Whilst man, in his first physical condition, is only passively
affected by the world of sense, he is still entirely identified with
it; and for this reason the external world, as yet, has no objective
existence for him. When he begins in his aesthetic state of mind to
regard the world objectively, then only is his personality severed
from it, and the world appears to him an objective reality, for the
simple reason that he has ceased to form an identical portion of it.
That which first connects man with the surrounding universe is the
power of reflective contemplation. Whereas desire seizes at once its
object, reflection removes it to a distance and renders it
inalienably her own by saving it from the greed of passion. The
necessity of sense which he obeyed during the period of mere
sensations, lessens during the period of reflection; the senses are
for the time in abeyance; even ever-fleeting time stands still
whilst the scattered rays of consciousness are gathering and shape
themselves; an image of the infinite is reflected upon the
perishable ground. As soon as light dawns in man, there is no longer
night outside of him; as soon as there is peace within him the storm
lulls throughout the universe, and the contending forces of nature
find rest within prescribed limits. Hence we cannot wonder if
ancient traditions allude to these great changes in the inner man as
to a revolution in surrounding nature, and symbolise thought
triumphing over the laws of time, by the figure of Zeus, which
terminates the reign of Saturn.
As long as man derives sensations from a contact with nature, he is
her slave; but as soon as he begins to reflect upon her objects and
laws he becomes her lawgiver. Nature, which previously ruled him as
a power, now expands before him as an object. What is objective to
him can have no power over him, for in order to become objective it
has to experience his own power. As far and as long as he impresses
a form upon matter, he cannot be injured by its effect; for a spirit
can only be injured by that which deprives it of its freedom.
Whereas he proves his own freedom by giving a form to the formless;
where the mass rules heavily and without shape, and its undefined
outlines are for ever fluctuating between uncertain boundaries, fear
takes up its abode; but man rises above any natural terror as soon
as he knows how to mould it, and transform it into an object of his
art. As soon as he upholds his independence toward phaenomenal
nature, he maintains his dignity toward her as a thing of power and
with a noble freedom he rises against his gods. They throw aside the
mask with which they had kept him in awe during his infancy, and to
his surprise his mind perceives the reflection of his own image. The
divine monster of the Oriental, which roams about changing the world
with the blind force of a beast of prey, dwindles to the charming
outline of humanity in Greek fable; the empire of the Titans is
crushed, and boundless force is tamed by infinite form.
But whilst I have been merely searching for an issue from the
material world and a passage into the world of mind, the bold flight
of my imagination has already taken me into the very midst of the
latter world. The beauty of which we are in search we have left
behind by passing from the life of mere sensations to the pure form
and to the pure object. Such a leap exceeds the condition of human
nature; in order to keep pace with the latter we must return to the
world of sense. Beauty is indeed the sphere of unfettered
contemplation and reflection; beauty conducts us into the world of
ideas, without however taking us from the world of sense, as occurs
when a truth is perceived and acknowledged. This is the pure product
of a process of abstraction from everything material and accidental,
a pure object free from every subjective barrier, a pure state of
self-activity without any admixture of passive sensations. There is
indeed a way back to sensation from the highest abstraction; for
thought teaches the inner sensation, and the idea of logical and
moral unity passes into a sensation of sensual accord. But if we
delight in knowledge we separate very accurately our own conceptions
from our sensations; we look upon the latter as something
accidental, which might have been omitted without the knowledge
being impaired thereby, without truth being less true. It would,
however, be a vain attempt to suppress this connection of the
faculty of feeling with the idea of beauty, consequently, we shall
not succeed in representing to ourselves one as the effect of the
other, but we must look upon them both together and reciprocally as
cause and effect. In the pleasure which we derive from knowledge we
readily distinguish the passage from the active to the passive
state, and we clearly perceive that the first ends when the second
begins. On the contrary, from the pleasure which we take in beauty,
this transition from the active to the passive is not perceivable,
and reflection is so intimately blended with feeling that we believe
we feel the form immediately. Beauty is then an object to us, it is
true, because reflection is the condition of the feeling which we
have of it; but it is also a state of our personality (our Ego),
because the feeling is the condition of the idea we conceive of it:
beauty is therefore doubtless form, because we contemplate it, but
it is equally life because we feel it. In a word, it is at once our
state and our act. And precisely because it is at the same time both
a state and an act, it triumphantly proves to us that the passive
does not exclude the active, neither matter nor form, neither the
finite nor the infinite; and that consequently the physical
dependence to which man is necessarily devoted does not in any way
destroy his moral liberty. This is the proof of beauty, and I ought
to add that this ALONE can prove it. In fact, as in the possession
of truth or of logical unity, feeling is not necessarily one with
the thought, but follows it accidentally; it is a fact which only
proves that a sensitive nature can succeed a rational nature, and
vice versa; not that they co-exist, that they exercise a reciprocal
action one over the other, and lastly that they ought to be united
in an absolute and necessary manner. From this exclusion of feeling
as long as there is thought, and of thought so long as there is
feeling, we should on the contrary conclude that the two natures are
incompatible, so that in order to demonstrate that pure reason is to
be realised in humanity, the best proof given by the analysis is
that this realisation is demanded. But, as in the realisation of
beauty or of aesthetic unity, there is a real union, mutual
substitution of matter and of form, of passive and of active, by
this alone is proved the compatibility of the two natures, the
possible realisation of the infinite in the finite, and consequently
also the possibility of the most sublime humanity.
Henceforth we need no longer be embarrassed to find a transition
from dependent feeling to moral liberty, because beauty reveals to
us the fact that they can perfectly co-exist, and that to show
himself a spirit, man need not escape from matter. But if on one
side he is free, even in his relation with a visible world, as the
fact of beauty teaches, and if on the other side freedom is
something absolute and super-sensuous, as its idea necessarily
implies, the question is no longer how man succeeds in raising
himself from the finite to the absolute, and opposing himself in his
thought and will to sensuality, as this has already been produced in
the fact of beauty. In a word, we have no longer to ask how he
passes from virtue to truth, which is already included in the
former, but how he opens a way for himself from vulgar reality to
aesthetic reality, and from the ordinary feelings of life to the
perception of the beautiful.