I approach continually nearer to the end to which I lead you, by a
path offering few attractions. Be pleased to follow me a few steps
further, and a large horizon will open up to you and a delightful
prospect will reward you for the labour of the way.
The object of the sensuous instinct, expressed in a universal
conception, is named Life in the widest acceptation: a conception
that expresses all material existence and all that is immediately
present in the senses. The object of the formal instinct, expressed
in a universal conception, is called shape or form, as well in an
exact as in an inexact acceptation; a conception that embraces all
formal qualities of things and all relations of the same to the
thinking powers. The object of the play instinct, represented in a
general statement, may therefore bear the name of living form; a
term that serves to describe all aesthetic qualities of phaenomena,
and what people style, in the widest sense, beauty.
Beauty is neither extended to the whole field of all living things
nor merely enclosed in this field. A marble block, though it is and
remains lifeless, can nevertheless become a living form by the
architect and sculptor; a man, though he lives and has a form, is
far from being a living form on that account. For this to be the
case, it is necessary that his form should be life, and that his
life should be a form. As long as we only think of his form, it is
lifeless, a mere abstraction; as long as we only feel his life, it
is without form, a mere impression. It is only when his form lives
in our feeling, and his life in our understanding, he is the living
form, and this will everywhere be the case where we judge him to be
beautiful.
But the genesis of beauty is by no means declared because we know
how to point out the component parts, which in their combination
produce beauty. For to this end it would be necessary to comprehend
that combination itself, which continues to defy our exploration, as
well as all mutual operation between the finite and the infinite.
The reason, on transcendental grounds, makes the following demand:
There shall be a communion between the formal impulse and the
material impulse-that is, there shall be a play instinct--because it
is only the unity of reality with the form, of the accidental with
the necessary, of the passive state with freedom, that the
conception of humanity is completed. Reason is obliged to make this
demand, because her nature impels her to completeness and to the
removal of all bounds; while every exclusive activity of one or the
other impulse leaves human nature incomplete and places a limit in
it. Accordingly, as soon as reason issues the mandate, "a humanity
shall exist," it proclaims at the same time the law, "there shall be
a beauty." Experience can answer us if there is a beauty, and we
shall know it as soon as she has taught us if a humanity can exist.
But neither reason nor experience can tell us how beauty can be, and
how a humanity is possible.
We know that man is neither exclusively matter nor exclusively
spirit. Accordingly, beauty, as the consummation of humanity, can
neither be exclusively mere life, as has been asserted by sharp-
sighted observers, who kept too close to the testimony of
experience, and to which the taste of the time would gladly degrade
it; Nor can beauty be merely form, as has been judged by speculative
sophists, who departed too far from experience, and by philosophic
artists, who were led too much by the necessity of art in explaining
beauty; it is rather the common object of both impulses, that is, of
the play instinct. The use of language completely justifies this
name, as it is wont to qualify with the word play what is neither
subjectively nor objectively accidental, and yet does not impose
necessity either externally or internally. As the mind in the
intuition of the beautiful finds itself in a happy medium between
law and necessity, it is, because it divides itself between both,
emancipated from the pressure of both. The formal impulse and the
material impulse are equally earnest in their demands, because one
relates in its cognition to things in their reality and the other to
their necessity; because in action the first is directed to the
preservation of life, the second to the preservation of dignity, and
therefore both to truth and perfection. But life becomes more
indifferent when dignity is mixed up with it, and duty no longer
coerces when inclination attracts. In like manner the mind takes in
the reality of things, material truth, more freely and tranquilly as
soon as it encounters formal truth, the law of necessity; nor does
the mind find itself strung by abstraction as soon as immediate
intuition can accompany it. In one word, when the mind comes into
communion with ideas, all reality loses its serious value because it
becomes small; and as it comes in contact with feeling, necessity
parts also with its serious value because it is easy.
But perhaps the objection has for some time occurred to you, Is not
the beautiful degraded by this, that it is made a mere play? and is
it not reduced to the level of frivolous objects which have for ages
passed under that name? Does it not contradict the conception of the
reason and the dignity of beauty, which is nevertheless regarded as
an instrument of culture, to confine it to the work of being a mere
play? and does it not contradict the empirical conception of play,
which can coexist with the exclusion of all taste, to confine it
merely to beauty?
But what is meant by a MERE PLAY, when we know that in all
conditions of humanity that very thing is play, and only that is
play which makes man complete and develops simultaneously his
twofold nature? What you style LIMITATION, according to your
representation of the matter, according to my views, which I have
justified by proofs, I name ENLARGEMENT. Consequently, I should have
said exactly the reverse: man is serious ONLY with the agreeable,
with the good, and with the perfect, but he PLAYS with beauty. In
saying this we must not indeed think of the plays that are in vogue
in real life, and which commonly refer only to his material state.
But in real life we should also seek in vain for the beauty of which
we are here speaking. The actually present beauty is worthy of the
really, of the actually, present play-impulse; but by the ideal of
beauty, which is set up by the reason, an ideal of the play-instinct
is also presented, which man ought to have before his eyes in all
his plays.
Therefore, no error will ever be incurred if we seek the ideal of
beauty on the same road on which we satisfy our play-impulse. We can
immediately understand why the ideal form of a Venus, of a Juno, and
of an Apollo, is to be sought not at Rome, but in Greece, if we
contrast the Greek population, delighting in the bloodless athletic
contests of boxing, racing, and intellectual rivalry at Olympia,
with the Roman people gloating over the agony of a gladiator. Now
the reason pronounces that the beautiful must not only be life and
form, but a living form, that is, beauty, inasmuch as it dictates to
man the twofold law of absolute formality and absolute reality.
Reason also utters the decision that man shall only PLAY with
beauty, and he SHALL ONLY PLAY with BEAUTY.
For, to speak out once for all, man only plays when in the full
meaning of the word he is a man, and HE IS ONLY COMPLETELY A MAN
WHEN HE PLAYS. This proposition, which at this moment perhaps
appears paradoxical, will receive a great and deep meaning if we
have advanced far enough to apply it to the twofold seriousness of
duty and of destiny. I promise you that the whole edifice of
aesthetic art and the still more difficult art of life will be
supported by this principle. But this proposition is only unexpected
in science; long ago it lived and worked in art and in the feeling
of the Greeks, her most accomplished masters; only they removed to
Olympus what ought to have been preserved on earth. Influenced by
the truth of this principle, they effaced from the brow of their
gods the earnestness and labour which furrow the cheeks of mortals,
and also the hollow lust that smoothes the empty face. They set free
the ever serene from the chains of every purpose, of every duty, of
every care, and they made INDOLENCE and INDIFFERENCE the envied
condition of the godlike race; merely human appellations for the
freest and highest mind. As well the material pressure of natural
laws as the spiritual pressure of moral laws lost itself in its
higher idea of necessity, which embraced at the same time both
worlds, and out of the union of these two necessities issued true
freedom. Inspired by this spirit, the Greeks also effaced from the
features of their ideal, together with DESIRE or INCLINATION, all
traces of VOLITION, or, better still, they made both unrecognisable,
because they knew how to wed them both in the closest alliance. It
is neither charm nor is it dignity which speaks from the glorious
face of the Juno Ludovici; it is neither of these, for it is both at
once. While the female god challenges our veneration, the godlike
woman at the same time kindles our love. But while in ecstacy we
give ourselves up to the heavenly beauty, the heavenly self-repose
awes us back. The whole form rests and dwells in itself--a fully
complete creation in itself--and as if she were out of space,
without advance or resistance; it shows no force contending with
force, no opening through which time could break in. Irresistibly
carried away and attracted by her womanly charm, kept off at a
distance by her godly dignity, we also find ourselves at length in
the state of the greatest repose, an4 the result is a wonderful
impression, for which the understanding has no idea and language no
name.