On a first survey, nothing appears more opposed than these two
impulsions; one having for its object change, the other
immutability, and yet it is these two notions that exhaust the
notion of humanity, and a third FUNDAMENTAL IMPULSION, holding a
medium between them, is quite inconceivable. How then shall we re-
establish the unity of human nature, a unity that appears completely
destroyed by this primitive and radical opposition?
I admit these two tendencies are contradictory, but it should be
noticed that they are not so in the SAME OBJECTS. But things that do
not meet cannot come into collision. No doubt the sensuous impulsion
desires change; but it does not wish that it should extend to
personality and its field, nor that there should be a change of
principles. The formal impulsion seeks unity and permanence, but it
does not wish the condition to remain fixed with the person, that
there should be identity of feeling. Therefore these two impulsions
are not divided by nature, and if, nevertheless, they appear so, it
is because they have become divided by transgressing nature freely,
by ignoring themselves, and by confounding their spheres. The office
of culture is to watch over them and to secure to each one its
proper LIMITS; therefore culture has to give equal justice to both,
and to defend not only the rational impulsion against the sensuous,
but also the latter against the former. Hence she has to act a
twofold part: first, to protect sense against the attacks of
freedom; secondly, to secure personality against the power of
sensations. One of these ends is attained by the cultivation of the
sensuous, the other by that of the reason.
Since the world is developed in time, or change, the perfection of
the faculty that places men in relation with the world will
necessarily be the greatest possible mutability and extensiveness.
Since personality is permanence in change, the perfection of this
faculty, which must be opposed to change, will be the greatest
possible freedom of action (autonomy) and intensity. The more the
receptivity is developed under manifold aspects, the more it is
movable and offers surfaces to phaenomena, the larger is the part of
the world seized upon by man, and the more virtualities he develops
in himself. Again, in proportion as man gains strength and depth,
and depth and reason gain in freedom, in that proportion man TAKES
IN a larger share of the world, and throws out forms outside
himself. Therefore his culture will consist, first, in placing his
receptivity on contact with the world in the greatest number of
points possible, and is raising passivity to the highest exponent on
the side of feeling; secondly, in procuring for the determining
faculty the greatest possible amount of independence, in relation to
the receptive power, and in raising activity to the highest degree
on the side of reason. By the union of these two qualities man will
associate the highest degree of self-spontaneity (autonomy) and of
freedom with the fullest plenitude of existence, and instead of
abandoning himself to the world so as to get lost in it, he will
rather absorb it in himself, with all the infinitude of its
phenomena, and subject it to the unity of his reason.
But man can invert this relation, and thus fail in attaining his
destination in two ways. He can hand over to the passive force the
intensity demanded by the active force; he can encroach by material
impulsion on the formal impulsion, and convert the receptive into
the determining power. He can attribute to the active force the
extensiveness belonging to the passive force, he can encroach by the
formal impulsion on the material impulsion, and substitute the
determining for the receptive power. In the former case, he will
never be an Ego, a personality; in the second case, he will never be
a Non-Ego, and hence in both cases he will be NEITHER ONE NOR THE
OTHER, consequently he will nothing.
In fact, if the sensuous impulsion becomes determining, if the
senses become law-givers, and if the world stifles personality, he
loses as object what he gains in force. It may be said of man that
when he is only the contents of time, he is not and consequently HE
HAS no other contents. His condition is destroyed at the same time
as his personality, because these are two correlative ideas, because
change presupposes permanence, and a limited reality implies an
infinite reality. If the formal impulsion becomes receptive, that
is, if thought anticipates sensation, and the person substitutes
itself in the place of the world, it loses as a subject and
autonomous force what it gains as object, because immutability
implies change, and that to manifest itself also absolute reality
requires limits. As soon as man is only form, he has no form, and
the personality vanishes with the condition. In a word, it is only
inasmuch as he is spontaneous, autonomous, that there is reality out
of him, that he is also receptive; and it is only inasmuch as he is
receptive that there is reality in him, that he is a thinking force.
Consequently these two impulsions require limits, and looked upon as
forces, they need tempering; the former that it may not encroach on
the field of legislation, the latter that it may not invade the
ground of feeling. But this tempering and moderating the sensuous
impulsion ought not to be the effect of physical impotence or of a
blunting of sensations, which is always a matter for contempt. It
must be a free act, an activity of the person, which by its moral
intensity moderates the sensuous intensity, and by the sway of
impressions takes from them in depth what it gives them in surface
or breadth. The character must place limits to temperament, for the
senses have only the right to lose elements if it be to the
advantage of the mind. In its turn, the tempering of the formal
impulsion must not result from moral impotence, from a relaxation of
thought and will, which would degrade humanity. It is necessary that
the glorious source of this second tempering should be the fulness
of sensations; it is necessary that sensuousness itself should
defend its field with a victorious arm and resist the violence that
the invading activity of the mind would do to it. In a word, it is
necessary that the material impulsion should be contained in the
limits of propriety by personality, and the formal impulsion by
receptivity or nature.