I have remarked in the beginning of the foregoing letter that there
is a twofold condition of determinableness and a twofold condition
of determination. And now I can clear up this proposition.
The mind can be determined--is determinate--only in as far as it is
not determined; it is, however, determinable also, in as far as it
is not exclusively determined; that is, if it is not confined in its
determination. The former is only a want of determination--it is
without limits, because it is without reality; but the latter, the
aesthetic determinableness, has no limits, because it unites all
reality.
The mind is determined, inasmuch as it is only limited; but it is
also determined because it limits itself of its own absolute
capacity. It is situated in the former position when it feels, in
the second when it thinks. Accordingly the aesthetic constitution is
in relation to determinableness what thought is in relation to
determination. The latter is a negative from internal and infinite
completeness, the former a limitation from internal infinite power.
Feeling and thought come into contact in one single point, the mind
is determined in both conditions, the man becomes something and
exists--either as individual or person--by exclusion; in other cases
these two faculties stand infinitely apart. Just in the same manner,
the aesthetic determinableness comes in contact with the mere want
of determination in a single point, by both excluding every distinct
determined existence, by thus being in all other points nothing and
all, and hence by being infinitely different. Therefore, if the
latter, in the absence of determination from deficiency, is
represented as an empty infiniteness, the aesthetic freedom of
determination, which forms the proper counterpart to the former, can
be considered, as a completed infiniteness; a representation which
exactly agrees with the teachings of the previous investigations.
Man is therefore nothing in the aesthetic state, if attention is
given to the single result, and not to the whole faculty, and if we
regard only the absence or want of every special determination. We
must therefore do justice to those who pronounce the beautiful, and
the disposition in which it places the mind, as entirely indifferent
and unprofitable, in relation to knowledge and feeling. They are
perfectly right; for it is certain that beauty gives no separate,
single result, either for the understanding or for the will; it does
not carry out a single intellectual or moral object; it discovers no
truth, does not help us to fulfil a single duty, and, in one word,
is equally unfit to found the character or to clear the head.
Accordingly, the personal worth of a man, or his dignity, as far as
this can only depend on himself, remains entirely undetermined by
aesthetic culture, and nothing further is attained than that, on the
part of nature, it is made profitable for him to make of himself
what he will; that the freedom to be what he ought to be is restored
perfectly to him.
But by this, something infinite is attained. But as soon as we
remember that freedom is taken from man by the one-sided compulsion
of nature in feeling, and by the exclusive legislation of the reason
in thinking, we must consider the capacity restored to him by the
aesthetical disposition, as the highest of all gifts, as the gift of
humanity. I admit that he possesses this capacity for humanity,
before every definite determination in which he may be placed. But
as a matter of fact, he loses it with every determined condition,
into which he may come, and if he is to pass over to an opposite
condition, humanity must be in every case restored to him by the
aesthetic life.
It is therefore not only a poetical license, but also
philosophically correct, when beauty is named our second creator.
Nor is this inconsistent with the fact that she only makes it
possible for us to attain and realise humanity, leaving this to our
free will. For in this she acts in common with our original creator,
nature, which has imparted to us nothing further than this capacity
for humanity, but leaves the use of it to our own determination of
will.