Convinced by my preceding letters, you agree with me on this point,
that man can depart from his destination by two opposite roads, that
our epoch is actually moving on these two false roads, and that it
has become the prey, in one case, of coarseness, and elsewhere of
exhaustion and de pravity. It is the beautiful that must bring it
back from this twofold departure. But how can the cultivation of the
fine arts remedy, at the same time, these opposite defects, and
unite in itself two contradictory qualities? Can it bind nature in
the savage, and set it free in the barbarian? Can it at once tighten
a spring and loose it, and if it cannot produce this double effect,
how will it be reasonable to expect from it so important a result as
the education of man?
It may be urged that it is almost a proverbial adage that the
feeling developed by the beautiful refines manners, and any new
proof offered on the subject would appear superfluous. Men base this
maxim on daily experience, which shows us almost always clearness of
intellect, deli cacy of feeling, liberality and even dignity of
conduct, associated with a cultivated taste, while an uncultivated
taste is almost always accompanied by the opposite qualities. With
considerable assurance, the most civilised nation of antiquity is
cited as an evidence of this, the Greeks, among whom the perception
of the beautiful attained its highest development, and, as a
contrast, it is usual to point to nations in a partial savage state,
and partly barbarous, who expiate their insensibility to the
beautiful by a coarse or, at all events, a hard austere character.
Nevertheless, some thinkers are tempted occasionally to deny either
the fact itself or to dispute the legitimacy of the consequences
that are derived from it. They do not entertain so unfavourable an
opinion of that savage coarseness which is made a reproach in the
case of certain nations; nor do they form so advantageous an opinion
of the refinement so highly lauded in the case of cultivated
nations. Even as far back as in antiquity there were men who by no
means regarded the culture of the liberal arts as a benefit, and who
were consequently led to forbid the entrance of their republic to
imagination.
I do not speak of those who calumniate art, because they have never
been favoured by it. These persons only appreciate a possession by
the trouble it takes to acquire it, and by the profit it brings; and
how could they properly appreciate the silent labour of taste in the
exterior and in terior man? How evident it is that the accidental
disadvantages attending liberal culture would make them lose sight
of its essential advantages! The man deficient in form despises the
grace of diction as a means of corruption, courtesy in the social
relations as dissimulation, delicacy and generosity in conduct as an
affected exaggeration. He cannot forgive the favourite of the Graces
for having enlivened all assemblies as a man of the world, of having
directed all men to his views like a statesman, and of giving his
impress to the whole century as a writer; while he, the victim of
labour, can only obtain, with all his learning, the least attention
or overcome the least difficulty. As he cannot learn from his
fortunate rival the secret of pleasing, the only course open to him
is to deplore the corruption of human nature, which adores rather
the appearance than the reality.
But there are also opinions deserving respect, that pronounce
themselves adverse to the effects of the beautiful, and find
formidable arms in experience, with which to wage war against it.
"We are free to admit"--such is their language--"that the charms of
the beautiful can further honourable ends in pure hands; but it is
not repugnant to its nature to produce, in impure hands, a directly
contrary effect, and to employ in the service of injustice and error
the power that throws the soul of man into chains. It is exactly
because taste only attends to the form and never to the substance;
it ends by placing the soul on the dangerous incline, leading it to
neglect all reality and to sacrifice truth and morality to an
attractive envelope. All the real difference of things vanishes, and
it is only the appearance that determines their value! How many men
of talent"--thus these arguers proceed--"have been turned aside from
all effort by the seductive power of the beautiful, or have been led
away from all serious exercise of their activity, or have been
induced to use it very feebly? How many weak minds have been
impelled to quarrel with the organisation of society, simply because
it has pleased the imagination of poets to present the image of a
world constituted differently, where no propriety chains down
opinion and no artifice helds nature in thraldom? What a dangerous
logic of the passions they have learned since the poets have painted
them in their pictures in the most brilliant colours and since, in
the contest with law and duty, they have commonly re mained masters
of the battlefield. What has society gained by the relations of
society, formerly under the sway of truth, being now subject to the
laws of the beautiful, or by the external impression deciding the
estimation in which merit is to be held? We admit that all virtues
whose appearance produces an agreeable effect are now seen to
flourish, and those which, in society, give a value to the man who
possesses them. But, as a compensation, all kinds of excesses are
seen to prevail, and all vices are in vogue that can be reconciled
with a graceful exterior." It is certainly a matter entitled to
reflection that, at almost all the periods of history when art
flourished and taste held sway, humanity is found in a state of
decline; nor can a single instance be cited of the union of a large
diffusion of aesthetic culture with political liberty and social
virtue, of fine manners associated with good morals, and of
politeness fraternising with truth and loyalty of character and
life.
As long as Athens and Sparta preserved their independence, and as
long as their institutions were based on respect for the laws, taste
did not reach its maturity, art remained in its infancy, and beauty
was far from exer cising her empire over minds. No doubt, poetry had
already taken a sublime flight, but it was on the wings of genius,
and we know that genius borders very closely on savage coarseness,
that it is a light which shines readily in the midst of darkness,
and which therefore often argues against rather than in favour of
the taste of the time. When the golden age of art appears under
Pericles and Alexander, and the sway of taste becomes more general,
strength and liberty have abandoned Greece; eloquence corrupts the
truth, wisdom offends it on the lips of Socrates, and virtue in the
life of Phocion. It is well known that the Romans had to exhaust
their energies in civil wars, and, corrupted by Oriental luxury, to
bow their heads under the yoke of a fortunate despot, before Grecian
art triumphed over the stiffness of their character. The same was
the case with the Arabs: civilisation only dawned upon them when the
vigour of their military spirit became softened under the sceptre of
the Abbassides. Art did not appear in modern Italy till the glorious
Lombard League was dissolved, Florence submitting to the Medici, and
all those brave cities gave up the spirit of independ ence for an
inglorious resignation. It is almost super fluous to call to mind
the example of modern nations, with whom refinement has increased in
direct proportion to the decline of their liberties. Wherever we
direct our eyes in past times, we see taste and freedom mutually
avoiding each other. Everywhere we see that the beautiful only
founds its sway on the ruins of heroic virtues.
And yet this strength of character, which is commonly sacrificed to
establish aesthetic culture, is the most power ful spring of all
that is great and excellent in man, and no other advantage, however
great, can make up for it. Accordingly, if we only keep to the
experiments hitherto made, as to the influence of the beautiful, we
cannot certainly be much encouraged in developing feelings so
dangerous to the real culture of man. At the risk of being hard and
coarse, it will seem preferable to dispense with this dissolving
force of the beautiful, rather than see human nature a prey to its
enervating influence, notwithstanding all its refining advantages.
However, experience is perhaps not the proper tribunal at which to
decide such a question; before giving so much weight to its
testimony, it would be well to inquire if the beauty we have been
discussing is the power that is condemned by the previous examples.
And the beauty we are discussing seems to assume an idea of the
beautiful derived from a source different from experience, for it is
this higher notion of the beautiful which has to decide if what is
called beauty by experience is entitled to the name.
This pure and rational idea of the beautiful--supposing it can be
placed in evidence--cannot be taken from any real and special case,
and must, on the contrary, direct and give sanction to our judgment
in each special case. It must therefore be sought for by a process
of abstraction, and it ought to be deduced from the simple
possibility of a nature both sensuous and rational; in short, beauty
ought to present itself as a necessary condition of humanity. It is
therefore essential that we should rise to the pure idea of
humanity, and as experience shows us nothing but individuals, in
particular cases, and never humanity at large, we must endeavour to
find in their individual and variable mode of being the absolute and
the permanent, and to grasp the necessary conditions of their
existence, suppressing all accidental limits. No doubt this
transcendental procedure will remove us for some time from the
familiar circle of phaenomena and the living presence of objects, to
keep us on the unproductive ground of abstract ideas; but we are
engaged in the search after a principle of knowledge solid enough
not to be shaken by anything, and the man who does not dare to rise
above reality will never conquer this truth.