I take up the thread of my researches, which I broke off only to apply
the principles I laid down to practical art and the appreciation of its
works.
The transition from the passivity of sensuousness to the activity of
thought and of will can be effected only by the intermediary state of
aesthetic liberty; and though in itself this state decides nothing
respecting our opinions and our sentiments, and therefore it leaves our
intellectual and moral value entirely problematical, it is, however, the
necessary condition without which we should never attain to an opinion or
a sentiment. In a word, there is no other way to make a reasonable being
out of a sensuous man than by making him first aesthetic.
But, you might object: Is this mediation absolutely indispensable? Could
not truth and duty, one or the other, in themselves and by themselves,
find access to the sensuous man? To this I reply: Not only is it
possible but it is absolutely necessary that they owe solely to
themselves their determining force, and nothing would be more
contradictory to our preceding affirmations than to appear to defend the
contrary opinion. It has been expressly proved that the beautiful
furnishes no result, either for the comprehension or for the will; that
it mingles with no operations, either of thought or of resolution; and
that it confers this double power without determining anything with
regard to the real exercise of this power. Here all foreign help
disappears, and the pure logical form, the idea, would speak immediately
to the intelligence, as the pure moral form, the law, immediately to the
will.
But that the pure form should be capable of it, and that there is in
general a pure form for sensuous man, is that, I maintain, which should
be rendered possible by the aesthetic disposition of the soul. Truth is
not a thing which can be received from without like reality or the
visible existence of objects. It is the thinking force, in his own
liberty and activity, which produces it, and it is just this liberty
proper to it, this liberty which we seek in vain in sensuous man. The
sensuous man is already determined physically, and thenceforth he has no
longer his free determinability; he must necessarily first enter into
possession of this lost determinability before he can exchange the
passive against an active determination. Therefore, in order to recover
it, he must either lose the passive determination that he had, or he
should enclose already in himself the active determination to which he
should pass. If he confined himself to lose passive determination, he
would at the same time lose with it the possibility of an active
determination, because thought needs a body, and form can only be
realized through matter. He must therefore contain already in himself
the active determination, that he may be at once both actively and
passively determined, that is to say, he becomes necessarily aesthetic.
Consequently, by the aesthetic disposition of the soul the proper
activity of reason is already revealed in the sphere of sensuousness, the
power of sense is already broken within its own boundaries, and the
ennobling of physical man carried far enough, for spiritual man has only
to develop himself according to the laws of liberty. The transition from
an aesthetic state to a logical and moral state (from the beautiful to
truth and duty) is then infinitely more easy than the transition from the
physical state to the aesthetic state (from life pure and blind to form).
This transition man can effectuate alone by his liberty, whilst he has
only to enter into possession of himself not to give it himself; but to
separate the elements of his nature, and not to enlarge it. Having
attained to the aesthetic disposition, man will give to his judgments and
to his actions a universal value as soon as he desires it. This passage
from brute nature to beauty, in which an entirely new faculty would
awaken in him, nature would render easier, and his will has no power over
a disposition which, we know, itself gives birth to the will. To bring
the aesthetic man to profound views, to elevated sentiments, he requires
nothing more than important occasions: to obtain the same thing from the
sensuous man, his nature must at first be changed. To make of the former
a hero, a sage, it is often only necessary to meet with a sublime
situation, which exercises upon the faculty of the will the more
immediate action; for the second, it must first be transplanted under
another sky.
One of the most important tasks of culture, then, is to submit man to
form, even in a purely physical life, and to render it aesthetic as far
as the domain of the beautiful can be extended, for it is alone in the
aesthetic state, and not in the physical state, that the moral state can
be developed. If in each particular case man ought to possess the power
to make his judgment and his will the judgment of the entire species; if
he ought to find in each limited existence the transition to an infinite
existence; if, lastly, he ought from every dependent situation to take
his flight to rise to autonomy and to liberty, it must be observed that
at no moment he is only individual and solely obeys the laws of nature.
To be apt and ready to raise himself from the narrow circle of the ends
of nature, to rational ends, in the sphere of the former he must already
have exercised himself in the second; he must already have realized his
physical destiny with a certain liberty that belongs only to spiritual
nature, that is to say according to the laws of the beautiful.
And that he can effect without thwarting in the least degree his physical
aim. The exigencies of nature with regard to him turn only upon what he
does--upon the substance of his acts; but the ends of nature in no degree
determine the way in which he acts, the form of his actions. On the
contrary, the exigencies of reason have rigorously the form of his
activity for its object. Thus, so much as it is necessary for the moral
destination of man, that he be purely moral, that he shows an absolute
personal activity, so much is he indifferent that his physical
destination be entirely physical, that he acts in a manner entirely
passive. Henceforth with regard to this last destination, it entirely
depends on him to fulfil it solely as a sensuous being and natural force
(as a force which acts only as it diminishes) or, at the same time, as
absolute force, as a rational being. To which of these does his dignity
best respond? Of this there can be no question. It is as disgraceful
and contemptible for him to do under sensuous impulsion that which he
ought to have determined merely by the motive of duty, as it is noble and
honorable for him to incline towards conformity with laws, harmony,
independence; there even where the vulgar man only satisfies a legitimate
want. In a word, in the domain of truth and morality, sensuousness must
have nothing to determine; but in the sphere of happiness, form may find
a place, and the instinct of play prevail.
Thus then, in the indifferent sphere of physical life, man ought to
already commence his moral life; his own proper activity ought already to
make way in passivity, and his rational liberty beyond the limits of
sense; he ought already to impose the law of his will upon his
inclinations; he ought--if you will permit me the expression--to carry
into the domain of matter the war against matter, in order to be
dispensed from combating this redoubtable enemy upon the sacred field of
liberty; he ought to learn to have nobler desires, not to be forced to
have sublime volitions. This is the fruit of aesthetic culture, which
submits to the laws of the beautiful, in which neither the laws of nature
nor those of reason suffer, which does not force the will of man, and
which by the form it gives to exterior life already opens internal life.