Two principal and different states of passive and active capacity of
being determined [Footnote: Bestimmbarkeit] can be distinguished in
man; in like manner two states of passive and active determination.
[Footnote: Bestimmung.] The explanation of this proposition leads us
most readily to our end.
The condition of the state of man before destination or direction is
given him by the impressions of the senses is an unlimited capacity
of being determined. The infinite of time and space is given to his
imagination for its free use; and, because nothing is settled in
this kingdom of the possible, and therefore nothing is excluded from
it, this state of absence of determination can be named an empty
infiniteness, which must not by any means be confounded with an
infinite void.
Now it is necessary that his sensuous nature should be modified, and
that in the indefinite series of possible determinations one alone
should become real. One perception must spring up in it. That which,
in the previous state of determinableness, was only an empty potency
becomes now an active force, and receives contents; but at the same
time, as an active force it receives a limit, after having been, as
a simple power, unlimited. Reality exists now, but the infinite has
disappeared. To describe a figure in space, we are obliged to limit
infinite space; to represent to ourselves a change in time, we are
obliged to divide the totality of time. Thus we only arrive at
reality by limitation, at the positive, at a real position, by
negation or exclusion; to determination, by the suppression of our
free determinableness.
But mere exclusion would never beget a reality, nor would a mere
sensuous impression ever give birth to a perception, if there were
not something from which it was excluded, if by an absolute act of
the mind the negation were not referred to something positive, and
if opposition did not issue out of non-position. This act of the
mind is styled judging or thinking, and the result is named thought.
Before we determine a place in space, there is no space for us; but
without absolute space we could never determine a place. The same is
the case with time. Before we have an instant, there is no time to
us; but without infinite time--eternity--we should never have a
representation of the instant. Thus, therefore, we can only arrive
at the whole by the part, to the unlimited through limitation; but
reciprocally we only arrive at the part through the whole, at
limitation through the unlimited.
It follows from this, that when it is affirmed of beauty that it
mediates for man, the transition from feeling to thought, this must
not be understood to mean that beauty can fill up the gap that
separates feeling from thought, the passive from the active. This
gap is infinite; and, without the interposition of a new and
independent faculty, it is impossible for the general to issue from
the individual, the necessary from the contingent. Thought is the
immediate act of this absolute power, which, I admit, can only be
manifested in connection with sensuous impressions, but which in
this manifestation depends so little on the sensuous that it reveals
itself specially in an opposition to it. The spontaneity or autonomy
with which it acts excludes every foreign influence; and it is not
in as far as it helps thought--which comprehends a manifest
contradiction--but only in as far as it procures for the
intellectual faculties the freedom to manifest themselves in
conformity with their proper laws. It does it only because the
beautiful can become a means of leading man from matter to form,
from feeling to laws, from a limited existence to an absolute
existence.
But this assumes that the freedom of the intellectual faculties can
be balked, which appears contradictory to the conception of an
autonomous power. For a power which only receives the matter of its
activity from without can only be hindered in its action by the
privation of this matter, and consequently by way of negation; it is
therefore a misconception of the nature of the mind, to attribute to
the sensuous passions the power of oppressing positively the freedom
of the mind. Experience does indeed present numerous examples where
the rational forces appear compressed in proportion to the violence
of the sensuous forces. But instead of deducing this spiritual
weakness from the energy of passion, this passionate energy must
rather be explained by the weakness of the human mind. For the sense
can only have a sway such as this over man when the mind has
spontaneously neglected to assert its power.
Yet in trying by these explanations to move one objection, I appear
to have exposed myself to another, and I have only saved the
autonomy of the mind at the cost of its unity. For how can the mind
derive at the same time from itself the principles of inactivity and
of activity, if it is not itself divided, and if it is not in
opposition with itself?
Here we must remember that we have before us, not the infinite mind,
but the finite. The finite mind is that which only becomes active
through the passive, only arrives at the absolute through
limitation, and only acts and fashions in as far as it receives
matter. Accordingly, a mind of this nature must associate with the
impulse towards form or the absolute, an impulse towards matter or
limitation, conditions without which it could not have the former
impulse nor satisfy it. How can two such opposite tendencies exist
together in the same being? This is a problem that can no doubt
embarrass the metaphysician, but not the transcendental philosopher.
The latter does not presume to explain the possibility of things,
but he is satisfied with giving a solid basis to the knowledge that
makes us understand the possibility of experience. And as experience
would be equally impossible without this autonomy in the mind, and
without the absolute unity of the mind, it lays down these two
conceptions as two conditions of experience equally necessary
without troubling itself any more to reconcile them. Moreover, this
immanence of two fundamental impulses does not in any degree
contradict the absolute unity of the mind, as soon as the mind
itself, its selfhood, is distinguished from these two motors. No
doubt, these two impulses exist and act in it, but itself is neither
matter nor form, nor the sensuous nor reason, and this is a point
that does not seem always to have occurred to those who only look
upon the mind as itself acting when its acts are in harmony with
reason, and who declare it passive when its acts contradict reason.
Arrived at its development, each of these two fundamental impulsions
tends of necessity and by its nature to satisfy itself; but
precisely because each of them has a necessary tendency, and both
nevertheless have an opposite tendency, this twofold constraint
mutually destroys itself, and the will preserves an entire freedom
between them both. It is therefore the will that conducts itself
like a power--as the basis of reality--with respect to both these
impulses; but neither of them can by itself act as a power with
respect to the other. A violent man, by his positive tendency to
justice, which never fails in him, is turned away from injustice;
nor can a temptation of pleasure, however strong, make a strong
character violate its principles. There is in man no other power
than his will; and death alone, which destroys man, or some
privation of self-consciousness, is the only thing that can rob man
of his internal freedom.
An external necessity determines our condition, our existence in
time, by means of the sensuous. The latter is quite involuntary,
and directly it is produced in us, we are necessarily passive. In
the same manner an internal necessity awakens our personality in
connection with sensations, and by its antagonism with them; for
consciousness cannot depend on the will, which presupposes it. This
primitive manifestation of personality is no more a merit to us
than its privation is a defect in us. Reason can only be required
in a being who is self-conscious, for reason is an absolute
consecutiveness and universality of consciousness; before this is
the case, he is not a man, nor can any act of humanity be expected
from him. The metaphysician can no more explain the limitation
imposed by sensation on a free and autonomous mind than the natural
philosopher can understand the infinite, which is revealed in
consciousness in connection with these limits. Neither abstraction
nor experience can bring us back to the source whence issue our
ideas of necessity and of universality; this source is concealed in
its origin in time from the observer, and its super-sensuous origin
from the researches of the metaphysician. But, to sum up in a few
words, consciousness is there, and, together with its immutable
unity, the law of all that is for man is established, as well as of
all that is to be by man, for his understanding and his activity.
The ideas of truth and of right present themselves inevitable,
incorruptible, immeasurable, even in the age of sensuousness; and
without our being able to say why or how, we see eternity in time,
the necessary following the contingent. It is thus that, without any
share on the part of the subject, the sensation and self-consciousness
arise, and the origin of both is beyond our volition, as it is out
of the sphere of our knowledge.
But as soon as these two faculties have passed into action, and man
has verified by experience, through the medium of sensation, a
determinate existence, and through the medium of consciousness, its
absolute existence, the two fundamental impulses exert their
influence directly their object is given. The sensuous impulse is
awakened with the experience of life--with the beginning of the
individual; the rational impulsion with the experience of law--with
the beginning of his personality; and it is only when these two
inclinations have come into existence that the human type is
realised. Up to that time, everything takes place in man according
to the law of necessity; but now the hand of nature lets him go, and
it is for him to keep upright humanity which nature places as a germ
in his heart. And thus we see that directly the two opposite and
fundamental impulses exercise their influence in him, both lose
their constraint, and the autonomy of two necessities gives birth to
freedom. LETTER XX.
That freedom Is an active and not a passive principle results from
its very conception; but that liberty itself should be an effect of
nature (taking this word in its widest sense), and not the work of
man, and therefore that it can be favoured or thwarted by natural
means, is the necessary consequence of that which precedes. It
begins only when man is complete, and when these two fundamental
impulsions have been developed. It will then be wanting whilst he is
incomplete, and while one of these impulsions is excluded, and it
will be re-established by all that gives back to man his integrity.
Thus it is possible, both with regard to the entire species as to
the individual, to remark the moment when man is yet incomplete, and
when one of the two exclusions acts solely in him. We know that man
commences by life simply, to end by form; that he is more of an
individual than a person, and that he starts from the limited or
finite to approach the infinite. The sensuous impulsion comes into
play therefore before the rational impulsion, because sensation
precedes consciousness; and in this priority of sensuous impulsion
we find the key of the history of the whole of human liberty.
There is a moment, in fact, when the instinct of life, not yet
opposed to the instinct of form, acts as nature and as necessity;
when the sensuous is a power because man has not begun; for even in
man there can be no other power than his will. But when man shall
have attained to the power of thought, reason, on the contrary, will
be a power, and moral or logical necessity will take the place of
physical necessity. Sensuous power must then be annihilated before
the law which must govern it can be established. It is not enough
that something shall begin which as yet was not; previously
something must end which had begun. Man cannot pass immediately from
sensuousness to thought. He must step backwards, for it is only when
one determination is suppressed that the contrary determination can
take place. Consequently, in order to exchange passive against
active liberty, a passive determination against an active, he must
be momentarily free from all determination, and must traverse a
state of pure determinability. He has then to return in some degree
to that state of pure negative indetermination in which he was
before his senses were affected by anything. But this state was
absolutely empty of all contents, and now the question is to
reconcile an equal determination and a determinability equally
without limit, with the greatest possible fulness, because from this
situation something positive must immediately follow. The
determination which man received by sensation must be preserved,
because he should not lose the reality; but at the same time, in so
far as finite, it should be suppressed, because a determinability
without limit would take place. The problem consists then in
annihilating the determination of the mode of existence, and yet at
the same time in preserving it, which is only possible in one way:
in opposing to it another. The two sides of a balance are in
equilibrium when empty; they are also in equilibrium when their
contents are of equal weight.
Thus, to pass from sensation to thought, the soul traverses a medium
position, in which sensibility and reason are at the same time
active, and thus they mutually destroy their determinant power, and
by their antagonism produce a negation. This medium situation in
which the soul is neither physically nor morally constrained, and
yet is in both ways active, merits essentially the name of a free
situation; and if we call the state of sensuous determination
physical, and the state of rational determination logical or moral,
that state of real and active determination should be called the
aesthetic.