But I might perhaps make a better use of the opening you afford me
if I were to direct your mind to a loftier theme than that of art.
It would appear to be unseasonable to go in search of a code for the
aesthetic world, when the moral world offers matter of so much
higher interest, and when the spirit of philosophical inquiry is so
stringently challenged by the circumstances of our times to occupy
itself with the most perfect of all works of art--the establishment
and structure of a true political freedom.
It is unsatisfactory to live out of your own age and to work for
other times. It is equally incumbent on us to be good members of our
own age as of our own state or country. If it is conceived to be
unseemly and even unlawful for a man to segregate himself from the
customs and manners of the circle in which he lives, it would be
inconsistent not to see that it is equally his duty to grant a
proper share of influence to the voice of his own epoch, to its
taste and its requirements, in the operations in which he engages.
But the voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all
events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The
course of events has given a direction to the genius of the time
that threatens to remove it continually further from the ideal of
art. For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily
above necessity and neediness for art is the daughter of freedom,
and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the
necessity of spirits and not by that of matter. But in our day it is
necessity, neediness, that prevails, and bends a degraded humanity
under its iron yoke. Utility is the great idol of the time, to which
all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient. In this great
balance of utility, the spiritual service of art has no weight, and,
deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity
Fair of our time. The very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself
robs the imagination of one promise after another, and the frontiers
of art are narrowed, in proportion as the limits of science are
enlarged.
The eyes of the philosopher as well as of the man of the world are
anxiously turned to the theatre of political events, where it is
presumed the great destiny of man is to be played out. It would
almost seem to betray e culpable indifference to the welfare of
society if we did not share this general interest. For this great
commerce in social and moral principles is of necessity a matter of
the greatest concern to every human being, on the ground both of its
subject and of its results. It must accordingly be of deepest moment
to every man to think for himself. It would seem that now at length
a question that formerly was only settled by the law of the stronger
is to be determined by the calm judgment of the reason, and every
man who is capable of placing himself in a central position, and
raising his individuality into that of his species, can look upon
himself as in possession of this judicial faculty of reason; being
moreover, as man and member of the human family, a party in the case
under trial and involved more or less in its decisions. It would
thus appear that this great political process is not only engaged
with his individual case, it has also to pronounce enactments, which
he as a rational spirit is capable of enunciating and entitled to
pronounce.
It is evident that it would have been most attractive to me to
inquire into an object such as this, to decide such a question in
conjunction with a thinker of powerful mind, a man of liberal
sympathies, and a heart imbued with a noble enthusiasm for the weal
of humanity. Though so widely separated by worldly position, it
would have been a delightful surprise to have found your
unprejudiced mind arriving at the same result as my own in the field
of ideas, Nevertheless, I think I can not only excuse, but even
justify by solid grounds, my step in resisting this attractive
purpose and in preferring beauty to freedom. I hope that I shall
succeed in convincing you that this matter of art is less foreign to
the needs than to the tastes of our age; nay, that, to arrive at a
solution even in the political problem, the road of aesthetics must
be pursued, because it is through beauty that we arrive at freedom.
But I cannot carry out this proof without my bringing to your
remembrance the principles by which the reason is guided in
political legislation.