While we were only engaged in deducing the universal idea of beauty
from the conception of human nature in general, we had only to
consider in the latter the limits established essentially in itself,
and inseparable from the notion of the finite. Without attending to
the contingent restrictions that human nature may undergo in the
real world of phenomena, we have drawn the conception of this nature
directly from reason, as a source of every necessity, and the ideal
of beauty has been given us at the same time with the ideal of
humanity.
But now we are coming down from the region of ideas to the scene of
reality, to find man in a DETERMINATE STATE, and consequently in
limits which are not derived from the pure conception of humanity,
but from external circumstances and from an accidental use of his
freedom. But although the limitation of the idea of humanity may be
very manifold in the individual, the contents of this idea suffice
to teach us that we can only depart from it by TWO opposite roads.
For if the perfection of man consist in the harmonious energy of his
sensuous and spiritual forces, he can only lack this perfection
through the want of harmony and the want of energy. Thus then,
before having received on this point the testimony of experience,
reason suffices to assure us that we shall find the real and
consequently limited man in a state of tension or relaxation,
according as the exclusive activity of isolated forces troubles the
harmony of his being, or as the unity of his nature is based on the
uniform relaxation of his physical and spiritual forces. These
opposite limits are, as we have now to prove, suppressed by the
beautiful, which re-establishes harmony in man when excited, and
energy in man when relaxed; and which, in this way, in conformity
with the nature of the beautiful, restores the state of limitation
to an absolute state, and makes of man a whole, complete in himself.
Thus the beautiful by no means belies in reality the idea which we
have made of it in speculation; only its action is much less free in
it than in the field of theory, where we were able to apply it to
the pure conception of humanity. In man, as experience shows him to
us, the beautiful finds a matter, already damaged and resisting,
which robs him in IDEAL perfection of what it communicates to him of
its individual mode of being. Accordingly in reality the beautiful
will always appear a peculiar and limited species, and not as the
pure genus; in excited minds in the state of tension, it will lose
its freedom and variety; in relaxed minds, it will lose its
vivifying force; but we, who have become familiar with the true
character of this contradictory phenomenon, cannot be led astray by
it. We shall not follow the great crowd of critics, in determining
their conception by separate experiences, and to make them
answerable for the deficiencies which man shows under their
influence. We know rather that it is man who transfers the
imperfections of his individuality over to them, who stands
perpetually in the way of their perfection by his subjective
limitation, and lowers their absolute ideal to two limited forms of
phenomena.
It was advanced that soft beauty is for an unstrung mind, and the
energetic beauty for the tightly strung mind. But I apply the term
unstrung to a man when he is rather under the pressure of feelings
than under the pressure of conceptions. Every exclusive sway of one
of his two fundamental impulses is for man a state of compulsion and
violence, and freedom only exists in the co-operation of his two
natures. Accordingly, the man governed preponderately by feelings,
or sensuously unstrung, is emancipated and set free by matter. The
soft and graceful beauty, to satisfy this twofold problem, must
therefore show herself under two aspects--in two distinct forms.
First as a form in repose, she will tone down savage life, and pave
the way from feeling to thought. She will, secondly, as a living
image equip the abstract form with sensuous power, and lead back the
conception to intuition and law to feeling. The former service she
does to the man of nature, the second to the man of art. But because
she does not in both cases hold complete sway over her matter, but
depends on that which is furnished either by formless nature or
unnatural art, she will in both cases bear traces of her origin, and
lose herself in one place in material life and in another in mere
abstract form.
To be able to arrive at a conception how beauty can become a means
to remove this twofold relaxation, we must explore its source in the
human mind. Accordingly, make up your mind to dwell a little longer
in the region of speculation, in order then to leave it for ever,
and to advance with securer footing on the ground of experience.