature, has its fixed

periods, its blossoming, its maturity, and its decline--periods the

revolution of which can easily be accelerated, but not retarded in any

case, by the play of the will, and this is the way in which it most

frequently finishes; little by little matter takes the upper hand over

form, and the plastic principle, which vivified the being, prepares for

itself its tomb under the accumulation of matter.

However, although no dumb trait, considered in an isolated point of view,

can be an expression of the mind, a face composed entirely of these kinds

of features can be characterized in its entireness by precisely the same

reason as a face which is speaking only as an expression of sensuous

nature can be nevertheless characteristic. I mean to say that the mind

is obliged to exercise its activity and to feel conformably to its moral

nature, and it accuses itself and betrays its fault when the face which

it animates shows no trace of this moral activity. If, therefore, the

pure and beautiful expression of the destination of man, which is marked

in his architectonic structure, penetrates us with satisfaction and

respect for the sovereign, reason, who is the author of it, at all events

these two sentiments will not be for us without mixture but in as far as

we see in man a simple creation of nature. But if we consider in him the

moral person, we have a right to demand of his face an expression of the

person, and if this expectation is deceived contempt will infallibly

follow. Simply organic beings have a right to our respect as creatures;

man cannot pretend to it but in the capacity of creator, that is to say,

as being himself the determiner of his own condition. He ought not only,

as the other sensuous creatures, to reflect the rays of a foreign

intelligence, were it even the divine intelligence; man ought, as a sun,

to shine by his own light.

Thus we require of man a speaking expression as soon as he becomes

conscious of his moral destiny; but we desire at the same time that this

expression speak to his advantage, that is to say, it marks in him

sentiments conformable to his moral destiny, and a superior moral

aptitude. This is what reason requires in the human face.

But, on the other side, man, as far as he is a phenomenon, is an object

of sense; there, where the moral sentiment is satisfied, the aesthetic

sentiment does not understand its being made a sacrifice, and the

conformity with an idea ought not to lessen the beauty of the phenomenon.

Thus, as much as reason requires an expression of the morality of the

subject in the human face, so much, and with no less rigor, does the eye

demand beauty. As these two requirements, although coming from the

principles of the appreciation of different degrees, address themselves

to the same object, also both one and the other must be given

satisfaction by one and the same cause. The disposition of the soul

which places man in the best state for accomplishing his moral destiny

ought to give place to an expression that will be at the same time the

most advantageous to his beauty as phenomenon; in other terms, his moral

exercise ought to be revealed by grace.

But a great difficulty now presents itself from the idea alone of the

expressive movements which bear witness to the morality of the subject:

it appears that the cause of these movements is necessarily a moral

cause, a principle which resides beyond the world of sense; and from the

sole idea of beauty it is not less evident that its principle is purely

sensuous, and that it ought to be a simple effect of nature, or at the

least appear to be such. But if the ultimate reason of the movements

which offer a moral expression is necessarily without, and the ultimate

reason of the beautiful necessarily within, the sensuous world, it

appears that grace, which ought to unite both of them, contains a

manifest contradiction.

To avoid this contradiction we must admit that the moral cause, which in

our soul is the foundation of grace, brings, in a necessary manner, in

the sensibility which depends on that cause, precisely that state which

contains in itself the natural conditions of beauty. I will explain.

The beautiful, as each sensuous phenomenon, supposes certain conditions,

and, in as far as it is beautiful, these are purely conditions of the

senses; well, then, in that the mind (in virtue of a law that we cannot

fathom), from the state in which it is, itself prescribes to physical

nature which accompanies it, its own state, and in that the state of

moral perfection is precisely in it the most favorable for the

accomplishment of the physical conditions of beauty, it follows that it

is the mind which renders beauty possible; and there its action ends.

But whether real beauty comes forth from it, that depends upon the

physical conditions alluded to, and is consequently a free effect of

nature. Therefore, as it cannot be said that nature is properly free in

the voluntary movements, in which it is employed but as a means to attain

an end, and as, on the other side, it cannot be said that it is free in

its involuntary movements, which express the moral, the liberty with

which it manifests itself, dependent as it is on the will of the subject,

must be a concession that the mind makes to nature; and, consequently, it

can be said that grace is a favor in which the moral has desired to

gratify the sensuous element; the same as the architectonic beauty may be

considered as nature acquiescing to the technical form.

May I be permitted a comparison to clear up this point? Let us suppose a

monarchical state administered in such a way that, although all goes on

according to the will of one person, each citizen could persuade himself

that he governs and obeys only his own inclination, we should call that

government a liberal government.

But we should look twice before we should thus qualify a government in

which the chief makes his will outweigh the wishes of the citizens, or a

government in which the will of the citizens outweighs that of the chief.

In the first case, the government would be no more liberal; in the

second, it would not be a government at all.

It is not difficult to make application of these examples to what the

human face could be under the government of the mind. If the mind is

manifested in such a way through the sensuous nature subject to its

empire that it executes its behests with the most faithful exactitude, or

expresses its sentiments in the most perfectly speaking manner, without

going in the least against that which the aesthetic sense demands from it

as a phenomenon, then we shall see produced that which we call grace.

But this is far from being grace, if mind is manifested in a constrained

manner by the sensuous nature, or if sensuous nature acting alone in all

liberty the expression of moral nature was absent. In the first case

there would not be beauty; in the second the beauty would be devoid of

play.

The super-sensuous cause, therefore, the cause of which the principle is

in the soul, can alone render grace speaking, and it is the purely

sensuous cause having its principle in nature which alone can render it

beautiful. We are not more authorized in asserting that mind engenders

beauty than we should be, in the former example, in maintaining that the

chief of the state produces liberty; because we can indeed leave a man in

his liberty, but not give it to him.

But just as when a people feels itself free under the constraint of a

foreign will, it is in a great degree due to the sentiments animating the

prince; and as this liberty would run great risks if the prince took

opposite sentiments, so also it is in the moral dispositions of the mind

which suggests them that we must seek the beauty of free movements. And

now the question which is presented is this one: What then are the

conditions of personal morality which assure the utmost amount of liberty

to the sensuous instruments of the will? and what are the moral

sentiments which agree the best in their expression with the beautiful?

That which is evident is that neither the will, in the intentional

movement, nor the passion, in the sympathetic movement, ought to act as a

force with regard to the physical nature which is subject to it, in order

that this, in obeying it, may have beauty. In truth, without going

further, common sense considers ease to be the first requisite of grace.

It is not less evident that, on another side, nature ought not to act as

a force with regard to mind, in order to give occasion for a fine moral

expression; for there, where physical nature commands alone, it is

absolutely necessary that the character of the man should vanish.

We can conceive three sorts of relation of man with himself: I mean the

sensuous part of man with the reasonable part. From these three

relations we have to seek which is that one which best suits him in the

sensuous world, and the expression of which constitutes the beautiful.

Either man enforces silence upon the exigencies of his sensuous nature,

to govern himself conformably with the superior exigencies of his

reasonable nature; or else, on the contrary, he subjects the reasonable

portion of his being to the sensuous part, reducing himself thus to obey

only the impulses which the necessity of nature imprints upon him, as

well as upon the other phenomena; or lastly, harmony is established

between the impulsions of the one and the laws of the other, and man is

in perfect accord with himself.

If he has the consciousness of his spiritual person, of his pure

autonomy, man rejects all that is sensuous, and it is only when thus

isolated from matter that he feels to the full his moral liberty. But

for that, as his sensuous nature opposes an obstinate and vigorous

resistance to him, he must, on his side, exercise upon it a notable

pressure and a strong effort, without which he could neither put aside

the appetites nor reduce to silence the energetic voice of instinct. A

mind of this quality makes the physical nature which depends on him feel

that it has a master in him, whether it fulfils the orders of the will or

endeavors to anticipate them. Under its stern discipline sensuousness

appears then repressed, and interior resistance will betray itself

exteriorly by the constraint. This moral state cannot, then, be

favorable to beauty, because nature cannot produce the beautiful but as

far as it is free, and consequently that which betrays to us the

struggles of moral liberty against matter cannot either be grace.

If, on the contrary, subdued by its wants, man allows himself to be

governed without reserve by the instinct of nature, it is his interior

autonomy that vanishes, and with it all trace of this autonomy is

exteriorly effaced. The animal nature is alone visible upon his visage;

the eye is watery and languishing, the mouth rapaciously open, the voice

trembling and muffled, the breathing short and rapid, the limbs trembling

with nervous agitation: the whole body by its languor betrays its moral

degradation. Moral force has renounced all resistance, and physical

nature, with such a man, is placed in full liberty. But precisely this

complete abandonment of moral independence, which occurs ordinarily at

the moment of sensuous desire, and more still at the moment of enjoyment,

sets suddenly brute matter at liberty which until then had been kept in

equilibrium by the active and passive forces. The inert forces of nature

commence from thence to gain the upper hand over the living forces of the

organism; the form is oppressed by matter, humanity by common nature.

The eye, in which the soul shone forth, becomes dull, or it protrudes

from its socket with I know not what glassy haggardness; the delicate

pink of the cheeks thickens, and spreads as a coarse pigment in uniform

layers. The mouth is no longer anything but a simple opening, because

its form no longer depends upon the action of forces, but on their

non-resistance; the gasping voice and breathing are no more than an

effort to ease the laborious and oppressed lungs, and which show a simple

mechanical want, with nothing that reveals a soul. In a word, in that

state of liberty which physical nature arrogates to itself from its

chief, we must not think of beauty. Under the empire of the moral agent,

the liberty of form was only restrained, here it is crushed by brutal

matter, which gains as much ground as is abstracted from the will. Man

in this state not only revolts the moral sense, which incessantly claims

of the face an expression of human dignity, but the aesthetic sense,

which is not content with simple matter, and which finds in the form an

unfettered pleasure--the aesthetic sense will turn away with disgust from

such a spectacle, where concupiscence could alone find its gratification.

Of these two relations between the moral nature of man and his physical

nature, the first makes us think of a monarchy, where strict surveillance

of the prince holds in hand all free movement; the second is an

ochlocracy, where the citizen, in refusing to obey his legitimate

sovereign, finds he has liberty quite as little as the human face has

beauty when the moral autonomy is oppressed; nay, on the contrary, just

as the citizens are given over to the brutal despotism of the lowest

classes, so the form is given over here to the despotism of matter. Just

as liberty finds itself between the two extremes of legal oppression and

anarchy, so also we shall find the beautiful between two extremes,

between the expression of dignity which bears witness to the domination

exercised by the mind, and the voluptuous expression which reveals the

domination exercised by instinct.

In other terms, if the beauty of expression is incompatible with the

absolute government of reason over sensuous nature, and with the

government of sensuous nature over the reason, it follows that the third

state (for one could not conceive a fourth)--that in which the reason and

the senses, duty and inclination, are in harmony--will be that in which

the beauty of play is produced. In order that obedience to reason may

become an object of inclination, it must represent for us the principle

of pleasure; for pleasure and pain are the only springs which set the

instincts in motion. It is true that in life it is the reverse that

takes place, and pleasure is ordinarily the motive for which we act

according to reason. If morality itself has at last ceased to hold this

language, it is to the immortal author of the "Critique" to whom we must

offer our thanks; it is to him to whom the glory is due of having

restored the healthy reason in separating it from all systems. But in

the manner in which the principles of this philosopher are ordinarily

expressed by himself and also by others, it appears that the inclination

can never be for the moral sense otherwise than a very suspicious

companion, and pleasure a dangerous auxiliary for moral determinations.

In admitting that the instinct of happiness does not exercise a blind

domination over man, it does not the less desire to interfere in the

moral actions which depend on free arbitration, and by that it changes

the pure action of the will, which ought always to obey the law alone,

never the instinct. Thus, to be altogether sure that the inclination has

not interfered with the demonstrations of the will, we prefer to see it

in opposition rather than in accord with the law of reason; because it

may happen too easily, when the inclination speaks in favor of duty, that

duty draws from the recommendation all its credit over the will. And in

fact, as in practical morals, it is not the conformity of the acts with

the law, but only the conformity of the sentiments with duty, which is

important. We do not attach, and with reason, any value to this

consideration, that it is ordinarily more favorable to the conformity of

acts with the law that inclination is on the side of duty. As a

consequence, this much appears evident: that the assent of sense, if it

does not render suspicious the conformity of the will with duty, at least

does not guarantee it. Thus the sensuous expression of this assent,

expression that grace offers to us, could never bear a sufficient

available witness to the morality of the act in which it is met; and it

is not from that which an action or a sentiment manifests to the eyes by

graceful expression that we must judge of the moral merit of that

sentiment or of that action.

Up to the present time I believe I have been in perfect accord with the

rigorists in morals. I shall not become, I hope, a relaxed moralist in

endeavoring to maintain in the world of phenomena and in the real

fulfilment of the law of duty those rights of sensuous nature which, upon

the ground of pure reason and in the jurisdiction of the moral law, are

completely set aside and excluded.

I will explain. Convinced as I am, and precisely because I am convinced,

that the inclination in associating itself to an act of the will offers

no witness to the pure conformity of this act with the duty, I believe

that we are able to infer from this that the moral perfection of man

cannot shine forth except from this very association of his inclination

with his moral conduct. In fact, the destiny of man is not to accomplish

isolated moral acts, but to be a moral being. That which is prescribed

to him does not consist of virtues, but of virtue, and virtue is not

anything else "than an inclination for duty." Whatever, then, in the

objective sense, may be the opposition which separates the acts suggested

by the inclination from those which duty determines, we cannot say it is

the same in the subjective sense; and not only is it permitted to man to

accord duty with pleasure, but he ought to establish between them this

accord, he ought to obey his reason with a sentiment of joy. It is not

to throw it off as a burden, nor to cast it off as a too coarse skin.

No, it is to unite it, by a union the most intimate, with his Ego, with

the most noble part of his being, that a sensuous nature has been

associated in him to his purely spiritual nature. By the fact that

nature has made of him a being both at once reasonable and sensuous, that

is to say, a man, it has prescribed to him the obligation not to separate

that which she has united; not to sacrifice in him the sensuous being,

were it in the most pure manifestations of the divine part; and never to

found the triumph of one over the oppression and the ruin of the other.

It is only when he gathers, so to speak, his entire humanity together,

and his way of thinking in morals becomes the result of the united action

of the two principles, when morality has become to him a second nature,

it is then only that it is secure; for, as far as the mind and the duty

are obliged to employ violence, it is necessary that the instinct shall

have force to resist them. The enemy which only is overturned can rise

up again, but the enemy reconciled is truly vanquished. In the moral

philosophy of Kant the idea of duty is proposed with a harshness enough

to ruffle the Graces, and one which could easily tempt a feeble mind to

seek for moral perfection in the sombre paths of an ascetic and monastic

life. Whatever precautions the great philosopher has been able to take

in order to shelter himself against this false interpretation, which must

be repugnant more than all else to the serenity of the free mind, he has

lent it a strong impulse, it seems to me, in opposing to each other by a

harsh contrast the two principles which act upon the human will. Perhaps

it was hardly possible, from the point of view in which he was placed, to

avoid this mistake; but he has exposed himself seriously to it. Upon the

basis of the question there is no longer, after the demonstration he has

given, any discussion possible, at least for the heads which think and

which are quite willing to be persuaded; and I am not at all sure if it

would not be better to renounce at once all the attributes of the human

being than to be willing to reach on this point, by reason, a different

result. But although he began to work without any prejudice when he

searched for the truth, and though all is here explained by purely

objective reasons, it appears that when he put forward the truth once

found he had been guided by a more subjective maxim, which is not

difficult, I believe, to be accounted for by the time and circumstances.

What, in fact, was the moral of his time, either in theory or in its

application? On one side, a gross materialism, of which the shameless

maxims would revolt his soul; impure resting-places offered to the

bastard characters of a century by the unworthy complacency of

philosophers; on the other side, a pretended system of perfectibility,

not less suspicious, which, to realize the chimera of a general

perfection common to the whole universe, would not be embarrassed for a

choice of means. This is what would meet his attention. So he carried

there, where the most pressing danger lay and reform was the most urgent,

the strongest forces of his principles, and made it a law to pursue

sensualism without pity, whether it walks with a bold face, impudently

insulting morality, or dissimulates under the imposing veil of a moral,

praiseworthy end, under which a certain fanatical kind of order know how

to disguise it. He had not to disguise ignorance, but to reform

perversion; for such a cure a violent blow, and not persuasion or

flattery, was necessary; and the more the contrast would be violent

between the true principles and the dominant maxims, the more he would

hope to provoke reflection upon this point. He was the Draco of his

time, because his time seemed to him as yet unworthy to possess a Solon,

neither capable of receiving him. From the sanctuary of pure reason he

drew forth the moral law, unknown then, and yet, in another way, so

known; he made it appear in all its saintliness before a degraded

century, and troubled himself little to know whether there were eyes too

enfeebled to bear the brightness.

But what had the children of the house done for him to have occupied

himself only with the valets? Because strongly impure inclinations often

usurp the name of virtue, was it a reason for disinterested inclinations

in the noblest heart to be also rendered suspicious? Because the moral

epicurean had willingly relaxed the law of reason, in order to fit it as

a plaything to his customs, was it a reason to thus exaggerate harshness,

and to make the fulfilment of duty, which is the most powerful

manifestation of moral freedom, another kind of decorated servitude of a

more specious name? And, in fact, between the esteem and the contempt of

himself has the truly moral man a more free choice than the slave of

sense between pleasure and pain? Is there less of constraint there for a

pure will than here for a depraved will? Must one, by this imperative

form given to the moral law, accuse man and humble him, and make of this

law, which is the most sublime witness of our grandeur, the most crushing

argument for our fragility? Was it possible with this imperative force

to avoid that a prescription which man imposes on himself, as a

reasonable being, and which is obligatory only for him on that account,

and which is conciliatory with the sentiment of his liberty only--that

this prescription, say I, took the appearance of a foreign law, a

positive law, an appearance which could hardly lessen the radical

tendency which we impute to man to react against the law?

It is certainly not an advantage for moral truth to have against itself

sentiments which man can avow without shame. Thus, how can the sentiment

of the beautiful, the sentiment of liberty, accord with the austere mind

of a legislation which governs man rather through fear than trust, which

tends constantly to separate that which nature has united, and which is

reduced to hold us in defiance against a part of our being, to assure its

empire over the rest? Human nature forms a whole more united in reality

than it is permitted to the philosopher, who can only analyze, to allow

it to appear. The reason can never reject as unworthy of it the

affections which the heart recognizes with joy; and there, where man

would be morally fallen, he can hardly rise in his own esteem. If in the

moral order the sensuous nature were only the oppressed party and not an

ally, how could it associate with all the ardor of its sentiments in a

triumph which would be celebrated only over itself? how could it be so

keen a participator in the satisfaction of a pure spirit having

consciousness of itself, if in the end it could not attach itself to the

pure spirit with such closeness that it is not possible even to

intellectual analysis to separate it without violence.

The will, besides, is in more immediate relation with the faculty of

feeling than with the cognitive faculties, and it would be regrettable in

many circumstances if it were obliged, in order to guide itself, to take

advice of pure reason. I prejudge nothing good of a man who dares so

little trust to the voice of instinct that he is obliged each time to

make it appear first before the moral law; he is much more estimable who

abandons himself with a certain security to inclination, without having

to fear being led astray by her. That proves in fact that with him the

two principles are already in harmony--in that harmony which places a

seat upon the perfection of the human being, and which constitutes that

which we understand by a noble soul.

It is said of a man that he has a great soul when the moral sense has

finished assuring itself of all the affections, to the extent of

abandoning without fear the direction of the senses to the will, and

never incurring the risk of finding himself in discord with its

decisions. It follows that in a noble soul it is not this or that

particular action, it is the entire character which is moral. Thus we

can make a merit of none of its actions because the satisfaction of an

instinct could not be meritorious. A noble soul has no other merit than

to be a noble soul. With as great a facility as if the instinct alone

were acting, it accomplishes the most painful duties of humanity, and the

most heroic sacrifice that she obtains over the instinct of nature seems

the effect of the free action of the instinct itself. Also, it has no

idea of the beauty of its act, and it never occurs to it that any other

way of acting could be possible; on the contrary, the moralist formed by

the school and by rule, is always ready at the first question of the

master to give an account with the most rigorous precision of the

conformity of its acts with the moral law. The life of this one is like

a drawing where the pencil has indicated by harsh and stiff lines all

that the rule demands, and which could, if necessary, serve for a student

to learn the elements of art. The life of a noble soul, on the contrary,

is like a painting of Titian; all the harsh outlines are effaced, which

does not prevent the whole face being more true, lifelike and harmonious.

It is then in a noble soul that is found the true harmony between reason

and sense, between inclination and duty, and grace is the expression of

this harmony in the sensuous world. It is only in the service of a noble

soul that nature can at the same time be in possession of its liberty,

and preserve from all alteration the beauty of its forms; for the one,

its liberty would be compromised under the tyranny of an austere soul,

the other, under the anarchical regimen of sensuousness. A noble soul

spreads even over a face in which the architectonic beauty is wanting an

irresistible grace, and often even triumphs over the natural disfavor.

All the movements which proceed from a noble soul are easy, sweet, and

yet animated. The eye beams with serenity as with liberty, and with the

brightness of sentiment; gentleness of heart would naturally give to the

mouth a grace that no affectation, no art, could attain. You trace there

no effort in the varied play of the physiognomy, no constraint in the

voluntary movements--a noble soul knows not constraint; the voice becomes

music, and the limpid stream of its modulations touches the heart. The

beauty of structure can excite pleasure, admiration, astonishment; grace

alone can charm. Beauty has its adorers; grace alone has its lovers: for

we pay our homage to the Creator, and we love man. As a whole, grace

would be met with especially amongst women; beauty, on the contrary, is

met with more frequently in man, and we need not go far without finding

the reason. For grace we require the union of bodily structure, as well

as that of character: the body, by its suppleness, by its promptitude to

receive impressions and to bring them into action; the character, by the

moral harmony of the sentiments. Upon these two points nature has been

more favorable to the woman than to man.

The more delicate structure of the woman receives more rapidly each

impression and allows it to escape as rapidly. It requires a storm to

shake a strong constitution, and when vigorous muscles begin to move we

should not find the ease which is one of the conditions of grace. That

which upon the face of woman is still a beautiful sensation would express

suffering already upon the face of man. Woman has the more tender

nerves; it is a reed which bends under the gentlest breath of passion.

The soul glides in soft and amiable ripples upon her expressive face,

which soon regains the calm and smooth surface of the mirror.

The same also for the character: for that necessary union of the soul

with grace the woman is more happily gifted than man. The character of

woman rises rarely to the supreme ideal of moral purity, and would rarely

go beyond acts of affection; her character would often resist

sensuousness with heroic force. Precisely because the moral nature of

woman is generally on the side of inclination, the effect becomes the

same, in that which touches the sensuous expression of this moral state,

as if the inclination were on the side of duty. Thus grace would be the

expression of feminine virtue, and this expression would often be wanting

in manly virtue.

ON DIGNITY.

As grace is the expression of a noble soul, so is dignity the expression

of elevated feeling.

It has been prescribed to man, it is true, to establish between his two

natures a unison, to form always an harmonious whole, and to act as in

union with his entire humanity. But this beauty of character, this last

fruit of human maturity, is but an ideal to which he ought to force his

conformity with a constant vigilance, but to which, with all his efforts,

he can never attain.

He cannot attain to it because his nature is thus made and it will not

change; the physical conditions of his existence themselves are opposed

to it.

In fact, his existence, so far as he is a sensuous creature, depends on

certain physical conditions; and in order to insure this existence man

ought--because, in his quality of a free being, capable of determining

his modifications by his own will--to watch over his own preservation

himself. Man ought to be made capable of certain acts in order to fulfil

these physical conditions of his existence, and when these conditions are

out of order to re-establish them.

But although nature had to give up to him this care which she reserves

exclusively to herself in those creatures which have only a vegetative

life, still it was necessary that the satisfaction of so essential a

want, in which even the existence of the individual and of the species is

interested, should not be absolutely left to the discretion of man, and

his doubtful foresight. It has then provided for this interest, which in

the foundation concerns it, and it has also interfered with regard to the

form in placing in the determination of free arbitration a principle of

necessity. From that arises natural instinct, which is nothing else than

a principle of physical necessity which acts upon free arbitration by the

means of sensation.

The natural instinct solicits the sensuous faculty through the combined

force of pain and of pleasure: by pain when it asks satisfaction, and by

pleasure when it has found what it asks.

As there is no bargaining possible with physical necessity, man must

also, in spite of his liberty, feel what nature desires him to feel.

According as it awakens in him a painful or an agreeable sensation, there

will infallibly result in him either aversion or desire. Upon this point

man quite resembles the brute; and the stoic, whatever his power of soul,

is not less sensible of hunger, and has no less aversion to it, than the

worm that crawls at his feet.

But here begins the great difference: with the lower creature action

succeeds to desire or aversion quite as of necessity, as the desire to

the sensation, and the expression to the external impression. It is here

a perpetual circle, a chain, the links of which necessarily join one to

the other. With man there is one more force--the will, which, as a

super-sensuous faculty, is not so subject to the law of nature, nor that

of reason, that he remains without freedom to choose, and to guide

himself according to this or to that. The animal cannot do otherwise

than seek to free itself from pain; man can decide to suffer.

The will of man is a privilege, a sublime idea, even when we do not

consider the moral use that he can make of it. But firstly, the animal

nature must be in abeyance before approaching the other, and from that

cause it is always a considerable step towards reaching the moral

emancipation of the will to have conquered in us the necessity of nature,

even in indifferent things, by the exercise in us of the simple will.

The jurisdiction of nature extends as far as the will, but there it

stops, and the empire of reason commences. Placed between these two

jurisdictions, the will is absolutely free to receive the law from one

and the other; but it is not in the same relation with one and the other.

Inasmuch as it is a natural force it is equally free with regard to

nature and with respect to reason; I mean to say it is not forced to pass

either on the side of one or of the other: but as far as it is a moral

faculty it is not free; I mean that it ought to choose the law of reason.

It is not chained to one or the other, but it is obliged towards the law

of reason. The will really then makes use of its liberty even whilst it

acts contrary to reason: but it makes use of it unworthily, because,

notwithstanding its liberty, it is no less under the jurisdiction of

nature, and adds no real action to the operation of pure instinct; for to

will by virtue of desire is only to desire in a different way.

There may be conflict between the law of nature, which works in us

through the instinct, and the law of reason, which comes out of

principles, when the instinct, to satisfy itself, demands of us an action

which disgusts our moral sense. It is, then, the duty of the will to

make the exigencies of the instinct give way to reason. Whilst the laws

of nature oblige the will only conditionally, the laws of reason oblige

absolutely and without conditions.

But nature obstinately maintains her rights, and as it is never by the

result of free choice that she solicits us, she also does not withdraw

any of her exigencies as long as she has not been satisfied. Since, from

the first cause which gave the impulsion to the threshold of the will

where its jurisdiction ends, all in her is rigorously necessary,

consequently she can neither give way nor go back, but must always go

forward and press more and more the will on which depends the

satisfaction of her wants. Sometimes, it is true, we could say that

nature shortens her road and acts immediately as a cause for the

satisfaction of her needs without having in the first instance carried

her request before the will. In such a case, that is to say, if man not

simply allowed instinct to follow a free course, but if instinct took

this course of itself, man would be no more than the brute. But it is

very doubtful whether this case would ever present itself, and if ever it

were really presented it would remain to be seen whether we should not

blame the will itself for this blind power which the instinct would have

usurped.

Thus the appetitive faculty claims with persistence the satisfaction of

its wants, and the will is solicited to procure it; but the will should

receive from the reason the motives by which she determines. What does

the reason permit? What does she prescribe? This is what the will

should decide upon. Well, then, if the will turns towards the reason

before consenting to the request of the instinct, it is properly a moral

act; but if it immediately decides, without consulting the reason, it is

a physical act.

Every time, then, that nature manifests an exigence and seeks to draw the

will along with it by the blind violence of affective movement, it is the

duty of the will to order nature to halt until reason has pronounced.

The sentence which reason pronounces, will it be favorable or the

contrary to the interest of sensuousness? This is, up to the present

time, what the will does not know. Also it should observe this conduct

for all the affective movements without exception, and when it is nature

which has spoken the first, never allow it to act as an immediate cause.

Man would testify only by that to his independence. It is when, by an

act of his will, he breaks the violence of his desires, which hasten

towards the object which should satisfy them, and would dispense entirely

with the co-operation of the will,--it is only then that he reveals

himself in quality of a moral being, that is to say, as a free agent,

which does not only allow itself to experience either aversion or desire,

but which at all times must will his aversions and his desires.

But this act of taking previously the advice of reason is already an

attempt against nature, who is a competent judge in her own cause, and

who will not allow her sentences to be submitted to a new and strange

jurisdiction; this act of the will which thus brings the appetitive

faculty before the tribunal of reason is then, in the proper acceptation

of the word, an act against nature, in that it renders accidental that

which is necessary, in that it attributes to the laws of reason the right

to decide in a cause where the laws of nature can alone pronounce, and

where they have pronounced effectively. Just, in fact, as the reason in

the exercise of its moral jurisdiction is little troubled to know if the

decisions it can come to will satisfy or not the sensuous nature, so the

sensuous in the exercise of the right which is proper to it does not

trouble itself whether its decisions would satisfy pure reason or not.

Each is equally necessary, though different in necessity, and this

character of necessity would be destroyed if it were permitted for one to

modify arbitrarily the decisions of the other. This is why the man who

has the most moral energy cannot, whatever resistance he opposes to

instinct, free himself from sensuousness, or stifle desire, but can only

deny it an influence upon the decisions of his will; he can disarm

instinct by moral means, but he cannot appease it but by natural means.

By his independent force he may prevent the laws of nature from

exercising any constraint over his will, but he can absolutely change

nothing of the laws themselves.

Thus in the affective movements in which nature (instinct) acts the first

and seeks to do without the will, or to draw it violently to its side,

the morality of character cannot manifest itself but by its resistance,

and there is but one means of preventing the instinct from restraining

the liberty of the will: it is to restrain the instinct itself. Thus we

can only have agreement between the law of reason and the affective

phenomena, under the condition of putting both in discord with the

exigencies of instinct. And as nature never gives way to moral reasons,

and recalls her claims, and as on her side, consequently, all remains in

the same state, in whatever manner the will acts towards her, it results

that there is no possible accord between the inclination and duty,

between reason and sense; and that here man cannot act at the same time

with all his being and with all the harmony of his nature, but

exclusively with his reasonable nature. Thus in these sorts of actions

we could not find moral beauty, because an action is morally good only as

far as inclination has taken part in it, and here the inclination

protests against much more than it concurs with it. But these actions

have moral grandeur, because all that testifies to a preponderating

authority exercised over the sensuous nature has grandeur, and grandeur

is found only there.

It is, then, in the affective movements that this great soul of which we

speak transforms itself and becomes sublime; and it is the touchstone to

distinguish the soul truly great from what is called a good heart, or

from the virtue of temperament. When in man the inclination is ranged on

the side of morality only because morality itself is happily on the side

of inclination, it will happen that the instinct of nature in the

affective movements will exercise upon the will a full empire, and if a

sacrifice is necessary it is the moral nature, and not the sensuous

nature, that will make it. If, on the contrary, it is reason itself

which has made the inclination pass to the side of duty (which is the

case in the fine character), and which has only confided the rudder to

the sensuous nature, it will be always able to retake it as soon as the

instinct should misuse its full powers. Thus the virtue of temperament

in the affective movements falls back to the state of simple production

of nature, whilst the noble soul passes to heroism and rises to the rank

of pure intelligence.

The rule over the instincts by moral force is the emancipation of mind,

and the expression by which this independence presents itself to the eyes

in the world of phenomena is what is called dignity.

To consider this rigorously: the moral force in man is susceptible of no

representation, for the super-sensuous could not explain itself by a

phenomenon that falls under the sense; but it can be represented

indirectly to the mind by sensuous signs, and this is actually the case

with dignity in the configuration of man.

When the instinct of nature is excited, it is accompanied just as the

heart in its moral emotions is, by certain movements of the body, which

sometimes go before the will, sometimes, even as movements purely

sympathetic, escape altogether its empire. In fact, as neither

sensation, nor the desire, nor aversion, are subject to the free

arbitration of man, man has no right over the physical movements which

immediately depend on it. But the instinct does not confine itself to

simple desire; it presses, it advances, it endeavors to realize its

object; and if it does not meet in the autonomy of the mind an energetic

resistance, it will even anticipate it, it will itself take the

initiative of those sorts of acts over which the will alone has the right

to pronounce. For the instinct of conservation tends without ceasing to

usurp the legislative powers in the domain of the will, and its efforts

go to exercise over man a domination as absolute as over the beast.

There are, then, two sorts of distinct movements, which, in themselves

and by their origin, in each affective phenomenon, arise in man by the

instinct of conservation: those firstly which immediately proceed from

sensation, and which, consequently, are quite involuntary; then those

which in principle could and would be voluntary, but from which the blind

instinct of nature takes all freedom. The first refer to the affection

itself, and are united necessarily with it; the others respond rather to

the cause and to the object of the affections, and are thus accidental

and susceptible of modification, and cannot be mistaken for infallible

signs of the affective phenomena. But as both one and the other, when

once the object is determined, are equally necessary to the instinct of

nature, so they assist, both one and the other, the expression of

affective phenomena; a necessary competition, in order that the

expression should be complete and form a harmonious whole.

If, then, the will is sufficiently independent to repress the aggressions

of instinct and to maintain its rights against this blind force, all the

phenomena which the instinct of nature, once excited, produce, in its

proper domain, will preserve, it is true, their force; but those of the

second kind, those which came out of a foreign jurisdiction, and which it

pretended to subject arbitrarily to its power, these phenomena would not

take place. Thus the phenomena are no longer in harmony; but it is

precisely in their opposition that consists the expression of the moral

force. Suppose that we see a man a prey to the most poignant affection,

manifested by movements of the first kind, by quite involuntary

movements. His veins swell, his muscles contract convulsively, his voice

is stifled, his chest is raised and projects, whilst the lower portion of

the torso is sunken and compressed; but at the same time the voluntary

movements are soft, the features of the face free, and serenity beams

forth from the brow and in the look. If man were only a physical being,

all his traits, being determined only by one and the same principle,

would be in unison one with the other, and would have a similar

expression. Here, for example, they would unite in expressing

exclusively suffering; but as those traits which express calmness are

mixed up with those which express suffering, and as similar causes do not

produce opposite effects, we must recognize in this contrast the presence

and the action of a moral force, independent of the passive affections,

and superior to the impressions beneath which we see sensuous nature give

way. And this is why calmness under suffering, in which properly

consists dignity, becomes--indirectly, it is true, and by means of

reasoning--a representation of the pure intelligence which is in man, and

an expression of his moral liberty. But it is not only under suffering,

in the restricted sense of the word, in the sense in which it marks only

the painful affections, but generally in all the cases in which the

appetitive faculty is strongly interested, that mind ought to show its

liberty, and that dignity ought to be the dominant expression. Dignity

is not less required in the agreeable affections than in the painful

affections, because in both cases nature would willingly play the part of

master, and has to be held in check by the will. Dignity relates to the

form and not to the nature of the affection, and this is why it can be

possible that often an affection, praiseworthy in the main, but one to

which we blindly commit ourselves, degenerates, from the want of dignity,

into vulgarity and baseness; and, on the contrary, a condemnable

affection, as soon as it testifies by its form to the empire of the mind

over the senses, changes often its character and approaches even towards

the sublime.

Thus in dignity the mind reigns over the body and bears itself as ruler:

here it has its independence to defend against imperious impulse, always

ready to do without it, to act and shake off its yoke. But in grace, on

the contrary, the mind governs with a liberal government, for here the

mind itself causes sensuous nature to act, and it finds no resistance to

overcome. But obedience only merits forbearance, and severity is only

justifiable when provoked by opposition.

Thus grace is nothing else than the liberty of voluntary movements, and

dignity consists in mastering involuntary movements. Grace leaves to

sensuous nature, where it obeys the orders of the mind, a certain air of

independence; dignity, on the contrary, submits the sensuous nature to

mind where it would make the pretensions to rule; wherever instinct takes

the initiative and allows itself to trespass upon the attributes of the

will, the will must show it no indulgence, but it must testify to its own

independence (autonomy), in opposing to it the most energetic resistance.

If, on the contrary, it is the will that commences, and if instinct does

but follow it, the free arbitration has no longer to display any rigor,

now it must show indulgence. Such is in a few words the law which ought

to regulate the relation of the two natures of man in what regards the

expression of this relation in the world of phenomena.

It follows that dignity is required, and is seen particularly in passive

affection, whilst grace is shown in the conduct, for it is only in

suffering that the liberty of the soul can be manifested, and only in

action that the liberty of the body can be displayed.

If dignity is an expression of resistance opposed to instinct by moral

liberty, and if the instinct consequently ought to be considered as a

force that renders resistance necessary, it follows that dignity is

ridiculous where you have no force of this kind to resist, and

contemptible where there ought not to be any such force to combat. We

laugh at a comedian, whatever rank or condition he may occupy, who even

in indifferent actions affects dignity. We despise those small souls

who, for having accomplished an ordinary action, and often for having

simply abstained from a base one, plume themselves on their dignity.

Generally, what is demanded of virtue is not properly speaking dignity,

but grace. Dignity is implicitly contained in the idea of virtue, which

even by its nature supposes already the rule of man over his instincts.

It is rather sensuous nature that, in the fulfilment of moral duties, is

found in a state of oppression and constraint, particularly when it

consummates in a painful sacrifice. But as the ideal of perfection in

man does not require a struggle, but harmony between the moral and

physical nature, this ideal is little compatible with dignity, which is

only the expression of a struggle between the two natures, and as such

renders visible either the particular impotence of the individual, or the

impotence common to the species. In the first case, when the want of

harmony between inclination and duty, with regard to a moral act, belongs

to the particular powerlessness of the subject, the act would always lose

its moral value, in as far as that combat is necessary, and, in

consequence, proportionally as there would be dignity in the exterior

expression of this act; for our moral judgment connects each individual

with the common measure of the species, and we do not allow man to be

stopped by other limits than those of human nature.

In the second case, when the action commanded by duty cannot be placed in

harmony with the exigencies of instinct without going against the idea of

human nature, the resistance of the inclination is necessary, and then

only the sight of the combat can convince us of the possibility of

victory. Thus we ask here of the features and attitudes an expression of

this interior struggle, not being able to take upon ourselves to believe

in virtue where there is no trace of humanity. Where then the moral law

commands of us an action which necessarily makes the sensuous nature

suffer, there the matter is serious, and ought not to be treated as play;

ease and lightness in accomplishing this act would be much more likely to

revolt us than to satisfy us; and thus, in consequence, expression is no

longer grace, but dignity. In general, the law which prevails here is,

that man ought to accomplish with grace all the acts that he can execute

in the sphere of human nature; and with dignity all those for the

accomplishment of which he is obliged to go beyond his nature.

In like manner as we ask of virtue to have grace, we ask of inclination

to have dignity. Grace is not less natural to inclination than dignity

to virtue, and that is evident from the idea of grace, which is all

sensuous and favorable to the liberty of physical nature, and which is

repugnant to all idea of constraint. The man without cultivation lacks

not by himself a certain degree of grace, when love or any other

affection of this kind animates him; and where do we find more grace than

in children, who are nevertheless entirely under the direction of

instinct. The danger is rather that inclination should end by making the

state of passion the dominant one, stifling the independence of mind, and

bringing about a general relaxation. Therefore in order to conciliate

the esteem of a noble sentiment--esteem can only be inspired by that

which proceeds from a moral source--the inclination must always be

accompanied by dignity. It is for that reason a person in love desires

to find dignity in the object of this passion. Dignity alone is the

warrant that it is not need which has forced, but free choice which has

chosen, that he is not desired as a thing, but esteemed as a person.

We require grace of him who obliges, dignity of the person obliged: the

first, to set aside an advantage which he has over the other, and which

might wound, ought to give to his actions, though his decision may have

been disinterested, the character of an affective movement, that thus,

from the part which he allows inclination to take, he may have the

appearance of being the one who gains the most: the second, not to

compromise by the dependence in which he put himself the honor of

humanity, of which liberty is the saintly palladium, ought to raise what

is only a pure movement of instinct to the height of an act of the will,

and in this manner, at the moment when he receives a favor, return in a

certain sense another favor.

We must censure with grace, and own our faults with dignity: to put

dignity into our remonstrances is to have the air of a man too penetrated

by his own advantage: to put grace into our confessions is to forget the

inferiority in which our fault has placed us. Do the powerful desire to

conciliate affection? Their superiority must be tempered by grace. The

feeble, do they desire to conciliate esteem? They must through dignity

rise above their powerlessness. Generally it is thought that dignity is

suitable to the throne, and every one knows that those seated upon it

desire to find in their councillors, their confessors, and in their

parliaments--grace. But that which may be good and praiseworthy in a

kingdom is not so always in the domain of taste. The prince himself

enters into this domain as soon as he descends from his throne (for

thrones have their privileges), and the crouching courtier places himself

under the saintly and free probation of this law as soon as he stands

erect and becomes again a man. The first we would counsel to supplement

from the superfluity of the second that which he himself needs, and to

give him as much of his dignity as he requires to borrow grace from him.

Although dignity and grace have each their proper domain in which they

are manifest, they do not exclude each other. They can be met with in

the same person, and even in the same state of that person. Further, it

is grace alone which guarantees and accredits dignity, and dignity alone

can give value to grace.

Dignity alone, wherever met with, testifies that the desires and

inclinations are restrained within certain limits. But what we take for

a force which moderates and rules, may it not be rather an obliteration

of the faculty of feeling (hardness)? Is it really the moral autonomy,

and may it not be rather the preponderance of another affection, and in

consequence a voluntary interested effort that restrains the outburst of

the present affection? This is what grace alone can put out of doubt in

joining itself to dignity. It is grace, I mean to say, that testifies to

a peaceful soul in harmony with itself and a feeling heart.

In like manner grace by itself shows a certain susceptibility of the

feeling faculty, and a certain harmony of sentiment. But may this not be

a certain relaxation of the mind which allows so much liberty to sensuous

nature and which opens the heart to all impressions? Is it indeed the

moral which has established this harmony between the sentiments? It is

dignity alone which can in its turn guarantee this to us in joining

itself to grace; I mean it is dignity alone which attests in the subject

an independent force, and at the moment when the will represses the

license of involuntary movement, it is by dignity that it makes known

that the liberty of voluntary movements is a simple concession on its

part.

If grace and dignity, still supported, the one by architectonic beauty

and the other by force, were united in the same person, the expression of

human nature would be accomplished in him: such a person would be

justified in the spiritual world and set at liberty in the sensuous

world. Here the two domains touch so closely that their limits are

indistinguishable. The smile that plays on the lips; this sweetly

animated look; that serenity spread over the brow--it is the liberty of

the reason which gleams forth in a softened light. This noble majesty

impressed on the face is the sublime adieu of the necessity of nature,

which disappears before the mind. Such is the ideal of human beauty

according to which the antique conceptions were formed, and we see it in

the divine forms of a Niobe, of the Apollo Belvedere, in the winged

Genius of the Borghese, and in the Muse of the Barberini palace. There,

where grace and dignity are united, we experience by turns attraction and

repulsion; attraction as spiritual creatures, and repulsion as being

sensuous creatures.

Dignity offers to us an example of subordination of sensuous nature to

moral nature--an example which we are bound to imitate, but which at the

same time goes beyond the measure of our sensuous faculty. This

opposition between the instincts of nature and the exigencies of the

moral law, exigencies, however, that we recognize as legitimate, brings

our feelings into play and awakens a sentiment that we name esteem, which

is inseparable from dignity.

With grace, on the contrary, as with beauty in general, reason finds its

demands satisfied in the world of sense, and sees with surprise one of

its own ideas presented to it, realized in the world of phenomena. This

unexpected encounter between the accident of nature and the necessity of

reason awakens in us a sentiment of joyous approval (contentment) which

calms the senses, but which animates and occupies the mind, and it

results necessarily that we are attracted by a charm towards the sensuous

object. It is this attraction which we call kindliness, or love--a

sentiment inseparable from grace and beauty.

The attraction--I mean the attraction (stimulus) not of love but of

voluptuousness--proposes to the senses a sensuous object that promises to

these the satisfaction of a want, that is to say a pleasure; the senses

are consequently solicited towards this sensuous object, and from that

springs desire, a sentiment which increases and excites the sensuous

nature, but which, on the contrary, relaxes the spiritual nature.

We can say of esteem that it inclines towards its object; of love, that

it approaches with inclination towards its object; of desire, that it

precipitates itself upon its object; with esteem, the object is reason,

and the subject is sensuous nature; with love, the object is sensuous,

and the subject is moral nature; with desire, the object and the subject

are purely sensuous.

With love alone is sentiment free, because it is pure in its principle,

and because it draws its source from the seat of liberty, from the breast

of our divine nature. Here, it is not the weak and base part of our

nature that measures itself with the greater and more noble part; it is

not the sensibility, a prey to vertigo, which gazes up at the law of

reason. It is absolute greatness which is reflected in beauty and in

grace, and satisfied in morality; it becomes the legislator even, the god

in us who plays with his own image in the world of sense. Thus love

consoles and dilates the heart, whilst esteem strains it; because here

there is nothing which could limit the heart and compress its impulses,

there being nothing higher than absolute greatness; and sensibility, from

which alone hinderance could come, is reconciled, in the breast of beauty

and of grace, with the ideas even of the mind. Love has but to descend;

esteem aspires with effort towards an object placed above it. This is

the reason that the wicked love nothing, though they are obliged to

esteem many things. This is why the well-disposed man can hardly esteem

without at once feeling love for the object. Pure spirit can only love,

but not esteem; the senses know only esteem, but not love.

The culpable man is perpetually a prey to fear, that he may meet in the

world of sense the legislator within himself; and sees an enemy in all

that bears the stamp of greatness, of beauty, and of perfection: the man,

on the contrary, in whom a noble soul breathes, knows no greater pleasure

than to meet out of himself the image or realization of the divine that

is in him; and to embrace in the world of sense a symbol of the immortal

friend he loves. Love is at the same time the most generous and the most

egotistical thing in nature; the most generous, because it receives

nothing and gives all--pure mind being only able to give and not receive;

the most egotistical, for that which he seeks in the subject, that which

he enjoys in it, is himself and never anything else.

But precisely because he who loves receives from the beloved object

nothing but that which he has himself given, it often happens that he

gives more than he has received.

The exterior senses believe to have discovered in the object that which

the internal sense alone contemplates in it, in the end believing what is

desired with ardor, and the riches belonging to the one who loves hide

the poverty of the object loved. This is the reason why love is subject

to illusion, whilst esteem and desire are never deceived. As long as the

super-excitement of the internal senses overcomes the internal senses,

the soul remains under the charm of this Platonic love, which gives place

only in duration to the delights enjoyed by the immortals. But as soon

as internal sense ceases to share its visions with the exterior sense,

these take possession of their rights and imperiously demand that which

is its due--matter. It is the terrestrial Venus who profits by the fire

kindled by the celestial Venus, and it is not rare to find the physical

instinct, so long sacrificed, revenge itself by a rule all the more

absolute. As external sense is never a dupe to illusion, it makes this

advantage felt with a brutal insolence over its noble rival; and it

possesses audacity to the point of asserting that it has settled an

account that the spiritual nature had left under sufferance.

Dignity prevents love from degenerating into desire, and grace, from

esteem turning into fear. True beauty, true grace, ought never to cause

desire. Where desire is mingled, either the object wants dignity, or he

who considers it wants morality in his sentiments. True greatness ought

never to cause fear. If fear finds a place, you may hold for certain

either that the object is wanting in taste and grace, or that he who

considers it is not at peace with his conscience.

Attraction, charm, grace: words commonly employed as synonyms, but which

are not, or ought not to be so, the idea they express being capable of

many determinations, requiring different designations.

There is a kind of grace which animates, and another which calms the

heart. One touches nearly the sphere of the senses, and the pleasure

which is found in these, if not restrained by dignity, would easily

degenerate into concupiscence; we may use the word attraction [Reiz] to

designate this grace. A man with whom the feelings have little

elasticity does not find in himself the necessary force to awaken his

affections: he needs to borrow it from without and to seek from

impressions which easily exercise the phantasy, by rapid transition from

sentiment to action, in order to establish in himself the elasticity he

had lost. It is the advantage that he will find in the society of an

attractive person, who by conversation and look would stir his

imagination and agitate this stagnant water.

The calming grace approaches more nearly to dignity, inasmuch as it

manifests itself through the moderation which it imposes upon the

impetuosity of the movements. It is to this the man addresses himself

whose imagination is over-excited; it is in this peaceful atmosphere that

the heart seeks repose after the violence of the storm. It is to this

that I reserve especially the appellation of grace. Attraction is not

incompatible with laughter, jest, or the sting of raillery; grace agrees

only with sympathy and love.

Dignity has also its degrees and its shades. If it approaches grace and

beauty, it takes the name of nobleness; if, on the contrary, it inclines

towards the side of fear, it becomes haughtiness.

The utmost degree of grace is ravishing charm. Dignity, in its highest

form, is called majesty. In the ravishing we love our Ego, and we feel

our being fused with the object. Liberty in its plenitude and in its

highest enjoyment tends to the complete destruction of liberty, and the

excitement of the mind to the delirium of the voluptuousness of the

senses. Majesty, on the contrary, proposes to us a law, a moral ideal,

which constrains us to turn back our looks upon ourselves. God is there,

and the sentiment we have of His presence makes us bend our eyes upon the

ground. We forget all that is without ourselves, and we feel but the

heavy burden of our own existence.

Majesty belongs to what is holy. A man capable of giving us an idea of

holiness possesses majesty, and if we do not go so far as to kneel, our

mind at least prostrates itself before him. But the mind recoils at once

upon the slightest trace of human imperfection which he discovers in the

object of his adoration, because that which is only comparatively great

cannot subdue the heart.

Power alone, however terrible or without limit we may suppose it to be,

can never confer majesty. Power imposes only upon the sensuous being;

majesty should act upon the mind itself, and rob it of its liberty. A

man who can pronounce upon me a sentence of death has neither more nor

less of majesty for me the moment I am what I ought to be. His advantage

over me ceases as soon as I insist on it. But he who offers to me in his

person the image of pure will, before him I would prostrate myself, if it

is possible, for all eternity.

Grace and dignity are too high in value for vanity and stupidity not to

be excited to appropriate them by imitation. There is only one means of

attaining this: it is to imitate the moral state of which they are the

expression. All other imitation is but to ape them, and would be

recognized directly through exaggeration.

Just as exaggeration of the sublime leads to inflation, and affectation

of nobleness to preciosity, in the same manner affectation of grace ends

in coquetry, and that of dignity to stiff solemnity, false gravity.

There where true grace simply used ease and provenance, affected grace

becomes effeminacy. One is content to use discreetly the voluntary

movements, and not thwart unnecessarily the liberty of nature; the other

has not even the heart to use properly the organs of will, and, not to

fall into hardness and heaviness, it prefers to sacrifice something of

the aim of movement, or else it seeks to reach it by cross ways and

indirect means. An awkward and stiff dancer expends as much force as if

he had to work a windmill; with his feet and arms he describes lines as

angular as if he were tracing figures with geometrical precision; the

affected dancer, on the other hand, glides with an excess of delicacy, as

if he feared to injure himself on coming in contact with the ground, and

his feet and hands describe only lines in sinuous curves. The other sex,

which is essentially in possession of true grace, is also that one which

is more frequently culpable of affected grace, but this affectation is

never more distasteful than when used as a bait to desire. The smile of

true grace thus gives place to the most repulsive grimace; the fine play

of look, so ravishing when it displays a true sentiment, is only

contortion; the melodious inflections of the voice, an irresistible

attraction from candid lips, are only a vain cadence, a tremulousness

which savors of study: in a word, all the harmonious charms of woman

become only deception, an artifice of the toilet.

If we have many occasions to observe the affected grace in the theatre

and in the ball-room, there is also often occasion of studying the

affected dignity in the cabinet of ministers and in the study-rooms of

men of science (notably at universities). True dignity is content to

prevent the domination of the affections, to keep the instinct within

just limits, but there only where it pretends to be master in the

involuntary movements; false dignity regulates with an iron sceptre even

the voluntary movements, it oppresses the moral movements, which were

sacred to true dignity, as well as the sensual movements, and destroys

all the mimic play of the features by which the soul gleams forth upon

the face. It arms itself not only against rebel nature, but against

submissive nature, and ridiculously seeks its greatness in subjecting

nature to its yoke, or, if this does not succeed, in hiding it. As if it

had vowed hatred to all that is called nature, it swathes the body in

long, heavy-plaited garments, which hide the human structure; it

paralyzes the limbs in surcharging them with vain ornaments, and goes

even the length of cutting the hair to replace this gift of nature by an

artificial production. True dignity does not blush for nature, but only

for brute nature; it always has an open and frank air; feeling gleams in

its look; calm and serenity of mind is legible upon the brow in eloquent

traits. False gravity, on the contrary, places its dignity in the lines

of its visage; it is close, mysterious, and guards its features with the

care of an actor; all the muscles of its face are tormented, all natural

and true expression disappears, and the entire man is like a sealed

letter.

But false dignity is not always wrong to keep the mimic play of its

features under sharp discipline, because it might betray more than would

be desired, a precaution true dignity has not to consider. True dignity

wishes only to rule, not to conceal nature; in false dignity, on the

contrary, nature rules the more powerfully within because it is

controlled outwardly. [Art can make use of a proper solemnity. Its

object is only to prepare the mind for something important. When the

poet is anxious to produce a great impression he tunes the mind to

receive it.]

ON THE NECESSARY LIMITATIONS IN THE USE OF BEAUTY OF FORM.

The abuse of the beautiful and the encroachments of imagination, when,

having only the casting vote, it seeks to grasp the law-giving sceptre,

has done great injury alike in life and in science. It is therefore

highly expedient to examine very closely the bounds that have been

assigned to the use of beautiful forms. These limits are embodied in the

very nature of the beautiful, and we have only to call to mind how taste

expresses its influence to be able to determine how far it ought to

extend it.

The following are the principal operations of taste; to bring the

sensuous and spiritual powers of man into harmony, and to unite them in a

close alliance. Consequently, whenever such an intimate alliance between

reason and the senses is suitable and legitimate, taste may be allowed

influence. But taste reaches the bounds which it is not permitted to

pass without defeating its end or removing us from our duty, in all cases

where the bond between mind and matter is given up for a time, where we

must act for the time as purely creatures of reason, whether it be to

attain an end or to perform a duty. Cases of this kind do really occur,

and they are even incumbent on us in carrying out our destiny.

For we are destined to obtain knowledge and to act from knowledge. In

both cases a certain readiness is required to exclude the senses from

that which the spirit does, because feelings must be abstracted from

knowledge, and passion or desire from every moral act of the will.

When we know, we take up an active attitude, and our attention is

directed to an object, to a relation between different representations.

When we feel, we have a passive attitude, and our attention--if we may

call that so, which is no conscious operation of the mind--is only

directed to our own condition, as far as it is modified by the impression

received. Now, as we only feel and do not know the beautiful, we do not

distinguish any relation between it and other objects, we do not refer

its representation to other representations, but to ourselves who have

experienced the impression. We learn or experience nothing in the

beautiful object, but we perceive a change occasioned by it in our own

condition, of which the impression produced is the expression.

Accordingly our knowledge is not enlarged by judgments of taste, and no

knowledge, not even that of beauty, is obtained by the feeling of beauty.

Therefore, when knowledge is the object, taste can give us no help, at

least directly and immediately; on the contrary, knowledge is shut out as

long as we are occupied with beauty.

But it may be objected, What is the use then of a graceful embodiment of

conceptions, if the object of the discussion or treatise, which is simply

and solely to produce knowledge, is rather hindered than benefited by

ornament? To convince the understanding this gracefulness of clothing

can certainly avail as little as the tasteful arrangement of a banquet

can satisfy the appetite of the guests, or the outward elegance of a

person can give a clue to his intrinsic worth. But just as the appetite

is excited by the beautiful arrangement of the table, and attention is

directed to the elegant person in question, by the attractiveness of the

exterior, so also we are placed in a favorable attitude to receive truth

by the charming representation given of it; we are led to open our souls

to its reception, and the obstacles are removed from our minds which

would have otherwise opposed the difficult pursuit of a long and strict

concatenation of thought. It is never the contents, the substance, that

gains by the beauty of form; nor is it the understanding that is helped

by taste in the act of knowing. The substance, the contents, must

commend themselves to the understanding directly, of themselves; whilst

the beautiful form speaks to the imagination, and flatters it with an

appearance of freedom.

But even further limitations are necessary in this innocent subserviency

to the senses, which is only allowed in the form, without changing

anything in the substance. Great moderation must be always used, and

sometimes the end in view may be completely defeated according to the

kind of knowledge and degree of conviction aimed at in imparting our

views to others. There is a scientific knowledge, which is based on

clear conceptions and known principles; and a popular knowledge, which is

founded on feelings more or less developed. What may be very useful to

the latter is quite possibly adverse to the former.

When the object in view is to produce a strict conviction on principles,

it is not sufficient to present the truth only in respect to its contents

or subject; the test of the truth must at the same time be contained in

the manner of its presentation. But this can mean nothing else than that

not only the contents, but also the mode of stating them, must be

according to the laws of thought. They must be connected in the

presentation with the same strict logical sequence with which they are

chained together in the seasonings of the understanding; the stability of

the representation must guarantee that of the ideas. But the strict

necessity with which the understanding links together reasonings and

conclusions, is quite antagonistic to the freedom granted to imagination

in matters of knowledge. By its very nature, the imagination strives

after perceptions, that is, after complete and completely determinate

representations, and is indefatigably active to represent the universal

in one single case, to limit it in time and space, to make of every

conception an individual, and to give a body to abstractions. Moreover,

the imagination likes freedom in its combinations, and admits no other

law in them than the accidental connection with time and space; for this

is the only connection that remains to our representations, if we

separate from them in thought all that is conception, all that binds them

internally and substantially together. The understanding, following a

diametrically opposite course, only occupies itself with part

representations or conceptions, and its effort is directed to distinguish

features in the living unity of a perception. The understanding proceeds

on the same principles in putting together and taking to pieces, but it

can only combine things by part-representations, just as it can separate

them; for it only unites, according to their inner relations, things that

first disclosed themselves in their separation.

The understanding observes a strict necessity and conformity with laws in

its combinations, and it is only the consistent connection of ideas that

satisfies it. But this connection is destroyed as often as the

imagination insinuates entire representations (individual cases) in this

chain of abstractions, and mixes up the accidents of time with the strict

necessity of a chain of circumstances. Accordingly, in every case where

it is essential to carry out a rigidly accurate sequence of reasoning,

imagination must forego its capricious character; and its endeavor to

obtain all possible sensuousness in conceptions, and all freedom in their

combination, must be made subordinate and sacrificed to the necessity of

the understanding. From this it follows that the exposition must be so

fashioned as to overthrow this effort of the imagination by the exclusion

of all that is individual and sensuous. The poetic impulse of

imagination must be curbed by distinctness of expression, and its

capricious tendency to combine must be limited by a strictly legitimate

course of procedure. I grant that it will not bend to this yoke without

resistance; but in this matter reliance is properly placed on a certain

amount of self-denial, and on an earnest determination of the hearer or

reader not to be deterred by the difficulties accompanying the form, for

the sake of the subject-matter. But in all cases where no sufficient

dependence can be placed on this self-denial, or where the interest felt

in the subject-matter is insufficient to inspire courage for such an

amount of exertion, it is necessary to resign the idea of imparting

strictly scientific knowledge; and to gain instead greater latitude in

the form of its presentation. In such a case it is expedient to abandon

the form of science, which exercises too great violence over the

imagination, and can only be made acceptable through the importance of

the object in view. Instead of this, it is proper to choose the form of

beauty, which, independent of the contents or subject, recommends itself

by its very appearance. As the matter cannot excuse the form in this

case, the form must trespass on the matter.

Popular instruction is compatible with this freedom. By the term popular

speakers or popular writers I imply all those who do not direct their

remarks exclusively to the learned. Now, as these persons do not address

any carefully trained body of hearers or readers, but take them as they

find them, they must only assume the existence of the general conditions

of thought, only the universal impulses that call attention, but no

special gift of thinking, no acquaintance with distinct conceptions, nor

any interest in special subjects. These lecturers and authors must not

be too particular as to whether their audience or readers assign by their

imagination a proper meaning to their abstractions, or whether they will

furnish a proper subject-matter for the universal conceptions to which

the scientific discourse is limited. In order to pursue a safer, easier

course, these persons will present along with their ideas the perceptions

and separate cases to which they relate, and they leave it to the

understanding of the reader to form a proper conception impromptu.

Accordingly, the faculty of imagination is much more mixed up with a

popular discourse, but only to reproduce, to renew previously received

representations, and not to produce, to express its own self-creating

power. Those special cases or perceptions are much too certainly

calculated for the object on hand, and much too closely applied to the

use that is to be made of them, to allow the imagination ever to forget

that it only acts in the service of the understanding. It is true that a

discourse of this popular kind holds somewhat closer to life and the

world of sense, but it does not become lost in it. The mode of

presenting the subject is still didactic; for in order to be beautiful it

is still wanting in the two most distinguished features of beauty,

sensuousness of expression and freedom of movement.

The mode of presenting a theme may be called free when the understanding,

while determining the connection of ideas, does so with so little

prominence that the imagination appears to act quite capriciously in the

matter, and to follow only the accident of time. The presentation of a

subject becomes sensuous when it conceals the general in the particular,

and when the fancy gives the living image (the whole representation),

where attention is merely concerned with the conception (the part

representation). Accordingly, sensuous presentation is, viewed in one

aspect, rich, for in cases where only one condition is desired, a

complete picture, an entirety of conditions, an individual is offered.

But viewed in another aspect it is limited and poor, because it only

confines to a single individual and a single case what ought to be

understood of a whole sphere. It therefore curtails the understanding in

the same proportion that it grants preponderance to the imagination; for

the completer a representation is in substance, the smaller it is in

compass.

It is the interest of the imagination to change objects according to its

caprice; the interest of the understanding is to unite its

representations with strict logical necessity.

To satisfy the imagination, a discourse must have a material part, a

body; and these are formed by the perceptions, from which the

understanding separates distinct features or conceptions. For though we

may attempt to obtain the highest pitch of abstraction, something

sensuous always lies at the ground of the thought. But imagination

strives to pass unfettered and lawless from one conception to another

conception, and seeks not to be bound by any other connection than that

of time. So when the perceptions that constitute the bodily part of a

discourse have no concatenation as things, when they appear rather to

stand apart as independent limbs and separate unities, when they betray

the utter disorder of a sportive imagination, obedient to itself alone,

then the clothing has aesthetic freedom and the wants of the fancy are

satisfied. A mode of presentation such as this might be styled an

organic product, in which not only the whole lives, but also each part

has its individual life. A merely scientific presentation is a

mechanical work, when the parts, lifeless in themselves, impart by their

connection an artificial life to the whole.

On the other hand, a discourse, in order to satisfy the understanding and

to produce knowledge, must have a spiritual part, it must have

significance, and it receives this through the conceptions, by means of

which those perceptions are referred to one another and united into a

whole. The problem of satisfying the understanding by conformity with

law, while the imagination is flattered by being set free from

restrictions, is solved thus: by obtaining the closest connection between

the conceptions forming the spiritual part of the discourse, while the

perceptions, corresponding to them and forming the sensuous part of the

discourse, appear to cohere merely through an arbitrary play of the

fancy.

If an inquiry be instituted into the magic influence of a beautiful

diction, it will always be found that it consists in this happy relation

between external freedom and internal necessity. The principal features

that contribute to this freedom of the imagination are the

individualizing of objects and the figurative or inexact expression of a

thing; the former employed to give force to its sensuousness, the latter

to produce it where it does not exist. When we express a species or kind

by an individual, and portray a conception in a single case, we remove

from fancy the chains which the understanding has placed upon her and

give her the power to act as a creator. Always grasping at completely

determinate images, the imagination obtains and exercises the right to

complete according to her wish the image afforded to her, to animate it,

to fashion it, to follow it in all the associations and transformations

of which it is capable. She may forget for a moment her subordinate

position, and act as an independent power, only self-directing, because

the strictness of the inner concatenation has sufficiently guarded

against her breaking loose from the control of the understanding. An

inexact or figurative expression adds to the liberty, by associating

ideas which in their nature differ essentially from one another, but

which unite in subordination to the higher idea. The imagination adheres

to the concrete object, the understanding to this higher idea, and thus

the former finds movement and variety even where the other verifies a

most perfect continuity. The conceptions are developed according to the

law of necessity, but they pass before the imagination according to the

law of liberty.

Thought remains the same; the medium that represents it is the only thing

that changes. It is thus that an eloquent writer knows how to extract

the most splendid order from the very centre of anarchy, and that he

succeeds in erecting a solid structure on a constantly moving ground, on

the very torrent of imagination.

If we compare together scientific statement or address, popular address,

and fine language, it is seen directly that all three express the idea

with an equal faithfulness as regards the matter, and consequently that

all three help us to acquire knowledge, but that as regards the mode and

degree of this knowledge a very marked difference exists between them.

The writer who uses the language of the beautiful rather represents the

matter of which he treats as possible and desirable than indulges in

attempts to convince us of its reality, and still less of its necessity.

His thought does in fact only present itself as an arbitrary creation of

the imagination, which is never qualified, in itself, to guarantee the

reality of what it represents. No doubt the popular writer leads us to

believe that the matter really is as he describes it, but does not

require anything more firm; for, though he may make the truth of a

proposition credible to our feelings, he does not make it absolutely

certain. Now, feeling may always teach us what is, but not what must be.

The philosophical writer raises this belief to a conviction, for he

proves by undeniable reasons that the matter is necessarily so.

Starting from the principle that we have just established, it will not be

difficult to assign its proper part and sphere to each of the three forms

of diction. Generally it may be laid down as a rule that preference

ought to be given to the scientific style whenever the chief

consideration is not only the result, but also the proofs. But when the

result merely is of the most essential importance the advantage must be

given to popular elocution and fine language. But it may be asked in

what cases ought popular elocution to rise to a fine, a noble style?

This depends on the degree of interest in the reader, or which you wish

to excite in his mind.

The purely scientific statement may incline either to popular discourse

or to philosophic language, and according to this bias it places us more

or less in possession of some branch of knowledge. All that popular

elocution does is to lend us this knowledge for a momentary pleasure or

enjoyment. The first, if I may be allowed the comparison, gives us a

tree with its roots, though with the condition that we wait patiently for

it to blossom and bear fruit. The other, or fine diction, is satisfied

with gathering its flowers and fruits, but the tree that bore them does

not become our property, and when once the flowers are faded and the

fruit is consumed our riches depart. It would therefore be equally

unreasonable to give only the flower and fruit to a man who wishes the

whole tree to be transplanted into his garden, and to offer the whole

tree with its fruit in the germ to a man who only looks for the ripe

fruit. The application of the comparison is self-evident, and I now only

remark that a fine ornate style is as little suited to the professor's

chair as the scholastic style to a drawing-room, the pulpit, or the bar.

The student accumulates in view of an ulterior end and for a future use;

accordingly the professor ought to endeavor to transmit the full and

entire property of the knowledge that he communicates to him. Now,

nothing belongs to us as our own but what has been communicated to the

understanding. The orator, on the other hand, has in view an immediate

end, and his voice must correspond with an immediate want of the public.

His interest is to make his knowledge practically available as soon as

possible; and the surest way is to hand it over to the senses, and to

prepare it for the use of sensation. The professor, who only admits

hearers on certain conditions, and who is entitled to suppose in his

hearers the dispositions of mind in which a man ought to be to receive

the truth, has only in view in his lecture the object of which he is

treating; while the orator, who cannot make any conditions with his

audience, and who needs above everything sympathy, to secure it on his

side, must regulate his action and treatment according to the subjects on

which he turns his discourse. The hearers of the professor have already

attended his lectures, and will attend them again; they only want

fragments that will form a whole after having been linked to the

preceding lectures. The audience of the orator is continually renewed;

it comes unprepared, and perhaps will not return; accordingly in every

address the orator must finish what he wishes to do; each of his

harangues must form a whole and contain expressly and entirely his

conclusion.

It is not therefore surprising that a dogmatic composition or address,

however solid, should not have any success either in conversation or in

the pulpit, nor that a fine diction, whatever wit it may contain, should

not bear fruit in a professor's chair. It is not surprising that the

fashionable world should not read writings that stand out in relief in

the scientific world, and that the scholar and the man of science are

ignorant of works belonging to the school of worldly people that are

devoured greedily by all lovers of the beautiful. Each of these works

may be entitled to admiration in the circle to which it belongs; and more

than this, both, fundamentally, may be quite of equal value; but it would

be requiring an impossibility to expect that the work which demands all

the application of the thinker should at the same time offer an easy

recreation to the man who is only a fine wit.

For the same reason I consider that it is hurtful to choose for the

instruction of youth books in which scientific matters are clothed in an

attractive style. I do not speak here of those in which the substance is

sacrificed to the form, but of certain writings really excellent, which

are sufficiently well digested to stand the strictest examination, but

which do not offer their proofs by their very form. No doubt books of

this kind attain their end, they are read; but this is always at the cost

of a more important end, the end for which they ought to be read. In

this sort of reading the understanding is never exercised save in as far

as it agrees with the fancy; it does not learn to distinguish the form

from the substance, nor to act alone as pure understanding. And yet the

exercise of the pure understanding is in itself an essential and capital

point in the instruction of youth; and very often the exercise itself of

thought is much more important than the object on which it is exercised.

If you wish for a matter to be done seriously, be very careful not to

announce it as a diversion. It is preferable, on the contrary, to secure

attention and effort by the very form that is employed, and to use a kind

of violence to draw minds over from the passive to an active state. The

professor ought never to hide from his pupil the exact regularity of the

method; he ought rather to fix his attention on it, and if possible to

make him desire this strictness. The student ought to learn to pursue an

end, and in the interest of that end to put up with a difficult process.

He ought early to aspire to that loftier satisfaction which is the reward

of exertion. In a scientific lecture the senses are altogether set

aside; in an aesthetic address it is wished to interest them. What is

the result? A writing or conversation of the aesthetic class is devoured

with interest; but questions are put as to its conclusions; the hearer is

scarcely able to give an answer. And this is quite natural, as here the

conceptions reach the mind only in entire masses, and the understanding

only knows what it analyzes. The mind during a lecture of this kind is

more passive than active, and the intellect only possesses what it has

produced by its own activity.

However, all this applies only to the vulgarly beautiful, and to a vulgar

fashion of perceiving beauty. True beauty reposes on the strictest

limitation, on the most exact definition, on the highest and most

intimate necessity. Only this limitation ought rather to let itself be

sought for than be imposed violently. It requires the most perfect

conformity to law, but this must appear quite natural. A product that

unites these conditions will fully satisfy the understanding as soon as

study is made of it. But exactly because this result is really

beautiful, its conformity is not expressed; it does not take the

understanding apart to address it exclusively; it is a harmonious unity

which addresses the entire man--all his faculties together; it is nature

speaking to nature.

A vulgar criticism may perhaps find it empty, paltry, and too little

determined. He who has no other knowledge than that of distinguishing,

and no other sense than that for the particular, is actually pained by

what is precisely the triumph of art, this harmonious unity where the

parts are blended in a pure entirety. No doubt it is necessary, in a

philosophical discourse, that the understanding, as a faculty of

analysis, find what will satisfy it; it must obtain single concrete

results; this is the essential that must not by any means be lost sight

of. But if the writer, while giving all possible precision to the

substance of his conceptions, has taken the necessary measures to enable

the understanding, as soon as it will take the trouble, to find of

necessity these truths, I do not see that he is a less good writer

because he has approached more to the highest perfection. Nature always

acts as a harmonious unity, and when she loses this in her efforts after

abstraction, nothing appears more urgent to her than to re-establish it,

and the writer we are speaking of is not less commendable if he obeys

nature by attaching to the understanding what had been separated by

abstraction, and when, by appealing at the same time to the sensuous and

to the spiritual faculties, he addresses altogether the entire man. No

doubt the vulgar critic will give very scant thanks to this writer for

having given him a double task. For vulgar criticism has not the feeling

for this harmony, it only runs after details, and even in the Basilica of

St. Peter would exclusively attend to the pillars on which the ethereal

edifice reposes. The fact is that this critic must begin by translating

it to understand it--in the same way that the pure understanding, left to

itself, if it meets beauty and harmony, either in nature or in art, must

begin by transferring them into its own language--and by decomposing it,

by doing in fact what the pupil does who spells before reading. But it

is not from the narrow mind of his readers that the writer who expresses

his conceptions in the language of the beautiful receives his laws. The

ideal which he carries in himself is the goal at which he aims without

troubling himself as to who follows and who remains behind. Many will

stay behind; for if it be a rare thing to find readers simply capable of

thinking, it is infinitely more rare to meet any who can think with

imagination. Thus our writer, by the force of circumstances, will fall

out, on the one hand, with those who have only intuitive ideas and

feelings, for he imposes on them a painful task by forcing them to think;

and, on the other hand, he aggravates those who only know how to think,

for he asks of them what is absolutely impossible--to give a living,

animated form to conception. But as both only represent true humanity

very imperfectly--that normal humanity which requires the absolute

harmony of these two operations--their contradictory objections have no

weight, and if their judgments prove anything, it is rather that the

author has succeeded in attaining his end. The abstract thinker finds

that the substance of the work is solidly thought; the reader of

intuitive ideas finds his style lively and animated; both consequently

find and approve in him what they are able to understand, and that alone

is wanting which exceeds their capacity.

But precisely for this very reason a writer of this class is not adapted

to make known to an ignorant reader the object of what he treats, or, in

the most proper sense of the word, to teach. Happily also, he is not

required for that, for means will not be wanting for the teaching of

scholars. The professor in the strictest acceptation is obliged to bind

himself to the needs of his scholars; the first thing he has to

presuppose is the ignorance of those who listen to him; the other, on the

other hand, demands a certain maturity and culture in his reader or

audience. Nor is his office confined to impart to them dead ideas; he

grasps the living object with a living energy, and seizes at once on the

entire man--his understanding, his heart, and his will.

We have found that it is dangerous for the soundness of knowledge to give

free scope to the exigencies of taste in teaching, properly so called.

But this does not mean by any means that the culture of this faculty in

the student is a premature thing. He must, on the contrary, be

encouraged to apply the knowledge that he has appropriated in the school

to the field of living development. When once the first point has been

observed, and the knowledge acquired, the other point, the exercise of

taste, can only have useful results. It is certain that it is necessary

to be quite the master of a truth to abandon without danger the form in

which it has been found; a great strength of understanding is required

not to lose sight of your object while giving free play to the

imagination. He who transmits his knowledge under a scholastic form

persuades me, I admit, that he has grasped these truths properly and that

he knows how to support them. But he who besides this is in a condition

to communicate them to me in a beautiful form not only proves that he is

adapted to promulgate them, he shows moreover that he has assimilated

them and that he is able to make their image pass into his productions

and into his acts. There is for the results of thought only one way by

which they can penetrate into the will and pass into life; that is, by

spontaneous imagination, only what in ourselves was already a living act

can become so out of us; and the same thing happens with the creations of

the mind as with those of organic nature, that the fruit issues only from

the flower. If we consider how many truths were living and active as

interior intuitions before philosophy showed their existence, and how

many truths most firmly secured by proofs often remain inactive on the

will and the feelings, it will be seen how important it is for practical

life to follow in this the indications of nature, and when we have

acquired a knowledge scientifically to bring it back again to the state

of a living intuition. It is the only way to enable those whose nature

has forbidden them to follow the artificial path of science to share in

the treasures of wisdom. The beautiful renders us here in relation with

knowledge what, in morals, it does in relation with conduct; it places

men in harmony on results, and on the substance of things, who would

never have agreed on the form and principles.

The other sex, by its very nature and fair destiny, cannot and ought not

to rival ours in scientific knowledge; but it can share truth with us by

the reproduction of things. Man agrees to have his taste offended,

provided compensation be given to his understanding by the increased

value of its possessions. But women do not forgive negligence in form,

whatever be the nature of the conception; and the inner structure of all

their being gives them the right to show a strict severity on this point.

The fair sex, even if it did not rule by beauty, would still be entitled

to its name because it is ruled by beauty, and makes all objects

presented to it appear before the tribunal of feeling, and all that does

not speak to feeling or belies it is lost in the opinion of women. No

doubt through this medium nothing can be made to reach the mind of woman

save the matter of truth, and not truth itself, which is inseparable from

its proofs. But happily woman only needs the matter of truth to reach

her highest perfection, and the few exceptions hitherto seen are not of a

nature to make us wish that the exception should become the rule. As,

therefore, nature has not only dispensed but cut off the other sex from

this task, man must give a double attention to it if he wishes to vie

with woman and be equal to her in what is of great interest in human

life. Consequently he will try to transfer all that he can from the

field of abstraction, where he is master, to that of imagination, of

feeling, where woman is at once a model and a judge. The mind of woman

being a ground that does not admit of durable cultivation, he will try to

make his own ground yield as many flowers and as much fruit as possible,

so as to renew as often as possible the quickly-fading produce on the

other ground, and to keep up a sort of artificial harvest where natural

harvests could not ripen. Taste corrects or hides the natural

differences of the two sexes. It nourishes and adorns the mind of woman

with the productions of that of man, and allows the fair sex to feel

without being previously fatigued by thought, and to enjoy pleasures

without having bought them with labors. Thus, save the restrictions I

have named, it is to the taste that is intrusted the care of form in

every statement by which knowledge is communicated, but under the express

condition that it will not encroach on the substance of things. Taste

must never forget that it carries out an order emanating elsewhere, and

that it is not its own affairs it is treating of. All its parts must be

limited to place our minds in a condition favorable to knowledge; over

all that concerns knowledge itself it has no right to any authority. For

it exceeds its mission, it betrays it, it disfigures the object that it

ought faithfully to transmit, it lays claim to authority out of its

proper province; if it tries to carry out there, too, its own law, which

is nothing but that of pleasing the imagination and making itself

agreeable to the intuitive faculties; if it applies this law not only to

the operation, but also to the matter itself; if it follows this rule not

only to arrange the materials, but also to choose them. When this is the

case the first consideration is not the things themselves, but the best

mode of presenting them so as to recommend them to the senses. The

logical sequence of conceptions of which only the strictness should have

been hidden from us is rejected as a disagreeable impediment. Perfection

is sacrificed to ornament, the truth of the parts to the beauty of the

whole, the inmost nature of things to the exterior impression. Now,

directly the substance is subordinated to form, properly speaking it

ceases to exist; the statement is empty, and instead of having extended

our knowledge we have only indulged in an amusing game.

The writers who have more wit than understanding and more taste than

science, are too often guilty of this deception; and readers more

accustomed to feel than to think are only too inclined to forgive them.

In general it is unsafe to give to the aesthetical sense all its culture

before having exercised the understanding as the pure thinking faculty,

and before having enriched the head with conceptions; for as taste always

looks at the carrying out and not at the basis of things, wherever it

becomes the only arbiter, there is an end of the essential difference

between things. Men become indifferent to reality, and they finish by

giving value to form and appearance only.

Hence arises that superficial and frivolous bel-esprit that we often see

hold sway in social conditions and in circles where men pride themselves,

and not unreasonably, on the finest culture. It is a fatal thing to

introduce a young man into assemblies where the Graces hold sway before

the Muses have dismissed him and owned his majority. Moreover, it can

hardly be prevented that what completes the external education of a young

man whose mind is ripe turns him who is not ripened by study into a fool.

I admit that to have a fund of conceptions, and not form, is only a half

possession. For the most splendid knowledge in a head incapable of

giving them form is like a treasure buried in the earth. But form

without substance is a shadow of riches, and all possible cleverness in

expression is of no use to him who has nothing to express.

Thus, to avoid the graces of education leading us in a wrong road, taste

must be confined to regulating the external form, while reason and

experience determine the substance and the essence of conceptions. If

the impression made on the senses is converted into a supreme criterion,

and if things are exclusively referred to sensation, man will never cease

to be in the service of matter; he will never clear a way for his

intelligence; in short, reason will lose in freedom in proportion as it

allows imagination to usurp undue influence.

The beautiful produces its effect by mere intuition; the truth demands

study. Accordingly, the man who among all his faculties has only

exercised the sense of the beautiful is satisfied even when study is

absolutely required, with a superficial view of things; and he fancies he

can make a mere play of wit of that which demands a serious effort. But

mere intuition cannot give any result. To produce something great it is

necessary to enter into the fundamental nature of things, to distinguish

them strictly, to associate them in different manners, and study them

with a steady attention. Even the artist and the poet, though both of

them labor to procure us only the pleasure of intuition, can only by most

laborious and engrossing study succeed in giving us a delightful

recreation by their works.

I believe this to be the test to distinguish the mere dilettante from the

artist of real genius. The seductive charm exercised by the sublime and

the beautiful, the fire which they kindle in the young imagination, the

apparent ease with which they place the senses under an illusion, have

often persuaded inexperienced minds to take in hand the palette or the

harp, and to transform into figures or to pour out in melody what they

felt living in their heart. Misty ideas circulate in their heads, like a

world in formation, and make them believe that they are inspired. They

take obscurity for depth, savage vehemence for strength, the undetermined

for the infinite, what has not senses for the super-sensuous. And how

they revel in these creations of their brain! But the judgment of the

connoisseur does not confirm this testimony of an excited self-love.

With his pitiless criticism he dissipates all the prestige of the

imagination and of its dreams, and carrying the torch before these

novices he leads them into the mysterious depths of science and life,

where, far from profane eyes, the source of all true beauty flows ever

towards him who is initiated. If now a true genius slumbers in the young

aspirant, no doubt his modesty will at first receive a shock; but soon

the consciousness of real talent will embolden him for the trial. If

nature has endowed him with gifts for plastic art, he will study the

structure of man with the scalpel of the anatomist; he will descend into

the lowest depths to be true in representing surfaces, and he will

question the whole race in order to be just to the individual. If he is

born to be a poet, he examines humanity in his own heart to understand

the infinite variety of scenes in which it acts on the vast theatre of

the world. He subjects imagination and its exuberant fruitfulness to the

discipline of taste, and charges the understanding to mark out in its

cool wisdom the banks that should confine the raging waters of

inspiration. He knows full well that the great is only formed of the

little--from the imperceptible. He piles up, grain by grain, the

materials of the wonderful structure, which, suddenly disclosed to our

eyes, produces a startling effect and turns our head. But if nature has

only intended him for a dilettante, difficulties damp his impotent zeal,

and one of two things happens: either he abandons, if he is modest, that

to which he was diverted by a mistaken notion of his vocation; or, if he

has no modesty, he brings back the ideal to the narrow limits of his

faculties, for want of being able to enlarge his faculties to the vast

proportions of the ideal. Thus the true genius of the artist will be

always recognized by this sign--that when most enthusiastic for the

whole, he preserves a coolness, a patience defying all obstacles, as

regards details. Moreover, in order not to do any injury to perfection,

he would rather renounce the enjoyment given by the completion. For the

simple amateur, it is the difficulty of means that disgusts him and turns

him from his aim; his dreams would be to have no more trouble in

producing than he had in conception and intuition.

I have spoken hitherto of the dangers to which we are exposed by an

exaggerated sensuousness and susceptibility to the beautiful in the form,

and from too extensive aesthetical requirements; and I have considered

these dangers in relation to the faculty of thinking and knowing. What,

then, will be the result when these pretensions of the aesthetical taste

bear on the will? It is one thing to be stopped in your scientific

progress by too great a love of the beautiful, another to see this

inclination become a cause of degeneracy in character itself, and make us

violate the law of duty. In matters of thought the caprices of "taste"

are no doubt an evil, and they must of necessity darken the intelligence;

but these same caprices applied to the maxims of the will become really

pernicious and infallibly deprave the heart. Yet this is the dangerous

extreme to which too refined an aesthetic culture brings us directly we

abandon ourselves exclusively to the feelings for the beautiful, and

directly we raise taste to the part of absolute lawgiver over our will.

The moral destination of man requires that the will should be completely

independent of all influence of sensuous instincts, and we know that

taste labors incessantly at making the link between reason and the senses

continually closer. Now this effort has certainly as its result the

ennobling of the appetites, and to make them more conformable with the

requirements of reason; but this very point may be a serious danger for

morality.

I proceed to explain my meaning. A very refined aesthetical education

accustoms the imagination to direct itself according to laws, even in its

free exercise, and leads the sensuous not to have any enjoyments without

the concurrence of reason; but it soon follows that reason, in its turn,

is required to be directed, even in the most serious operations of its

legislative power, according to the interests of imagination, and to give

no more orders to the will without the consent of the sensuous instincts.

The moral obligation of the will, which is, however, an absolute and

unconditional law, takes unperceived the character of a simple contract,

which only binds each of the contracting parties when the other fulfils

its engagement. The purely accidental agreement of duty with inclination

ends by being considered a necessary condition, and thus the principle of

all morality is quenched in its source.

How does the character become thus gradually depraved? The process may

be explained thus: So long as man is only a savage, and his instincts'

only bear on material things and a coarse egotism determines his actions,

sensuousness can only become a danger to morality by its blind strength,

and does not oppose reason except as a force. The voice of justice,

moderation, and humanity is stifled by the appetites, which make a

stronger appeal. Man is then terrible in his vengeance, because he is

terribly sensitive to insults. He robs, he kills, because his desires

are still too powerful for the feeble guidance of reason. He is towards

others like a wild beast, because the instinct of nature still rules him

after the fashion of animals.

But when to the savage state, to that of nature, succeeds civilization;

when taste ennobles the instincts, and holds out to them more worthy

objects taken from the moral order; when culture moderates the brutal

outbursts of the appetites and brings them back under the discipline of

the beautiful, it may happen that these same instincts, which were only

dangerous before by their blind power, coming to assume an air of dignity

and a certain assumed authority, may become more dangerous than before to

the morality of the character; and that, under the guise of innocence,

nobleness, and purity, they may exercise over the will a tyranny a

hundred times worse than the other.

The man of taste willingly escapes the gross thraldom of the appetites.

He submits to reason the instinct which impels him to pleasure, and he is

willing to take counsel from his spiritual and thinking nature for the

choice of the objects he ought to desire. Now, reason is very apt to

mistake a spiritualized instinct for one of its own instincts, and at

length to give up to it the guidance of the will, and this in proportion

as moral judgment and aesthetic judgment, the sense of the good and the

sense of the beautiful, meet in the same object and in the same decision.

So long as it remains possible for inclination and duty to meet in the

same object and in a common desire, this representation of the moral

sense by the aesthetic sense may not draw after it positively evil

consequences, though, if the matter be strictly considered, the morality

of particular actions does not gain by this agreement. But the

consequences will be quite different when sensuousness and reason have

each of them a different interest. If, for example, duty commands us to

perform an action that revolts our taste, or if taste feels itself drawn

towards an object which reason as a moral judge is obliged to condemn,

then, in fact, we suddenly encounter the necessity of distinguishing

between the requirements of the moral sense and those of the aesthetic

sense, which so long an agreement had almost confounded to such a degree

that they could not be distinguished. We must now determine their

reciprocal rights, and find which of them is the real master in our soul.

But such a long representation of the moral sense by the sense of the

beautiful has made us forget this master. When we have so long practised

this rule of obeying at once the suggestions of taste, and when we have

found the result always satisfactory, taste ends by assuming a kind of

appearance of right. As taste has shown itself irreproachable in the

vigilant watch it has kept over the will, we necessarily come to grant a

certain esteem to its decisions; and it is precisely to this esteem that

inclination, with captious logic, gives weight against the duties of

conscience.

Esteem is a feeling that can only be felt for law, and what corresponds

to it. Whatever is entitled to esteem lays claim to an unconditional

homage. The ennobled inclination which has succeeded in captivating our

esteem will, therefore, no longer be satisfied with being subordinate to

reason; it aspires to rank alongside it. It does not wish to be taken

for a faithless subject in revolt against his sovereign; it wishes to be

regarded as a queen; and, treating reason as its peer, to dictate, like

reason, laws to the conscience. Thus, if we listen to her, she would

weigh by right equally in the scale; and then have we not good reason to

fear that interest will decide?

Of all the inclinations that are decided from the feeling for the

beautiful and that are special to refined minds, none commends itself so

much to the moral sense as the ennobled instinct of love; none is so

fruitful in impressions which correspond to the true dignity of man. To

what an elevation does it raise human nature! and often what divine

sparks does it kindle in the common soul! It is a sacred fire that

consumes every egotistical inclination, and the very principles of

morality are scarcely a greater safeguard of the soul's chastity than

love is for the nobility of the heart. How often it happens while the

moral principles are still struggling that love prevails in their favor,

and hastens by its irresistible power the resolutions that duty alone

would have vainly demanded from weak human nature! Who, then, would

distrust an affection that protects so powerfully what is most excellent

in human nature, and which fights so victoriously against the moral foe

of all morality, egotism?

But do not follow this guide till you have secured a better. Suppose a

loved object be met that is unhappy, and unhappy because of you, and that

it depends only on you to make it happy by sacrificing a few moral

scruples. You may be disposed to say, "Shall I let this loved being

suffer for the pleasure of keeping our conscience pure? Is this

resistance required by this generous, devoted affection, always ready to

forget itself for its object? I grant it is going against conscience to

have recourse to this immoral means to solace the being we love; but can

we be said to love if in presence of this being and of its sorrow we

continue to think of ourselves? Are we not more taken up with ourselves

than with it, since we prefer to see it unhappy rather than consent to be

so ourselves by the reproaches of our conscience?" These are the

sophisms that the passion of love sets against conscience (whose voice

thwarts its interests), making its utterances despicable as suggestions

of selfishness, and representing our moral dignity as one of the

components of our happiness that we are free to alienate. Then, if the

morality of our character is not strongly backed by good principles, we

shall surrender, whatever may be the impetus of our exalted imagination,

to disgraceful acts; and we shall think that we gain a glorious victory

over our self-love, while we are only the despicable victims of this

instinct. A well-known French romance, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," gives

us a striking example of this delusion, by which love betrays a soul

otherwise pure and beautiful. The Presidente de Tourvel errs by

surprise, and seeks to calm her remorse by the idea that she has

sacrificed her virtue to her generosity.

Secondary and imperfect duties, as they are styled, are those that the

feeling for the beautiful takes most willingly under its patronage, and

which it allows to prevail on many occasions over perfect duties. As

they assign a much larger place to the arbitrary option of the subject,

and at the same time as they have the appearance of merit, which gives

them lustre, they commend themselves far more to the aesthetic taste than

perfect or necessary duties, which oblige us strictly and

unconditionally. How many people allow themselves to be unjust that they

may be generous! How many fail in their duties to society that they may

do good to an individual, and reciprocally! How many people forgive a

lie sooner than a rudeness, a crime against humanity rather than an

insult to honor! How many debase their bodies to hasten the perfection

of their minds, and degrade their character to adorn their understanding!

How many do not scruple to commit a crime when they have a laudable end

in view, pursue an ideal of political happiness through all the terrors

of anarchy, tread under foot existing laws to make way for better ones,

and do not scruple to devote the present generation to misery to secure

at this cost the happiness of future generations! The apparent

unselfishness of certain virtues gives them a varnish of purity, which

makes them rash enough to break and run counter to the moral law; and

many people are the dupes of this strange illusion, to rise higher than

morality and to endeavor to be more reasonable than reason.

The man of a refined taste is susceptible, in this respect, of a moral

corruption, from which the rude child of nature is preserved by his very

coarseness. In the latter, the opposite of the demands of sense and the

decrees of the moral law is so strongly marked and so manifest, and the

spiritual element has so small a share in his desires, that although the

appetites exercise a despotic sway over him, they cannot wrest his esteem

from him. Thus, when the savage, yielding to the superior attraction of

sense, gives way to the committal of an unjust action, he may yield to

temptation, but he will not hide from himself that he is committing a

fault, and he will do homage to reason even while he violates its

mandates. The child of civilization, on the contrary, the man of

refinement, will not admit that he commits a fault, and to soothe his

conscience he prefers to impose on it by a sophism. No doubt he wishes

to obey his appetite, but at the same time without falling in his own

esteem. How does he manage this? He begins by overthrowing the superior

authority that thwarts his inclination, and before transgressing the law

he calls in question the competence of the lawgiver. Could it be

expected that a corrupt will should so corrupt the intelligence? The

only dignity that an inclination can assume accrues to it from its

agreement with reason; yet we find that inclination, independent as well

as blind, aspires, at the very moment she enters into contest with

reason, to keep this dignity which she owes to reason alone. Nay,

inclination even aspires to use this dignity she owes to reason against

reason itself.

These are the dangers that threaten the morality of the character when

too intimate an association is attempted between sensuous instincts and

moral instincts, which can never perfectly agree in real life, but only

in the ideal. I admit that the sensuous risks nothing in this

association, because it possesses nothing except what it must give up

directly duty speaks and reason demands the sacrifice. But reason, as

the arbiter of the moral law, will run the more risk from this union if

it receives as a gift from inclination what it might enforce; for, under

the appearance of freedom, the feeling of obligation may be easily lost,

and what reason accepts as a favor may quite well be refused it when the

sensuous finds it painful to grant it. It is, therefore, infinitely

safer for the morality of the character to suspend, at least for a time,

this misrepresentation of the moral sense by the sense of the beautiful.

It is best of all that reason should command by itself without mediation,

and that it should show to the will its true master. The remark is,

therefore, quite justified, that true morality only knows itself in the

school of adversity, and that a continual prosperity becomes easily a

rock of offence to virtue. I mean here by prosperity the state of a man

who, to enjoy the goods of life, need not commit injustice, and who to

conform to justice need not renounce any of the goods of life. The man

who enjoys a continual prosperity never sees moral duty face to face,

because his inclinations, naturally regular and moderate, always

anticipate the mandate of reason, and because no temptation to violate

the law recalls to his mind the idea of law. Entirely guided by the

sense of the beautiful, which represents reason in the world of sense, he

will reach the tomb without having known by experience the dignity of his

destiny. On the other hand, the unfortunate man, if he be at the same

time a virtuous man, enjoys the sublime privilege of being in immediate

intercourse with the divine majesty of the moral law; and as his virtue

is not seconded by any inclination, he bears witness in this lower world,

and as a human being, of the freedom of pure spirits!

REFLECTIONS ON THE USE OF THE VULGAR AND LOW ELEMENTS IN WORKS OF ART.

I call vulgar (common) all that does not speak to the mind, of which all

the interest is addressed only to the senses. There are, no doubt, an

infinite number of things vulgar in themselves from their material and

subject. But as the vulgarity of the material can always be ennobled by

the treatment, in respect of art the only question is that relating to

the vulgarity in form. A vulgar mind will dishonor the most noble matter

by treating it in a common manner. A great and noble mind, on the

contrary, will ennoble even a common matter, and it will do so by

superadding to it something spiritual and discovering in it some aspect

in which this matter has greatness. Thus, for example, a vulgar

historian will relate to us the most insignificant actions of a hero with

a scrupulousness as great as that bestowed on his sublimest exploit, and

will dwell as lengthily on his pedigree, his costume, and his household

as on his projects and his enterprises. He will relate those of his

actions that have the most grandeur in such wise that no one will

perceive that character in them. On the contrary, a historian of genius,

himself endowed with nobleness of mind, will give even to the private

life and the least considerable actions of his hero an interest and a

value that will make them considerable. Thus, again, in the matter of

the plastic arts, the Dutch and Flemish painters have given proof of a

vulgar taste; the Italians, and still more the ancient Greeks, of a grand

and noble taste. The Greeks always went to the ideal; they rejected

every vulgar feature, and chose no common subject.

A portrait painter can represent his model in a common manner or with

grandeur; in a common manner if he reproduce the merely accidental

details with the same care as the essential features, if he neglect the

great to carry out the minutiae curiously. He does it grandly if he know

how to find out and place in relief what is most interesting, and

distinguish the accidental from the necessary; if he be satisfied with

indicating what is paltry, reserving all the finish of the execution for

what is great. And the only thing that is great is the expression of the

soul itself, manifesting itself by actions, gestures, or attitudes.

The poet treats his subject in a common manner when in the execution of

his theme he dwells on valueless facts and only skims rapidly over those

that are important. He treats his theme with grandeur when he associates

with it what is great. For example, Homer treated the shield of Achilles

grandly, though the making of a shield, looking merely at the matter, is

a very commonplace affair.

One degree below the common or the vulgar is the element of the base or

gross, which differs from the common in being not only something

negative, a simple lack of inspiration or nobleness, but something

positive, marking coarse feelings, bad morals, and contemptible manners.

Vulgarity only testifies that an advantage is wanting, whereof the

absence is a matter of regret; baseness indicates the want of a quality

which we are authorized to require in all. Thus, for example, revenge,

considered in itself, in whatever place or way it manifests itself, is

something vulgar, because it is the proof of a lack of generosity. But

there is, moreover, a base vengeance, when the man, to satisfy it,

employs means exposed to contempt. The base always implies something

gross, or reminds one of the mob, while the common can be found in a

well-born and well-bred man, who may think and act in a common manner if

he has only mediocre faculties. A man acts in a common manner when he is

only taken up with his own interest, and it is in this that he is in

opposition with the really noble man, who, when necessary, knows how to

forget himself to procure some enjoyment for others. But the same man

would act in a base manner if he consulted his interests at the cost of

his honor, and if in such a case he did not even take upon himself to

respect the laws of decency. Thus the common is only the contrary of the

noble; the base is the contrary both of the noble and the seemly. To

give yourself up, unresisting, to all your passions, to satisfy all your

impulses, without being checked even by the rules of propriety, still

less by those of morality, is to conduct yourself basely, and to betray

baseness of the soul.

The artist also may fall into a low style, not only by choosing ignoble

subjects, offensive to decency and good taste, but moreover by treating

them in a base manner. It is to treat a subject in a base manner if

those sides are made prominent which propriety directs us to conceal, or

if it is expressed in a manner that incidentally awakens low ideas. The

lives of the greater part of men can present particulars of a low kind,

but it is only a low imagination that will pick out these for

representation.

There are pictures describing sacred history in which the Apostles, the

Virgin, and even the Christ, are depicted in such wise that they might be

supposed to be taken from the dregs of the populace. This style of

execution always betrays a low taste, and might justly lead to the

inference that the artist himself thinks coarsely and like the mob.

No doubt there are cases where art itself may be allowed to produce base

images: for example, when the aim is to provoke laughter. A man of

polished manners may also sometimes, and without betraying a corrupt

taste, be amused by certain features when nature expresses herself

crudely but with truth, and he may enjoy the contrast between the manners

of polished society and those of the lower orders. A man of position

appearing intoxicated will always make a disagreeable impression on us;

but a drunken driver, sailor, or carter will only be a risible object.

Jests that would be insufferable in a man of education amuse us in the

mouth of the people. Of this kind are many of the scenes of

Aristophanes, who unhappily sometimes exceeds this limit, and becomes

absolutely condemnable. This is, moreover, the source of the pleasure we

take in parodies, when the feelings, the language, and the mode of action

of the common people are fictitiously lent to the same personages whom

the poet has treated with all possible dignity and decency. As soon as

the poet means only to jest, and seeks only to amuse, we can overlook

traits of a low kind, provided he never stirs up indignation or disgust.

He stirs up indignation when he places baseness where it is quite

unpardonable, that is in the case of men who are expected to show

fine moral sense. In attributing baseness to them he will either

outrage truth, for we prefer to think him a liar than to believe that

well-trained men can act in a base manner; or his personages will offend

our moral sense, and, what is worse, excite our imagination. I do not

mean by this to condemn farces; a farce implies between the poet and the

spectator a tacit consent that no truth is to be expected in the piece.

In a farce we exempt the poet from all faithfulness in his pictures; he

has a kind of privilege to tell us untruths. Here, in fact, all the

comic consists exactly in its contrast with the truth, and so it cannot

possibly be true.

This is not all: even in the serious and the tragic there are certain

places where the low element can be brought into play. But in this case

the affair must pass into the terrible, and the momentary violation of

our good taste must be masked by a strong impression, which brings our

passion into play. In other words, the low impression must be absorbed

by a superior tragic impression. Theft, for example, is a thing

absolutely base, and whatever arguments our heart may suggest to excuse

the thief, whatever the pressure of circumstances that led him to the

theft, it is always an indelible brand stamped upon him, and,

aesthetically speaking, he will always remain a base object. On this

point taste is even less forgiving than morality, and its tribunal is

more severe; because an aesthetical object is responsible even for the

accessory ideas that are awakened in us by such an object, while moral

judgment eliminates all that is merely accidental. According to this

view a man who robs would always be an object to be rejected by the poet

who wishes to present serious pictures. But suppose this man is at the

same time a murderer, he is even more to be condemned than before by the

moral law. But in the aesthetic judgment he is raised one degree higher

and made better adapted to figure in a work of art. Continuing to judge

him from the aesthetic point of view, it may be added that he who abases

himself by a vile action can to a certain extent be raised by a crime,

and can be thus reinstated in our aesthetic estimation. This

contradiction between the moral judgment and the aesthetical judgment is

a fact entitled to attention and consideration. It may be explained in

different ways. First, I have already said that, as the aesthetic

judgment depends on the imagination, all the accessory ideas awakened in

us by an object and naturally associated with it, must themselves

influence this judgment. Now, if these accessory ideas are base, they

infallibly stamp this character on the principal object.

In the second place, what we look for in the aesthetic judgment is

strength; whilst in a judgment pronounced in the name of the moral sense

we consider lawfulness. The lack of strength is something contemptible,

and every action from which it may be inferred that the agent lacks

strength is, by that very fact, a contemptible action. Every cowardly

and underhand action is repugnant to us, because it is a proof of

impotence; and, on the contrary, a devilish wickedness can, aesthetically

speaking, flatter our taste, as soon as it marks strength. Now, a theft

testifies to a vile and grovelling mind: a murder has at least on its

side the appearance of strength; the interest we take in it aesthetically

is in proportion to the strength that is manifested in it.

A third reason is, because in presence of a deep and horrible crime we no

longer think of the quality but the awful consequences of the action.

The stronger emotion covers and stifles the weaker one. We do not look

back into the mind of the agent; we look onward into his destiny, we

think of the effects of his action. Now, directly we begin to tremble

all the delicacies of taste are reduced to silence. The principal

impression entirely fills our mind: the accessory and accidental ideas,

in which chiefly dwell all impressions of baseness, are effaced from it.

It is for this reason that the theft committed by young Ruhberg, in the

"Crime through Ambition," [a play of Iffland] far from displeasing on the

stage, is a real tragic effect. The poet with great skill has managed

the circumstances in such wise that we are carried away; we are left

almost breathless. The frightful misery of the family, and especially

the grief of the father, are objects that attract our attention, turn it

aside, from the person of the agent, towards the consequences of his act.

We are too much moved to tarry long in representing to our minds the

stamp of infamy with which the theft is marked. In a word, the base

element disappears in the terrible. It is singular that this theft,

really accomplished by young Ruhberg, inspires us with less repugnance

than, in another piece, the mere suspicion of a theft, a suspicion which

is actually without foundation. In the latter case it is a young officer

who is accused without grounds of having abstracted a silver spoon, which

is recovered later on. Thus the base element is reduced in this case to

a purely imaginary thing, a mere suspicion, and this suffices

nevertheless to do an irreparable injury, in our aesthetical

appreciation, to the hero of the piece, in spite of his innocence. This

is because a man who is supposed capable of a base action did not

apparently enjoy a very solid reputation for morality, for the laws of

propriety require that a man should be held to be a man of honor as long

as he does not show the opposite. If therefore anything contemptible is

imputed to him, it seems that by some part of his past conduct he has

given rise to a suspicion of this kind, and this does him injury, though

all the odious and the base in an undeserved suspicion are on the side of

him who accuses. A point that does still greater injury to the hero of

the piece of which I am speaking is the fact that he is an officer, and

the lover of a lady of condition brought up in a manner suitable to her

rank. With these two titles, that of thief makes quite a revolting

contrast, and it is impossible for us, when we see him near his lady, not

to think that perhaps at that very moment he had the silver spoon in his

pocket. Lastly, the most unfortunate part of the business is, that he

has no idea of the suspicion weighing over him, for if he had a knowledge

of it, in his character of officer, he would exact a sanguinary

reparation. In this case the consequences of the suspicion would change

to the terrible, and all that is base in the situation would disappear.

We must distinguish, moreover, between the baseness of feeling and that

which is connected with the mode of treatment and circumstance. The

former in all respects is below aesthetic dignity; the second in many

cases may perfectly agree with it. Slavery, for example, is abase thing;

but a servile mind in a free man is contemptible. The labors of the

slave, on the contrary, are not so when his feelings are not servile.

Far from this, a base condition, when joined to elevated feelings, can

become a source of the sublime. The master of Epictetus, who beat him,

acted basely, and the slave beaten by him showed a sublime soul. True

greatness, when it is met in a base condition, is only the more brilliant

and splendid on that account: and the artist must not fear to show us his

heroes even under a contemptible exterior as soon as he is sure of being

able to give them, when he wishes, the expression of moral dignity.

But what can be granted to the poet is not always allowed in the artist.

The poet only addresses the imagination; the painter addresses the senses

directly. It follows not only that the impression of the picture is more

lively than that of the poem, but also that the painter, if he employ

only his natural signs, cannot make the minds of his personages as

visible as the poet can with the arbitrary signs at his command: yet it

is only the sight of the mind that can reconcile us to certain exteriors.

When Homer causes his Ulysses to appear in the rags of a beggar

["Odyssey," book xiii. v. 397], we are at liberty to represent his image

to our mind more or less fully, and to dwell on it as long as we like.

But in no case will it be sufficiently vivid to excite our repugnance or

disgust. But if a painter, or even a tragedian, try to reproduce

faithfully the Ulysses of Homer, we turn away from the picture with

repugnance. It is because in this case the greater or less vividness of

the impression no longer depends on our will: we cannot help seeing what

the painter places under our eyes; and it is not easy for us to remove

the accessory repugnant ideas which the picture recalls to our mind.

DETACHED REFLECTIONS ON DIFFERENT QUESTIONS OF AESTHETICS.

All the properties by which an object can become aesthetic, can be

referred to four classes, which, as well according to their objective

differences as according to their different relation with the subject,

produce on our passive and active faculties pleasures unequal not only in

intensity but also in worth; classes which also are of an unequal use for

the end of the fine arts: they are the agreeable, the good, the sublime,

and the beautiful.

Of these four categories, the sublime and the beautiful only belong

properly to art. The agreeable is not worthy of art, and the good is at

least not its end; for the aim of art is to please, and the good, whether

we consider it in theory or in practice, neither can nor ought to serve

as a means of satisfying the wants of sensuousness. The agreeable only

satisfies the senses, and is distinguished thereby from the good, which

only pleases the reason. The agreeable only pleases by its matter, for

it is only matter that can affect the senses, and all that is form can

only please the reason. It is true that the beautiful only pleases

through the medium of the senses, by which it is distinguished from the

good; but it pleases reason, on account of its form, by which it is

essentially distinguished from the agreeable. It might be said that the

good pleases only by its form being in harmony with reason; the beautiful

by its form having some relation of resemblance with reason, and that the

agreeable absolutely does not please by its form. The good is perceived

by thought, the beautiful by intuition, and the agreeable only by the

senses. The first pleases by the conception, the second by the idea, and

the third by material sensation.

The distance between the good and the agreeable is that which strikes the

eyes the most. The good widens our understanding, because it procures

and supposes an idea of its object; the pleasure which it makes us

perceive rests on an objective foundation, even when this pleasure itself

is but a certain state in which we are situated. The, agreeable, on the

contrary, produces no notion of its object, and, indeed, reposes on no

objective foundation. It is agreeable only inasmuch as it is felt by the

subject, and the idea of it completely vanishes the moment an obstruction

is placed on the affectibility of the senses, or only when it is

modified. For a man who feels the cold the agreeable would be a warm

air; but this same man, in the heat of summer, would seek the shade and

coolness; but we must agree that in both cases he has judged well.

On the other hand, that which is objective is altogether independent of

us, and that which to-day appears to us true, useful, reasonable, ought

yet (if this judgment of to-day be admitted as just) to seem to us the

same twenty years hence. But our judgment of the agreeable changes as

soon as our state, with regard to its object, has changed. The agreeable

is therefore not a property of the object; it springs entirely from the

relations of such an object with our senses, for the constitution of our

senses is a necessary condition thereof.

The good, on the contrary, is good in itself, before being represented to

us, and before being felt. The property by which it pleases exists fully

in itself without being in want of our subject, although the pleasure

which we take in it rests on an aptitude for feeling that which is in us.

Thus we can say that the agreeable exists only because it is experienced,

and that the good, on the contrary, is experienced because it exists.

The distinction between the beautiful and the agreeable, great as it is,

moreover, strikes the eye less. The beautiful approaches the agreeable

in this--that it must always be proposed to the senses, inasmuch as it

pleases only as a phenomenon. It comes near to it again in as far as it

neither procures nor supposes any notion of its object. But, on the

other hand, it is widely separated from the agreeable, because it pleases

by the form under which it is produced, and not by the fact of the

material sensation. No doubt it only pleases the reasonable subject in

so far as it is also a sensuous subject; but also it pleases the sensuous

subject only inasmuch as it is at the same time a reasonable subject.

The beautiful is not only pleasing to the individual but to the whole

species; and although it draws its existence but from its relation with

creatures at the same time reasonable and sensuous, it is not less

independent of all empirical limitations of sensuousness, and it remains

identical even when the particular constitution of the individual is

modified. The beautiful has exactly in common with the good that by

which it differs from the agreeable, and it differs from the good exactly

in that in which it approximates to the agreeable.

By the good we must understand that in which reason recognizes a

conformity with her theoretical and practical laws. But the same object

can be perfectly conformable to the theoretical reason, and not be the

less in contradiction in the highest degree with the practical reason.

We can disapprove of the end of an enterprise, and yet admire the skill

of the means and their relation with the end in view. We can despise the

pleasures which the voluptuous man makes the end of his life, and

nevertheless praise the skill which he exhibits in the choice of his

means, and the logical result with which he carries out his principles.

That which pleases us only by its form is good, absolutely good, and

without any conditions, when its form is at the same time its matter.

The good is also an object of sensuousness, but not of an immediate

sensuousness, as the agreeable, nor moreover of a mixed sensuousness, as

the beautiful. It does not excite desire as the first, nor inclination

as the second. The simple idea of the good inspires only esteem.

The difference separating the agreeable, the good, and the beautiful

being thus established, it is evident that the same object can be ugly,

defective, even to be morally rejected, and nevertheless be agreeable and

pleasing to the senses; that an object can revolt the senses, and yet be

good, i.e., please the reason; that an object can from its inmost nature

revolt the moral senses, and yet please the imagination which

contemplates it, and still be beautiful. It is because each one of these

ideas interests different faculties, and interests differently.

But have we exhausted the classification of the aesthetic attributes?

No, there are objects at the same time ugly, revolting, and horrifying to

the senses, which do not please the understanding, and of no account to

the moral judgment, and these objects do not fail to please; certainly to

please to such a degree, that we would willingly sacrifice the pleasure

of these senses and that of the understanding to procure for us the

enjoyment of these objects. There is nothing more attractive in nature

than a beautiful landscape, illuminated by the purple light of evening.

The rich variety of the objects, the mellow outlines, the play of lights

infinitely varying the aspect, the light vapors which envelop distant

objects,--all combine in charming the senses; and add to it, to increase

our pleasure, the soft murmur of a cascade, the song of the nightingales,

an agreeable music. We give ourselves up to a soft sensation of repose,

and whilst our senses, touched by the harmony of the colors, the forms,

and the sounds, experience the agreeable in the highest, the mind is

rejoiced by the easy and rich flow of the ideas, the heart by the

sentiments which overflow in it like a torrent. All at once a storm

springs up, darkening the sky and all the landscape, surpassing and

silencing all other noises, and suddenly taking from us all our

pleasures. Black clouds encircle the horizon; the thunder falls with a

deafening noise. Flash succeeds flash. Our sight and hearing is

affected in the most revolting manner. The lightning only appears to

render to us more visible the horrors of the night: we see the electric

fluid strike, nay, we begin to fear lest it may strike us. Well, that

does not prevent us from believing that we have gained more than lost by

the change; I except, of course, those whom fear has bereft of all

liberty of judgment. We are, on the one hand, forcibly drawn towards

this terrible spectacle, which on the other wounds and repulses our

senses, and we pause before it with a feeling which we cannot properly

call a pleasure, but one which we often like much more than pleasure.

But still, the spectacle that nature then offers to us is in itself

rather destructive than good (at all events we in no way need to think of

the utility of a storm to take pleasure in this phenomenon), is in itself

rather ugly than beautiful, for the darkness, hiding from us all the

images which light affords, cannot be in itself a pleasant thing; and

those sudden crashes with which the thunder shakes the atmosphere, those

sudden flashes when the lightning rends the cloud--all is contrary to one

of the essential conditions of the beautiful, which carries with it

nothing abrupt, nothing violent. And moreover this phenomenon, if we

consider only our senses, is rather painful than agreeable, for the

nerves of our sight and those of our hearing are each in their turn

painfully strained, then not less violently relaxed, by the alternations

of light and darkness, of the explosion of the thunder, and silence. And

in spite of all these causes of displeasure, a storm is an attractive

phenomenon for whomsoever is not afraid of it.

Another example. In the midst of a green and smiling plain there rises a

naked and barren hillock, which hides from the sight a part of the view.

Each one would wish that this hillock were removed which disfigures the

beauty of all the landscape. Well, let us imagine this hillock rising,

rising still, without indeed changing at all its shape, and preserving,

although on a greater scale, the same proportions between its width and

height. To begin with, our impression of displeasure will but increase

with the hillock itself, which will the more strike the sight, and which

will be the more repulsive. But continue; raise it up twice as high as a

tower, and insensibly the displeasure will efface itself to make way for

quite another feeling. The hill has at last become a mountain, so high a

mountain that it is quite impossible for our eyes to take it in at one

look. There is an object more precocious than all this smiling plain

which surrounds it, and the impression that it makes on us is of such a

nature that we should regret to exchange it for any other impression,

however beautiful it might be. Now, suppose this mountain to be leaning,

and of such an inclination that we could expect it every minute to crash

down, the previous impression will be complicated with another

impression: terror will be joined to it: the object itself will be but

still more attractive. But suppose it were possible to prop up this

leaning mountain with another mountain, the terror would disappear, and

with it a good part of the pleasure we experienced. Suppose that there

were beside this mountain four or five other mountains, of which each one

was a fourth or a fifth part lower than the one which came immediately

after; the first impression with which the height of one mountain

inspired us will be notably weakened. Something somewhat analogous would

take place if the mountain itself were cut into ten or twelve terraces,

uniformly diminishing; or again if it were artificially decorated with

plantations. We have at first subjected one mountain to no other

operation than that of increasing its size, leaving it otherwise just as

it was, and without altering its form; and this simple circumstance has

sufficed to make an indifferent or even disagreeable object satisfying to

the eyes. By the second operation, this enlarged object has become at

the same time an object of terror; and the pleasure which we have found

in contemplating it has but been the greater. Finally, by the last

operation which we have made, we have diminished the terror which its

sight occasioned, and the pleasure has diminished as much. We have

diminished subjectively the idea of its height, whether by dividing the

attention of the spectator between several objects, or in giving to the

eyes, by means of these smaller mountains, placed near to the large one,

a measure by which to master the height of the mountain all the more

easily. The great and the terrible can therefore be of themselves in

certain cases a source of aesthetic pleasure.

There is not in the Greek mythology a more terrible, and at the same time

more hideous, picture than the Furies, or Erinyes, quitting the infernal

regions to throw themselves in the pursuit of a criminal. Their faces

frightfully contracted and grimacing, their fleshless bodies, their heads

covered with serpents in the place of hair--revolt our senses as much as

they offend our taste. However, when these monsters are represented to

us in the pursuit of Orestes, the murderer of his mother, when they are

shown to us brandishing the torches in their hands, and chasing their

prey, without peace or truce, from country to country, until at last, the

anger of justice being appeased, they engulf themselves in the abyss of

the infernal regions; then we pause before the picture with a horror

mixed with pleasure. But not only the remorse of a criminal which is

personified by the Furies, even his unrighteous acts nay, the real

perpetration of a crime, are able to please us in a work of art. Medea,

in the Greek tragedy; Clytemnestra, who takes the life of her husband;

Orestes, who kills his mother, fill our soul with horror and with

pleasure. Even in real life, indifferent and even repulsive or frightful

objects begin to interest us the moment that they approach the monstrous

or the terrible. An altogether vulgar and insignificant man will begin

to please us the moment that a violent passion, which indeed in no way

upraises his personal value, makes him an object of fear and terror, in

the same way that a vulgar, meaningless object becomes to us the source

of aesthetic pleasure the instant we have enlarged it to the point where

it threatens to overstep our comprehension. An ugly man is made still

more ugly by passion, and nevertheless it is in bursts of this passion,

provided that it turns to the terrible and not to the ridiculous, that

this man will be to us of the most interest. This remark extends even to

animals. An ox at the plow, a horse before a carriage, a dog, are common

objects; but excite this bull to the combat, enrage this horse who is so

peaceable, or represent to yourself this dog a prey to madness; instantly

these animals are raised to the rank of aesthetic objects, and we begin

to regard them with a feeling which borders on pleasure and esteem. The

inclination to the pathetic--an inclination common to all men--the

strength of the sympathetic sentiment--this force which in mature makes

us wish to see suffering, terror, dismay, which has so many attractions

for us in art, which makes us hurry to the theatre, which makes us take

so much pleasure in the picturing of great misfortune,--all this bears

testimony to a fourth source of aesthetic pleasure, which neither the

agreeable, nor the good, nor the beautiful are in a state to produce.

All the examples that I have alleged up to the present have this in

common--that the feeling they excite in us rests on something objective.

In all these phenomena we receive the idea of something "which oversteps,

or which threatens to overstep, the power of comprehension of our senses,

or their power of resistance"; but not, however, going so far as to

paralyze these two powers, or so far as to render us incapable of

striving, either to know the object, or to resist the impression it makes

on us. There is in the phenomena a complexity which we cannot retrace to

unity without driving the intuitive faculty to its furthest limits.

We have the idea of a force in comparison with which our own vanishes,

and which we are nevertheless compelled to compare with our own. Either

it is an object which at the same time presents and hides itself from our

faculty of intuition, and which urges us to strive to represent it to

ourselves, without leaving room to hope that this aspiration will be

satisfied; or else it is an object which appears to upraise itself as an

enemy, even against our existence--which provokes us, so to say, to

combat, and makes us anxious as to the issue. In all the alleged

examples there is visible in the same way the same action on the faculty

of feeling. All throw our souls into an anxious agitation and strain its

springs. A certain gravity which can even raise itself to a solemn

rejoicing takes possession of our soul, and whilst our organs betray

evident signs of internal anxiety, our mind falls back on itself by

reflection, and appears to find a support in a higher consciousness of

its independent strength and dignity. This consciousness of ourselves

must always dominate in order that the great and the horrible may have

for us an aesthetic value. It is because the soul before such sights as

these feels itself inspired and lifted above itself that they are

designated under the name of sublime, although the things themselves are

objectively in no way sublime; and consequently it would be more just to

say that they are elevating than to call them in themselves elevated or

sublime.

For an object to be called sublime it must be in opposition with our

sensuousness. In general it is possible to conceive but two different

relations between the objects and our sensuousness, and consequently

there ought to be two kinds of resistance. They ought either to be

considered as objects from which we wish to draw a knowledge, or else

they should be regarded as a force with which we compare our own.

According to this division there are two kinds of the sublime, the

sublime of knowledge and the sublime of force. Moreover, the sensuous

faculties contribute to knowledge only in grasping a given matter, and

putting one by the other its complexity in time and in space.

As to dissecting this complex property and assorting it, it is the

business of the understanding and not of the imagination. It is for the

understanding alone that the diversity exists: for the imagination

(considered simply as a sensuous faculty) there is but an uniformity, and

consequently it is but the number of the uniform things (the quantity and

not the quality) which can give origin to any difference between the

sensuous perception of phenomena. Thus, in order that the faculty of

picturing things sensuously maybe reduced to impotence before an object,

necessarily it is imperative that this object exceeds in its quantity the

capacity of our imagination.

ON SIMPLE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY.

There are moments in life when nature inspires us with a sort of love and

respectful emotion, not because she is pleasing to our senses, or because

she satisfies our mind or our taste (it is often the very opposite that

happens), but merely because she is nature. This feeling is often

elicited when nature is considered in her plants, in her mineral kingdom,

in rural districts; also in the case of human nature, in the case of

children, and in the manners of country people and of the primitive

races. Every man of refined feeling, provided he has a soul, experiences

this feeling when he walks out under the open sky, when he lives in the

country, or when he stops to contemplate the monuments of early ages; in

short, when escaping from factitious situations and relations, he finds

himself suddenly face to face with nature. This interest, which is often

exalted in us so as to become a want, is the explanation of many of our

fancies for flowers and for animals, our preference for gardens laid out

in the natural style, our love of walks, of the country and those who

live there, of a great number of objects proceeding from a remote

antiquity, etc. It is taken for granted that no affectation exists in

the matter, and moreover that no accidental interest comes into play.

But this sort of interest which we take in nature is only possible under

two conditions. First the object that inspires us with this feeling must

be really nature, or something we take for nature; secondly this object

must be in the full sense of the word simple, that is, presenting the

entire contrast of nature with art, all the advantage remaining on the

side of nature. Directly this second condition is united to the first,

but no sooner, nature assumes the character of simplicity.

Considered thus, nature is for us nothing but existence in all its

freedom; it is the constitution of things taken in themselves; it is

existence itself according to its proper and immutable laws.

It is strictly necessary that we should have this idea of nature to take

an interest in phenomena of this kind. If we conceive an artificial

flower so perfectly imitated that it has all the appearance of nature and

would produce the most complete illusion, or if we imagine the imitation

of simplicity carried out to the extremest degree, the instant we

discover it is only an imitation, the feeling of which I have been

speaking is completely destroyed. It is, therefore, quite evident that

this kind of satisfaction which nature causes us to feel is not a

satisfaction of the aesthetical taste, but a satisfaction of the moral

sense; for it is produced by means of a conception and not immediately by

the single fact of intuition: accordingly it is by no means determined by

the different degrees of beauty in forms. For, after all, is there

anything so specially charming in a flower of common appearance, in a

spring, a moss-covered stone, the warbling of birds, or the buzzing of

bees, etc.? What is that can give these objects a claim to our love? It

is not these objects in themselves; it is an idea represented by them

that we love in them. We love in them life and its latent action, the

effects peacefully produced by beings of themselves, existence under its

proper laws, the inmost necessity of things, the eternal unity of their

nature.

These objects which captivate us are what we were, what we must be again

some day. We were nature as they are; and culture, following the way of

reason and of liberty, must bring us back to nature. Accordingly, these

objects are an image of our infancy irrevocably past--of our infancy

which will remain eternally very dear to us, and thus they infuse a

certain melancholy into us; they are also the image of our highest

perfection in the ideal world, whence they excite a sublime emotion in

us.

But the perfection of these objects is not a merit that belongs to them,

because it is not the effect of their free choice. Accordingly they

procure quite a peculiar pleasure for us, by being our models without

having anything humiliating for us. It is like a constant manifestation

of the divinity surrounding us, which refreshes without dazzling us. The

very feature that constitutes their character is precisely what is

lacking in ours to make it complete; and what distinguishes us from them

is precisely what they lack to be divine. We are free and they are

necessary; we change and they remain identical. Now it is only when

these two conditions are united, when the will submits freely to the laws

of necessity, and when, in the midst of all the changes of which the

imagination is susceptible, reason maintains its rule--it is only then

that the divine or the ideal is manifested. Thus we perceive eternally

in them that which we have not, but which we are continually forced to

strive after; that which we can never reach, but which we can hope to

approach by continual progress. And we perceive in ourselves an

advantage which they lack, but in which some of them--the beings deprived

of reason--cannot absolutely share, and in which the others, such as

children, can only one day have a share by following our way.

Accordingly, they procure us the most delicious feeling of our human

nature, as an idea, though in relation to each determinate state of our

nature they cannot fail to humble us.

As this interest in nature is based on an idea, it can only manifest

itself in a soul capable of ideas, that is, in a moral soul. For the

immense majority it is nothing more than pure affectation; and this taste

of sentimentality so widely diffused in our day, manifesting itself,

especially since the appearance of certain books, by sentimental

excursions and journeys, by sentimental gardens, and other fancies akin

to these--this taste by no means proves that true refinement of sense has

become general. Nevertheless, it is certain that nature will always

produce something of this impression, even on the most insensible hearts,

because all that is required for this is the moral disposition or

aptitude, which is common to all men. For all men, however contrary

their acts may be to simplicity and to the truth of nature, are brought

back to it in their ideas. This sensibility in connection with nature is

specially and most strongly manifested, in the greater part of persons,

in connection with those sorts of objects which are closely related to

us, and which, causing us to look closer into ourselves, show us more

clearly what in us departs from nature; for example, in connection with

children, or with nations in a state of infancy. It is an error to

suppose that it is only the idea of their weakness that, in certain

moments, makes us dwell with our eyes on children with so much emotion.

This may be true with those who, in the presence of a feeble being, are

used to feel nothing but their own superiority. But the feeling of which

I speak is only experienced in a very peculiar moral disposition, nor

must it be confounded with the feeling awakened in us by the joyous

activity of children. The feeling of which I speak is calculated rather

to humble than to flatter our self-love; and if it gives us the idea of

some advantage, this advantage is at all events not on our side.

We are moved in the presence of childhood, but it is not because from the

height of our strength and of our perfection we drop a look of pity on

it; it is, on the contrary, because from the depths of our impotence, of

which the feeling is inseparable from that of the real and determinate

state to which we have arrived, we raise our eyes to the child's

determinableness and pure innocence. The feeling we then experience is

too evidently mingled with sadness for us to mistake its source. In the

child, all is disposition and destination; in us, all is in the state of

a completed, finished thing, and the completion always remains infinitely

below the destination. It follows that the child is to us like the

representation of the ideal; not, indeed, of the ideal as we have

realized it, but such as our destination admitted; and, consequently, it

is not at all the idea of its indigence, of its hinderances, that makes

us experience emotion in the child's presence; it is, on the contrary,

the idea of its pure and free force, of the integrity, the infinity of

its being. This is the reason why, in the sight of every moral and

sensible man, the child will always be a sacred thing; I mean an object

which, by the grandeur of an idea, reduces to nothingness all grandeur

realized by experience; an object which, in spite of all it may lose in

the judgment of the understanding, regains largely the advantage before

the judgment of reason.