focus lies in the genital organs), and eternal, free, serene subject of
pure knowing (whose pole is the brain); so, corresponding to this
antithesis, the sun is both the source of _light_, the condition of the
most perfect kind of knowledge, and therefore of the most delightful of
things—and the source of _warmth_, the first condition of life, _i.e._, of
all phenomena of will in its higher grades. Therefore, what warmth is for
the will, light is for knowledge. Light is the largest gem in the crown of
beauty, and has the most marked influence on the knowledge of every
beautiful object. Its presence is an indispensable condition of beauty;
its favourable disposition increases the beauty of the most beautiful.
Architectural beauty more than any other object is enhanced by favourable
light, though even the most insignificant things become through its
influence most beautiful. If, in the dead of winter, when all nature is
frozen and stiff, we see the rays of the setting sun reflected by masses
of stone, illuminating without warming, and thus favourable only to the
purest kind of knowledge, not to the will; the contemplation of the
beautiful effect of the light upon these masses lifts us, as does all
beauty, into a state of pure knowing. But, in this case, a certain
transcending of the interests of the will is needed to enable us to rise
into the state of pure knowing, because there is a faint recollection of
the lack of warmth from these rays, that is, an absence of the principle
of life; there is a slight challenge to persist in pure knowing, and to
refrain from all willing, and therefore it is an example of a transition
from the sense of the beautiful to that of the sublime. It is the faintest
trace of the sublime in the beautiful; and beauty itself is indeed present
only in a slight degree. The following is almost as weak an example.
Let us imagine ourselves transported to a very lonely place, with unbroken
horizon, under a cloudless sky, trees and plants in the perfectly
motionless air, no animals, no men, no running water, the deepest silence.
Such surroundings are, as it were, a call to seriousness and
contemplation, apart from all will and its cravings; but this is just what
imparts to such a scene of desolate stillness a touch of the sublime. For,
because it affords no object, either favourable or unfavourable, for the
will which is constantly in need of striving and attaining, there only
remains the state of pure contemplation, and whoever is incapable of this,
is ignominiously abandoned to the vacancy of unoccupied will, and the
misery of ennui. So far it is a test of our intellectual worth, of which,
generally speaking, the degree of our power of enduring solitude, or our
love of it, is a good criterion. The scene we have sketched affords us,
then, an example of the sublime in a low degree, for in it, with the state
of pure knowing in its peace and all-sufficiency, there is mingled, by way
of contrast, the recollection of the dependence and poverty of the will
which stands in need of constant action. This is the species of the
sublime for which the sight of the boundless prairies of the interior of
North America is celebrated.
But let us suppose such a scene, stripped also of vegetation, and showing
only naked rocks; then from the entire absence of that organic life which
is necessary for existence, the will at once becomes uneasy, the desert
assumes a terrible aspect, our mood becomes more tragic; the elevation to
the sphere of pure knowing takes place with a more decided tearing of
ourselves away from the interests of the will; and because we persist in
continuing in the state of pure knowing, the sense of the sublime
distinctly appears.
The following situation may occasion this feeling in a still higher
degree: Nature convulsed by a storm; the sky darkened by black threatening
thunder-clouds; stupendous, naked, overhanging cliffs, completely shutting
out the view; rushing, foaming torrents; absolute desert; the wail of the
wind sweeping through the clefts of the rocks. Our dependence, our strife
with hostile nature, our will broken in the conflict, now appears visibly
before our eyes. Yet, so long as the personal pressure does not gain the
upper hand, but we continue in æsthetic contemplation, the pure subject of
knowing gazes unshaken and unconcerned through that strife of nature,
through that picture of the broken will, and quietly comprehends the Ideas
even of those objects which are threatening and terrible to the will. In
this contrast lies the sense of the sublime.
But the impression becomes still stronger, if, when we have before our
eyes, on a large scale, the battle of the raging elements, in such a scene
we are prevented from hearing the sound of our own voice by the noise of a
falling stream; or, if we are abroad in the storm of tempestuous seas,
where the mountainous waves rise and fall, dash themselves furiously
against steep cliffs, and toss their spray high into the air; the storm
howls, the sea boils, the lightning flashes from black clouds, and the
peals of thunder drown the voice of storm and sea. Then, in the undismayed
beholder, the two-fold nature of his consciousness reaches the highest
degree of distinctness. He perceives himself, on the one hand, as an
individual, as the frail phenomenon of will, which the slightest touch of
these forces can utterly destroy, helpless against powerful nature,
dependent, the victim of chance, a vanishing nothing in the presence of
stupendous might; and, on the other hand, as the eternal, peaceful,
knowing subject, the condition of the object, and, therefore, the
supporter of this whole world; the terrific strife of nature only his
idea; the subject itself free and apart from all desires and necessities,
in the quiet comprehension of the Ideas. This is the complete impression
of the sublime. Here he obtains a glimpse of a power beyond all comparison
superior to the individual, threatening it with annihilation.
The impression of the sublime may be produced in quite another way, by
presenting a mere immensity in space and time; its immeasurable greatness
dwindles the individual to nothing. Adhering to Kant’s nomenclature and
his accurate division, we may call the first kind the dynamical, and the
second the mathematical sublime, although we entirely dissent from his
explanation of the inner nature of the impression, and can allow no share
in it either to moral reflections, or to hypostases from scholastic
philosophy.
If we lose ourselves in the contemplation of the infinite greatness of the
universe in space and time, meditate on the thousands of years that are
past or to come, or if the heavens at night actually bring before our eyes
innumerable worlds and so force upon our consciousness the immensity of
the universe, we feel ourselves dwindle to nothing; as individuals, as
living bodies, as transient phenomena of will, we feel ourselves pass away
and vanish into nothing like drops in the ocean. But at once there rises
against this ghost of our own nothingness, against such lying
impossibility, the immediate consciousness that all these worlds exist
only as our idea, only as modifications of the eternal subject of pure
knowing, which we find ourselves to be as soon as we forget our
individuality, and which is the necessary supporter of all worlds and all
times the condition of their possibility. The vastness of the world which
disquieted us before, rests now in us; our dependence upon it is annulled
by its dependence upon us. All this, however, does not come at once into
reflection, but shows itself merely as the felt consciousness that in some
sense or other (which philosophy alone can explain) we are one with the
world, and therefore not oppressed, but exalted by its immensity. It is
the felt consciousness of this that the Upanishads of the Vedas repeatedly
express in such a multitude of different ways; very admirably in the
saying already quoted: _Hæ omnes creaturæ in totum ego sum, et præter me
aliud ens non est_ (Oupnek’hat, vol. i. p. 122.) It is the transcending of
our own individuality, the sense of the sublime.
We receive this impression of the mathematical-sublime, quite directly, by
means of a space which is small indeed as compared with the world, but
which has become directly perceptible to us, and affects us with its whole
extent in all its three dimensions, so as to make our own body seem almost
infinitely small. An empty space can never be thus perceived, and
therefore never an open space, but only space that is directly perceptible
in all its dimensions by means of the limits which enclose it; thus for
example a very high, vast dome, like that of St. Peter’s at Rome, or St.
Paul’s in London. The sense of the sublime here arises through the
consciousness of the vanishing nothingness of our own body in the presence
of a vastness which, from another point of view, itself exists only in our
idea, and of which we are as knowing subject, the supporter. Thus here as
everywhere it arises from the contrast between the insignificance and
dependence of ourselves as individuals, as phenomena of will, and the
consciousness of ourselves as pure subject of knowing. Even the vault of
the starry heaven produces this if it is contemplated without reflection;
but just in the same way as the vault of stone, and only by its apparent,
not its real extent. Some objects of our perception excite in us the
feeling of the sublime because, not only on account of their spatial
vastness, but also of their great age, that is, their temporal duration,
we feel ourselves dwarfed to insignificance in their presence, and yet
revel in the pleasure of contemplating them: of this kind are very high
mountains, the Egyptian pyramids, and colossal ruins of great antiquity.
Our explanation of the sublime applies also to the ethical, to what is
called the sublime character. Such a character arises from this, that the
will is not excited by objects which are well calculated to excite it, but
that knowledge retains the upper hand in their presence. A man of sublime
character will accordingly consider men in a purely objective way, and not
with reference to the relations which they might have to his will; he
will, for example, observe their faults, even their hatred and injustice
to himself, without being himself excited to hatred; he will behold their
happiness without envy; he will recognise their good qualities without
desiring any closer relations with them; he will perceive the beauty of
women, but he will not desire them. His personal happiness or unhappiness
will not greatly affect him, he will rather be as Hamlet describes
Horatio:—
“... for thou hast been,
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hast ta’en with equal thanks,” &c. (A. 3. Sc. 2.)
For in the course of his own life and its misfortunes, he will consider
less his individual lot than that of humanity in general, and will
therefore conduct himself in its regard, rather as knowing than as
suffering.
§ 40. Opposites throw light upon each other, and therefore the remark may
be in place here, that the proper opposite of the sublime is something
which would not at the first glance be recognised, as such: _the charming_
or _attractive_. By this, however, I understand, that which excites the
will by presenting to it directly its fulfilment, its satisfaction. We saw
that the feeling of the sublime arises from the fact, that something
entirely unfavourable to the will, becomes the object of pure
contemplation, so that such contemplation can only be maintained by
persistently turning away from the will, and transcending its interests;
this constitutes the sublimity of the character. The charming or
attractive, on the contrary, draws the beholder away from the pure
contemplation which is demanded by all apprehension of the beautiful,
because it necessarily excites this will, by objects which directly appeal
to it, and thus he no longer remains pure subject of knowing, but becomes
the needy and dependent subject of will. That every beautiful thing which
is bright or cheering should be called charming, is the result of a too
general concept, which arises from a want of accurate discrimination, and
which I must entirely set aside, and indeed condemn. But in the sense of
the word which has been given and explained, I find only two species of
the charming or attractive in the province of art, and both of them are
unworthy of it. The one species, a very low one, is found in Dutch
paintings of still life, when they err by representing articles of food,
which by their deceptive likeness necessarily excite the appetite for the
things they represent, and this is just an excitement of the will, which
puts an end to all æsthetic contemplation of the object. Painted fruit is
yet admissible, because we may regard it as the further development of the
flower, and as a beautiful product of nature in form and colour, without
being obliged to think of it as eatable; but unfortunately we often find,
represented with deceptive naturalness, prepared and served dishes,
oysters, herrings, crabs, bread and butter, beer, wine, and so forth,
which is altogether to be condemned. In historical painting and in
sculpture the charming consists in naked figures, whose position, drapery,
and general treatment are calculated to excite the passions of the
beholder, and thus pure æsthetical contemplation is at once annihilated,
and the aim of art is defeated. This mistake corresponds exactly to that
which we have just censured in the Dutch paintings. The ancients are
almost always free from this fault in their representations of beauty and
complete nakedness of form, because the artist himself created them in a
purely objective spirit, filled with ideal beauty, not in the spirit of
subjective, and base sensuality. The charming is thus everywhere to be
avoided in art.
There is also a negative species of the charming or exciting which is even
more reprehensible than the positive form which has been discussed; this
is the disgusting or the loathsome. It arouses the will of the beholder,
just as what is properly speaking charming, and therefore disturbs pure
æsthetic contemplation. But it is an active aversion and opposition which
is excited by it; it arouses the will by presenting to it objects which it
abhors. Therefore it has always been recognised that it is altogether
inadmissible in art, where even what is ugly, when it is not disgusting,
is allowable in its proper place, as we shall see later.
§ 41. The course of the discussion has made it necessary to insert at this
point the treatment of the sublime, though we have only half done with the
beautiful, as we have considered its subjective side only. For it was
merely a special modification of this subjective side that distinguished
the beautiful from the sublime. This difference was found to depend upon
whether the state of pure will-less knowing, which is presupposed and
demanded by all æsthetic contemplation, was reached without opposition, by
the mere disappearance of the will from consciousness, because the object
invited and drew us towards it; or whether it was only attained through
the free, conscious transcending of the will, to which the object
contemplated had an unfavourable and even hostile relation, which would
destroy contemplation altogether, if we were to give ourselves up to it.
This is the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime. In the
object they are not essentially different, for in every case the object of
æsthetical contemplation is not the individual thing, but the Idea in it
which is striving to reveal itself; that is to say, adequate objectivity
of will at a particular grade. Its necessary correlative, independent,
like itself of the principle of sufficient reason, is the pure subject of
knowing; just as the correlative of the particular thing is the knowing
individual, both of which lie within the province of the principle of
sufficient reason.
When we say that a thing is _beautiful_, we thereby assert that it is an
object of our æsthetic contemplation, and this has a double meaning; on
the one hand it means that the sight of the thing makes us _objective_,
that is to say, that in contemplating it we are no longer conscious of
ourselves as individuals, but as pure will-less subjects of knowledge; and
on the other hand it means that we recognise in the object, not the
particular thing, but an Idea; and this can only happen, so far as our
contemplation of it is not subordinated to the principle of sufficient
reason, does not follow the relation of the object to anything outside it
(which is always ultimately connected with relations to our own will), but
rests in the object itself. For the Idea and the pure subject of knowledge
always appear at once in consciousness as necessary correlatives, and on
their appearance all distinction of time vanishes, for they are both
entirely foreign to the principle of sufficient reason in all its forms,
and lie outside the relations which are imposed by it; they may be
compared to the rainbow and the sun, which have no part in the constant
movement and succession of the falling drops. Therefore, if, for example,
I contemplate a tree æsthetically, _i.e._, with artistic eyes, and thus
recognise, not it, but its Idea, it becomes at once of no consequence
whether it is this tree or its predecessor which flourished a thousand
years ago, and whether the observer is this individual or any other that
lived anywhere and at any time; the particular thing and the knowing
individual are abolished with the principle of sufficient reason, and
there remains nothing but the Idea and the pure subject of knowing, which
together constitute the adequate objectivity of will at this grade. And
the Idea dispenses not only with time, but also with space, for the Idea
proper is not this special form which appears before me but its
expression, its pure significance, its inner being, which discloses itself
to me and appeals to me, and which may be quite the same though the
spatial relations of its form be very different.
Since, on the one hand, every given thing may be observed in a. purely
objective manner and apart from all relations; and since, on the other
hand, the will manifests itself in everything at some grade of its
objectivity, so that everything is the expression of an Idea; it follows
that everything is also _beautiful_. That even the most insignificant
things admit of pure objective and will-less contemplation, and thus prove
that they are beautiful, is shown by what was said above in this reference
about the Dutch pictures of still-life (§ 38). But one thing is more
beautiful than another, because it makes this pure objective contemplation
easier, it lends itself to it, and, so to speak, even compels it, and then
we call it very beautiful. This is the case sometimes because, as an
individual thing, it expresses in its purity the Idea of its species by
the very distinct, clearly defined, and significant relation of its parts,
and also fully reveals that Idea through the completeness of all the
possible expressions of its species united in it, so that it makes the
transition from the individual thing to the Idea, and therefore also the
condition of pure contemplation, very easy for the beholder. Sometimes
this possession of special beauty in an object lies in the fact that the
Idea itself which appeals to us in it is a high grade of the objectivity
of will, and therefore very significant and expressive. Therefore it is
that man is more beautiful than all other objects, and the revelation of
his nature is the highest aim of art. Human form and expression are the
most important objects of plastic art, and human action the most important
object of poetry. Yet each thing has its own peculiar beauty, not only
every organism which expresses itself in the unity of an individual being,
but also everything unorganised and formless, and even every manufactured
article. For all these reveal the Ideas through which the will objectifies
itself at its lowest grades, they give, as it were, the deepest resounding
bass-notes of nature. Gravity, rigidity, fluidity, light, and so forth,
are the Ideas which express themselves in rocks, in buildings, in waters.
Landscape-gardening or architecture can do no more than assist them to
unfold their qualities distinctly, fully, and variously; they can only
give them the opportunity of expressing themselves purely, so that they
lend themselves to æsthetic contemplation and make it easier. Inferior
buildings or ill-favoured localities, on the contrary, which nature has
neglected or art has spoiled, perform this task in a very slight degree or
not at all; yet even from them these universal, fundamental Ideas of
nature cannot altogether disappear. To the careful observer they present
themselves here also, and even bad buildings and the like are capable of
being æsthetically considered; the Ideas of the most universal properties
of their materials are still recognisable in them, only the artificial
form which has been given them does not assist but hinders æsthetic
contemplation. Manufactured articles also serve to express Ideas, only it
is not the Idea of the manufactured article which speaks in them, but the
Idea of the material to which this artificial form has been given. This
may be very conveniently expressed in two words, in the language of the
schoolmen, thus,—the manufactured article expresses the Idea of its _forma
substantialis_, but not that of its _forma accidentalis_; the latter leads
to no Idea, but only to a human conception of which it is the result. It
is needless to say that by manufactured article no work of plastic art is
meant. The schoolmen understand, in fact, by _forma substantialis_ that
which I call the grade of the objectification of will in a thing. We shall
return immediately, when we treat of architecture, to the Idea of the
material. Our view, then, cannot be reconciled with that of Plato if he is
of opinion that a table or a chair express the Idea of a table or a chair
(De Rep., x., pp. 284, 285, et Parmen., p. 79, ed. Bip.), but we say that
they express the Ideas which are already expressed in their mere material
as such. According to Aristotle (Metap. xi., chap. 3), however, Plato
himself only maintained Ideas of natural objects: ὁ Πλατων εφη, ὁτι ειδη
εστιν ὁποσα φυσει (_Plato dixit, quod ideæ eorum sunt, quæ natura sunt_),
and in chap. 5 he says that, according to the Platonists, there are no
Ideas of house and ring. In any case, Plato’s earliest disciples, as
Alcinous informs us (_Introductio __ in Platonicam Philosophiam_, chap.
9), denied that there were any ideas of manufactured articles. He says:
Ὁριζονται δε την ιδεαν, παραδειγμα των κατα φυσιν αιωνιον. Ουτε γαρ τοις
πλειστοις των απο Πλατωνος αρεσκει, των τεχνικων ειναι ιδεας, οἱον ασπιδος
η λυρας, ουτε μην των παρα φυσιν, οἱον πυρετου και χολερας, ουτε των κατα
μερος, οἱον Σωκρατους και Πλατωνος, αλλ᾽ ουτε των ευτελων τινος, οἱον
ρυπου και καρφους, ουτε των προς τι, οἱον μειζονος και ὑπερεχοντος; ειναι
γαρ τας ιδεας νοησεις θεου αιωνιους τε και αυτοτελεις (_Definiunt autem_
IDEAM _exemplar æternum eorum, quæ secundum naturam existunt. Nam plurimis
ex iis, qui Platonem secuti sunt, minime placuit, arte factorum ideas
esse, ut clypei atque lyræ; neque rursus eorum, quæ prætor naturam, ut
febris et choleræ, neque particularium, ceu Socratis et Platonis; neque
etiam rerum vilium, veluti sordium et festucæ; neque relationum, ut
majoris et excedentis: esse namque ideas intellectiones dei æternas, ac
seipsis perfectas_). We may take this opportunity of mentioning another
point in which our doctrine of Ideas differs very much from that of Plato.
He teaches (De Rep., x., p. 288) that the object which art tries to
express, the ideal of painting and poetry, is not the Idea but the
particular thing. Our whole exposition hitherto has maintained exactly the
opposite, and Plato’s opinion is the less likely to lead us astray,
inasmuch as it is the source of one of the greatest and best known errors
of this great man, his depreciation and rejection of art, and especially
poetry; he directly connects his false judgment in reference to this with
the passage quoted.