Now it is precisely this contradiction between the judgment of reason and

that of the understanding which produces in us this quite special

phenomenon, this mixed feeling, called forth in us by the sight of the

simple--I mean the simple in the manner of thinking. It is at once the

idea of a childlike simplicity and of a childish simplicity. By what it

has of childish simplicity it exposes a weak side to the understanding,

and provokes in us that smile by which we testify our superiority (an

entirely speculative superiority). But directly we have reason to think

that childish simplicity is at the same time a childlike simplicity--that

it is not consequently a want of intelligence, an infirmity in a

theoretical point of view, but a superior force (practically), a

heart-full of truth and innocence, which is its source, a heart that has

despised the help of art because it was conscious of its real and

internal greatness--directly this is understood, the understanding no

longer seeks to triumph. Then raillery, which was directed against

simpleness, makes way for the admiration inspired by noble simplicity.

We feel ourselves obliged to esteem this object, which at first made us

smile, and directing our eyes to ourselves, to feel ourselves unhappy in

not resembling it. Thus is produced that very special phenomenon of a

feeling in which good-natured raillery, respect, and sadness are

confounded. It is the condition of the simple that nature should triumph

over art, either unconsciously to the individual and against his

inclination, or with his full and entire cognizance. In the former case

it is simplicity as a surprise, and the impression resulting from it is

one of gayety; in the second case, it is simplicity of feeling, and we

are moved.

With regard to simplicity as a surprise, the person must be morally

capable of denying nature. In simplicity of feeling the person may be

morally incapable of this, but we must not think him physically

incapable, in order that it may make upon us the impression of the

simple. This is the reason why the acts and words of children only

produce the impression of simplicity upon us when we forget that they are

physically incapable of artifice, and in general only when we are

exclusively impressed by the contrast between their natural character and

what is artificial in us. Simplicity is a childlike ingenuousness which

is encountered when it is not expected; and it is for this very reason

that, taking the word in its strictest sense, simplicity could not be

attributed to childhood properly speaking.

But in both cases, in simplicity as a surprise and simplicity as a

feeling, nature must always have the upper hand, and art succumb to her.

Until we have established this distinction we can only form an incomplete

idea of simplicity. The affections are also something natural, and the

rules of decency are artificial; yet the triumph of the affections over

decency is anything but simple. But when affection triumphs over

artifice, over false decency, over dissimulation, we shall have no

difficulty in applying the word simple to this. Nature must therefore

triumph over art, not by its blind and brutal force as a dynamical power,

but in virtue of its form as a moral magnitude; in a word, not as a want,

but as an internal necessity. It must not be insufficiency, but the

inopportune character of the latter that gives nature her victory; for

insufficiency is only a want and a defect, and nothing that results from

a want or defect could produce esteem. No doubt in the simplicity

resulting from surprise, it is always the predominance of affection and a

want of reflection that causes us to appear natural. But this want and

this predominance do not by any means suffice to constitute simplicity;

they merely give occasion to nature to obey without let or hinderance her

moral constitution, that is, the law of harmony.

The simplicity resulting from surprise can only be encountered in man and

that only in as far as at the moment he ceases to be a pure and innocent

nature. This sort of simplicity implies a will that is not in harmony

with that which nature does of her own accord. A person simple after

this fashion, when recalled to himself, will be the first to be alarmed

at what he is; on the other hand, a person in whom simplicity is found as

a feeling, will only wonder at one thing, that is, at the way in which

men feel astonishment. As it is not the moral subject as a person, but

only his natural character set free by affection, that confesses the

truth, it follows from this that we shall not attribute this sincerity to

man as a merit, and that we shall be entitled to laugh at it, our

raillery not being held in check by any personal esteem for his

character. Nevertheless, as it is still the sincerity of nature which,

even in the simplicity caused by surprise, pierces suddenly through the

veil of dissimulation, a satisfaction of a superior order is mixed with

the mischievous joy we feel in having caught any one in the act. This is

because nature, opposed to affectation, and truth, opposed to deception,

must in every case inspire us with esteem. Thus we experience, even in

the presence of simplicity originating in surprise, a really moral

pleasure, though it be not in connection with a moral object.

I admit that in simplicity proceeding from surprise we always experience

a feeling of esteem for nature, because we must esteem truth; whereas in

the simplicity of feeling we esteem the person himself, enjoying in this

way not only a moral satisfaction, but also a satisfaction of which the

object is moral. In both cases nature is right, since she speaks the

truth; but in the second case not only is nature right, but there is also

an act that does honor to the person. In the first case the sincerity of

nature always puts the person to the blush, because it is involuntary; in

the second it is always a merit which must be placed to the credit of the

person, even when what he confesses is of a nature to cause a blush.

We attribute simplicity of feeling to a man, when, in the judgments he

pronounces on things, he passes, without seeing them, over all the

factitious and artificial sides of an object, to keep exclusively to

simple nature. We require of him all the judgments that can be formed of

things without departing from a sound nature; and we only hold him

entirely free in what presupposes a departure from nature in his mode of

thinking or feeling.

If a father relates to his son that such and such a person is dying of

hunger, and if the child goes and carries the purse of his father to this

unfortunate being, this is a simple action. It is in fact a healthy

nature that acts in the child; and in a world where healthy nature would

be the law, he would be perfectly right to act so. He only sees the

misery of his neighbor and the speediest means of relieving him. The

extension given to the right of property, in consequence of which part of

the human race might perish, is not based on mere nature. Thus the act

of this child puts to shame real society, and this is acknowledged by our

heart in the pleasure it experiences from this action.

If a good-hearted man, inexperienced in the ways of the world, confides

his secrets to another, who deceives him, but who is skilful in

disguising his perfidy, and if by his very sincerity he furnishes him

with the means of doing him injury, we find his conduct simple. We laugh

at him, yet we cannot avoid esteeming him, precisely on account of his

simplicity. This is because his trust in others proceeds from the

rectitude of his own heart; at all events, there is simplicity here only

as far as this is the case.

Simplicity in the mode of thinking cannot then ever be the act of a

depraved man; this quality only belongs to children, and to men who are

children in heart. It often happens to these in the midst of the

artificial relations of the great world to act or to think in a simple

manner. Being themselves of a truly good and humane nature, they forget

that they have to do with a depraved world; and they act, even in the

courts of kings, with an ingenuousness and an innocence that are only

found in the world of pastoral idyls.

Nor is it always such an easy matter to distinguish exactly childish

candor from childlike candor, for there are actions that are on the

skirts of both. Is a certain act foolishly simple, and must we laugh at

it? or is it nobly simple, and must we esteem the actors the higher on

that account? It is difficult to know which side to take in some cases.

A very remarkable example of this is found in the history of the

government of Pope Adrian VI., related by Mr. Schroeckh with all the

solidity and the spirit of practical truth which distinguish him.

Adrian, a Netherlander by birth, exerted the pontifical sway at one of

the most critical moments for the hierarchy--at a time when an

exasperated party laid bare without any scruple all the weak sides of the

Roman Church, while the opposite party was interested in the highest

degree in covering them over. I do not entertain the question how a man

of a truly simple character ought to act in such a case, if such a

character were placed in the papal chair. But, we ask, how could this

simplicity of feeling be compatible with the part of a pope? This

question gave indeed very little embarrassment to the predecessors and

successors of Adrian. They followed uniformly the system adopted once

for all by the court of Rome, not to make any concessions anywhere. But

Adrian had preserved the upright character of his nation and the

innocence of his previous condition. Issuing from the humble sphere of

literary men to rise to this eminent position, he did not belie at that

elevation the primitive simplicity of his character. He was moved by the

abuses of the Roman Church, and he was much too sincere to dissimulate

publicly what he confessed privately. It was in consequence of this

manner of thinking that, in his instruction to his legate in Germany, he

allowed himself to be drawn into avowals hitherto unheard of in a

sovereign pontiff, and diametrically contrary to the principles of that

court "We know well," he said, among other things, "that for many years

many abominable things have taken place in this holy chair; it is not

therefore astonishing that the evil has been propagated from the head to

the members, from the pope to the prelates. We have all gone astray from

the good road, and for a long time there is none of us, not one, who has

done anything good." Elsewhere he orders his legate to declare in his

name "that he, Adrian, cannot be blamed for what other popes have done

before him; that he himself, when he occupied a comparatively mediocre

position, had always condemned these excesses." It may easily be

conceived how such simplicity in a pope must have been received by the

Roman clergy. The smallest crime of which he was accused was that of

betraying the church and delivering it over to heretics. Now this

proceeding, supremely imprudent in a pope, would yet deserve our esteem

and admiration if we could believe it was real simplicity; that is, that

Adrian, without fear of consequences, had made such an avowal, moved by

his natural sincerity, and that he would have persisted in acting thus,

though he had understood all the drift of his clumsiness. Unhappily we

have some reason to believe that he did not consider his conduct as

altogether impolitic, and that in his candor he went so far as to flatter

himself that he had served very usefully the interests of his church by

his indulgence to his adversaries. He did not even imagine that he ought

to act thus in his quality as an honest man; he thought also as a pope to

be able to justify himself, and forgetting that the most artificial of

structures could only be supported by continuing to deny the truth, he

committed the unpardonable fault of having recourse to means of safety,

excellent perhaps, in a natural situation, but here applied to entirely

contrary circumstances. This necessarily modifies our judgment very

much, and although we cannot refuse our esteem for the honesty of heart

in which the act originates, this esteem is greatly lessened when we

reflect that nature on this occasion was too easily mistress of art, and

that the heart too easily overruled the head.

True genius is of necessity simple, or it is not genius. Simplicity

alone gives it this character, and it cannot belie in the moral order

what it is in the intellectual and aesthetical order. It does not know

those rules, the crutches of feebleness, those pedagogues which prop up

slippery spirits; it is only guided by nature and instinct, its guardian

angel; it walks with a firm, calm step across all the snares of false

taste, snares in which the man without genius, if he have not the

prudence to avoid them the moment he detects them, remains infallibly

imbedded. It is therefore the part only of genius to issue from the

known without ceasing to be at home, or to enlarge the circle of nature

without overstepping it. It does indeed sometimes happen that a great

genius oversteps it; but only because geniuses have their moments of

frenzy, when nature, their protector, abandons them, because the force of

example impels them, or because the corrupt taste of their age leads them

astray.

The most intricate problems must be solved by genius with simplicity,

without pretension, with ease; the egg of Christopher Columbus is the

emblem of all the discoveries of genius. It only justifies its character

as genius by triumphing through simplicity over all the complications of

art. It does not proceed according to known principles, but by feelings

and inspiration; the sallies of genius are the inspirations of a God (all

that healthy nature produces is divine); its feelings are laws for all

time, for all human generations.

This childlike character imprinted by genius on its works is also shown

by it in its private life and manners. It is modest, because nature is

always so; but it is not decent, because corruption alone is decent. It

is intelligent, because nature cannot lack intelligence; but it is not

cunning, because art only can be cunning. It is faithful to its

character and inclinations, but this is not so much because it has

principles as because nature, notwithstanding all its oscillations,

always returns to its equilibrium, and brings back the same wants. It is

modest and even timid, because genius remains always a secret to itself;

but it is not anxious, because it does not know the dangers of the road

in which it walks. We know little of the private life of the greatest

geniuses; but the little that we know of it--what tradition has

preserved, for example, of Sophocles, of Archimedes, of Hippocrates, and

in modern times of Ariosto, of Dante, of Tasso, of Raphael, of Albert

Duerer, of Cervantes, of Shakespeare, of Fielding, of Sterne, etc.--

confirms this assertion.

Nay, more; though this admission seems more difficult to support, even

the greatest philosophers and great commanders, if great by their genius,

have simplicity in their character. Among the ancients I need only name

Julius Caesar and Epaminondas; among the moderns Henry IV. in France,

Gustavus Adolphus in Sweden, and the Czar Peter the Great. The Duke of

Marlborough, Turenne, and Vendome all present this character. With

regard to the other sex, nature proposes to it simplicity of character as

the supreme perfection to which it should reach. Accordingly, the love

of pleasing in women strives after nothing so much as the appearance of

simplicity; a sufficient proof, if it were the only one, that the

greatest power of the sex reposes in this quality. But, as the

principles that prevail in the education of women are perpetually

struggling with this character, it is as difficult for them in the moral

order to reconcile this magnificent gift of nature with the advantages of

a good education as it is difficult for men to preserve them unchanged in

the intellectual order: and the woman who knows how to join a knowledge

of the world to this sort of simplicity in manners is as deserving of

respect as a scholar who joins to the strictness of scholastic rules the

freedom and originality of thought.

Simplicity in our mode of thinking brings with it of necessity simplicity

in our mode of expression, simplicity in terms as well as movement; and

it is in this that grace especially consists. Genius expresses its most

sublime and its deepest thoughts with this simple grace; they are the

divine oracles that issue from the lips of a child; while the scholastic

spirit, always anxious to avoid error, tortures all its words, all its

ideas, and makes them pass through the crucible of grammar and logic,

hard and rigid, in order to keep from vagueness, and uses few words in

order not to say too much, enervates and blunts thought in order not to

wound the reader who is not on his guard--genius gives to its expression,

with a single and happy stroke of the brush, a precise, firm, and yet

perfectly free form. In the case of grammar and logic, the sign and the

thing signified are always heterogenous and strangers to each other: with

genius, on the contrary, the expression gushes forth spontaneously from

the idea, the language and the thought are one and the same; so that even

though the expression thus gives it a body the spirit appears as if

disclosed in a nude state. This fashion of expression, when the sign

disappears entirely in the thing signified, when the tongue, so to speak,

leaves the thought it translates naked, whilst the other mode of

expression cannot represent thought without veiling it at the same time:

this is what is called originality and inspiration in style.

This freedom, this natural mode by which genius expresses itself in works

of intellect, is also the expression of the innocence of heart in the

intercourse of life. Every one knows that in the world men have departed

from simplicity, from the rigorous veracity of language, in the same

proportion as they have lost the simplicity of feelings. The guilty

conscience easily wounded, the imagination easily seduced, made an

anxious decency necessary. Without telling what is false, people often

speak differently from what they think; we are obliged to make

circumlocutions to say certain things, which however, can never afflict

any but a sickly self-love, and that have no danger except for a depraved

imagination. The ignorance of these laws of propriety (conventional

laws), coupled with a natural sincerity which despises all kinds of bias

and all appearance of falsity (sincerity I mean, not coarseness, for

coarseness dispenses with forms because it is hampered), gives rise in

the intercourse of life to a simplicity of expression that consists in

naming things by their proper name without circumlocution. This is done

because we do not venture to designate them as they are, or only to do so

by artificial means. The ordinary expressions of children are of this

kind. They make us smile because they are in opposition to received

manners; but men would always agree in the bottom of their hearts that

the child is right.

It is true that simplicity of feeling cannot properly be attributed to

the child any more than to the man,--that is, to a being not absolutely

subject to nature, though there is still no simplicity, except on the

condition that it is pure nature that acts through him. But by an effort

of the imagination, which likes to poetise things, we often carry over

these attributes of a rational being to beings destitute of reason. It

is thus that, on seeing an animal, a landscape, a building, and nature in

general, from opposition to what is arbitrary and fantastic in the

conceptions of man, we often attribute to them a simple character. But

that implies always that in our thought we attribute a will to these

things that have none, and that we are struck to see it directed

rigorously according to the laws of necessity. Discontented as we are

that we have ill employed our own moral freedom, and that we no longer

find moral harmony in our conduct, we are easily led to a certain

disposition of mind, in which we willingly address ourselves to a being

destitute of reason, as if it were a person. And we readily view it as

if it had really had to struggle against the temptation of acting

otherwise, and proceed to make a merit of its eternal uniformity, and to

envy its peaceable constancy. We are quite disposed to consider in those

moments reason, this prerogative of the human race, as a pernicious gift

and as an evil; we feel so vividly all that is imperfect in our conduct

that we forget to be just to our destiny and to our aptitudes.

We see, then, in nature, destitute of reason, only a sister who, more

fortunate than ourselves, has remained under the maternal roof, while in

the intoxication of our freedom we have fled from it to throw ourselves

into a stranger world. We regret this place of safety, we earnestly long

to come back to it as soon as we have begun to feel the bitter side of

civilization, and in the totally artificial life in which we are exiled

we hear in deep emotion the voice of our mother. While we were still

only children of nature we were happy, we were perfect: we have become

free, and we have lost both advantages. Hence a twofold and very unequal

longing for nature: the longing for happiness and the longing for the

perfection that prevails there. Man, as a sensuous being, deplores

sensibly the loss of the former of these goods; it is only the moral man

who can be afflicted at the loss of the other.

Therefore, let the man with a sensible heart and a loving nature question

himself closely. Is it your indolence that longs for its repose, or your

wounded moral sense that longs for its harmony? Ask yourself well, when,

disgusted with the artifices, offended by the abuses that you discover in

social life, you feel yourself attracted towards inanimate nature, in the

midst of solitude ask yourself what impels you to fly the world. Is it

the privation from which you suffer, its loads, its troubles? or is it

the moral anarchy, the caprice, the disorder that prevail there? Your

heart ought to plunge into these troubles with joy, and to find in them

the compensation in the liberty of which they are the consequence. You

can, I admit, propose as your aim, in a distant future, the calm and the

happiness of nature; but only that sort of happiness which is the reward

of your dignity. Thus, then, let there be no more complaint about the

loads of life, the inequality of conditions, or the hampering of social

relations, or the uncertainty of possession, ingratitude, oppression, and

persecution. You must submit to all these evils of civilization with a

free resignation; it is the natural condition of good, par excellence, of

the only good, and you ought to respect it under this head. In all these

evils you ought only to deplore what is morally evil in them, and you

must do so not with cowardly tears only. Rather watch to remain pure

yourself in the midst of these impurities, free amidst this slavery,

constant with yourself in the midst of these capricious changes, a

faithful observer of the law amidst this anarchy. Be not frightened at

the disorder that is without you, but at the disorder which is within;

aspire after unity, but seek it not in uniformity; aspire after repose,

but through equilibrium, and not by suspending the action of your

faculties. This nature which you envy in the being destitute of reason

deserves no esteem: it is not worth a wish. You have passed beyond it;

it ought to remain for ever behind you. The ladder that carried you

having given way under your foot, the only thing for you to do is to

seize again on the moral law freely, with a free consciousness, a free

will, or else to roll down, hopeless of safety, into a bottomless abyss.

But when you have consoled yourself for having lost the happiness of

nature, let its perfection be a model to your heart. If you can issue

from the circle in which art keeps you enclosed and find nature again, if

it shows itself to you in its greatness and in its calm, in its simple

beauty, in its childlike innocence and simplicity, oh! then pause before

its image, cultivate this feeling lovingly. It is worthy of you, and of

what is noblest in man. Let it no more come into your mind to change

with it; rather embrace it, absorb it into your being, and try to

associate the infinite advantage it has over you with that infinite

prerogative that is peculiar to you, and let the divine issue from this

sublime union. Let nature breathe around you like a lovely idyl, where

far from artifice and its wanderings you may always find yourself again,

where you may go to draw fresh courage, a new confidence, to resume your

course, and kindle again in your heart the flame of the ideal, so readily

extinguished amidst the tempests of life.

If we think of that beautiful nature which surrounded the ancient Greeks,

if we remember how intimately that people, under its blessed sky, could

live with that free nature; how their mode of imagining, and of feeling,

and their manners, approached far nearer than ours to the simplicity of

nature, how faithfully the works of their poets express this; we must

necessarily remark, as a strange fact, that so few traces are met among

them of that sentimental interest that we moderns ever take in the scenes

of nature and in natural characters. I admit that the Greeks are

superiorly exact and faithful in their descriptions of nature. They

reproduce their details with care, but we see that they take no more

interest in them and more heart in them than in describing a vestment, a

shield, armor, a piece of furniture, or any production of the mechanical

arts. In their love for the object it seems that they make no difference

between what exists in itself and what owes its existence to art, to the

human will. It seems that nature interests their minds and their

curiosity more than moral feeling. They do not attach themselves to it

with that depth of feeling, with that gentle melancholy, that

characterize the moderns. Nay, more, by personifying nature in its

particular phenomena, by deifying it, by representing its effects as the

acts of free being, they take from it that character of calm necessity

which is precisely what makes it so attractive to us. Their impatient

imagination only traverses nature to pass beyond it to the drama of human

life. It only takes pleasure in the spectacle of what is living and

free; it requires characters, acts, the accidents of fortune and of

manners; and whilst it happens with us, at least in certain moral

dispositions, to curse our prerogative, this free will, which exposes us

to so many combats with ourselves, to so many anxieties and errors, and

to wish to exchange it for the condition of beings destitute of reason,

for that fatal existence that no longer admits of any choice, but which

is so calm in its uniformity;--while we do this, the Greeks, on the

contrary, only have their imagination occupied in retracing human nature

in the inanimate world, and in giving to the will an influence where

blind necessity rules.

Whence can arise this difference between the spirit of the ancients and

the modern spirit? How comes it that, being, for all that relates to

nature, incomparably below the ancients, we are superior to them

precisely on this point, that we render a more complete homage to nature;

that we have a closer attachment to it; and that we are capable of

embracing even the inanimate world with the most ardent sensibility. It

is because nature, in our time, is no longer in man, and that we no

longer encounter it in its primitive truth, except out of humanity, in

the inanimate world. It is not because we are more conformable to

nature--quite the contrary; it is because in our social relations, in our

mode of existence, in our manners, we are in opposition with nature.

This is what leads us, when the instinct of truth and of simplicity is

awakened--this instinct which, like the moral aptitude from which it

proceeds, lives incorruptible and indelible in every human heart--to

procure for it in the physical world the satisfaction which there is no

hope of finding in the moral order. This is the reason why the feeling

that attaches us to nature is connected so closely with that which makes

us regret our infancy, forever flown, and our primitive innocence. Our

childhood is all that remains of nature in humanity, such as civilization

has made it, of untouched, unmutilated nature. It is, therefore, not

wonderful, when we meet out of us the impress of nature, that we are

always brought back to the idea of our childhood.

It was quite different with the Greeks in antiquity. Civilization with

them did not degenerate, nor was it carried to such an excess that it was

necessary to break with nature. The entire structure of their social

life reposed on feelings, and not on a factitious conception, on a work

of art. Their very theology was the inspiration of a simple spirit, the

fruit of a joyous imagination, and not, like the ecclesiastical dogmas of

modern nations, subtle combinations of the understanding. Since,

therefore, the Greeks had not lost sight of nature in humanity, they had

no reason, when meeting it out of man, to be surprised at their

discovery, and they would not feel very imperiously the need of objects

in which nature could be retraced. In accord with themselves, happy in

feeling themselves men, they would of necessity keep to humanity as to

what was greatest to them, and they must needs try to make all the rest

approach it; while we, who are not in accord with ourselves--we who are

discontented with the experience we have made of our humanity--have no

more pressing interest than to fly out of it and to remove from our sight

a so ill-fashioned form. The feeling of which we are treating here is,

therefore, not that which was known by the ancients; it approaches far

more nearly that which we ourselves experience for the ancients. The

ancients felt naturally; we, on our part, feel what is natural. It was

certainly a very different inspiration that filled the soul of Homer,

when he depicted his divine cowherd [Dios uphorbos, "Odyssey," xiv. 413,

etc.] giving hospitality to Ulysses, from that which agitated the soul of

the young Werther at the moment when he read the "Odyssey" [Werther, May

26, June 21, August 28, May 9, etc.] on issuing from an assembly in which

he had only found tedium. The feeling we experience for nature resembles

that of a sick man for health.

As soon as nature gradually vanishes from human life--that is, in

proportion as it ceases to be experienced as a subject (active and

passive)--we see it dawn and increase in the poetical world in the guise

of an idea and as an object. The people who have carried farthest the

want of nature, and at the same time the reflections on that matter, must

needs have been the people who at the same time were most struck with

this phenomenon of the simple, and gave it a name. If I am not mistaken,

this people was the French. But the feeling of the simple, and the

interest we take in it, must naturally go much farther back, and it dates

from the time when the moral sense and the aesthetical sense began to be

corrupt. This modification in the manner of feeling is exceedingly

striking in Euripides, for example, if compared with his predecessors,

especially Aeschylus; and yet Euripides was the favorite poet of his

time. The same revolution is perceptible in the ancient historians.

Horace, the poet of a cultivated and corrupt epoch, praises, under the

shady groves of Tibur, the calm and happiness of the country, and he

might be termed the true founder of this sentimental poetry, of which he

has remained the unsurpassed model. In Propertius, Virgil, and others,

we find also traces of this mode of feeling; less of it is found in Ovid,

who would have required for that more abundance of heart, and who in his

exile at Tomes sorrowfully regrets the happiness that Horace so readily

dispensed with in his villa at Tibur.

It is in the fundamental idea of poetry that the poet is everywhere the

guardian of nature. When he can no longer entirely fill this part, and

has already in himself suffered the deleterious influence of arbitrary

and factitious forms, or has had to struggle against this influence, he

presents himself as the witness of nature and as its avenger. The poet

will, therefore, be the expression of nature itself, or his part will be

to seek it, if men have lost sight of it. Hence arise two kinds of

poetry, which embrace and exhaust the entire field of poetry. All poets

--I mean those who are really so--will belong, according to the time when

they flourish, according to the accidental circumstances that have

influenced their education generally, and the different dispositions of

mind through which they pass, will belong, I say, to the order of the

sentimental poetry or to simple poetry.

The poet of a young world, simple and inspired, as also the poet who at

an epoch of artificial civilization approaches nearest to the primitive

bards, is austere and prudish, like the virginal Diana in her forests.

Wholly unconfiding, he hides himself from the heart that seeks him, from

the desire that wishes to embrace him. It is not rare for the dry truth

with which he treats his subject to resemble insensibility. The whole

object possesses him, and to reach his heart it does not suffice, as with

metals of little value, to stir up the surface; as with pure gold, you

must go down to the lowest depths. Like the Deity behind this universe,

the simple poet hides himself behind his work; he is himself his work,

and his work is himself. A man must be no longer worthy of the work, nor

understand it, or be tired of it, to be even anxious to learn who is its

author.

Such appears to us, for instance, Homer in antiquity, and Shakespeare

among moderns: two natures infinitely different and separated in time by

an abyss, but perfectly identical as to this trait of character. When,

at a very youthful age, I became first acquainted with Shakespeare, I was

displeased with his coldness, with his insensibility, which allows him to

jest even in the most pathetic moments, to disturb the impression of the

most harrowing scenes in "Hamlet," in "King Lear," and in "Macbeth,"

etc., by mixing with them the buffooneries of a madman. I was revolted

by his insensibility, which allowed him to pause sometimes at places

where my sensibility would bid me hasten and bear me along, and which

sometimes carried him away with indifference when my heart would be so

happy to pause. Though I was accustomed, by the practice of modern

poets, to seek at once the poet in his works, to meet his heart, to

reflect with him in his theme--in a word, to see the object in the

subject--I could not bear that the poet could in Shakespeare never be

seized, that he would never give me an account of himself. For some

years Shakespeare had been the object of my study and of all my respect

before I had learned to love his personality. I was not yet able to

comprehend nature at first hand. All that my eyes could bear was its

image only, reflected by the understanding and arranged by rules: and on

this score the sentimental poetry of the French, or that of the Germans

of 1750 to 1780, was what suited me best. For the rest, I do not blush

at this childish judgment: adult critics pronounced in that day in the

same way, and carried their simplicity so far as to publish their

decisions to the world.

The same thing happened to me in the case of Homer, with whom I made

acquaintance at a later date. I remember now that remarkable passage of

the sixth book of the "Iliad," where Glaucus and Diomed meet each other

in the strife, and then, recognizing each other as host and guest,

exchange presents. With this touching picture of the piety with which

the laws of hospitality were observed even in war, may be compared a

picture of chivalrous generosity in Ariosto. The knights, rivals in

love, Ferragus and Rinaldo--the former a Saracen, the latter a Christian

--after having fought to extremity, all covered with wounds, make peace

together, and mount the same horse to go and seek the fugitive Angelica.

These two examples, however different in other respects, are very similar

with regard to the impression produced on our heart: both represent the

noble victory of moral feeling over passion, and touch us by the

simplicity of feeling displayed in them. But what a difference in the

way in which the two poets go to work to describe two such analogous

scenes! Ariosto, who belongs to an advanced epoch, to a world where

simplicity of manners no longer existed, in relating this trait, cannot

conceal the astonishment, the admiration, he feels at it. He measures

the distance from those manners to the manners of his own age, and this

feeling of astonishment is too strong for him. He abandons suddenly the

painting of the object, and comes himself on the scene in person. This

beautiful stanza is well known, and has been always specially admired at

all times:--

"Oh nobleness, oh generosity of the ancient manners of chivalry! These

were rivals, separated by their faith, suffering bitter pain throughout

their frames in consequence of a desperate combat; and, without any

suspicion, behold them riding in company along dark and winding paths.

Stimulated by four spurs, the horse hastens his pace till they arrive at

the place where the road divides." ["Orlando Furioso," canto i., stanza

32.]

Now let us turn to old Homer. Scarcely has Diomed learned by the story

of Glaucus, his adversary, that the latter has been, from the time of

their fathers, the host and friend of his family, when he drives his

lance into the ground, converses familiarly with him, and both agree

henceforth to avoid each other in the strife. But let us hear Homer

himself:--

"'Thus, then, I am for thee a faithful host in Argos, and thou to me in

Lycia, when I shall visit that country. We shall, therefore, avoid our

lances meeting in the strife. Are there not for me other Trojans or

brave allies to kill when a god shall offer them to me and my steps shall

reach them? And for thee, Glaucus, are there not enough Achaeans, that

thou mayest immolate whom thou wishest? But let us exchange our arms, in

order that others may also see that we boast of having been hosts and

guests at the time of our fathers.' Thus they spoke, and, rushing from

their chariots, they seized each other's hands, and swore friendship the

one to the other." [Pope's "Iliad," vi. 264-287.]

It would have been difficult for a modern poet (at least to one who would

be modern in the moral sense of the term) even to wait as long as this

before expressing his joy in the presence of such an action. We should

pardon this in him the more easily, because we also, in reading it, feel

that our heart makes a pause here, and readily turns aside from the

object to bring back its thoughts on itself. But there is not the least

trace of this in Homer. As if he had been relating something that is

seen everyday--nay, more, as if he had no heart beating in his breast--he

continues, with his dry truthfulness:--

"Then the son of Saturn blinded Glaucus, who, exchanging his armor with

Diomed, gave him golden arms of the value of one hecatomb, for brass arms

only worth nine beeves." ["Iliad," vi. 234-236.]

The poets of this order,--the genuinely simple poets, are scarcely any

longer in their place in this artificial age. Accordingly they are

scarcely possible in it, or at least they are only possible on the

condition of traversing their age, like scared persons, at a running

pace, and of being preserved by a happy star from the influence of their

age, which would mutilate their genius. Never, for ay and forever, will

society produce these poets; but out of society they still appear

sometimes at intervals, rather, I admit, as strangers, who excite wonder,

or as ill-trained children of nature, who give offence. These

apparitions, so very comforting for the artist who studies them, and for

the real connoisseur, who knows how to appreciate them, are, as a general

conclusion, in the age when they are begotten, to a very small degree

preposterous. The seal of empire is stamped on their brow, and we,--we

ask the Muses to cradle us, to carry us in their arms. The critics, as

regular constables of art, detest these poets as disturbers of rules or

of limits. Homer himself may have been only indebted to the testimony of

ten centuries for the reward these aristarchs are kindly willing to

concede him. Moreover, they find it a hard matter to maintain their

rules against his example, or his authority against their rules.

SENTIMENTAL POETRY.

I have previously remarked that the poet is nature, or he seeks nature.

In the former case, he is a simple poet, in the second case, a

sentimental poet.

The poetic spirit is immortal, nor can it disappear from humanity; it can

only disappear with humanity itself, or with the aptitude to be a man, a

human being. And actually, though man by the freedom of his imagination

and of his understanding departs from simplicity, from truth, from the

necessity of nature, not only a road always remains open to him to return

to it, but, moreover, a powerful and indestructible instinct, the moral

instinct, brings him incessantly back to nature; and it is precisely the

poetical faculty that is united to this instinct by the ties of the

closest relationship. Thus man does not lose the poetic faculty directly

he parts with the simplicity of nature; only this faculty acts out of him

in another direction.

Even at present nature is the only flame that kindles and warms the

poetic soul. From nature alone it obtains all its force; to nature alone

it speaks in the artificial culture-seeking man. Any other form of

displaying its activity is remote from the poetic spirit. Accordingly it

may be remarked that it is incorrect to apply the expression poetic to

any of the so-styled productions of wit, though the high credit given to

French literature has led people for a long period to class them in that

category. I repeat that at present, even in the existing phase of

culture, it is still nature that powerfully stirs up the poetic spirit,

only its present relation to nature is of a different order from

formerly.

As long as man dwells in a state of pure nature (I mean pure and not

coarse nature), all his being acts at once like a simple sensuous unity,

like a harmonious whole. The senses and reason, the receptive faculty

and the spontaneously active faculty, have not been as yet separated in

their respective functions: a fortiori they are not yet in contradiction

with each other. Then the feelings of man are not the formless play of

chance; nor are his thoughts an empty play of the imagination, without

any value. His feelings proceed from the law of necessity; his thoughts

from reality. But when man enters the state of civilization, and art has

fashioned him, this sensuous harmony which was in him disappears, and

henceforth he can only manifest himself as a moral unity, that is, as

aspiring to unity. The harmony that existed as a fact in the former

state, the harmony of feeling and thought, only exists now in an ideal

state. It is no longer in him, but out of him; it is a conception of

thought which he must begin by realizing in himself; it is no longer a

fact, a reality of his life. Well, now let us take the idea of poetry,

which is nothing else than expressing humanity as completely as possible,

and let us apply this idea to these two states. We shall be brought to

infer that, on the one hand, in the state of natural simplicity, when all

the faculties of man are exerted together, his being still manifests

itself in a harmonious unity, where, consequently, the totality of his

nature expresses itself in reality itself, the part of the poet is

necessarily to imitate the real as completely as is possible. In the

state of civilization, on the contrary, when this harmonious competition

of the whole of human nature is no longer anything but an idea, the part

of the poet is necessarily to raise reality to the ideal, or, what

amounts to the same thing, to represent the ideal. And, actually, these

are the only two ways in which, in general, the poetic genius can

manifest itself. Their great difference is quite evident, but though

there be great opposition between them, a higher idea exists that

embraces both, and there is no cause to be astonished if this idea

coincides with the very idea of humanity.

This is not the place to pursue this thought any further, as it would

require a separate discussion to place it in its full light. But if we

only compare the modern and ancient poets together, not according to the

accidental forms which they may have employed, but according to their

spirit, we shall be easily convinced of the truth of this thought. The

thing that touches us in the ancient poets is nature; it is the truth of

sense, it is a present and a living reality modern poets touch us through

the medium of ideas.

The path followed by modern poets is moreover that necessarily followed

by man generally, individuals as well as the species. Nature reconciles

man with himself; art divides and disunites him; the ideal brings him

back to unity. Now, the ideal being an infinite that he never succeeds

in reaching, it follows that civilized man can never become perfect in

his kind, while the man of nature can become so in his. Accordingly in

relation to perfection one would be infinitely below the other, if we

only considered the relation in which they are both to their own kind and

to their maximum. If, on the other hand, it is the kinds that are

compared together, it is ascertained that the end to which man tends by

civilization is infinitely superior to that which he reaches through

nature. Thus one has his reward, because having for object a finite

magnitude, he completely reaches this object; the merit of the other is

to approach an object that is of infinite magnitude. Now, as there are

only degrees, and as there is only progress in the second of these

evolutions, it follows that the relative merit of the man engaged in the

ways of civilization is never determinable in general, though this man,

taking the individuals separately, is necessarily at a disadvantage,

compared with the man in whom nature acts in all its perfection. But we

know also that humanity cannot reach its final end except by progress,

and that the man of nature cannot make progress save through culture, and

consequently by passing himself through the way of civilization.

Accordingly there is no occasion to ask with which of the two the

advantage must remain, considering this last end.

All that we say here of the different forms of humanity may be applied

equally to the two orders of poets who correspond to them.

Accordingly it would have been desirable not to compare at all the

ancient and the modern poets, the simple and the sentimental poets, or

only to compare them by referring them to a higher idea (since there is

really only one) which embraces both. For, sooth to say, if we begin by

forming a specific idea of poetry, merely from the ancient poets, nothing

is easier, but also nothing is more vulgar, than to depreciate the

moderns by this comparison. If persons wish to confine the name of

poetry to that which has in all times produced the same impression in

simple nature, this places them in the necessity of contesting the title

of poet in the moderns precisely in that which constitutes their highest

beauties, their greatest originality and sublimity; for precisely in the

points where they excel the most, it is the child of civilization whom

they address, and they have nothing to say to the simple child of nature.

To the man who is not disposed beforehand to issue from reality in order

to enter the field of the ideal, the richest and most substantial poetry

is an empty appearance, and the sublimest flights of poetic inspiration

are an exaggeration. Never will a reasonable man think of placing

alongside Homer, in his grandest episodes, any of our modern poets; and

it has a discordant and ridiculous effect to hear Milton or Klopstock

honored with the name of a "new Homer." But take in modern poets what

characterizes them, what makes their special merit, and try to compare

any ancient poet with them in this point, they will not be able to

support the comparison any better, and Homer less than any other. I

should express it thus: the power of the ancients consists in compressing

objects into the finite, and the moderns excel in the art of the

infinite.

What we have said here may be extended to the fine arts in general,

except certain restrictions that are self-evident. If, then, the

strength of the artists of antiquity consists in determining and limiting

objects, we must no longer wonder that in the field of the plastic arts

the ancients remain so far superior to the moderns, nor especially that

poetry and the plastic arts with the moderns, compared respectively with

what they were among the ancients, do not offer the same relative value.

This is because an object that addresses itself to the eyes is only

perfect in proportion as the object is clearly limited in it; whilst a

work that is addressed to the imagination can also reach the perfection

which is proper to it by means of the ideal and the infinite. This is

why the superiority of the moderns in what relates to ideas is not of

great aid to them in the plastic arts, where it is necessary for them to

determine in space, with the greatest precision, the image which their

imagination has conceived, and where they must therefore measure

themselves with the ancient artist just on a point where his superiority

cannot be contested. In the matter of poetry it is another affair, and

if the advantage is still with the ancients on that ground, as respects

the simplicity of forms--all that can be represented by sensuous

features, all that is something bodily--yet, on the other hand, the

moderns have the advantage over the ancients as regards fundamental

wealth, and all that can neither be represented nor translated by

sensuous signs, in short, for all that is called mind and idea in the

works of art.

From the moment that the simple poet is content to follow simple nature

and feeling, that he is contented with the imitation of the real world,

he can only be placed, with regard to his subject, in a single relation.

And in this respect he has no choice as to the manner of treating it. If

simple poetry produces different impressions--I do not, of course, speak

of the impressions that are connected with the nature of the subject, but

only of those that are dependent on poetic execution--the whole

difference is in the degree; there is only one way of feeling, which

varies from more to less; even the diversity of external forms changes

nothing in the quality of aesthetic impressions. Whether the form be

lyric or epic, dramatic or descriptive, we can receive an impression

either stronger or weaker, but if we remove what is connected with the

nature of the subject, we shall always be affected in the same way. The

feeling we experience is absolutely identical; it proceeds entirely from

one single and the same element to such a degree that we are unable to

make any distinction. The very difference of tongues and that of times

does not here occasion any diversity, for their strict unity of origin

and of effect is precisely a characteristic of simple poetry.

It is quite different with sentimental poetry. The sentimental poet

reflects on the impression produced on him by objects; and it is only on

this reflection that his poetic force is based. It follows that the

sentimental poet is always concerned with two opposite forces, has two

modes of representing objects to himself, and of feeling them; these are,

the real or limited, and the ideal or infinite; and the mixed feeling

that he will awaken will always testify to this duality of origin.

Sentimental poetry thus admitting more than one principle, it remains to

know which of the two will be predominant in the poet, both in his

fashion of feeling and in that of representing the object; and

consequently a difference in the mode of treating it is possible. Here,

then, a new subject is presented: shall the poet attach himself to the

real or the ideal? to the real as an object of aversion and of disgust,

or to the ideal as an object of inclination? The poet will therefore be

able to treat the same subject either in its satirical aspect or in its

elegiac aspect,--taking these words in a larger sense, which will be

explained in the sequel: every sentimental poet will of necessity become

attached to one or the other of these two modes of feeling.

SATIRICAL POETRY.

The poet is a satirist when he takes as subject the distance at which

things are from nature, and the contrast between reality and the ideal:

as regards the impression received by the soul, these two subjects blend

into the same. In the execution, he may place earnestness and passion,

or jests and levity, according as he takes pleasure in the domain of the

will or in that of the understanding. In the former case it is avenging

and pathetic satire; in the second case it is sportive, humorous, and

mirthful satire.

Properly speaking, the object of poetry is not compatible either with the

tone of punishment or that of amusement. The former is too grave for

play, which should be the main feature of poetry; the latter is too

trifling for seriousness, which should form the basis of all poetic play.

Our mind is necessarily interested in moral contradictions, and these

deprive the mind of its liberty. Nevertheless, all personal interest,

and reference to a personal necessity, should be banished from poetic

feeling. But mental contradictions do not touch the heart, nevertheless

the poet deals with the highest interests of the heart--nature and the

ideal. Accordingly it is a hard matter for him not to violate the poetic

form in pathetic satire, because this form consists in the liberty of

movement; and in sportive satire he is very apt to miss the true spirit

of poetry, which ought to be the infinite. The problem can only be

solved in one way: by the pathetic satire assuming the character of the

sublime, and the playful satire acquiring poetic substance by enveloping

the theme in beauty.

In satire, the real as imperfection is opposed to the ideal, considered

as the highest reality. In other respects it is by no means essential

that the ideal should be expressly represented, provided the poet knows

how to awaken it in our souls, but he must in all cases awaken it,

otherwise he will exert absolutely no poetic action. Thus reality is

here a necessary object of aversion; but it is also necessary, for the

whole question centres here, that this aversion should come necessarily

from the ideal, which is opposed to reality. To make this clear--this

aversion might proceed from a purely sensuous source, and repose only on

a want of which the satisfaction finds obstacles in the real. How often,

in fact, we think we feel, against society a moral discontent, while we

are simply soured by the obstacles that it opposes to our inclination.

It is this entirely material interest that the vulgar satirist brings

into play; and as by this road he never fails to call forth in us

movements connected with the affections, he fancies that he holds our

heart in his hand, and thinks he has graduated in the pathetic. But all

pathos derived from this source is unworthy of poetry, which ought only

to move us through the medium of ideas, and reach our heart only by

passing through the reason. Moreover, this impure and material pathos

will never have its effect on minds, except by over-exciting the

affective faculties and by occupying our hearts with painful feelings; in

this it differs entirely from the truly poetic pathos, which raises in us

the feeling of moral independence, and which is recognized by the freedom

of our mind persisting in it even while it is in the state of affection.

And, in fact, when the emotion emanates from the ideal opposed to the

real, the sublime beauty of the ideal corrects all impression of

restraint; and the grandeur of the idea with which we are imbued raises

us above all the limits of experience. Thus in the representation of

some revolting reality, the essential thing is that the necessary be the

foundation on which the poet or the narrator places the real: that he

know how to dispose our mind for ideas. Provided the point from which we

see and judge be elevated, it matters little if the object be low and far

beneath us. When the historian Tacitus depicts the profound decadence of

the Romans of the first century, it is a great soul which from a loftier

position lets his looks drop down on a low object; and the disposition in

which he places us is truly poetic, because it is the height where he is

himself placed, and where he has succeeded in raising us, which alone

renders so perceptible the baseness of the object.

Accordingly the satire of pathos must always issue from a mind deeply

imbued with the ideal. It is nothing but an impulsion towards harmony

that can give rise to that deep feeling of moral opposition and that

ardent indignation against moral obliquity which amounted to the fulness

of enthusiasm in Juvenal, Swift, Rousseau, Haller, and others. These

same poets would have succeeded equally well in forms of poetry relating

to all that is tender and touching in feeling, and it was only the

accidents of life in their early days that diverted their minds into

other walks. Nay, some amongst them actually tried their hand

successfully in these other branches of poetry. The poets whose names

have been just mentioned lived either at a period of degeneracy, and had

scenes of painful moral obliquity presented to their view, or personal

troubles had combined to fill their souls with bitter feelings. The

strictly austere spirit in which Rousseau, Haller, and others paint

reality is a natural result, moreover, of the philosophical mind, when

with rigid adherence to laws of thought it separates the mere phenomenon

from the substance of things. Yet these outer and contingent influences,

which always put restraint on the mind, should never be allowed to do

more than decide the direction taken by enthusiasm, nor should they ever

give the material for it. The substance ought always to remain

unchanged, emancipated from all external motion or stimulus, and it ought

to issue from an ardent impulsion towards the ideal, which forms the only

true motive that can be put forth for satirical poetry, and indeed for

all sentimental poetry.

While the satire of pathos is only adapted to elevated minds, playful

satire can only be adequately represented by a heart imbued with beauty.

The former is preserved from triviality by the serious nature of the

theme; but the latter, whose proper sphere is confined to the treatment

of subjects of morally unimportant nature, would infallibly adopt the

form of frivolity, and be deprived of all poetic dignity, were it not

that the substance is ennobled by the form, and did not the personal

dignity of the poet compensate for the insignificance of the subject.

Now, it is only given to mind imbued with beauty to impress its

character, its entire image, on each of its manifestations, independently

of the object of its manifestations. A sublime soul can only make itself

known as such by single victories over the rebellion of the senses, only

in certain moments of exaltation, and by efforts of short duration. In a

mind imbued with beauty, on the contrary, the ideal acts in the same

manner as nature, and therefore continuously; accordingly it can manifest

itself in it in a state of repose. The deep sea never appears more

sublime than when it is agitated; the true beauty of a clear stream is in

its peaceful course.

The question has often been raised as to the comparative preference to be

awarded to tragedy or comedy. If the question is confined merely to

their respective themes, it is certain that tragedy has the advantage.

But if our inquiry be directed to ascertain which has the more important

personality, it is probable that a decision may be given in favor of

comedy. In tragedy the theme in itself does great things; in comedy the

object does nothing and the poet all. Now, as in the judgments of taste

no account must be kept of the matter treated of, it follows naturally

that the aesthetic value of these two kinds will be in an inverse ratio

to the proper importance of their themes.

The tragic poet is supported by the theme, while the comic poet, on the

contrary, has to keep up the aesthetic character of his theme by his own

individual influence. The former may soar, which is not a very difficult

matter, but the latter has to remain one and the same in tone; he has to

be in the elevated region of art, where he must be at home, but where the

tragic poet has to be projected and elevated by a bound. And this is

precisely what distinguishes a soul of beauty from a sublime soul. A

soul of beauty bears in itself by anticipation all great ideas; they flow

without constraint and without difficulty from its very nature--an

infinite nature, at least in potency, at whatever point of its career you

seize it. A sublime soul can rise to all kinds of greatness, but by an

effort; it can tear itself from all bondage, to all that limits and

constrains it, but only by strength of will. Consequently the sublime

soul is only free by broken efforts; the other with ease and always.

The noble task of comedy is to produce and keep up in us this freedom of

mind, just as the end of tragedy is to re-establish in us this freedom of

mind by aesthetic ways, when it has been violently suspended by passion.

Consequently it is necessary that in tragedy the poet, as if he made an

experiment, should artificially suspend our freedom of mind, since

tragedy shows its poetic virtue by re-establishing it; in comedy, on the

other hand, care must be taken that things never reach this suspension of

freedom.

It is for this reason that the tragic poet invariably treats his theme in

a practical manner, and the comic poet in a theoretic manner, even when

the former, as happened with Lessing in his "Nathan," should have the

curious fancy to select a theoretical, and the latter should have that of

choosing a practical subject. A piece is constituted a tragedy or a

comedy not by the sphere from which the theme is taken, but by the

tribunal before which it is judged. A tragic poet ought never to indulge

in tranquil reasoning, and ought always to gain the interest of the

heart; but the comic poet ought to shun the pathetic and bring into play

the understanding. The former displays his art by creating continual

excitement, the latter by perpetually subduing his passion; and it is

natural that the art in both cases should acquire magnitude and strength

in proportion as the theme of one poet is abstract and that of the other

pathetic in character. Accordingly, if tragedy sets out from a more

exalted place, it must be allowed, on the other hand, that comedy aims at

a more important end; and if this end could be actually attained it would

make all tragedy not only unnecessary, but impossible. The aim that

comedy has in view is the same as that of the highest destiny of man, and

this consists in liberating himself from the influence of violent

passions, and taking a calm and lucid survey of all that surrounds him,

and also of his own being, and of seeing everywhere occurrence rather

than fate or hazard, and ultimately rather smiling at the absurdities

than shedding tears and feeling anger at sight of the wickedness of man.

It frequently happens in human life that facility of imagination,

agreeable talents, a good-natured mirthfulness are taken for ornaments of

the mind. The same fact is discerned in the case of poetical displays.

Now, public taste scarcely if ever soars above the sphere of the

agreeable, and authors gifted with this sort of elegance of mind and

style do not find it a difficult matter to usurp a glory which is or

ought to be the reward of so much real labor. Nevertheless, an

infallible text exists to enable us to discriminate a natural facility of

manner from ideal gentleness, and qualities that consist in nothing more

than natural virtue from genuine moral worth of character. This test is

presented by trials such as those presented by difficulty and events

offering great opportunities. Placed in positions of this kind, the

genius whose essence is elegance is sure infallibly to fall into

platitudes, and that virtue which only results from natural causes drops

down to a material sphere. But a mind imbued with true and spiritual

beauty is in cases of the kind we have supposed sure to be elevated to

the highest sphere of character and of feeling. So long as Lucian merely

furnishes absurdity, as in his "Wishes," in the "Lapithae," in "Jupiter

Tragoedus," etc., he is only a humorist, and gratifies us by his sportive

humor; but he changes character in many passages in his "Nigrinus," his

"Timon," and his "Alexander," when his satire directs its shafts against

moral depravity. Thus he begins in his "Nigrinus" his picture of the

degraded corruption of Rome at that time in this way: "Wretch, why didst

thou quit Greece, the sunlight, and that free and happy life? Why didst

thou come here into this turmoil of splendid slavery, of service and

festivals, of sycophants, flatterers, poisoners, orphan-robbers, and

false friends?" It is on such occasions that the poet ought to show the

lofty earnestness of soul which has to form the basis of all plays, if a

poetical character is to be obtained by them. A serious intention may

even be detected under the malicious jests with which Lucian and

Aristophanes pursue Socrates. Their purpose is to avenge truth against

sophistry, and to do combat for an ideal which is not always prominently

put forward. There can be no doubt that Lucian has justified this

character in his Diogenes and Demonax. Again, among modern writers, how

grave and beautiful is the character depicted on all occasions by

Cervantes in his Don Quixote! How splendid must have been the ideal that

filled the mind of a poet who created a Tom Jones and a Sophonisba! How

deeply and strongly our hearts are moved by the jests of Yorick when he

pleases! I detect this seriousness also in our own Wieland: even the

wanton sportiveness of his humor is elevated and impeded by the goodness

of his heart; it has an influence even on his rhythm; nor does he ever

lack elastic power, when it is his wish, to raise us up to the most

elevated planes of beauty and of thought.

The same judgment cannot be pronounced on the satire of Voltaire. No

doubt, also, in his case, it is the truth and simplicity of nature which

here and there makes us experience poetic emotions, whether he really

encounters nature and depicts it in a simple character, as many times in

his "Ingenu;" or whether he seeks it and avenges it as in his "Candide"

and elsewhere. But when neither one nor the other takes place, he can

doubtless amuse us with his fine wit, but he assuredly never touches us

as a poet. There is always rather too little of the serious under his

raillery, and this is what makes his vocation as poet justly suspicious.

You always meet his intelligence only; never his feelings. No ideal can

be detected under this light gauze envelope; scarcely can anything

absolutely fixed be found under this perpetual movement. His prodigious

diversity of externals and forms, far from proving anything in favor of

the inner fulness of his inspiration, rather testifies to the contrary;

for he has exhausted all forms without finding a single one on which he

has succeeded in impressing his heart. We are almost driven to fear that

in the case of his rich talent the poverty of heart alone determined his

choice of satire. And how could we otherwise explain the fact that he

could pursue so long a road without ever issuing from its narrow rut?

Whatever may be the variety of matter and of external forms, we see the

inner form return everywhere with its sterile and eternal uniformity, and

in spite of his so productive career, he never accomplished in himself

the circle of humanity, that circle which we see joyfully traversed

throughout by the satirists previously named.

ELEGIAC POETRY.

When the poet opposes nature to art, and the ideal to the real, so that

nature and the ideal form the principal object of his pictures, and that

the pleasure we take in them is the dominant impression, I call him an

elegiac poet. In this kind, as well as in satire, I distinguish two

classes. Either nature and the ideal are objects of sadness, when one is

represented as lost to man and the other as unattained; or both are

objects of joy, being represented to us as reality. In the first case it

is elegy in the narrower sense of the term; in the second case it is the

idyl in its most extended acceptation.

Indignation in the pathetic and ridicule in mirthful satire are

occasioned by an enthusiasm which the ideal has excited; and thus also

sadness should issue from the same source in elegy. It is this, and this

only, that gives poetic value to elegy, and any other origin for this

description of poetical effusion is entirely beneath the dignity of

poetry. The elegiac poet seeks after nature, but he strives to find her

in her beauty, and not only in her mirth; in her agreement with

conception, and not merely in her facile disposition towards the

requirements and demands of sense. Melancholy at the privation of joys,

complaints at the disappearance of the world's golden age, or at the

vanished happiness of youth, affection, etc., can only become the proper

themes for elegiac poetry if those conditions implying peace and calm in

the sphere of the senses can moreover be portrayed as states of moral

harmony. On this account I cannot bring myself to regard as poetry the

complaints of Ovid, which he transmitted from his place of exile by the

Black Sea; nor would they appear so to me however touching and however

full of passages of the highest poetry they might be. His suffering is

too devoid of spirit, and nobleness. His lamentations display a want of

strength and enthusiasm; though they may not reflect the traces of a

vulgar soul, they display a low and sensuous condition of a noble spirit

that has been trampled into the dust by its hard destiny. If, indeed, we

call to mind that his regrets are directed to Rome, in the Augustan age,

we forgive him the pain he suffers; but even Rome in all its splendor,

except it be transfigured by the imagination, is a limited greatness, and

therefore a subject unworthy of poetry, which, raised above every trace

of the actual, ought only to mourn over what is infinite.

Thus the object of poetic complaint ought never to be an external object,

but only an internal and ideal object; even when it deplores a real loss,

it must begin by making it an ideal loss. The proper work of the poet

consists in bringing back the finite object to the proportions of the

infinite. Consequently the external matter of elegy, considered in

itself, is always indifferent, since poetry can never employ it as it

finds it, and because it is only by what it makes of it that it confers

on it a poetic dignity. The elegiac poet seeks nature, but nature as an

idea, and in a degree of perfection that it has never reached in reality,

although he weeps over this perfection as something that has existed and

is now lost. When Ossian speaks to us of the days that are no more, and

of the heroes that have disappeared, his imagination has long since

transformed these pictures represented to him by his memory into a pure

ideal, and changed these heroes into gods. The different experiences of

such or such a life in particular have become extended and confounded in

the universal idea of transitoriness, and the bard, deeply moved, pursued

by the increase of ruin everywhere present, takes his flight towards

heaven, to find there in the course of the sun an emblem of what does not

pass away.

I turn now to the elegiac poets of modern times. Rousseau, whether

considered as a poet or a philosopher, always obeys the same tendency; to

seek nature or to avenge it by art. According to the state of his heart,

whether he prefers to seek nature or to avenge it, we see him at one time

roused by elegiac feelings, at others showing the tone of the satire of

Juneval; and again, as in his Julia, delighting in the sphere of the

idyl. His compositions have undoubtedly a poetic value, since their

object is ideal; only he does not know how to treat it in a poetic

fashion. No doubt his serious character prevents him from falling into

frivolity; but this seriousness also does not allow him to rise to poetic

play. Sometimes absorbed by passion, at others by abstractions, he

seldom if ever reaches aesthetic freedom, which the poet ought to

maintain in spite of his material before his object, and in which he

ought to make the reader share. Either he is governed by his sickly

sensibility and his impressions become a torture, or the force of thought

chains down his imagination and destroys by its strictness of reasoning

all the grace of his pictures. These two faculties, whose reciprocal

influence and intimate union are what properly make the poet, are found

in this writer in an uncommon degree, and he only lacks one thing--it is

that the two qualities should manifest themselves actually united; it is

that the proper activity of thought should show itself mixed more with

feeling, and the sensuous more with thought. Accordingly, even in the

ideal which he has made of human nature, he is too much taken up with the

limits of this nature, and not enough with its capabilities; he always

betrays a want of physical repose rather than want of moral harmony. His

passionate sensuousness must be blamed when, to finish as quickly as

possible that struggle in humanity which offends him, he prefers to carry

man back to the unintelligent uniformity of his primitive condition,

rather than see that struggle carried out in the intellectual harmony of

perfect cultivation, when, rather than await the fulfilment of art he

prefers not to let it begin; in short, when he prefers to place the aim

nearer the earth, and to lower the ideal in order to reach it the sooner

and the safer.

Among the poets of Germany who belong to this class, I shall only mention

here Haller, Kleist, and Klopstock. The character of their poetry is

sentimental; it is by the ideal that they touch us, not by sensuous

reality; and that not so much because they are themselves nature, as

because they know how to fill us with enthusiasm for nature. However,

what is true in general, as well of these three poets as of every

sentimental poet, does not evidently exclude the faculty of moving us, in

particular, by beauties of the simple genus; without this they would not

be poets. I only mean that it is not their proper and dominant

characteristic to receive the impression of objects with a calm feeling,

simple, easy, and to give forth in like manner the impression received.

Involuntarily the imagination in them anticipates intuition, and

reflection is in play before the sensuous nature has done its function;

they shut their eyes and stop their ears to plunge into internal

meditations. Their souls could not be touched by any impression without

observing immediately their own movements, without placing before their

eyes and outside themselves what takes place in them. It follows from

this that we never see the object itself, but what the intelligence and

reflection of the poet have made of the object; and even if this object

be the person itself of the poet, even when he wishes to represent to us

his own feelings, we are not informed of his state immediately or at

first hand; we only see how this state is reflected in his mind and what

he has thought of it in the capacity of spectator of himself. When

Haller deplores the death of his wife--every one knows this beautiful

elegy--and begins in the following manner:--

"If I must needs sing of thy death,

O Marian, what a song it would be!

When sighs strive against words,

And idea follows fast on idea," etc.,

we feel that this description is strictly true, but we feel also that the

poet does not communicate to us, properly speaking, his feelings, but the

thoughts that they suggest to him. Accordingly, the emotion we feel on

hearing him is much less vivid! people remark that the poet's mind must

have been singularly cooled down to become thus a spectator of his own

emotion.

Haller scarcely treated any subjects but the super-sensuous, and part of

the poems of Klopstock are also of this nature: this choice itself

excludes them from the simple kind. Accordingly, in order to treat these

super-sensuous themes in a poetic fashion, as no body could be given to

them, and they could not be made the objects of sensuous intuition, it

was necessary to make them pass from the finite to the infinite, and

raise them to the state of objects of spiritual intuition. In general,

it may be said, that it is only in this sense that a didactic poetry can

be conceived without involving contradiction; for, repeating again what

has been so often said, poetry has only two fields, the world of sense

and the ideal world, since in the sphere of conceptions, in the world of

the understanding, it cannot absolutely thrive. I confess that I do not

know as yet any didactic poem, either among the ancients or among the

moderns, where the subject is completely brought down to the individual,

or purely and completely raised to the ideal. The most common case, in

the most happy essays, is where the two principles are used together; the

abstract idea predominates, and the imagination, which ought to reign

over the whole domain of poetry, has merely the permission to serve the

understanding. A didactic poem in which thought itself would be poetic,

and would remain so, is a thing which we must still wait to see.

What we say here of didactic poems in general is true in particular of

the poems of Haller. The thought itself of these poems is not poetical,

but the execution becomes so sometimes, occasionally by the use of

images, at other times by a flight towards the ideal. It is from this

last quality only that the poems of Haller belong to this class. Energy,

depth, a pathetic earnestness--these are the traits that distinguish this

poet. He has in his soul an ideal that enkindles it, and his ardent love

of truth seeks in the peaceful valleys of the Alps that innocence of the

first ages that the world no longer knows. His complaint is deeply

touching; he retraces in an energetic and almost bitter satire the

wanderings of the mind and of the heart, and he lovingly portrays the

beautiful simplicity of nature. Only, in his pictures as well as in his

soul, abstraction prevails too much, and the sensuous is overweighted by

the intellectual. He constantly teaches rather than paints; and even in

his paintings his brush is more energetic than lovable. He is great,

bold, full of fire, sublime; but he rarely and perhaps never attains to

beauty.

For the solidity and depth of ideas, Kleist is far inferior to Haller; in

point of grace, perhaps, he would have the advantage--if, as happens

occasionally, we did not impute to him as a merit, on the one side, that

which really is a want on the other. The sensuous soul of Kleist takes

especial delight at the sight of country scenes and manners; he withdraws

gladly from the vain jingle and rattle of society, and finds in the heart

of inanimate nature the harmony and peace that are not offered to him by

the moral world. How touching is his "Aspiration after Repose"! how much

truth and feeling there is in these verses!--

"O world, thou art the tomb of true life!

Often a generous instinct attracts me to virtue;

My heart is sad, a torrent of tears bathes my cheeks

But example conquers, and thou, O fire of youth!

Soon you dry these noble tears.

A true man must live far from men!"

But if the poetic instinct of Kleist leads him thus far away from the

narrow circle of social relations, in solitude, and among the fruitful

inspirations of nature, the image of social life and of its anguish

pursues him, and also, alas! its chains. What he flees from he carries

in himself, and what he seeks remains entirely outside him: never can he

triumph over the fatal influence of his time. In vain does he find

sufficient flame in his heart and enough energy in his imagination to

animate by painting the cold conceptions of the understanding; cold

thought each time kills the living creations of fancy, and reflection

destroys the secret work of the sensuous nature. His poetry, it must be

admitted, is of as brilliant color and as variegated as the spring he

celebrated in verse; his imagination is vivid and active; but it might be

said that it is more variable than rich, that it sports rather than

creates, that it always goes forward with a changeful gait, rather than

stops to accumulate and mould things into shape. Traits succeed each

other rapidly, with exuberance, but without concentrating to form an

individual, without completing each other to make a living whole, without

rounding to a form, a figure. Whilst he remains in purely lyrical

poetry, and pauses amidst his landscapes of country life, on the one hand

the greater freedom of the lyrical form, and on the other the more

arbitrary nature of the subject, prevent us from being struck with this

defect; in these sorts of works it is in general rather the feelings of

the poet, than the object in itself, of which we expect the portraiture.

But this defect becomes too apparent when he undertakes, as in Cisseis

and Paches, or in his Seneca, to represent men and human actions; because

here the imagination sees itself kept in within certain fixed and

necessary limits, and because here the effect can only be derived from

the object itself. Kleist becomes poor, tiresome, jejune, and

insupportably frigid; an example full of lessons for those who, without

having an inner vocation, aspire to issue from musical poetry, to rise to

the regions of plastic poetry. A spirit of this family, Thomson, has

paid the same penalty to human infirmity.

In the sentimental kind, and especially in that part of the sentimental

kind which we name elegiac, there are but few modern poets, and still

fewer ancient ones, who can be compared to our Klopstock. Musical poetry

has produced in this poet all that can be attained out of the limits of

the living form, and out of the sphere of individuality, in the region of

ideas. It would, no doubt, be doing him a great injustice to dispute

entirely in his case that individual truth and that feeling of life with

which the simple poet describes his pictures. Many of his odes, many

separate traits in his dramas, and in his "Messiah," represent the object

with a striking truth, and mark the outline admirably; especially, when

the object is his own heart, he has given evidence on many occasions of a

great natural disposition and of a charming simplicity. I mean only that

it is not in this that the proper force of Klopstock consists, and that

it would not perhaps be right to seek for this throughout his work.

Viewed as a production of musical poetry, the "Messiah" is a magnificent

work; but in the light of plastic poetry, where we look for determined

forms and forms determined for the intuition, the "Messiah" leaves much

to be desired. Perhaps in this poem the figures are sufficiently

determined, but they are not so with intuition in view. It is

abstraction alone that created them, and abstraction alone can discern

them. They are excellent types to express ideas, but they are not

individuals nor living figures. With regard to the imagination, which

the poet ought to address, and which he ought to command by putting

before it always perfectly determinate forms, it is left here much too

free to represent as it wishes these men and these angels, these

divinities and demons, this paradise and this hell. We see quite well

the vague outlines in which the understanding must be kept to conceive

these personages; but we do not find the limit clearly traced in which

the imagination must be enclosed to represent them. And what I say here

of characters must apply to all that in this poem is, or ought to be,

action and life, and not only in this epopoeia, but also in the dramatic

poetry of Klopstock. For the understanding all is perfectly determined

and bounded in them--I need only here recall his Judas, his Pilate, his

Philo, his Solomon in the tragedy that bears that name--but for the

imagination all this wants form too much, and I must readily confess I do

not find that our poet is at all in his sphere here. His sphere is

always the realm of ideas; and he knows how to raise all he touches to

the infinite. It might be said that he strips away their bodily

envelope, to spiritualize them from all the objects with which he is

occupied, in the same way that other poets clothe all that is spiritual

with a body. The pleasure occasioned by his poems must almost always be

obtained by an exercise of the faculty of reflection; the feelings he

awakens in us, and that so deeply and energetically, flow always from

super-sensuous sources. Hence the earnestness, the strength, the

elasticity, the depth, that characterize all that comes from him; but

from that also issues that perpetual tension of mind in which we are kept

when reading him. No poet--except perhaps Young, who in this respect

exacts even more than Klopstock, without giving us so much compensation

--no poet could be less adapted than Klopstock to play the part of

favorite author and guide in life, because he never does anything else

than lead us out of life, because he never calls to arms anything save

spirit, without giving recreation and refreshment to sensuous nature by

the calm presence of any object. His muse is chaste, it has nothing of

the earthly, it is immaterial and holy as his religion; and we are forced

to admit with admiration that if he wanders sometimes on these high

places, it never happened to him to fall from them. But precisely for

this reason, I confess in all ingenuousness, that I am not free from

anxiety for the common sense of those who quite seriously and

unaffectedly make Klopstock the favorite book, the book in which we find

sentiments fitting all situations, or to which we may revert at all

times: perhaps even--and I suspect it--Germany has seen enough results of

his dangerous influence. It is only in certain dispositions of the mind,

and in hours of exaltation, that recourse can be had to Klopstock, and

that he can be felt. It is for this reason that he is the idol of youth,

without, however, being by any means the happiest choice that they could

make. Youth, which always aspires to something beyond real life, which

avoids all stiffness of form, and finds all limits too narrow, lets

itself be carried away with love, with delight, into the infinite spaces

opened up to them by this poet. But wait till the youth has become a

man, and till, from the domain of ideas, he comes back to the world of

experience, then you will see this enthusiastic love of Klopstock

decrease greatly, without, however, a riper age changing at all the

esteem due to this unique phenomenon, to this so extraordinary genius, to

these noble sentiments--the esteem that Germany in particular owes to his

high merit.

I have said that this poet was great specially in the elegiac style, and

it is scarcely necessary to confirm this judgment by entering into

particulars. Capable of exercising all kinds of action on the heart, and

having graduated as master in all that relates to sentimental poetry, he

can sometimes shake the soul by the most sublime pathos, at others cradle

it with sweet and heavenly sensations. Yet his heart prefers to follow

the direction of a lofty spiritual melancholy; and, however sublime be

the tones of his harp and of his lyre, they are always the tender notes

of his lute that resound with most truth and the deepest emotion. I take

as witnesses all those whose nature is pure and sensuous: would they not

be ready to give all the passages where Klopstock is strong, and bold;

all those fictions, all the magnificent descriptions, all the models of

eloquence which abound in the "Messiah," all those dazzling comparisons

in which our poet excels,--would they not exchange them for the pages

breathing tenderness, the "Elegy to Ebert" for example, or that admirable

poem entitled "Bardalus," or again, the "Tombs Opened before the Hour,"

the "Summer's Night," the "Lake of Zurich," and many other pieces of this

kind? In the same way the "Messiah" is dear to me as a treasure of

elegiac feelings and of ideal paintings, though I am not much satisfied

with it as the recital of an action and as an epic.

I ought, perhaps, before quitting this department, to recall the merits

in this style of Uz, Denis, Gessner in the "Death of Abel"--Jacobi,

Gerstenberg, Hoelty, De Goeckingk, and several others, who all knew how

to touch by ideas, and whose poems belong to the sentimental kind in the

sense in which we have agreed to understand the word. But my object is

not here to write a history of German poetry; I only wished to clear up

what I said further back by some examples from our literature. I wished

to show that the ancient and the modern poets, the authors of simple

poetry and of sentimental poetry, follow essentially different paths to

arrive at the same end: that the former move by nature, individuality, a

very vivid sensuous element; while the latter do it by means of ideas and

a high spirituality, exercising over our minds an equally powerful though

less extensive influence.

It has been seen, by the examples which precede, how sentimental poetry

conceives and treats subjects taken from nature; perhaps the reader may

be curious to know how also simple poetry treats a subject of the

sentimental order. This is, as it seems, an entirely new question, and

one of special difficulty; for, in the first place, has a subject of the

sentimental order ever been presented in primitive and simple periods?

And in modern times, where is the simple poet with whom we could make

this experiment? This has not, however, prevented genius from setting

this problem, and solving it in a wonderfully happy way. A poet in whose

mind nature works with a purer and more faithful activity than in any

other, and who is perhaps of all modern poets the one who departs the

least from the sensuous truth of things, has proposed this problem to

himself in his conception of a mind, and of the dangerous extreme of the

sentimental character. This mind and this character have been portrayed

by the modern poet we speak of, a character which with a burning

sensuousness embraces the ideal and flies the real, to soar up to an

infinite devoid of being, always occupied in seeking out of himself what

he incessantly destroys in himself; a mind that only finds reality in his

dreams, and to whom the realities of life are only limits and obstacles;

in short, a mind that sees only in its own existence a barrier, and goes

on, as it were, logically to break down this barrier in order to

penetrate to true reality.

It is interesting to see with what a happy instinct all that is of a

nature to feed the sentimental mind is gathered together in Werther: a

dreamy and unhappy love, a very vivid feeling for nature, the religious

sense coupled with the spirit of philosophic contemplation, and lastly,

to omit nothing, the world of Ossian, dark, formless, melancholy. Add to

this the aspect under which reality is presented, all is depicted which

is least adapted to make it lovable, or rather all that is most fit to

make it hated; see how all external circumstances unite to drive back the

unhappy man into his ideal world; and now we understand that it was quite

impossible for a character thus constituted to save itself, and issue

from the circle in which it was enclosed. The same contrast reappears in

the "Torquato Tasso" of the same poet, though the characters are very

different. Even his last romance presents, like his first, this

opposition between the poetic mind and the common sense of practical men,

between the ideal and the real, between the subjective mode and the

objective mode of seeing and representing things; it is the same

opposition, I say, but with what a diversity! Even in "Faust" we still

find this contrast, rendered, I admit--as the subject required--much more

coarsely on both hands, and materialized. It would be quite worth while

if a psychological explanation were attempted of this character,

personified and specified in four such different ways.

It has been observed further back that a mere disposition to frivolity of

mind, to a merry humor, if a certain fund of the ideal is not joined to

it, does not suffice to constitute the vocation of a satirical poet,

though this mistake is frequently made. In the same way a mere

disposition for tender sentiments, softness of heart, and melancholy do

not suffice to constitute a vocation for elegy. I cannot detect the true

poetical talent, either on one side or the other; it wants the essential,

I mean the energetic and fruitful principle that ought to enliven the

subject, and produce true beauty. Accordingly the productions of this

latter nature, of the tender nature, do nothing but enervate us; and

without refreshing the heart, without occupying the mind, they are only

able to flatter in us the sensuous nature. A constant disposition to

this mode of feeling ends necessarily, in the long run, by weakening the

character, and makes it fall into a state of passivity from which nothing

real can issue, either for external or for internal life. People have,

therefore, been quite right to persecute by pitiless raillery this fatal

mania of sentimentality and of tearful melancholy which possessed Germany

eighteen years since, in consequence of certain excellent works that were

ill understood and indiscreetly imitated. People have been right, I say,

to combat this perversity, though the indulgence with which men are

disposed to receive the parodies of these elegiac caricatures--that are

very little better themselves--the complaisance shown to bad wit, to

heartless satire and spiritless mirth, show clearly enough that this zeal

against false sentimentalism does not issue from quite a pure source. In

the balance of true taste one cannot weigh more than the other,

considering that both here and there is wanting that which forms the

aesthetic value of a work of art, the intimate union of spirit with

matter, and the twofold relation of the work with the faculty of

perception as well as with the faculty of the ideal.

People have turned Siegwart ["Siegwart," a novel by J. Mailer, published

at Ulm, 1776] and his convent story into ridicule, and yet the "Travels

into the South of France" are admired; yet both works have an equal claim

to be esteemed in certain respects, and as little to be unreservedly

praised in others. A true, though excessive, sensuousness gives value to

the former of these two romances; a lively and sportive humor, a fine

wit, recommends the other: but one totally lacks all sobriety of mind

that would befit it, the other lacks all aesthetic dignity. If you

consult experience, one is rather ridiculous; if you think of the ideal,

the other is almost contemptible. Now, as true beauty must of necessity

accord both with nature and with the ideal, it is clear that neither the

one nor the other of these two romances could pretend to pass for a fine

work. And notwithstanding all this, it is natural, as I know it by my

own experience, that the romance of Thummel should be read with much

pleasure. As a fact it only wounds those requirements which have their

principle in the ideal, and which consequently do not exist for the

greater part of readers; requirements that, even in persons of most

delicate feeling, do not make themselves felt at the moments when we read

romances. With regard to the other needs of the mind, and especially to

those of the senses, this book, on the other hand, affords unusual

satisfaction. Accordingly, it must be, and will be so, that this book

will remain justly one of the favorite works of our age, and of all

epochs when men only write aesthetic works to please, and people only

read to get pleasure.

But does not poetical literature also offer, even in its classical

monuments, some analogous examples of injuries inflicted or attempted

against the ideal and its superior purity? Are there not some who, by

the gross, sensuous nature of their subject, seem to depart strangely

from the spiritualism I here demand of all works of art? If this is

permitted to the poet, the chaste nurseling of the muses, ought it not to

be conceded to the novelist, who is only the half-brother of the poet,

and who still touches by so many points? I can the less avoid this

question because there are masterpieces, both in the elegiac and in the

satirical kind, where the authors seek and preach up a nature quite

different from that I am discussing in this essay, and where they seem to

defend it, not so much against bad as against good morals. The natural

conclusion would be either that this sort of poem ought to be rejected,

or that, in tracing here the idea of elegiac poetry, we have granted far

too much to what is arbitrary.

The question I asked was, whether what was permitted by the poet might

not be tolerated in a prose narrator too? The answer is contained in the

question. What is allowed in the poet proves nothing about what must be

allowed in one who is not a poet. This tolerancy in fact reposes on the

very idea which we ought to make to ourselves of the poet, and only on

this idea; what in his case is legitimate freedom, is only a license

worthy of contempt as soon as it no longer takes its source in the ideal,

in those high and noble inspirations which make the poet.

The laws of decency are strangers to innocent nature; the experience of

corruption alone has given birth to them. But when once this experience

has been made, and natural innocence has disappeared from manners, these

laws are henceforth sacred laws that man, who has a moral sense, ought

not to infringe upon. They reign in an artificial world with the same

right that the laws of nature reign in the innocence of primitive ages.

But by what characteristic is the poet recognized? Precisely by his

silencing in his soul all that recalls an artificial world, and by

causing nature herself to revive in him with her primitive simplicity.

The moment he has done this he is emancipated by this alone from all the

laws by which a depraved heart secures itself against itself. He is

pure, he is innocent, and all that is permitted to innocent nature is

equally permitted to him. But you who read him or listen to him, if you

have lost your innocence, and if you are incapable of finding it again,

even for a moment, in a purifying contact with the poet, it is your own

fault, and not his: why do not you leave him alone? it is not for you

that he has sung!

Here follows, therefore, in what relates to these kinds of freedoms, the

rules that we can lay down.

Let us remark in the first place that nature only can justify these

licenses; whence it follows that you could not legitimately take them up

of your own choice, nor with a determination of imitating them; the will,

in fact, ought always to be directed according to the laws of morality,

and on its part all condescending to the sensuous is absolutely

unpardonable. These licenses must, therefore, above all, be simplicity.

But how can we be convinced that they are actually simple? We shall hold

them to be so if we see them accompanied and supported by all the other

circumstances which also have their spring of action in nature; for

nature can only be recognized by the close and strict consistency, by the

unity and uniformity of its effects. It is only a soul that has on all

occasions a horror of all kinds of artifice, and which consequently

rejects them even where they would be useful--it is only that soul which

we permit to be emancipated from them when the artificial

conventionalities hamper and hinder it. A heart that submits to all the

obligations of nature has alone the right to profit also by the liberties

which it authorizes. All the other feelings of that heart ought

consequently to bear the stamp of nature: it will be true, simple, free,

frank, sensible, and straightforward; all disguise, all cunning, all

arbitrary fancy, all egotistical pettiness, will be banished from his

character, and you will see no trace of them in his writings.

Second rule: beautiful nature alone can justify freedoms of this kind;

whence it follows that they ought not to be a mere outbreak of the

appetites; for all that proceeds exclusively from the wants of sensuous

nature is contemptible. It is, therefore, from the totality and the

fulness of human nature that these vivid manifestations must also issue.

We must find humanity in them. But how can we judge that they proceed in

fact from our whole nature, and not only from an exclusive and vulgar

want of the sensuous nature? For this purpose it is necessary that we

should see--that they should represent to us--this whole of which they

form a particular feature. This disposition of the mind to experience

the impressions of the sensuous is in itself an innocent and an

indifferent thing. It does not sit well on a man only because of its

being common to animals with him; it augurs in him the lack of true and

perfect humanity. It only shocks us in the poem because such a work

having the pretension to please us, the author consequently seems to

think us capable, us also, of this moral infirmity. But when we see in

the man who has let himself be drawn into it by surprise all the other

characteristics that human nature in general embraces; when we find in

the work where these liberties have been taken the expression of all the

realities of human nature, this motive of discontent disappears, and we

can enjoy, without anything changing our joy, this simple expression of a

true and beautiful nature. Consequently this same poet who ventures to

allow himself to associate us with feelings so basely human, ought to

know, on the other hand, how to raise us to all that is grand, beautiful,

and sublime in our nature.

We should, therefore, have found there a measure to which we could

subject the poet with confidence, when he trespasses on the ground of

decency, and when he does not fear to penetrate as far as that in order

freely to paint nature. His work is common, base, absolutely

inexcusable, from the moment it is frigid, and from the moment it is

empty, because that shows a prejudice, a vulgar necessity, an unhealthy

appeal to our appetites. His work, on the other hand, is beautiful and

noble, and we ought to applaud it without any consideration for all the

objections of frigid decency, as soon as we recognize in it simplicity,

the alliance of spiritual nature and of the heart.

Perhaps I shall be told that if we adopt this criterion, most of the

recitals of this kind composed by the French, and the best imitations

made of them in Germany, would not perhaps find their interest in it; and

that it might be the same, at least in part, with many of the productions

of our most intellectual and amiable poets, without even excepting his

masterpieces. I should have nothing to reply to this. The sentence

after all is anything but new, and I am only justifying the judgment

pronounced long since on this matter by all men of delicate perceptions.

But these same principles which, applied to the works of which I have

just spoken, seem perhaps in too strict a spirit, might also be found too

indulgent when applied to some other works. I do not deny, in fact, that

the same reasons which make me hold to be quite inexcusable the dangerous

pictures drawn by the Roman Ovid and the German Ovid, those of Crebillon,

of Voltaire, of Marmontel, who pretends to write moral tales!--of

Lacroix, and of many others--that these same reasons, I say, reconcile me

with the elegies of the Roman Propertius and of the German Propertius,

and even with some of the decried productions of Diderot. This is

because the former of those works are only witty, prosaic, and

voluptuous, while the others are poetic, human, and simple.

IDYL.

It remains for me to say a few words about this third kind of sentimental

poetry--some few words and no more, for I propose to speak of it at

another time with the developments particularly demanded by the theme.

This kind of poetry generally presents the idea and description of an

innocent and happy humanity. This innocence and bliss seeming remote

from the artificial refinements of fashionable society, poets have

removed the scene of the idyl from crowds of worldly life to the simple

shepherd's cot, and have given it a place in the infancy of humanity

before the beginning of culture. These limitations are evidently

accidental; they do not form the object of the idyl, but are only to be

regarded as the most natural means to attain this end. The end is

everywhere to portray man in a state of innocence: which means a state of

harmony and peace with himself and the external world.

But a state such as this is not merely met with before the dawn of

civilization; it is also the state to which civilization aspires, as to

its last end, if only it obeys a determined tendency in its progress.

The idea of a similar state, and the belief of the possible reality of

this state, is the only thing that can reconcile man with all the evils

to which he is exposed in the path of civilization; and if this idea were

only a chimera, the complaints of those who accuse civil life and the

culture of the intelligence as an evil for which there is no

compensation, and who represent this primitive state of nature that we

have renounced as the real end of humanity--their complaints, I say,

would have a perfectly just foundation. It is, therefore, of infinite

importance for the man engaged in the path of civilization to see

confirmed in a sensuous manner the belief that this idea can be

accomplished in the world of sense, that this state of innocence can be

realized in it; and as real experience, far from keeping up this belief,

is rather made incessantly to contradict it, poetry comes here, as in

many other cases, in aid of reason, to cause this idea to pass into the

condition of an intuitive idea, and to realize it in a particular fact.

No doubt this innocence of pastoral life is also a poetic idea, and the

imagination must already have shown its creative power in that. But the

problem, with this datum, becomes infinitely simpler and easier to solve;

and we must not forget that the elements of these pictures already

existed in real life, and that it was only requisite to gather up the

separate traits to form a whole. Under a fine sky, in a primitive

society, when all the relations are still simple, when science is limited

to so little, nature is easily satisfied, and man only turns to savagery

when he is tortured by want. All nations that have a history have a

paradise, an age of innocence, a golden age. Nay, more than this, every

man has his paradise, his golden age, which he remembers with more or

less enthusiasm, according as he is more or less poetical. Thus

experience itself furnishes sufficient traits to this picture which the

pastoral idyl executes. But this does not prevent the pastoral idyl from

remaining always a beautiful and an encouraging fiction; and poetic

genius, in retracing these pictures, has really worked in favor of the

ideal. For, to the man who has once departed from simple nature, and who

has been abandoned to the dangerous guidance of his reason, it is of the

greatest importance to find the laws of nature expressed in a faithful

copy, to see their image in a clear mirror, and to reject all the stains

of artificial life. There is, however, a circumstance which remarkably

lessens the aesthetic value of these sorts of poetry. By the very fact

that the idyl is transported to the time that precedes civilization, it

also loses the advantages thereof; and by its nature finds itself in

opposition to itself. Thus, in a theoretical sense, it takes us back at

the same time that in a practical sense it leads us on and ennobles us.

Unhappily it places behind us the end towards which it ought to lead us,

and consequently it can only inspire us with the sad feeling of a loss,

and not the joyous feeling of a hope. As these poems can only attain

their end by dispensing with all art, and by simplifying human nature,

they have the highest value for the heart, but they are also far too poor

for what concerns the mind, and their uniform circle is too quickly

traversed. Accordingly we can only seek them and love them in moments in

which we need calm, and not when our faculties aspire after movement and

exercise. A morbid mind will find its cure in them, a sound soul will

not find its food in them. They cannot vivify, they can only soften.

This defect, grounded in the essence of the pastoral idyll, has not been

remedied by the whole art of poets. I know that this kind of poem is not

without admirers, and that there are readers enough who prefer an Amyntus

and a Daphnis to the most splendid masterpieces of the epic or the

dramatic muse; but in them it is less the aesthetical taste than the

feeling of an individual want that pronounces on works of art; and their

judgment, by that very fact, could not be taken into consideration here.

The reader who judges with his mind, and whose heart is sensuous, without

being blind to the merit of these poems, will confess that he is rarely

affected by them, and that they tire him most quickly. But they act with

so much the more effect in the exact moment of need. But must the truly

beautiful be reduced to await our hours of need? and is it not rather its

office to awaken in our soul the want that it is going to satisfy?

The reproaches I here level against the bucolic idyl cannot be understood

of the sentimental. The simple pastoral, in fact, cannot be deprived of

aesthetic value, since this value is already found in the mere form. To

explain myself: every kind of poetry is bound to possess an infinite

ideal value, which alone constitutes it a true poetry; but it can satisfy

this condition in two different ways. It can give us the feeling of the

infinite as to form, by representing the object altogether limited and

individualizing it; it can awaken in us the feeling of the infinite as to

matter, in freeing its object from all limits in which it is enclosed, by

idealizing this object; therefore it can have an ideal value either by an

absolute representation or by the representation of an absolute. Simple

poetry takes the former road, the other is that of sentimental poetry.

Accordingly the simple poet is not exposed to failure in value so long as

he keeps faithfully to nature, which is always completely circumscribed,

that is, is infinite as regards form. The sentimental poet, on the

contrary, by that very fact, that nature only offers him completely

circumscribed objects, finds in it an obstruction when he wishes to give

an absolute value to a particular object. Thus the sentimental poet

understands his interests badly when he goes along the trail of the

simple poet, and borrows his objects from him--objects which by

themselves are perfectly indifferent, and which only become poetical by

the way in which they are treated. By this he imposes on himself without

any necessity the same limits that confine the field of the simple poet,

without, however, being able to carry out the limitation properly, or to

vie with his rival in absolute definiteness of representation. He ought

rather, therefore, to depart from the simple poet, just in the choice of

object; because, the latter having the advantage of him on the score of

form, it is only by the nature of the objects that he can resume the

upper hand.

Applying this to the pastoral idyls of the sentimental poet, we see why

these poems, whatever amount of art and genius be displayed in them, do

not fully satisfy the heart or the mind. An ideal is proposed in it,

and, at the same time, the writer keeps to this narrow and poor medium of

pastoral life. Would it not have been better, on the contrary, to choose

for the ideal another frame, or for the pastoral world another kind of

picture? These pictures are just ideal enough for painting to lose its

individual truth in them, and, again, just individual enough for the

ideal in them to suffer therefrom. For example, a shepherd of Gessner

can neither charm by the illusion of nature nor by the beauty of

imitation; he is too ideal a being for that, but he does not satisfy us

any more as an ideal by the infinity of the thought: he is a far too

limited creature to give us this satisfaction. He will, therefore,

please up to a certain point all classes of readers, without exception,

because he seeks to unite the simple with the sentimental, and he thus

gives a commencement of satisfaction to the two opposite exigencies that

may be brought to bear on any particular part of a poem; but the author,

in trying to unite the two points, does not fully satisfy either one or

the other exigency, as you do not find in him either pure nature or the

pure ideal; he cannot rank himself as entirely up to the mark of a

stringent critical taste, for taste does not accept anything equivocal or

incomplete in aesthetical matters. It is a strange thing that, in the

poet whom I have named, this equivocal character extends to the language,

which floats undecided between poetry and prose, as if he feared either

to depart too far from nature, by speaking rhythmical language, or if he

completely freed himself from rhythm, to lose all poetic flight. Milton

gives a higher satisfaction to the mind, in the magnificent picture of

the first human pair, and of the state of innocence in paradise;--the

most beautiful idyl I know of the sentimental kind. Here nature is

noble, inspired, simple, full of breadth, and, at the same time, of

depth; it is humanity in its highest moral value, clothed in the most

graceful form.

Thus, even in respect to the idyl, as well as to all kinds of poetry, we

must once for all declare either for individuality or ideality; for to

aspire to give satisfaction to both exigencies is the surest means,

unless you have reached the terminus of perfection, to miss both ends.

If the modern poet thinks he feels enough of the Greeks' mind to vie with

them, notwithstanding all the indocility of his matter, on their own

ground, namely that of simple poetry, let him do it exclusively, and

place himself apart from all the requirements of the sentimental taste of

his age. No doubt it is very doubtful if he come up to his models;

between the original and the happiest imitation there will always remain

a notable distance; but, by taking this road, he is at all events secure

of producing a really poetic work. If, on the other hand, he feels

himself carried to the ideal by the instinct of sentimental poetry, let

him decide to pursue this end fully; let him seek the ideal in its

purity, and let him not pause till he has reached the highest regions

without looking behind him to know if the real follows him, and does not

leave him by the way. Let him not lower himself to this wretched

expedient of spoiling the ideal to accommodate himself to the wants of

human weakness, and to turn out mind in order to play more easily with

the heart. Let him not take us back to our infancy, to make us buy, at

the cost of the most precious acquisitions of the understanding, a repose

that can only last as long as the slumber of our spiritual faculties; but

let him lead us on to emancipation, and give us this feeling of higher

harmony which compensates for all his troubles and secures the happiness

of the victor! Let him prepare as his task an idyl that realizes the

pastoral innocence, even in the children of civilization, and in all the

conditions of the most militant and excited life; of thought enlarged by

culture; of the most refined art; of the most delicate social

conventionalities--an idyl, in short, that is made, not to bring back man

to Arcadia, but to lead him to Elysium.

This idyl, as I conceive it, is the idea of humanity definitely

reconciled with itself, in the individual as well as in the whole of

society; it is union freely re-established between inclination and duty;

it is nature purified, raised to its highest moral dignity; in short, it

is no less than the ideal of beauty applied to real life. Thus, the

character of this idyl is to reconcile perfectly all the contradictions

between the real and the ideal, which formed the matter of satirical and

elegiac poetry, and, setting aside their contradictions, to put an end to

all conflict between the feelings of the soul. Thus, the dominant

expression of this kind of poetry would be calm; but the calm that

follows the accomplishment, and not that of indolence--the calm that

comes from the equilibrium re-established between the faculties, and not

from the suspending of their exercise; from the fulness of our strength,

and not from our infirmity; the calm, in short, which is accompanied in

the soul by the feeling of an infinite power. But precisely because idyl

thus conceived removes all idea of struggle, it will be infinitely more

difficult than it was in two previously-named kinds of poetry to express

movement; yet this is an indispensable condition, without which poetry

can never act on men's souls. The most perfect unity is required, but

unity ought not to wrong variety; the heart must be satisfied, but

without the inspiration ceasing on that account. The solution of this

problem is properly what ought to be given us by the theory of the idyl.

Now, what are the relations of the two poetries to one another, and their

relations to the poetic ideal? Here are the principles we have

established.

Nature has granted this favor to the simple poet, to act always as an

indivisible unity, to be at all times identical and perfect, and to

represent, in the real world, humanity at its highest value. In

opposition, it has given a powerful faculty to the sentimental poet, or,

rather, it has imprinted an ardent feeling on him; this is to replace out

of himself this first unity that abstraction has destroyed in him, to

complete humanity in his person, and to pass from a limited state to an

infinite state. They both propose to represent human nature fully, or

they would not be poets; but the simple poet has always the advantage of

sensuous reality over the sentimental poet, by setting forth as a real

fact what the other aspires only to reach. Every one experiences this in

the pleasure he takes in simple poetry.

We there feel that the human faculties are brought into play; no vacuum

is felt; we have the feeling of unity, without distinguishing anything of

what we experience; we enjoy both our spiritual activity and also the

fulness of physical life. Very different is the disposition of mind

elicited by the sentimental poet. Here we feel only a vivid aspiration

to produce in us this harmony of which we had in the other case the

consciousness and reality; to make of ourselves a single and same

totality; to realize in ourselves the idea of humanity as a complete

expression. Hence it comes that the mind is here all in movement,

stretched, hesitating between contrary feelings; whereas it was before

calm and at rest, in harmony with itself, and fully satisfied.

But if the simple poet has the advantage over the sentimental poet on the

score of reality; if he causes really to live that of which the other can

only elicit a vivid instinct, the sentimental poet, in compensation, has

this great advantage over the simple poet: to be in a position to offer

to this instinct a greater object than that given by his rival, and the

only one he could give. All reality, we know, is below the ideal; all

that exists has limits, but thought is infinite. This limitation, to

which everything is subject in sensuous reality, is, therefore, a

disadvantage for the simple poet, while the absolute, unconditional

freedom of the ideal profits the sentimental poet. No doubt the former

accomplishes his object, but this object is limited; the second, I admit,

does not entirely accomplish his, but his object is infinite. Here I

appeal to experience. We pass pleasantly to real life and things from

the frame of mind in which the simple poet has placed us. On the other

hand, the sentimental poet will always disgust us, for a time, with real

life. This is because the infinite character has, in a manner, enlarged

our mind beyond its natural measure, so that nothing it finds in the

world of sense can fill its capacity. We prefer to fall back in

contemplation on ourselves, where we find food for this awakened impulse

towards the ideal world; while, in the simple poet, we only strive to

issue out of ourselves, in search of sensuous objects. Sentimental

poetry is the offspring of retirement and science, and invites to it;

simple poetry is inspired by the spectacle of life, and brings back life.

I have styled simple poetry a gift of nature to show that thought has no

share in it. It is a first jet, a happy inspiration, that needs no

correction, when it turns out well, and which cannot be rectified if ill

turned out. The entire work of the simple genius is accomplished by

feeling; in that is its strength, and in it are its limits. If, then, he

has not felt at once in a poetic manner--that is, in a perfectly human

manner--no art in the world can remedy this defect. Criticism may help

him to see the defect, but can place no beauty in its stead. Simple

genius must draw all from nature; it can do nothing, or almost nothing,

by its will; and it will fulfil the idea of this kind of poetry provided

nature acts in it by an inner necessity. Now, it is true that all which

happens by nature is necessary, and all the productions, happy or not, of

the simple genius, which is disassociated from nothing so much as from

arbitrary will, are also imprinted with this character of necessity;

momentary constraint is one thing, and the internal necessity dependent

on the totality of things another. Considered as a whole, nature is

independent and infinite; in isolated operations it is poor and limited.

The same distinction holds good in respect to the nature of the poet.

The very moment when he is most happily inspired depends on a preceding

instant, and consequently only a conditional necessity can be attributed

to him. But now the problem that the poet ought to solve is to make an

individual state similar to the human whole, and consequently to base it

in an absolute and necessary manner on itself. It is therefore necessary

that at the moment of inspiration every trace of a temporal need should

be banished, and that the object itself, however limited, should not

limit the flight of the poet. But it may be conceived that this is only

possible in so far as the poet brings to the object an absolute freedom,

an absolute fulness of faculties, and in so far as he is prepared by an

anterior exercise to embrace all things with all his humanity. Now he

cannot acquire this exercise except by the world in which he lives, and

of which he receives the impressions immediately. Thus simple genius is

in a state of dependence with regard to experience, while the sentimental

genius is forced from it. We know that the sentimental genius begins its

operation at the place where the other finishes its own: its virtue is to

complete by the elements which it derives from itself a defective object,

and to transport itself by its own strength from a limited state to one

of absolute freedom. Thus the simple poet needs a help from without,

while the sentimental poet feeds his genius from his own fund, and

purifies himself by himself. The former requires a picturesque nature, a

poetical world, a simple humanity which casts its eyes around; for he

ought to do his work without issuing from the sensuous sphere. If

external aid fails him, if he be surrounded by matter not speaking to

mind, one of two things will happen: either, if the general character of

the poet-race is what prevails in him, he issues from the particular

class to which he belongs as a poet, and becomes sentimental to be at any

rate poetic; or, if his particular character as simple poet has the upper

hand, he leaves his species and becomes a common nature, in order to

remain at any rate natural. The former of these two alternatives might

represent the case of the principal poets of the sentimental kind in

Roman antiquity and in modern times. Born at another period of the

world, transplanted under another sky, these poets who stir us now by

ideas, would have charmed us by individual truth and simple beauty. The

other alternative is the almost unavoidable quicksand for a poet who,

thrown into a vulgar world, cannot resolve to lose sight of nature.

I mean, to lose sight of actual nature; but the greatest care must be

given to distinguish actual nature from true nature, which is the subject

of simple poetry. Actual nature exists everywhere; but true nature is so

much the more rare because it requires an internal necessity that

determines its existence. Every eruption of passion, however vulgar, is

real--it may be even true nature; but it is not true human nature, for

true human nature requires that the self-directing faculty in us should

have a share in the manifestation, and the expression of this faculty is

always dignified. All moral baseness is an actual human phenomenon, but

I hope not real human nature, which is always noble. All the faults of

taste cannot be surveyed that have been occasioned in criticism or the

practice of art by this--confusion between actual human nature and true

human nature. The greatest trivialities are tolerated and applauded

under the pretext that they are real nature. Caricatures not to be

tolerated in the real world are carefully preserved in the poetic world

and reproduced according to nature! The poet can certainly imitate a

lower nature; and it enters into the very definition of a satirical poet:

but then a beauty by its own nature must sustain and raise the object,

and the vulgarity of the subject must not lower the imitator too much.

If at the moment he paints he is true human nature himself, the object of

his paintings is indifferent; but it is only on this condition we can

tolerate a faithful reproduction of reality. Unhappy for us readers when

the rod of satire falls into hands that nature meant to handle another

instrument, and when, devoid of all poetic talent, with nothing but the

ape's mimicry, they exercise it brutally at the expense of our taste!

But vulgar nature has even its dangers for the simple poet; for the

simple poet is formed by this fine harmony of the feeling and thinking

faculty, which yet is only an idea, never actually realized. Even in the

happiest geniuses of this class, receptivity will always more or less

carry the day over spontaneous activity. But receptivity is always more

or less subordinate to external impressions, and nothing but a perpetual

activity of the creative faculty could prevent matter from exercising a

blind violence over this quality. Now, every time this happens the

feeling becomes vulgar instead of poetical.

No genius of the simple class, from Homer down to Bodmer, has entirely

steered clear of this quicksand. It is evident that it is most perilous

to those who have to struggle against external vulgarity, or who have

parted with their refinement owing to a want of proper restraint. The

first-named difficulty is the reason why even authors of high cultivation

are not always emancipated from platitudes--a fact which has prevented

many splendid talents from occupying the place to which they were

summoned by nature. For this reason, a comic poet whose genius has

chiefly to deal with scenes of real life, is more liable to the danger

of acquiring vulgar habits of style and expression--a fact evidenced in

the case of Aristophanes, Plautus, and all the poets who have followed

in their track. Even Shakspeare, with all his sublimity, suffers us to

fall very low now and then. Again, Lope De Vega, Moliere, Regnard,

Goldoni worry us with frequent trifling. Holberg drags us down into

the mire. Schlegel, a German poet, among the most remarkable for

intellectual talent, with genius to raise him to a place among poets of

the first order; Gellert, a truly simple poet, Rabener, and Lessing

himself, if I am warranted to introduce his name in this category--this

highly-cultivated scholar of criticism and vigilant examiner of his own

genius--all these suffer in different degrees from the platitudes and

uninspired movements of the natures they chose as the theme of their

satire. With regard to more recent authors of this class, I avoid naming

any of them, as I can make no exceptions in their case.

But not only is simple genius exposed to the danger of coming too near to

vulgar reality; the ease of expression, even this too close approximation

to reality, encourages vulgar imitators to try their hand in poetry.

Sentimental poetry, though offering danger enough, has this advantage, to

keep this crowd at a distance, for it is not for the first comer to rise

to the ideal; but simple poetry makes them believe that, with feeling and

humor, you need only imitate real nature to claim the title of poet. Now

nothing is more revolting than platitude when it tries to be simple and

amiable, instead of hiding its repulsive nature under the veil of art.

This occasions the incredible trivialities loved by the Germans under the

name of simple and facetious songs, and which give them endless amusement

round a well-garnished table. Under the pretext of good humor and of

sentiment people tolerate these poverties: but this good humor and this

sentiment ought to be carefully proscribed. The Muses of the Pleisse, in

particular, are singularly pitiful; and other Muses respond to them, from

the banks of the Seine, and the Elbe. If these pleasantries are flat,

the passion heard on our tragic stage is equally pitiful, for, instead of

imitating true nature, it is only an insipid and ignoble expression of

the actual. Thus, after shedding torrents of tears, you feel as you

would after visiting a hospital or reading the "Human Misery" of

Saltzmann. But the evil is worse in satirical poetry and comic romance,

kinds which touch closely on every-day life, and which consequently, as

all frontier posts, ought to be in safer hands. In truth, he less than

any other is called on to become the painter of his century, who is

himself the child and caricature of his century. But as, after all,

nothing is easier than to take in hand, among our acquaintances, a comic

character--a big, fat man--and draw a coarse likeness of him on paper,

the sworn enemies of poetic inspiration are often led to blot some paper

in this way to amuse a circle of friends. It is true that a pure heart,

a well-made mind, will never confound these vulgar productions with the

inspirations of simple genius. But purity of feeling is the very thing

that is wanting, and in most cases nothing is thought of but satisfying a

want of sense, without spiritual nature having any share. A

fundamentally just idea, ill understood, that works of bel esprit serve

to recreate the mind, contributes to keep up this indulgence, if

indulgence it may be called when nothing higher occupies the mind, and

reader as well as writer find their chief interest therein. This is

because vulgar natures, if overstrained, can only be refreshed by

vacuity; and even a higher intelligence, when not sustained by a

proportional culture, can only rest from its work amidst sensuous

enjoyments, from which spiritual nature is absent.

Poetic genius ought to have strength enough to rise with a free and

innate activity above all the accidental hinderances which are

inseparable from every confined condition, to arrive at a representation

of humanity in the absolute plenitude of its powers; it is not, however,

permitted, on the other hand, to emancipate itself from the necessary

limits implied by the very idea of human nature; for the absolute only in

the circle of humanity is its true problem. Simple genius is not exposed

to overstep this sphere, but rather not to fill it entirely, giving too

much scope to external necessity, to accidental wants, at the expense of

the inner necessity. The danger for the sentimental genius is, on the

other hand, by trying to remove all limits, of nullifying human nature

absolutely, and not only rising, as is its right and duty, beyond finite

and determinate reality, as far as absolute possibility, or in other

terms to idealize; but of passing even beyond possibility, or, in other

words, dreaming. This fault--overstraining--is precisely dependent on

the specific property of the sentimental process, as the opposite defect,

inertia, depends on the peculiar operation of the simple genius. The

simple genius lets nature dominate, without restricting it; and as nature

in her particular phenomena is always subject to some want, it follows

that the simple sentiment will not be always exalted enough to resist the

accidental limitations of the present hour. The sentimental genius, on

the contrary, leaves aside the real world, to rise to the ideal and to

command its matter with free spontaneity. But while reason, according to

law, aspires always to the unconditional, so the sentimental genius will

not always remain calm enough to restrain itself uniformly and without

interruption within the conditions implied by the idea of human nature,

and to which reason must always, even in its freest acts, remain

attached. He could only confine himself in these conditions by help of a

receptivity proportioned to his free activity; but most commonly the

activity predominates over receptivity in the sentimental poet, as much

as receptivity over activity in the simple poet. Hence, in the

productions of simple genius, if sometimes inspiration is wanting, so

also in works of sentimental poetry the object is often missed. Thus,

though they proceed in opposite ways, they will both fall into a vacuum,

for before the aesthetic judgment an object without inspiration, and

inspiration without an object, are both negations.

The poets who borrow their matter too much from thought, and rather

conceive poetic pictures by the internal abundance of ideas than by the

suggestions of feeling, are more or less likely to be addicted to go thus

astray. In their creations reason makes too little of the limits of the

sensuous world, and thought is always carried too far for experience to

follow it. Now, when the idea is carried so far that not only no

experience corresponds to it--as is the case in the beau ideal--but also

that it is repugnant to the conditions of all possible experience, so

that, in order to realize it, one must leave human nature altogether, it

is no longer a poetic but an exaggerated thought; that is, supposing it

claims to be representable and poetical, for otherwise it is enough if it

is not self-contradictory. If thought is contradictory it is not

exaggeration, but nonsense; for what does not exist cannot exceed. But

when the thought is not an object proposed to the fancy, we are just as

little justified in calling it exaggerated. For simple thought is

infinite, and what is limitless also cannot exceed. Exaggeration,

therefore, is only that which wounds, not logical truth, but sensuous

truth, and what pretends to be sensuous truth. Consequently, if a poet

has the unhappy chance to choose for his picture certain natures that are

merely superhuman and cannot possibly be represented, he can only avoid

exaggeration by ceasing to be a poet, and not trusting the theme to his

imagination. Otherwise one of two things would happen: either

imagination, applying its limits to the object, would make a limited and

merely human object of an absolute object--which happened with the gods

of Greece--or the object would take away limits from fancy, that is,

would render it null and void, and this is precisely exaggeration.

Extravagance of feeling should be distinguished from extravagance of

portraiture; we are speaking of the former. The object of the feeling

may be unnatural, but the feeling itself is natural, and ought

accordingly to be shadowed forth in the language of nature. While

extravagant feelings may issue from a warm heart and a really poetic

nature, extravagance of portraiture always displays a cold heart, and

very often a want of poetic capacity. Therefore this is not a danger for

the sentimental poet, but only for the imitator, who has no vocation; it

is therefore often found with platitude, insipidity, and even baseness.

Exaggeration of sentiment is not without truth, and must have a real

object; as nature inspires it, it admits of simplicity of expression and

coming from the heart it goes to the heart. As its object, however, is

not in nature, but artificially produced by the understanding, it has

only a logical reality, and the feeling is not purely human. It was not

an illusion that Heloise had for Abelard, Petrarch for Laura, Saint Preux

for his Julia, Werther for his Charlotte; Agathon, Phanias, and

Peregrinus--in Wieland--for the object of their dreams: the feeling is

true, only the object is factitious and outside nature. If their thought

had kept to simple sensuous truth, it could not have taken this flight;

but on the other hand a mere play of fancy, without inner value, could

not have stirred the heart: this is only stirred by reason. Thus this

sort of exaggeration must be called to order, but it is not contemptible:

and those who ridicule it would do well to find out if the wisdom on

which they pride themselves is not want of heart, and if it is not

through want of reason that they are so acute. The exaggerated delicacy

in gallantry and honor which characterizes the chivalrous romances,

especially of Spain, is of this kind; also the refined and even

ridiculous tenderness of French and English sentimental romances of the

best kind. These sentiments are not only subjectively true, but also

objectively they are not without value; they are sound sentiments issuing

from a moral source, only reprehensible as overstepping the limits of

human truth. Without this moral reality how could they stir and touch so

powerfully? The same remark applies to moral and religious fanaticism,

patriotism, and the love of freedom when carried up to exaltation. As

the object of these sentiments is always a pure idea, and not an external

experience, imagination with its proper activity has here a dangerous

liberty, and cannot, as elsewhere, be called back to bounds by the

presence of a visible object. But neither the man nor the poet can

withdraw from the law of nature, except to submit to that of reason. He

can only abandon reality for the ideal; for liberty must hold to one or

the other of these anchors. But it is far from the real to the ideal;

and between the two is found fancy, with its arbitrary conceits and its

unbridled freedom. It must needs be, therefore, that man in general, and

the poet in particular, when he withdraws by liberty of his understanding

from the dominion of feeling, without being moved to it by the laws of

reason--that is, when he abandons nature through pure liberty--he finds

himself freed from all law, and therefore a prey to the illusions of

phantasy.

It is testified by experience that entire nations, as well as individual

men, who have parted with the safe direction of nature, are actually in

this condition; and poets have gone astray in the same manner. The true

genius of sentimental poetry, if its aim is to raise itself to the rank

of the ideal, must overstep the limits of the existing nature; but false

genius oversteps all boundaries without any discrimination, flattering

itself with the belief that the wild sport of the imagination is poetic

inspiration. A true poetical genius can never fall into this error,

because it only abandons the real for the sake of the ideal, or, at all

events, it can only do so at certain moments when the poet forgets

himself; but his main tendencies may dispose him to extravagance within

the sphere of the senses. His example may also drive others into a chase

of wild conceptions, because readers of lively fancy and weak

understanding only remark the freedom which he takes with existing

nature, and are unable to follow him in copying the elevated necessities

of his inner being. The same difficulties beset the path of the

sentimental genius in this respect, as those which afflict the career of

a genius of the simple order. If a genius of this class carries out

every work, obedient to the free and spontaneous impulses of his nature,

the man devoid of genius who seeks to imitate him is not willing to

consider his own nature a worse guide than that of the great poet. This

accounts for the fact that masterpieces of simple poetry are commonly

followed by a host of stale and unprofitable works in print, and

masterpieces of the sentimental class by wild and fanciful effusions,--a

fact that may be easily verified on questioning the history of

literature.

Two maxims are prevalent in relation to poetry, both of them quite

correct in themselves, but mutually destructive in the way in which they

are generally conceived. The first is, that "poetry serves as a means of

amusement and recreation," and we have previously observed that this

maxim is highly favorable to aridity and platitudes in poetical actions.

The other maxim, that "poetry is conducive to the moral progress of

humanity," takes under its shelter theories and views of the most wild

and extravagant character. It may be profitable to examine more

attentively these two maxims, of which so much is heard, and which are so

often imperfectly understood and falsely applied.

We say that a thing amuses us when it makes us pass from a forced state

to the state that is natural to us. The whole question here is to know

in what our natural state ought to consist, and what a forced state

means. If our natural state is made to consist merely in the free

development of all our physical powers, in emancipation from all

constraint, it follows that every act of reason by resisting what is

sensuous, is a violence we undergo, and rest of mind combined with

physical movement will be a recreation par excellence. But if we make

our natural state consist in a limitless power of human expression and of

freely disposing of all our strength, all that divides these forces will

be a forced state, and recreation will be what brings all our nature to

harmony. Thus, the first of these ideal recreations is simply determined

by the wants of our sensuous nature; the second, by the autonomous

activity of human nature. Which of these two kinds of recreation can be

demanded of the poet? Theoretically, the question is inadmissible, as no

one would put the human ideal beneath the brutal. But in practice the

requirements of a poet have been especially directed to the sensuous

ideal, and for the most part favor, though not the esteem, for these

sorts of works is regulated thereby. Men's minds are mostly engaged in a

labor that exhausts them, or an enjoyment that sets them asleep. Now

labor makes rest a sensible want, much more imperious than that of the

moral nature; for physical nature must be satisfied before the mind can

show its requirements. On the other hand, enjoyment paralyzes the moral

instinct. Hence these two dispositions common in men are very injurious

to the feeling for true beauty, and thus very few even of the best judge

soundly in aesthetics. Beauty results from the harmony between spirit

and sense; it addresses all the faculties of man, and can only be

appreciated if a man employs fully all his strength. He must bring to it

an open sense, a broad heart, a spirit full of freshness. All a man's

nature must be on the alert, and this is not the case with those divided

by abstraction, narrowed by formulas, enervated by application. They

demand, no doubt, a material for the senses; but not to quicken, only to

suspend, thought. They ask to be freed from what? From a load that

oppressed their indolence, and not a rein that curbed their activity.

After this can one wonder at the success of mediocre talents in

aesthetics? or at the bitter anger of small minds against true energetic

beauty? They reckon on finding therein a congenial recreation, and

regret to discover that a display of strength is required to which they

are unequal. With mediocrity they are always welcome; however little

mind they bring, they want still less to exhaust the author's

inspiration. They are relieved of the load of thought; and their nature

can lull itself in beatific nothings on the soft pillow of platitude. In

the temple of Thalia and Melpomene--at least, so it is with us--the

stupid savant and the exhausted man of business are received on the broad

bosom of the goddess, where their intelligence is wrapped in a magnetic

sleep, while their sluggish senses are warmed, and their imagination with

gentle motions rocked.

Vulgar people may be excused what happens to the best capacities. Those

moments of repose demanded by nature after lengthy labor are not

favorable to aesthetic judgment, and hence in the busy classes few can

pronounce safely on matters of taste. Nothing is more common than for

scholars to make a ridiculous figure, in regard to a question of beauty,

besides cultured men of the world; and technical critics are especially

the laughing-stock of connoisseurs. Their opinion, from exaggeration,

crudeness, or carelessness guides them generally quite awry, and they can

only devise a technical judgment, and not an aesthetical one, embracing

the whole work, in which feeling should decide. If they would kindly

keep to technicalities they might still be useful, for the poet in

moments of inspiration and readers under his spell are little inclined to

consider details. But the spectacle which they afford us is only the

more ridiculous inasmuch as we see these crude natures--with whom all

labor and trouble only develop at the most a particular aptitude,--when

we see them set up their paltry individualities as the representation of

universal and complete feeling, and in the sweat of their brow pronounce

judgment on beauty.

We have just seen that the kind of recreation poetry ought to afford is

generally conceived in too restricted a manner, and only referred to a

simple sensuous want. Too much scope, however, is also given to the

other idea, the moral ennobling the poet should have in view, inasmuch as

too purely an ideal aim is assigned.

In fact, according to the pure ideal, the ennobling goes on to infinity,

because reason is not restricted to any sensuous limits, and only finds

rest in absolute perfection. Nothing can satisfy whilst a superior thing

can be conceived; it judges strictly and admits no excuses of infirmity

and finite nature. It only admits for limits those of thought, which

transcends time and space. Hence the poet could no more propose to

himself such an ideal of ennobling (traced for him by pure (didactic)

reason) any more than the coarse ideal of recreation of sensuous nature.

The aim is to free human nature from accidental hinderances, without

destroying the essential ideal of our humanity, or displacing its limits.

All beyond this is exaggeration, and a quicksand in which the poet too

easily suffers shipwreck if he mistakes the idea of nobleness. But,

unfortunately, he cannot rise to the true ideal of ennobled human nature

without going some steps beyond it. To rise so high he must abandon the

world of reality, for, like every ideal, it is only to be drawn from its

inner moral source. He does not find it in the turmoil of worldly life,

but only in his heart, and that only in calm meditation. But in this

separation from real life he is likely to lose sight of all the limits of

human nature, and seeking pure form he may easily lose himself in

arbitrary and baseless conceptions. Reason will abstract itself too much

from experience, and the practical man will not be able to carry out, in

the crush of real life, what the contemplative mind has discovered on the

peaceful path of thought. Thus, what makes a dreamy man is the very

thing that alone could have made him a sage; and the advantage for the

latter is not that he has never been a dreamer, but rather that he has

not remained one.

We must not, then, allow the workers to determine recreation according to

their wants, nor thinkers that of nobleness according to their

speculations, for fear of either a too low physical poetry, or a poetry

too given to hyperphysical exaggeration. And as these two ideas direct

most men's judgments on poetry, we must seek a class of mind at once

active, but not slavishly so, and idealizing, but not dreamy; uniting the

reality of life within as few limits as possible, obeying the current of

human affairs, but not enslaved by them. Such a class of men can alone

preserve the beautiful unity of human nature, that harmony which all work

for a moment disturbs, and a life of work destroys; such alone can, in

all that is purely human, give by its feelings universal rules of

judgment. Whether such a class exists, or whether the class now existing

in like conditions answers to this ideal conception, I am not concerned

to inquire. If it does not respond to the ideal it has only itself to

blame. In such a class--here regarded as a mere ideal--the simple and

sentimental would keep each other from extremes of extravagance and

relaxation. For the idea of a beautiful humanity is not exhausted by

either, but can only be presented in the union of both.

THE STAGE AS A MORAL INSTITUTION.

Sulzer has remarked that the stage has arisen from an irresistible

longing for the new and extraordinary. Man, oppressed by divided cares,

and satiated with sensual pleasure, felt an emptiness or want. Man,

neither altogether satisfied with the senses, nor forever capable of

thought, wanted a middle state, a bridge between the two states, bringing

them into harmony. Beauty and aesthetics supplied that for him. But a

good lawgiver is not satisfied with discovering the bent of his people--

he turns it to account as an instrument for higher use; and hence he

chose the stage, as giving nourishment to the soul, without straining it,

and uniting the noblest education of the head and heart.

The man who first pronounced religion to be the strongest pillar of the

state, unconsciously defended the stage, when he said so, in its noblest

aspect. The uncertain nature of political events, rendering religion a

necessity, also demands the stage as a moral force. Laws only prevent

disturbances of social life; religion prescribes positive orders

sustaining social order. Law only governs actions; religion controls the

heart and follows thought to the source.

Laws are flexible and capricious; religion binds forever. If religion

has this great sway over man's heart, can it also complete his culture?

Separating the political from the divine element in it, religion acts

mostly on the senses; she loses her sway if the senses are gone. By what

channel does the stage operate? To most men religion vanishes with the

loss of her symbols, images, and problems; and yet they are only pictures

of the imagination, and insolvable problems. Both laws and religion are

strengthened by a union with the stage, where virtue and vice, joy and

sorrow, are thoroughly displayed in a truthful and popular way; where a

variety of providential problems are solved; where all secrets are

unmasked, all artifice ends, and truth alone is the judge, as

incorruptible as Rhadamanthus.

Where the influence of civil laws ends that of the stage begins. Where

venality and corruption blind and bias justice and judgment, and

intimidation perverts its ends, the stage seizes the sword and scales and

pronounces a terrible verdict on vice. The fields of fancy and of

history are open to the stage; great criminals of the past live over

again in the drama, and thus benefit an indignant posterity. They pass

before us as empty shadows of their age, and we heap curses on their

memory while we enjoy on the stage the very horror of their crimes. When

morality is no more taught, religion no longer received, or laws exist,

Medea would still terrify us with her infanticide. The sight of Lady

Macbeth, while it makes us shudder, will also make us rejoice in a good

conscience, when we see her, the sleep-walker, washing her hands and

seeking to destroy the awful smell of murder. Sight is always more

powerful to man than description; hence the stage acts more powerfully

than morality or law.

But in this the stage only aids justice. A far wider field is really

open to it. There are a thousand vices unnoticed by human justice, but

condemned by the stage; so, also, a thousand virtues overlooked by man's

laws are honored on the stage. It is thus the handmaid of religion and

philosophy. From these pure sources it draws its high principles and the

exalted teachings, and presents them in a lovely form. The soul swells

with noblest emotions when a divine ideal is placed before it. When

Augustus offers his forgiving hand to Cinna, the conspirator, and says to

him: "Let us be friends, Cinna!" what man at the moment does not feel

that he could do the same. Again, when Francis von Sickingen, proceeding

to punish a prince and redress a stranger, on turning sees the house,

where his wife and children are, in flames, and yet goes on for the sake

of his word--how great humanity appears, how small the stern power of

fate!

Vice is portrayed on the stage in an equally telling manner. Thus, when

old Lear, blind, helpless, childless, is seen knocking in vain at his

daughters' doors, and in tempest and night he recounts by telling his

woes to the elements, and ends by saying: "I have given you all,"--how

strongly impressed we feel at the value of filial piety, and how hateful

ingratitude seems to us!

The stage does even more than this. It cultivates the ground where

religion and law do not think it dignified to stop. Folly often troubles

the world as much as crime; and it has been justly said that the heaviest

loads often hang suspended by the slightest threads. Tracing actions to

their sources, the list of criminals diminish, and we laugh at the long

catalogue of fools. In our sex all forms of evil emanate almost entirely

from one source, and all our excesses are only varied and higher forms of

one quality, and that a quality which in the end we smile at and love;

and why should not nature have followed this course in the opposite sex

too? In man there is only one secret to guard against depravity; that

is, to protect his heart against wickedness.

Much of all this is shown up on the stage. It is a mirror to reflect

fools and their thousand forms of folly, which are there turned to

ridicule. It curbs vice by terror, and folly still more effectually by

satire and jest. If a comparison be made between tragedy and comedy,

guided by experience, we should probably give the palm to the latter as

to effects produced. Hatred does not wound the conscience so much as

mockery does the pride of man. We are exposed specially to the sting of

satire by the very cowardice that shuns terrors. From sins we are

guarded by law and conscience, but the ludicrous is specially punished on

the stage. Where we allow a friend to correct our morals, we rarely

forgive a laugh. We may bear heavy judgment on our transgressions, but

our weaknesses and vulgarities must not be criticised by a witness.

The stage alone can do this with impunity, chastising us as the anonymous

fool. We can bear this rebuke without a blush, and even gratefully.

But the stage does even more than this. It is a great school of

practical wisdom, a guide for civil life, and a key to the mind in all

its sinuosities. It does not, of course, remove egoism and stubbornness

in evil ways; for a thousand vices hold up their heads in spite of the

stage, and a thousand virtues make no impression on cold-hearted

spectators. Thus, probably, Moliere's Harpagon never altered a

usurer's heart, nor did the suicide in Beverley save any one from the

gaming-table. Nor, again, is it likely that the high roads will be safer

through Karl Moor's untimely end. But, admitting this, and more than

this, still how great is the influence of the stage! It has shown us the

vices and virtues of men with whom we have to live. We are not surprised

at their weaknesses, we are prepared for them. The stage points them out

to us, and their remedy. It drags off the mask from the hypocrite, and

betrays the meshes of intrigue. Duplicity and cunning have been forced

by it to show their hideous features in the light of day. Perhaps the

dying Sarah may not deter a single debauchee, nor all the pictures of

avenged seduction stop the evil; yet unguarded innocence has been shown

the snares of the corrupter, and taught to distrust his oaths.

The stage also teaches men to bear the strokes of fortune. Chance and

design have equal sway over life. We have to bow to the former, but we

control the latter. It is a great advantage if inexorable facts do not

find us unprepared and unexercised, and if our breast has been steeled to

bear adversity. Much human woe is placed before us on the stage. It

gives us momentary pain in the tears we shed for strangers' troubles, but

as a compensation it fills us with a grand new stock of courage and

endurance. We are led by it, with the abandoned Ariadne, through the

Isle of Naxos, and we descend the Tower of Starvation in Ugolino; we

ascend the terrible scaffold, and we are present at the awful moment of

execution. Things remotely present in thought become palpable realities

now. We see the deceived favorite abandoned by the queen. When about to

die, the perfidious Moor is abandoned by his own sophistry. Eternity

reveals the secrets of the unknown through the dead, and the hateful

wretch loses all screen of guilt when the tomb opens to condemn him.

Then the stage teaches us to be more considerate to the unfortunate, and

to judge gently. We can only pronounce on a man when we know his whole

being and circumstances. Theft is a base crime, but tears mingle with

our condemnation, when we read what obliged Edward Ruhberg to do the

horrid deed. Suicide is shocking; but the condemnation of an enraged

father, her love, and the fear of a convent, lead Marianne to drink the

cup, and few would dare to condemn the victim of a dreadful tyranny.

Humanity and tolerance have begun to prevail in our time at courts of

princes and in courts of law. A large share of this may be due to the

influence of the stage in showing man and his secret motives.

The great of the world ought to be especially grateful to the stage, for

it is here alone that they hear the truth.

Not only man's mind, but also his intellectual culture, has been promoted

by the higher drama. The lofty mind and the ardent patriot have often

used the stage to spread enlightenment.

Considering nations and ages, the thinker sees the masses enchained by

opinion and cut off by adversity from happiness; truth only lights up a

few minds, who perhaps have to acquire it by the trials of a lifetime.

How can the wise ruler put these within the reach of his nation.

The thoughtful and the worthier section of the people diffuse the light

of wisdom over the masses through the stage. Purer and better principles

and motives issue from the stage and circulate through society: the night

of barbarism and superstition vanishes. I would mention two glorious

fruits of the higher class of dramas. Religious toleration has latterly

become universal. Before Nathan the Jew and Saladin the Saracen put us

to shame, and showed that resignation to God's will did not depend on a

fancied belief of His nature--even before Joseph II. contended with the

hatred of a narrow piety--the stage had sown seeds of humanity and

gentleness: pictures of fanaticism had taught a hatred of intolerance,

and Christianity, seeing itself in this awful mirror, washed off its

stains. It is to be hoped that the stage will equally combat mistaken

systems of education. This is a subject of the first political

importance, and yet none is so left to private whims and caprice. The

stage might give stirring examples of mistaken education, and lead

parents to juster, better views of the subject. Many teachers are led

astray by false views, and methods are often artificial and fatal.

Opinions about governments and classes might be reformed by the stage.

Legislation could thus justify itself by foreign symbols, and silence

doubtful aspersions without offence.

Now, if poets would be patriotic they could do much on the stage to

forward invention and industry. A standing theatre would be a material

advantage to a nation. It would have a great influence on the national

temper and mind by helping the nation to agree in opinions and

inclinations. The stage alone can do this, because it commands all human

knowledge, exhausts all positions, illumines all hearts, unites all

classes, and makes its way to the heart and understanding by the most

popular channels.

If one feature characterized all dramas; if the poets were allied in

aim--that is, if they selected well and from national topics--there

would be a national stage, and we should become a nation. It was this

that knit the Greeks so strongly together, and this gave to them the

all-absorbing interest in the republic and the advancement of humanity.

Another advantage belongs to the stage; one which seems to have become

acknowledged even by its censurers. Its influence on intellectual and

moral culture, which we have till now been advocating, may be doubted;

but its very enemies have admitted that it has gained the palm over all

other means of amusement. It has been of much higher service here than

people are often ready to allow.

Human nature cannot bear to be always on the rack of business, and the

charms of sense die out with their gratification. Man, oppressed by

appetites, weary of long exertion, thirsts for refined pleasure, or

rushes into dissipations that hasten his fall and ruin, and disturb

social order. Bacchanal joys, gambling, follies of all sorts to disturb

ennui, are unavoidable if the lawgiver produces nothing better. A man of

public business, who has made noble sacrifices to the state, is apt to

pay for them with melancholy, the scholar to become a pedant, and the

people brutish, without the stage. The stage is an institution combining

amusement with instruction, rest with exertion, where no faculty of the

mind is overstrained, no pleasure enjoyed at the cost of the whole. When

melancholy gnaws the heart, when trouble poisons our solitude, when we

are disgusted with the world, and a thousand worries oppress us, or when

our energies are destroyed by over-exercise, the stage revives us, we

dream of another sphere, we recover ourselves, our torpid nature is

roused by noble passions, our blood circulates more healthily. The

unhappy man forgets his tears in weeping for another. The happy man is

calmed, the secure made provident. Effeminate natures are steeled,

savages made man, and, as the supreme triumph of nature, men of all

clanks, zones, and conditions, emancipated from the chains of

conventionality and fashion, fraternize here in a universal sympathy,

forget the world, and come nearer to their heavenly destination. The

individual shares in the general ecstacy, and his breast has now only

space for an emotion: he is a man.

ON THE TRAGIC ART.

The state of passion in itself, independently of the good or bad

influence of its object on our morality, has something in it that charms

us. We aspire to transport ourselves into that state, even if it costs

us some sacrifices. You will find this instinct at the bottom of all our

most habitual pleasures. As to the nature itself of the affection,

whether it be one of aversion or desire, agreeable or painful, this is

what we take little into consideration. Experience teaches us that

painful affections are those which have the most attraction for us, and

thus that the pleasure we take in an affection is precisely in an inverse

ratio to its nature. It is a phenomenon common to all men, that sad,

frightful things, even the horrible, exercise over us an irresistible

seduction, and that in presence of a scene of desolation and of terror we

feel at once repelled and attracted by two equal forces. Suppose the

case be an assassination. Then every one crowds round the narrator and

shows a marked attention. Any ghost story, however embellished by

romantic circumstances, is greedily devoured by us, and the more readily

in proportion as the story is calculated to make our hair stand on end.

This disposition is developed in a more lively manner when the objects

themselves are placed before our eyes. A tempest that would swallow up

an entire fleet would be, seen from shore, a spectacle as attractive to

our imagination as it would be shocking to our heart. It would be

difficult to believe with Lucretius that this natural pleasure results

from a comparison between our own safety and the danger of which we are

witnesses. See what a crowd accompanies a criminal to the scene of his

punishment! This phenomenon cannot be explained either by the pleasure

of satisfying our love of justice, nor the ignoble joy of vengeance.

Perhaps the unhappy man may find excuses in the hearts of those present;

perhaps the sincerest pity takes an interest in his reprieve: this does

not prevent a lively curiosity in the spectators to watch his expressions

of pain with eye and ear. If an exception seems to exist here in the

case of a well-bred man, endowed with a delicate sense, this does not

imply that he is a complete stranger to this instinct; but in his case

the painful strength of compassion carries the day over this instinct, or

it is kept under by the laws of decency. The man of nature, who is not

chained down by any feeling of human delicacy, abandons himself without

any sense of shame to this powerful instinct. This attraction must,

therefore, have its spring of action in an original disposition, and it

must be explained by a psychological law common to the whole species.

But if it seems to us that these brutal instincts of nature are

incompatible with the dignity of man, and if we hesitate, for this

reason, to establish on this fact a law common to the whole species, yet

no experiences are required to prove, with the completest evidence, that

the pleasure we take in painful emotions is real, and that it is general.

The painful struggle of a heart drawn asunder between its inclinations or

contrary duties, a struggle which is a cause of misery to him who

experiences it, delights the person who is a mere spectator. We follow

with always heightening pleasure the progress of a passion to the abyss

into which it hurries its unhappy victim. The same delicate feeling that

makes us turn our eyes aside from the sight of physical suffering, or

even from the physical expression of a purely moral pain, makes us

experience a pleasure heightened in sweetness, in the sympathy for a

purely moral pain. The interest with which we stop to look at the

painting of these kinds of objects is a general phenomenon.

Of course this can only be understood of sympathetic affections, or those

felt as a secondary effect after their first impression; for commonly

direct and personal affections immediately call into life in us the

instinct of our own happiness, they take up all our thoughts, and seize

hold of us too powerfully to allow any room for the feeling of pleasure

that accompanies them, when the affection is freed from all personal

relation. Thus, in the mind that is really a prey to painful passion,

the feeling of pain commands all others notwithstanding all the charm

that the painting of its moral state may offer to the hearers and the

spectators. And yet the painful affection is not deprived of all

pleasure, even for him who experiences it directly; only this pleasure

differs in degree according to the nature of each person's mind. The

sports of chance would not have half so much attraction for us were there

not a kind of enjoyment in anxiety, in doubt, and in fear; danger would

not be encountered from mere foolhardiness; and the very sympathy which

interests us in the trouble of another would not be to us that pleasure

which is never more lively than at the very moment when the illusion is

strongest, and when we substitute ourselves most entirely in the place of

the person who suffers. But this does not imply that disagreeable

affections cause pleasure of themselves, nor do I think any one will

uphold this view; it suffices that these states of the mind are the

conditions that alone make possible for its certain kinds of pleasure.

Thus the hearts particularly sensitive to this kind of pleasure, and most

greedy of them, will be more easily led to share these disagreeable

affections, which are the condition of the former; and even in the most

violent storms of passion they will always preserve some remains of their

freedom.

The displeasure we feel in disagreeable affections comes from the

relation of our sensuous faculty or of our moral faculty with their

object. In like manner, the pleasure we experience in agreeable

affections proceeds from the very same source. The degree of liberty

that may prevail in the affections depends on the proportion between the

moral nature and the sensuous nature of a man. Now it is well known that

in the moral order there is nothing arbitrary for us, that, on the

contrary, the sensuous instinct is subject to the laws of reason and

consequently depends more or less on our will. Hence it is evident that

we can keep our liberty full and entire in all those affections that are

concerned with the instinct of self-love, and that we are the masters to

determine the degree which they ought to attain. This degree will be

less in proportion as the moral sense in a man will prevail over the

instinct of happiness, and as by obeying the universal laws of reasons he

will have freed himself from the selfish requirements of his

individuality, his Ego. A man of this kind must therefore, in a state of

passion, feel much less vividly the relation of an object with his own

instinct of happiness, and consequently he will be much less sensible of

the displeasure that arises from this relation. On the other hand, he

will be perpetually more attentive to the relation of this same object

with his moral nature, and for this very reason he will be more sensible

to the pleasure which the relation of the object with morality often

mingles with the most painful affections. A mind thus constituted is

better fitted than all others to enjoy the pleasure attaching to

compassion, and even to regard a personal affection as an object of

simple compassion. Hence the inestimable value of a moral philosophy,

which, by raising our eyes constantly towards general laws, weakens in us

the feeling of our individuality, teaches us to plunge our paltry

personality in something great, and enables us thus to act to ourselves

as to strangers. This sublime state of the mind is the lot of strong

philosophic minds, which by working assiduously on themselves have

learned to bridle the egotistical instinct. Even the most cruel loss

does not drive them beyond a certain degree of sadness, with which an

appreciable sum of pleasure can always be reconciled. These souls, which

are alone capable of separating themselves from themselves, alone enjoy

the privilege of sympathizing with themselves and of receiving of their

own sufferings only a reflex, softened by sympathy.

The indications contained in what precedes will suffice to direct our

attention to the sources of the pleasure that the affection in itself

causes, more particularly the sad affection. We have seen that this

pleasure is more energetic in moral souls, and it acts with greater

freedom in proportion as the soul is more independent of the egotistical

instinct. This pleasure is, moreover, more vivid and stronger in sad

affections, when self-love is painfully disquieted, than in gay

affections, which imply a satisfaction of self-love. Accordingly this

pleasure increases when the egotistical instinct is wounded, and

diminishes when that instinct is flattered. Now we only know of two

sources of pleasure--the satisfaction of the instinct of happiness, and

the accomplishment of the moral laws. Therefore, when it is shown that a

particular pleasure does not emanate from the former source, it must of

necessity issue from the second. It is therefore from our moral nature

that issues the charm of the painful affections shared by sympathy, and

the pleasure that we sometimes feel even where the painful affection

directly affects ourselves.

Many attempts have been made to account for the pleasure of pity, but

most of these solutions had little chance of meeting the problem, because

the principle of this phenomenon was sought for rather in the

accompanying circumstances than in the nature of the affection itself.

To many persons the pleasure of pity is simply the pleasure taken by the

mind in exercising its own sensibility. To others it is the pleasure of

occupying their forces energetically, of exercising the social faculty

vividly--in short, of satisfying the instinct of restlessness. Others

again make it derived from the discovery of morally fine features of

character, placed in a clear light by the struggle against adversity or

against the passions. But there is still the difficulty to explain why

it should be exactly the very feeling of pain,--suffering properly so

called,--that in objects of pity attracts us with the greatest force,

while, according to those elucidations, a less degree of suffering ought

evidently to be more favorable to those causes to which the source of the

emotion is traced. Various matters may, no doubt, increase the pleasure

of the emotion without occasioning it. Of this nature are the vividness

and force of the ideas awakened in our imagination, the moral excellence

of the suffering persons, the reference to himself of the person feeling

pity. I admit that the suffering of a weak soul, and the pain of a

wicked character, do not procure us this enjoyment. But this is because

they do not excite our pity to the same degree as the hero who suffers,

or the virtuous man who struggles. Thus we are constantly brought back

to the first question: why is it precisely the degree of suffering that

determines the degree of sympathetic pleasure which we take in an

emotion? and one answer only is possible; it is because the attack made

on our sensibility is precisely the condition necessary to set in motion

that quality of mind of which the activity produces the pleasure we feel

in sympathetic affections.

Now this faculty is no other than the reason; and because the free

exercise of reason, as an absolutely independent activity, deserves par

excellence the name of activity; as, moreover, the heart of man only

feels itself perfectly free and independent in its moral acts, it follows

that the charm of tragic emotions is really dependent on the fact that

this instinct of activity finds its gratification in them. But, even

admitting this, it is neither the great number nor the vivacity of the

ideas that are awakened then in our imagination, nor in general the

exercise of the social faculty, but a certain kind of ideas and a certain

activity of the social faculty brought into play by reason, which is the

foundation of this pleasure.

Thus the sympathetic affections in general are for us a source of

pleasure because they give satisfaction to our instinct of activity, and

the sad affections produce this effect with more vividness because they

give more satisfaction to this instinct. The mind only reveals all its

activity when it is in full possession of its liberty, when it has a

perfect consciousness of its rational nature, because it is only then

that it displays a force superior to all resistance.

Hence the state of mind which allows most effectually the manifestation

of this force, and awakens most successfully its activity, is that state

which is most suitable to a rational being, and which best satisfies our

instincts of activity: whence it follows that a greater amount of

pleasure must be attached necessarily to this state. Now it is the

tragic states that place our soul in this state, and the pleasure found

in them is necessarily higher than the charm produced by gay affections,

in the same degree that moral power in us is superior to the power of the

senses.

Points that are only subordinate and partial in a system of final causes

may be considered by art independently of that relation with the rest,

and may be converted into principal objects. It is right that in the

designs of nature pleasure should only be a mediate end, or a means; but

for art it is the highest end. It is therefore essentially important for

art not to neglect this high enjoyment attaching to the tragic emotion.

Now, tragic art, taking this term in its widest acceptation, is that

among the fine arts which proposes as its principal object the pleasure

of pity.

Art attains its end by the imitation of nature, by satisfying the

conditions which make pleasure possible in reality, and by combining,

according to a plan traced by the intelligence, the scattered elements

furnished by nature, so as to attain as a principal end to that which,

for nature, was only an accessory end. Thus tragic art ought to imitate

nature in those kinds of actions that are specially adapted to awaken

pity.

It follows that, in order to determine generally the system to be

followed by tragic art, it is necessary before all things to know on what

conditions in real life the pleasure of the emotion is commonly produced

in the surest and the strongest manner; but it is necessary at the same

time to pay attention to the circumstances that restrict or absolutely

extinguish this pleasure.

After what we have established in our essay "On the Cause of the Pleasure

we derive from Tragic Objects," it is known that in every tragic emotion

there is an idea of incongruity, which, though the emotion may be

attended with charm, must always lead on to the conception of a higher

consistency. Now it is the relation that these two opposite conceptions

mutually bear which determines in an emotion if the prevailing impression

shall be pleasurable or the reverse. If the conception of incongruity be

more vivid than that of the contrary, or if the end sacrificed is more

important than the end gained, the prevailing impression will always be

displeasure, whether this be understood objectively of the human race in

general, or only subjectively of certain individuals.

If the cause that has produced a misfortune gives us too much

displeasure, our compassion for the victim is diminished thereby. The

heart cannot feel simultaneously, in a high degree, two absolutely

contrary affections. Indignation against the person who is the primary

cause of the suffering becomes the prevailing affection, and all other

feeling has to yield to it. Thus our interest is always enfeebled when

the unhappy man whom it would be desirable to pity had cast himself into

ruin by a personal and an inexcusable fault; or if, being able to save

himself, he did not do so, either through feebleness of mind or

pusillanimity. The interest we take in unhappy King Lear, ill-treated by

two ungrateful daughters, is sensibly lessened by the circumstance that

this aged man, in his second childhood, so weakly gave up his crown, and

divided his love among his daughters with so little discernment. In the

tragedy of Kronegk, "Olinda and Sophronia," the most terrible suffering

to which we see these martyrs to their faith exposed only excites our

pity feebly, and all their heroism only stirs our admiration moderately,

because madness alone can suggest the act by which Olinda has placed

himself and all his people on the brink of the precipice.

Our pity is equally lessened when the primary cause of a misfortune,

whose innocent victim ought to inspire us with compassion, fills our mind

with horror. When the tragic poet cannot clear himself of his plot

without introducing a wretch, and when he is reduced to derive the

greatness of suffering from the greatness of wickedness, the supreme

beauty of his work must always be seriously injured. Iago and Lady

Macbeth in Shakspeare, Cleopatra in the tragedy of "Rodogune," or Franz

Moor in "The Robbers," are so many proofs in support of this assertion.

A poet who understands his real interest will not bring about the

catastrophe through a malicious will which proposes misfortune as its

end; nor, and still less, by want of understanding: but rather through

the imperious force of circumstances. If this catastrophe does not come

from moral sources, but from outward things, which have no volition and

are not subject to any will, the pity we experience is more pure, or at

all events it is not weakened by any idea of moral incongruity. But then

the spectator cannot be spared the disagreeable feeling of an incongruity

in the order of nature, which can alone save in such a case moral

propriety. Pity is far more excited when it has for its object both him

who suffers and him who is the primary cause of the suffering. This can

only happen when the latter has neither elicited our contempt nor our

hatred, but when he has been brought against his inclination to become

the cause of this misfortune. It is a singular beauty of the German play

of "Iphigenia" that the King of Tauris, the only obstacle who thwarts the

wishes of Orestes and of his sister, never loses our esteem, and that we

love him to the end.

There is something superior even to this kind of emotion; this is the

case when the cause of the misfortune not only is in no way repugnant to

morality, but only becomes possible through morality, and when the

reciprocal suffering comes simply from the idea that a fellow-creature

has been made to suffer. This is the situation of Chimene and Rodrigue

in "The Cid" of Pierre Corneille, which is undeniably in point of

intrigue the masterpiece of the tragic stage. Honor and filial love arm

the hand of Rodrigue against the father of her whom he loves, and his

valor gives him the victory. Honor and filial love rouse up against him,

in the person of Chimene, the daughter of his victim, an accuser and a

formidable persecutor. Both act in opposition to their inclination, and

they tremble with anguish at the thought of the misfortune of the object

against which they arm themselves, in proportion as zeal inspires them

for their duty to inflict this misfortune. Accordingly both conciliate

our esteem in the highest sense, as they accomplish a moral duty at the

cost of inclination; both inflame our pity in the highest degree, because

they suffer spontaneously for a motive that renders them in the highest

degree to be respected. It results from this that our pity is in this

case so little modified by any opposite feeling that it burns rather with

a double flame; only the impossibility of reconciling the idea of

misfortune with the idea of a morality so deserving of happiness might

still disturb our sympathetic pleasure, and spread a shade of sadness

over it. It is besides a great point, no doubt, that the discontent

given us by this contradiction does not bear upon our moral being, but is

turned aside to a harmless place, to necessity only; but this blind

subjection to destiny is always afflicting and humiliating for free

beings, who determine themselves. This is the cause that always leaves

something to be wished for even in the best Greek pieces. In all these

pieces, at the bottom of the plot it is always fatality that is appealed

to, and in this there is a knot that cannot be unravelled by our reason,

which wishes to solve everything.

But even this knot is untied, and with it vanishes every shade of

displeasure, at the highest and last step to which man perfected by

morality rises, and at the highest point which is attained by the art

which moves the feelings. This happens when the very discontent with

destiny becomes effaced, and is resolved in a presentiment or rather a

clear consciousness of a teleological concatenation of things, of a

sublime order, of a beneficent will. Then, to the pleasure occasioned in

us by moral consistency is joined the invigorating idea of the most

perfect suitability in the great whole of nature. In this case the thing

that seemed to militate against this order, and that caused us pain, in a

particular case, is only a spur that stimulates our reason to seek in

general laws for the justification of this particular case, and to solve

the problem of this separate discord in the centre of the general

harmony. Greek art never rose to this supreme serenity of tragic

emotion, because neither the national religion, nor even the philosophy

of the Greeks, lighted their step on this advanced road. It was reserved

for modern art, which enjoys the privilege of finding a purer matter in a

purer philosophy, to satisfy also this exalted want, and thus to display

all the moral dignity of art.

If we moderns must resign ourselves never to reproduce Greek art because

the philosophic genius of our age, and modern civilization in general are

not favorable to poetry, these influences are at all events less hurtful

to tragic art, which is based rather on the moral element. Perhaps it is

in the case of this art only that our civilization repairs the injury

that it has caused to art in general.

In the same manner as the tragic emotion is weakened by the admixture of

conflicting ideas and feelings, and the charm attaching to it is thus

diminished, so this emotion can also, on the contrary, by approaching the

excess of direct and personal affection, become exaggerated to the point

where pain carries the day over pleasure. It has been remarked that

displeasure, in the affections, comes from the relation of their object

with our senses, in the same way as the pleasure felt in them comes from

the relation of the affection itself to our moral faculty. This implies,

then, between our senses and our moral faculty a determined relation,

which decides as regards the relation between pleasure and displeasure in

tragic emotions. Nor could this relation be modified or overthrown

without overthrowing at the same time the feelings of pleasure and

displeasure which we find in the emotions, or even without changing them

into their opposites. In the same ratio that the senses are vividly

roused in us, the influence of morality will be proportionately

diminished; and reciprocally, as the sensuous loses, morality gains

ground. Therefore that which in our hearts gives a preponderance to the

sensuous faculty, must of necessity, by placing restrictions on the moral

faculty, diminish the pleasure that we take in tragic emotions, a

pleasure which emanates exclusively from this moral faculty. In

like manner, all that in our heart impresses an impetus on this

latter faculty, must blunt the stimulus of pain even in direct and

personal affections. Now our sensuous nature actually acquires this

preponderance, when the ideas of suffering rise to a degree of vividness

that no longer allows us to distinguish a sympathetic affection from

a personal affection, or our own proper Ego from the subject that

suffers,--reality, in short, from poetry. The sensuous also gains the

upper hand when it finds an aliment in the great number of its objects,

and in that dazzling light which an over-excited imagination diffuses

over it. On the contrary, nothing is more fit to reduce the sensuous to

its proper bounds than to place alongside it super-sensuous ideas, moral

ideas, to which reason, oppressed just before, clings as to a kind of

spiritual props, to right and raise itself above the fogs of the sensuous

to a serener atmosphere. Hence the great charm which general truths or

moral sentences, scattered opportunely over dramatic dialogue, have for

all cultivated nations, and the almost excessive use that the Greeks made

of them. Nothing is more agreeable to a moral soul than to have the

power, after a purely passive state that has lasted too long, of escaping

from the subjection of the senses, and of being recalled to its

spontaneous activity, and restored to the possession of its liberty.

These are the remarks I had to make respecting the causes that restrict

our pity and place an obstacle to our pleasure in tragic emotions. I

have next to show on what conditions pity is solicited and the pleasure

of the emotion excited in the most infallible and energetic manner.

Every feeling of pity implies the idea of suffering, and the degree of

pity is regulated according to the degree more or less of vividness, of

truth, of intensity, and of duration of this idea.

1st. The moral faculty is provoked to reaction in proportion to the

vividness of ideas in the soul, which incites it to activity and solicits

its sensuous faculty. Now the ideas of suffering are conceived in two

different manners, which are not equally favorable to the vividness of

the impression. The sufferings that we witness affect us incomparably

more than those that we have through a description or a narrative. The

former suspend in us the free play of the fancy, and striking our senses

immediately penetrate by the shortest road to our heart. In the

narrative, on the contrary, the particular is first raised to the

general, and it is from this that the knowledge of the special case is

afterwards derived; accordingly, merely by this necessary operation of

the understanding, the impression already loses greatly in strength. Now

a weak impression cannot take complete possession of our mind, and it

will allow other ideas to disturb its action and to dissipate the

attention. Very frequently, moreover, the narrative account transports

us from the moral disposition, in which the acting person is placed, to

the state of mind of the narrator himself, which breaks up the illusion

so necessary for pity. In every case, when the narrator in person puts

himself forward, a certain stoppage takes place in the action, and, as an

unavoidable result, in our sympathetic affection. This is what happens

even when the dramatic poet forgets himself in the dialogue, and puts in

the mouth of his dramatic persons reflections that could only enter the

mind of a disinterested spectator. It would be difficult to mention a

single one of our modern tragedies quite free from this defect; but the

French alone have made a rule of it. Let us infer, then, that the

immediate vivid and sensuous presence of the object is necessary to give

to the ideas impressed on us by suffering that strength without which the

emotion could not rise to a high degree.

2d. But we can receive the most vivid impressions of the idea of

suffering without, however, being led to a remarkable degree of pity, if

these impressions lack truth. It is, necessary that we should form of

suffering an idea of such a nature that we are obliged to share and take

part in it. To this end there must be a certain agreement between this

suffering and something that we have already in us. In other words, pity

is only possible inasmuch as we can prove or suppose a resemblance

between ourselves and the subject that suffers. Everywhere where this

resemblance makes itself known, pity is necessary; where this resemblance

is lacking, pity is impossible. The more visible and the greater is the

resemblance, the more vivid is our pity; and they mutually slacken in

dependence on each other. In order that we may feel the affections of

another after him, all the internal conditions demanded by this affection

must be found beforehand in us, in order that the external cause which,

by meeting with the internal conditions, has given birth to the

affection, may also produce on us a like effect. It is necessary that,

without doing violence to ourselves, we should be able to exchange

persons with another, and transport our Ego by an instantaneous

substitution in the state of the subject. Now, how is it possible to

feel in us the state of another, if we have not beforehand recognized

ourselves in this other.

This resemblance bears on the totality of the constitution of the mind,

in as far as that is necessary and universal. Now, this character of

necessity and of universality belongs especially to our moral nature.

The faculty of feeling can be determined differently by accidental

causes: our cognitive faculties themselves depend on variable conditions:

the moral faculty only has its principle in itself, and by that very fact

it can best give us a general measure and a certain criterion of this

resemblance. Thus an idea which we find in accord with our mode of

thinking and of feeling, which offers at once a certain relationship with

the train of our own ideas, which is easily grasped by our heart and our

mind, we call a true idea. If this relationship bears on what is

peculiar to our heart, on the private determinations that modify in us

the common fundamentals of humanity, and which may be withdrawn without

altering this general character, this idea is then simply true for us.

If it bears on the general and necessary form that we suppose in the

whole species, the truth of this idea ought to be held to be equal to

objective truth. For the Roman, the sentence of the first Brutus and the

suicide of Cato are of subjective truth. The ideas and the feelings that

have inspired the actions of these two men are not an immediate

consequence of human nature in general, but the mediate consequence of a

human nature determined by particular modifications. To share with them

these feelings we must have a Roman soul, or at least be capable of

assuming for a moment a Roman soul. It suffices, on the other hand, to

be a man in general, to be vividly touched by the heroic sacrifice of

Leonidas, by the quiet resignation of Aristides, by the voluntary death

of Socrates, and to be moved to tears by the terrible changes in the

fortunes of Darius. We attribute to these kinds of ideas, in opposition

to the preceding ones, an objective truth because they agree with the

nature of all human subjects, which gives them a character of

universality and of necessity as strict as if they were independent of

every subjective condition.