The moment [see Aeneid, ii. 216-217] had arrived when the hero himself
had to be recommended to our respect as a moral personage, and the poet
seized upon that moment. We already know by his description all the
force, all the rage of the two monsters who menace Laocoon, and we know
how all resistance would be in vain. If Laocoon were only a common man
he would better understand his own interests, and, like the rest of the
Trojans, he would find safety in rapid flight. But there is a heart in
that breast; the danger to his children holds him back, and decides him
to meet his fate. This trait alone renders him worthy of our pity. At
whatever moment the serpents had assailed him, we should have always been
touched and troubled. But because it happens just at the moment when as
father he shows himself so worthy of respect, his fate appears to us as
the result of having fulfilled his duty as parent, of his tender
disquietude for his children. It is this which calls forth our sympathy
in the highest degree. It appears, in fact, as if he deliberately
devoted himself to destruction, and his death becomes an act of the will.
Thus there are two conditions in every kind of the pathetic: 1st.
Suffering, to interest our sensuous nature; 2d. Moral liberty, to
interest our spiritual nature. All portraiture in which the expression
of suffering nature is wanting remains without aesthetic action, and our
heart is untouched. All portraiture in which the expression of moral
aptitude is wanting, even did it possess all the sensuous force possible,
could not attain to the pathetic, and would infallibly revolt our
feelings. Throughout moral liberty we require the human being who
suffers; throughout all the sufferings of human nature we always desire
to perceive the independent spirit, or the capacity for independence.
But the independence of the spiritual being in the state of suffering can
manifest itself in two ways. Either negatively, when the moral man does
not receive the law from the physical man, and his state exercises no
influence over his manner of feeling; or positively, when the moral man
is a ruler over the physical being, and his manner of feeling exercises
an influence upon his state. In the first case, it is the sublime of
disposition; in the second, it is the sublime of action.
The sublime of disposition is seen in all character independent of the
accidents of fate. "A noble heart struggling against adversity," says
Seneca, "is a spectacle full of attraction even for the gods." Such for
example is that which the Roman Senate offered after the disaster of
Cannae. Lucifer even, in Milton, when for the first time he contemplates
hell--which is to be his future abode--penetrates us with a sentiment of
admiration by the force of soul he displays:--
"Hail, horrors, hail.
Infernal world, and thou, profoundest Hell;
Receive thy new possessor!--one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time;
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell. . . .
Here at least
We shall be free," etc.
The reply of Medea in the tragedy belongs also to this order of the
sublime.
The sublime of disposition makes itself seen, it is visible to the
spectator, because it rests upon co-existence, the simultaneous; the
sublime action, on the contrary, is conceived only by the thought,
because the impression and the act are successive, and the intervention
of the mind is necessary to infer from a free determination the idea of
previous suffering.
It follows that the first alone can be expressed by the plastic arts,
because these arts give but that which is simultaneous; but the poet can
extend his domain over one and the other. Even more; when the plastic
art has to represent a sublime action, it must necessarily bring it back
to sublimity.
In order that the sublimity of action should take place, not only must
the suffering of man have no influence upon the moral constitution, but
rather the opposite must be the case. The affection is the work of his
moral character. This can happen in two ways: either mediately, or
according to the law of liberty, when out of respect for such and such a
duty it decides from free choice to suffer--in this case, the idea of
duty determines as a motive, and its suffering is a voluntary act--or
immediately, and according to the necessity of nature, when he expiates
by a moral suffering the violation of duty; in this second case, the idea
of duty determines him as a force, and his suffering is no longer an
effect. Regulus offers us an example of the first kind, when, to keep
his word, he gives himself up to the vengeance of the Carthaginians; and
he would serve as an example of the second class, if, having betrayed his
trust, the consciousness of this crime would have made him miserable. In
both cases suffering has a moral course, but with this difference, that
on the one part Regulus shows us its moral character, and that, on the
other, he only shows us that he was made to have such a character. In
the first case he is in our eyes a morally great person; in the second he
is only aesthetically great.
This last distinction is important for the tragic art; it consequently
deserves to be examined more closely.
Man is already a sublime object, but only in the aesthetic sense, when
the state in which he is gives us an idea of his human destination, even
though we might not find this destination realized in his person. He
only becomes sublime to us in a moral point of view, when he acts,
moreover, as a person, in a manner conformable with this destination; if
our respect bears not only on his moral faculty, but on the use he makes
of this faculty; if dignity, in his case, is due, not only to his moral
aptitude; but to the real morality of his conduct. It is quite a
different thing to direct our judgment and attention to the moral faculty
generally, and to the possibility of a will absolutely free, and to be
directing it to the use of this faculty, and to the reality of this
absolute freedom of willing.
It is, I repeat, quite a different thing; and this difference is
connected not only with the objects to which we may have to direct our
judgment, but to the very criterion of our judgment. The same object can
displease us if we appreciate it in a moral point of view, and be very
attractive to us in the aesthetical point of view. But even if the moral
judgment and the aesthetical judgment were both satisfied, this object
would produce this effect on one and the other in quite a different way.
It is not morally satisfactory because it has an aesthetical value, nor
has it an aesthetical value because it satisfies us morally. Let us
take, as example, Leonidas and his devotion at Thermopylae. Judged from
the moral point of view, this action represents to me the moral law
carried out notwithstanding all the repugnance of instinct. Judged from
the aesthetic point of view, it gives me the idea of the moral faculty,
independent of every constraint of instinct. The act of Leonidas
satisfies the moral sense, the reason; it enraptures the aesthetical
sense, the imagination.
Whence comes this difference in the feelings in connection with the same
object? I account for it thus:--
In the same way that our being consists of two principles and natures, so
also and consequently our feelings are divided into two kinds, entirely
different. As reasonable beings we experience a feeling of approbation
or of disapprobation; as sensuous creatures we experience pleasure or
displeasure. The two feelings, approbation and pleasure, repose on
satisfaction: one on a satisfaction given to a requirement of reason--
reason has only requirements, and not wants. The other depends on a
satisfaction given to a sensuous want--sense only knows of wants, and
cannot prescribe anything. These two terms--requirements of reason,
wants of the senses--are mutually related, as absolute necessity and the
necessity of nature. Accordingly, both are included in the idea of
necessity, but with this difference, that the necessity of reason is
unconditional, and the necessity of sense only takes place under
conditions. But, for both, satisfaction is a purely contingent thing.
Accordingly every feeling, whether of pleasure or approbation, rests
definitively on an agreement between the contingent and the necessary.
If the necessary has thus an imperative character, the feeling
experienced will be that of approbation. If necessity has the character
of a want, the feeling experienced will be that of pleasure, and both
will be strong in proportion as the satisfaction will be contingent.
Now, underlying every moral judgment there is a requirement of reason
which requires us to act conformably with the moral law, and it is an
absolute necessity that we should wish what is good. But as the will is
free, it is physically an accidental thing that we should do in fact what
is good. If we actually do it, this agreement between the contingent in
the use of free will and the imperative demand of reason gives rise to
our assent or approbation, which will be greater in proportion as the
resistance of the inclinations made this use that we make of our free
will more accidental and more doubtful. Every aesthetic judgment, on the
contrary, refers the object to the necessity which cannot help willing
imperatively, but only desires that there should be an agreement between
the accidental and its own interest. Now what is the interest of
imagination? It is to emancipate itself from all laws, and to play its
part freely. The obligation imposed on the will by the moral law, which
prescribes its object in the strictest manner, is by no means favorable
to this need of independence. And as the moral obligation of the will is
the object of the moral judgment, it is clear that in this mode of
judging, the imagination could not find its interest. But a moral
obligation imposed on the will cannot be conceived, except by supposing
this same will absolutely independent of the moral instincts and from
their constraint. Accordingly the possibility of the moral act requires
liberty, and therefore agrees here in the most perfect manner with the
interest of imagination. But as imagination, through the medium of its
wants, cannot give orders to the will of the individual, as reason does
by its imperative character, it follows that the faculty of freedom, in
relation to imagination, is something accidental, and consequently that
the agreement between the accidental and the necessary (conditionally
necessary) must excite pleasure. Therefore, if we bring to bear a moral
judgment on this act of Leonidas, we shall consider it from a point of
view where its accidental character strikes the eye less than its
necessary side. If, on the other hand, we apply the aesthetical judgment
to it, this is another point of view, where its character of necessity
strikes us less forcibly than its accidental character. It is a duty for
every will to act thus, directly it is a free will; but the fact that
there is a free will that makes this act possible is a favor of nature in
regard to this faculty, to which freedom is a necessity. Thus an act of
virtue judged by the moral sense--by reason--will give us as its only
satisfaction the feeling of approbation, because reason can never find
more, and seldom finds as much as it requires. This same act, judged, on
the contrary, by the aesthetic sense--by imagination--will give us a
positive pleasure, because the imagination, never requiring the end to
agree with the demand, must be surprised, enraptured, at the real
satisfaction of this demand as at a happy chance. Our reason will merely
approve, and only approve, of Leonidas actually taking this heroic
resolution; but that he could take this resolution is what delights and
enraptures us.
This distinction between the two sorts of judgments becomes more evident
still, if we take an example where the moral sense and the aesthetic
sense pronounce a different verdict. Suppose we take the act of
Perigrinus Proteus burning himself at Olympia. Judging this act morally,
I cannot give it my approbation, inasmuch as I see it determined by
impure motives, to which Proteus sacrifices the duty of respecting his
own existence. But in the aesthetic judgment this same act delights
me; it delights me precisely because it testifies to a power of will
capable of resisting even the most potent of instincts, that of
self-preservation. Was it a moral feeling, or only a more powerful
sensuous attraction, that silenced the instinct of self-preservation in
this enthusiast. It matters little, when I appreciate the act from an
aesthetic point of view. I then drop the individual, I take away the
relation of his will to the law that ought to govern him; I think of
human will in general, considered as a common faculty of the race, and I
regard it in connection with all the forces of nature. We have seen that
in a moral point of view, the preservation of our being seemed to us a
duty, and therefore we were offended at seeing Proteus violate this duty.
In an aesthetic point of view the self-preservation only appears as an
interest, and therefore the sacrifice of this interest pleases us. Thus
the operation that we perform in the judgments of the second kind is
precisely the inverse of that which we perform in those of the first. In
the former we oppose the individual, a sensuous and limited being, and
his personal will, which can be effected pathologically, to the absolute
law of the will in general, and of unconditional duty which binds every
spiritual being; in the second case, on the contrary, we oppose the
faculty of willing, absolute volition, and the spiritual force as an
infinite thing, to the solicitations of nature and the impediments of
sense. This is the reason why the aesthetical judgment leaves us free,
and delights and enraptures us. It is because the mere conception of
this faculty of willing in an absolute manner, the mere idea of this
moral aptitude, gives us in itself a consciousness of a manifest
advantage over the sensuous. It is because the mere possibility of
emancipating ourselves from the impediments of nature is in itself a
satisfaction that flatters our thirst for freedom. This is the reason
why moral judgment, on the contrary, makes us experience a feeling of
constraint that humbles us. It is because in connection with each
voluntary act we appreciate in this manner, we feel, as regards the
absolute law that ought to rule the will in general, in a position of
inferiority more or less decided, and because the constraint of the will
thus limited to a single determination, which duty requires of it at all
costs, contradicts the instinct of freedom which is the property of
imagination. In the former case we soared from the real to the possible,
and from the individual to the species; in the latter, on the contrary,
we descend from the possible to the real, and we shut up the species in
the narrow limits of the individual. We cannot therefore be surprised if
the aesthetical judgment enlarges the heart, while the moral judgment
constrains and straitens it.
It results, therefore, from all that which precedes, that the moral
judgment and the aesthetic, far from mutually corroborating each other,
impede and hinder each other, because they impress on the soul two
directions entirely opposite. In fact, this observance of rule which
reason requires of us as moral judge is incompatible with the
independence which the imagination calls for as aesthetic judge. It
follows that an object will have so much the less aesthetic value the
more it has the character of a moral object, and if the poet were obliged
notwithstanding that to choose it, he would do well in treating of it,
not to call the attention of our reason to the rule of the will, but that
of our imagination to the power of the will. In his own interest it is
necessary for the poet to enter on this path, for with our liberty his
empire finishes. We belong to him only inasmuch as we look beyond
ourselves; we escape from him the moment we re-enter into our innermost
selves, and that is what infallibly takes place the moment an object
ceases to be a phenomenon in our consideration, and takes the character
of a law which judges us.
Even in the manifestation of the most sublime virtue, the poet can only
employ for his own views that which in those acts belongs to force. As
to the direction of the force, he has no reason to be anxious. The poet,
even when he places before our eyes the most perfect models of morality,
has not, and ought not to have, any other end than that of rejoicing our
soul by the contemplation of this spectacle. Moreover, nothing can
rejoice our soul except that which improves our personality, and nothing
can give us a spiritual joy except that which elevates the spiritual
faculty. But in what way can the morality of another improve our own
personality, and raise our spiritual force? That this other one
accomplishes really his duty results from an accidental use which he
makes of his liberty, and which for that very reason can prove nothing to
us. We only have in common with him the faculty to conform ourselves
equally to duty; the moral power which he exhibits reminds us also of our
own, and that is why we then feel something which upraises our spiritual
force. Thus it is only the idea of the possibility of an absolutely free
will which makes the real exercise of this will in us charming to the
aesthetic feeling.
We shall be still more convinced when we think how little the poetic
force of impression which is awakened in us by an act or a moral
character is dependent on their historic reality. The pleasure which we
take in considering an ideal character will in no way be lessened when we
come to think that this character is nothing more than a poetic fiction;
for it is on the poetic truth, and not on historic truth, that every
aesthetic impression of the feelings rest. Moreover, poetic truth does
not consist in that this or that thing has effectually taken place, but
in that it may have happened, that is to say, that the thing is in itself
possible. Thus the aesthetic force is necessarily obliged to rest in the
first place in the idea of possibility.
Even in real subjects, for which the actors are borrowed from history, it
is not the reality of the simple possibility of the fact, but that which
is guaranteed to us by its very reality which constitutes the poetic
element. That these personages have indeed existed, and that these
events have in truth taken place, is a circumstance which can, it is
true, in many cases add to our pleasure, but that which it adds to it is
like a foreign addition, much rather unfavorable than advantageous to the
poetical impression.
It was long thought that a great service was rendered to German poetry by
recommending German poets to treat of national themes. Why, it was
asked, did Greek poetry have so much power over the mind? Because it
brought forward national events and immortalized domestic exploits. No
doubt the poetry of the ancients may have been indebted to this
circumstance for certain effects of which modern poetry cannot boast; but
do these effects belong to art and the poet? It is small glory for the
Greek genius if it had only this accidental advantage over modern genius;
still more if it were necessary for the poets, in order to gain this
advantage, to obtain it by this conformity of their invention with real
history! It is only a barbarous taste that requires this stimulant of a
national interest to be captivated by beautiful things; and it is only a
scribbler who borrows from matter a force to which he despairs of giving
a form.
Poetry ought not to take its course through the frigid region of memory;
it ought never to convert learning into its interpreter, nor private
interest its advocate with the popular mind. It ought to go straight to
the heart, because it has come from the heart; and aim at the man in the
citizen, not the citizen in the man.
Happily, true genius does not make much account of all these counsels
that people are so anxious to give her with better intentions than
competence. Otherwise, Sulzer and his school might have made German
poetry adopt a very equivocal style. It is no doubt a very honorable aim
in a poet to moralize the man, and excite the patriotism of the citizen,
and the Muses know better than any one how well the arts of the sublime
and of the beautiful are adapted to exercise this influence. But that
which poetry obtains excellently by indirect means it would accomplish
very badly as an immediate end. Poetry is not made to serve in man for
the accomplishment of a particular matter, nor could any instrument be
selected less fitted to cause a particular object to succeed, or to carry
out special projects and details. Poetry acts on the whole of human
nature, and it is only by its general influence on the character of a man
that it can influence particular acts. Poetry can be for man what love
is for the hero. It can neither counsel him, nor strike for him, nor do
anything for him in short; but it can form a hero in him, call him to
great deeds, and arm him with a strength to be all that he ought to be.
Thus the degree of aesthetical energy with which sublime feelings and
sublime acts take possession of our souls, does not rest at all on the
interest of reason, which requires every action to be really conformable
with the idea of good. But it rests on the interest of the imagination,
which requires conformity with good should be possible, or, in other
terms, that no feeling, however strong, should oppress the freedom of the
soul. Now this possibility is found in every act that testifies with
energy to liberty, and to the force of the will; and if the poet meets
with an action of this kind, it matters little where, he has a subject
suitable for his art. To him, and to the interest we have in him, it is
quite the same, to take his hero in one class of characters or in
another, among the good or the wicked, as it often requires as much
strength of character to do evil conscientiously and persistently as to
do good. If a proof be required that in our aesthetic judgments we
attend more to the force than to its direction, to its freedom than to
its lawfulness, this is sufficient for our evidence. We prefer to see
force and freedom manifest themselves at the cost of moral regularity,
rather than regularity at the cost of freedom and strength. For directly
one of those cases offers itself, in which the general law agrees with
the instincts which by their strength threaten to carry away the will,
the aesthetic value of the character is increased, if he be capable of
resisting these instincts. A vicious person begins to interest us as
soon as he must risk his happiness and life to carry out his perverse
designs; on the contrary, a virtuous person loses in proportion as he
finds it useful to be virtuous. Vengeance, for instance, is certainly an
ignoble and a vile affection, but this does not prevent it from becoming
aesthetical, if to satisfy it we must endure painful sacrifice. Medea
slaying her children aims at the heart of Jason, but at the same time she
strikes a heavy blow at her own heart, and her vengeance aesthetically
becomes sublime directly we see in her a tender mother.
In this sense the aesthetic judgment has more of truth than is ordinarily
believed. The vices which show a great force of will evidently announce
a greater aptitude for real moral liberty than do virtues which borrow
support from inclination; seeing that it only requires of the man who
persistently does evil to gain a single victory over himself, one simple
upset of his maxims, to gain ever after to the service of virtue his
whole plan of life, and all the force of will which he lavished on evil.
And why is it we receive with dislike medium characters, whilst we at
times follow with trembling admiration one which is altogether wicked?
It is evident, that with regard to the former, we renounce all hope, we
cannot even conceive the possibility of finding absolute liberty of the
will; whilst with the other, on the contrary, each time he displays his
faculties, we feel that one single act of the will would suffice to raise
him up to the fullest height of human dignity.
Thus, in the aesthetic judgment, that which excites our interest is not
morality itself, but liberty alone; and moral purity can only please our
imagination when it places in relief the forces of the will. It is then
manifestly to confound two very distinct orders of ideas, to require in
aesthetic things so exact a morality, and, in order to stretch the domain
of reason, to exclude the imagination from its own legitimate sphere.
Either it would be necessary to subject it entirely, then there would be
an end to all aesthetic effect; or it would share the realm of reason,
then morality would not gain much. For if we pretend to pursue at the
same time two different ends, there would be risk of missing both one and
the other. The liberty of the imagination would be fettered by too great
respect for the moral law; and violence would be done to the character of
necessity which is in the reason, in missing the liberty which belongs to
the imagination.
ON GRACE AND DIGNITY.
The Greek fable attributes to the goddess of beauty a wonderful girdle
which has the quality of lending grace and of gaining hearts in all who
wear it. This same divinity is accompanied by the Graces, or goddesses
of grace. From this we see that the Greeks distinguished from beauty
grace and the divinities styled the Graces, as they expressed the ideas
by proper attributes, separable from the goddess of beauty. All that is
graceful is beautiful, for the girdle of love winning attractions is the
property of the goddess of Cnidus; but all beauty is not of necessity
grace, for Venus, even without this girdle, does not cease to be what she
is.
However, according to this allegory, the goddess of beauty is the only
one who wears and who lends to others the girdle of attractions. Juno,
the powerful queen of Olympus, must begin by borrowing this girdle from
Venus, when she seeks to charm Jupiter on Mount Ida [Pope's "Iliad," Book
XIV. v. 220]. Thus greatness, even clothed with a certain degree of
beauty, which is by no means disputed in the spouse of Jupiter, is never
sure of pleasing without the grace, since the august queen of the gods,
to subdue the heart of her consort, expects the victory not from her own
charms but from the girdle of Venus.
But we see, moreover, that the goddess of beauty can part with this
girdle, and grant it, with its quality and effects, to a being less
endowed with beauty. Thus grace is not the exclusive privilege of the
beautiful; it can also be handed over, but only by beauty, to an object
less beautiful, or even to an object deprived of beauty.
If these same Greeks saw a man gifted in other respects with all the
advantages of mind, but lacking grace, they advised him to sacrifice to
the Graces. If, therefore, they conceived these deities as forming an
escort to the beauty of the other sex, they also thought that they would
be favorable to man, and that to please he absolutely required their
help.
But what then is grace, if it be true that it prefers to unite with
beauty, yet not in an exclusive manner? What is grace if it proceeds
from beauty, but yet produces the effects of beauty, even when beauty is
absent. What is it, if beauty can exist indeed without it, and yet has
no attraction except with it? The delicate feeling of the Greek people
had marked at an early date this distinction between grace and beauty,
whereof the reason was not then able to give an account; and, seeking the
means to express it, it borrowed images from the imagination, because the
understanding could not offer notions to this end. On this score, the
myth of the girdle deserves to fix the attention of the philosopher, who,
however, ought to be satisfied to seek ideas corresponding with these
pictures when the pure instinctive feeling throws out its discoveries,
or, in other words, with explaining the hieroglyphs of sensation. If we
strip off its allegorical veil from this conception of the Greeks, the
following appears the only meaning it admits.
Grace is a kind of movable beauty, I mean a beauty which does not belong
essentially to its subject, but which may be produced accidentally in it,
as it may also disappear from it. It is in this that grace is
distinguished from beauty properly so called, or fixed beauty, which is
necessarily inherent in the subject itself. Venus can no doubt take off
her girdle and give it up for the moment to Juno, but she could only give
up her beauty with her very person. Venus, without a girdle, is no
longer the charming Venus, without beauty she is no longer Venus.
But this girdle as a symbol of movable beauty has this particular
feature, that the person adorned with it not only appears more graceful,
but actually becomes so. The girdle communicates objectively this
property of grace, in this contrasting with other articles of dress,
which have only subjective effects, and without modifying the person
herself, only modify the impression produced on the imagination of
others. Such is the express meaning of the Greek myth; grace becomes the
property of the person who puts on this girdle; she does more than appear
amiable, it is so in fact.
No doubt it may be thought that a girdle, which after all is only an
outward, artificial ornament, does not prove a perfectly correct emblem
to express grace as a personal quality. But a personal quality that is
conceived at the same time as separable from the subject, could only be
represented to the senses by an accidental ornament which can be detached
from the person, without the essence of the latter being affected by it.
Thus the girdle of charms operates not by a natural effect (for then it
would not change anything in the person itself) but by a magical effect;
that is to say, its virtue extends beyond all natural conditions. By
this means, which is nothing more, I admit, than an expedient, it has
been attempted to avoid the contradiction to which the mind, as regards
its representative faculty, is unavoidably reduced, every time it asks an
expression from nature herself, for an object foreign to nature and which
belongs to the free field of the ideal. If this magic girdle is the
symbol of an objective property which can be separated from its subject
without modifying in any degree its nature, this myth can only express
one thing--the beauty of movement, because movement is the only
modification that can affect an object without changing its identity.
The beauty of movement is an idea that satisfies the two conditions
contained in the myth which now occupies us. In the first place, it is
an objective beauty, not entirely depending upon the impression that we
receive from the object, but belonging to the object itself. In the
second place, this beauty has in itself something accidental, and the
object remains identical even when we conceive it to be deprived of this
property. The girdle of attractions does not lose its magic virtue in
passing to an object of less beauty, or even to that which is without
beauty; that is to say, that a being less beautiful, or even one which is
not beautiful, may also lay claim to the beauty of movement. The myth
tells us that grace is something accidental in the subject in which we
suppose it to be. It follows that we can attribute this property only to
accidental movements. In an ideal of beauty the necessary movements must
be beautiful, because inasmuch as necessary they form an integral part of
its nature; the idea of Venus once given, the idea of this beauty of
necessary movements is that implicitly comprised in it; but it is not the
same with the beauty of accidental movements; this is an extension of the
former; there can be a grace in the voice, there is none in respiration.
But all this beauty in accidental movements--is it necessarily grace? It
is scarcely necessary to notice that the Greek fable attributes grace
exclusively to humanity. It goes still further, for even the beauty of
form it restricts within the limits of the human species, in which, as we
know, the Greeks included also their gods. But if grace is the exclusive
privilege of the human form, none of the movements which are common to
man with the rest of nature can evidently pretend to it. Thus, for
example, if it were admitted that the ringlets of hair on a beautiful
head undulate with grace, there would also be no reason to deny a grace
of movement to the branches of trees, to the waves of the stream, to the
ears of a field of corn, or to the limbs of animals. No, the goddess of
Cnidus represents exclusively the human species; therefore, as soon as
you see only a physical creature in man, a purely sensuous object, she is
no longer concerned with him. Thus, grace can only be met with in
voluntary movements, and then in those only which express some sentiment
of the moral order. Those which have as principle only animal
sensuousness belong only, however voluntary we may suppose them to be, to
physical nature, which never reaches of itself to grace. If it were
possible to have grace in the manifestations of the physical appetites
and instincts, grace would no longer be either capable or worthy to serve
as the expression of humanity. Yet it is humanity alone which to the
Greek contains all the idea of beauty and of perfection. He never
consents to see separated from the soul the purely sensuous part, and
such is with him that which might be called man's sensuous nature, which
it is equally impossible for him to isolate either from his lower nature
or from his intelligence. In the same way that no idea presents itself
to his mind without taking at once a visible form, and without his
endeavoring to give a bodily envelope even to his intellectual
conceptions, so he desires in man that all his instinctive acts should
express at the same time his moral destination. Never for the Greek is
nature purely physical nature, and for that reason he does not blush to
honor it; never for him is reason purely reason, and for that reason he
has not to tremble in submitting to its rule. The physical nature and
moral sentiments, matter and mind, earth and heaven, melt together with a
marvellous beauty in his poetry. Free activity, which is truly at home
only in Olympus, was introduced by him even into the domain of sense, and
it is a further reason for not attaching blame to him if reciprocally he
transported the affections of the sense into Olympus. Thus, this
delicate sense of the Greeks, which never suffered the material element
unless accompanied by the spiritual principle, recognizes in man no
voluntary movement belonging only to sense which did not at the same time
manifest the moral sentiment of the soul. It follows that for them grace
is one of the manifestations of the soul, revealed through beauty in
voluntary movements; therefore, wherever there is grace, it is the soul
which is the mobile, and it is in her that beauty of movement has its
principle. The mythological allegory thus expresses the thought, "Grace
is a beauty not given by nature, but produced by the subject itself."
Up to the present time I have confined myself to unfolding the idea of
grace from the Greek myth, and I hope I have not forced the sense: may I
now be permitted to try to what result a philosophical investigation on
this point will lead us, and to see if this subject, as so many others,
will confirm this truth, that the spirit of philosophy can hardly flatter
itself that it can discover anything which has not already been vaguely
perceived by sentiment and revealed in poetry?
Without her girdle, and without the Graces, Venus represents the ideal of
beauty, such as she could have come forth from the hands of nature, and
such as she is made without the intervention of mind endowed with
sentiment and by the virtue alone of plastic forces. It is not without
reason that the fable created a particular divinity to represent this
sort of beauty, because it suffices to see and to feel in order to
distinguish it very distinctly from the other, from that which derives
its origin from the influence of a mind endowed with sentiments.
This first beauty, thus formed by nature solely and in virtue of the laws
of necessity, I shall distinguish from that which is regulated upon
conditions of liberty, in calling it, if allowed, beauty of structure
(architectonic beauty). It is agreed, therefore, to designate under this
name that portion of human beauty which not only has as efficient
principle the forces and agents of physical nature (for we can say as
much for every phenomenon), but which also is determined, so far as it is
beauty solely, by the forces of this nature.
Well-proportioned limbs, rounded contours, an agreeable complexion,
delicacy of skin, an easy and graceful figure, a harmonious tone of
voice, etc., are advantages which are gifts of nature and fortune: of
nature, which predisposed to this, and developed it herself; of fortune,
which protects against all influence adverse to the work of nature.
Venus came forth perfect and complete from the foam of the sea. Why
perfect? because she is the finished and exactly determined work of
necessity, and on that account she is neither susceptible of variety nor
of progress. In other terms, as she is only a beautiful representation
of the various ends which nature had in view in forming man, and thence
each of her properties is perfectly determined by the idea that she
realizes; hence it follows that we can consider her as definitive and
determined (with regard to its connection with the first conception)
although this conception is subject, in its development, to the
conditions of time.
The architectonic beauty of the human form and its technical perfection
are two ideas, which we must take good care not to confound. By the
latter, the ensemble of particular ends must be understood, such as they
co-ordinate between themselves towards a general and higher end; by the
other, on the contrary, a character suited to the representation of these
ends, as far as these are revealed, under a visible form, to our faculty
of seeing and observing. When, then, we speak of beauty, we neither take
into consideration the justness of the aims of nature in themselves, nor
formally, the degree of adaptation to the principles of art which their
combination could offer. Our contemplative faculties hold to the manner
in which the object appears to them, without taking heed to its logical
constitution. Thus, although the architectonic beauty, in the structure
of man, be determined by the idea which has presided at this structure,
and by the ends that nature proposes for it, the aesthetic judgment,
making abstraction of these ends, considers this beauty in itself; and in
the idea which we form of it, nothing enters which does not immediately
and properly belong to the exterior appearance.
We are, then, not obliged to say that the dignity of man and of his
condition heightens the beauty of his structure. The idea we have of his
dignity may influence, it is true, the judgment that we form on the
beauty of his structure; but then this judgment ceases to be purely
aesthetic. Doubtless, the technical constitution of the human form is an
expression of its destiny, and, as such, it ought to excite our
admiration; but this technical constitution is represented to the
understanding and not to sense; it is a conception and not a phenomenon.
The architectonic beauty, on the contrary, could never be an expression
of the destiny of man, because it addresses itself to quite a different
faculty from that to which it belongs to pronounce upon his destiny.
If, then, man is, amongst all the technical forces created by nature,
that to whom more especially we attribute beauty, this is exact and true
only under one condition, which is, that at once and upon the simple
appearance he justifies this superiority, without the necessity, in order
to appreciate it, that we bring to mind his humanity. For, to recall
this, we must pass through a conception; and then it would no longer be
the sense, but the understanding, that would become the judge of beauty,
which would imply contradiction. Man, therefore, cannot put forward the
dignity of his moral destiny, nor give prominence to his superiority as
intelligence, to increase the price of his beauty. Man, here, is but a
being thrown like others into space--a phenomenon amongst other
phenomena. In the world of sense no account is made of the rank he holds
in the world of ideas; and if he desires in that to hold the first place,
he can only owe it to that in him which belongs to the physical order.
But his physical nature is determined, we know, by the idea of his
humanity; from which it follows that his architectonic beauty is so also
mediately. If, then he is distinguished by superior beauty from all
other creatures of the sensuous world, it is incontestable that he owes
this advantage to his destiny as man, because it is in it that the reason
is of the differences which in general separate him from the rest of the
sensuous world. But the beauty of the human form is not due to its being
the expression of this superior destiny, for if it were so, this form
would necessarily cease to be beautiful, from the moment it began to
express a less high destiny, and the contrary to this form would be
beautiful as soon as it could be admitted that it expresses this higher
destination. However, suppose that at the sight of a fine human face we
could completely forget that which it expresses, and put in its place,
without chancing anything of its outside, the savage instincts of the
tiger, the judgment of the eyesight would remain absolutely the same, and
the tiger would be for it the chef-d'oeuvre of the Creator.
The destiny of man as intelligence contributes, then, to the beauty of
his structure only so far as the form that represents this destiny, the
expression that makes it felt, satisfies at the same time the conditions
which are prescribed in the world of sense to the manifestations of the
beautiful; which signifies that beauty ought always to remain a pure
effect of physical nature, and that the rational conception which had
determined the technical utility of the human structure cannot confer
beauty, but simply be compatible with beauty.
It could be objected, it is true, that in general all which is manifested
by a sensuous representation is produced by the forces of nature, and
that consequently this character cannot be exclusively an indication of
the beautiful. Certainly, and without doubt, all technical creations are
the work of nature; but it is not by the fact of nature that they are
technical, or at least that they are so judged to be. They are technical
only through the understanding, and thus their technical perfection has
already its existence in the understanding, before passing into the world
of sense, and becoming a sensible phenomenon. Beauty, on the contrary,
has the peculiarity, that the sensuous world is not only its theatre, but
the first source from whence it derives its birth, and that it owes to
nature not only its expression, but also its creation. Beauty is
absolutely but a property of the world of sense; and the artist, who has
the beautiful in view, would not attain to it but inasmuch as he
entertains this illusion, that his work is the work of nature.
In order to appreciate the technical perfection of the human body, we
must bear in mind the ends to which it is appropriated; this being quite
unnecessary for the appreciation of its beauty. Here the senses require
no aid, and of themselves judge with full competence; however they would
not be competent judges of the beautiful, if the world of sense (the
senses have no other object) did not contain all the conditions of beauty
and was therefore competent to produce it. The beauty of man, it is
true, has for mediate reason the idea of his humanity, because all his
physical nature is founded on this idea; but the senses, we know, hold to
immediate phenomena, and for them it is exactly the same as if this
beauty were a simple effect of nature, perfectly independent.
From what we have said, up to the present time, it would appear that the
beautiful can offer absolutely no interest to the understanding, because
its principle belongs solely to the world of sense, and amongst all our
faculties of knowledge it addresses itself only to our senses. And in
fact, the moment that we sever from the idea of the beautiful, as a
foreign element, all that is mixed with the idea of technical perfection,
almost inevitably, in the judgment of beauty, it appears that nothing
remains to it by which it can become the object of an intellectual
pleasure. And nevertheless, it is quite as incontestable that the
beautiful pleases the understanding, as it is beyond doubt that the
beautiful rests upon no property of the object that could not be
discovered but by the understanding.
To solve this apparent contradiction, it must be remembered that the
phenomena can in two different ways pass to the state of objects of the
understanding and express ideas. It is not always necessary that the
understanding draws these ideas from phenomena; it can also put them into
them. In the two cases, the phenomena will be adequate to a rational
conception, with this simple difference, that, in the first case, the
understanding finds it objectively given, and to a certain extent only
receives it from the object because it is necessary that the idea should
be given to explain the nature and often even the possibility of the
object; whilst in the second case, on the contrary, it is the
understanding which of itself interprets, in a manner to make of it the
expression of its idea, that which the phenomenon offers us, without any
connection with this idea, and thus treats by a metaphysical process that
which in reality is purely physical. There, then, in the association of
the idea with the object there is an objective necessity; here, on the
contrary, a subjective necessity at the utmost. It is unnecessary to say
that, in my mind, the first of these two connections ought to be
understood of technical perfection, the second, of the beautiful.
As then in the second case it is a thing quite contingent for the
sensuous object that there should or should not be outside of it an
object which perceives it--an understanding that associates one of its
own ideas with it, consequently, the ensemble of these objective
properties ought to be considered as fully independent of this idea; we
have perfectly the right to reduce the beautiful, objectively, to the
simple conditions of physical nature, and to see nothing more in beauty
than effect belonging purely to the world of sense. But as, on the other
side, the understanding makes of this simple fact of the world of sense a
transcendent usage, and in lending it a higher signification inasmuch as
he marks it, as it were, with his image, we have equally the right to
transport the beautiful, subjectively, into the world of intelligence.
It is in this manner that beauty belongs at the same time to the two
worlds--to one by the right of birth, to the other by adoption; it takes
its being in the world of sense, it acquires the rights of citizenship in
the world of understanding. It is that which explains how it can be that
taste, as the faculty for appreciating the beautiful, holds at once the
spiritual element and that of sense; and that these two natures,
incompatible one with the other, approach in order to form in it a happy
union. It is this that explains how taste can conciliate respect for the
understanding with the material element, and with the rational principle
the favor and the sympathy of the senses, how it can ennoble the
perceptions of the senses so as to make ideas of them, and, in a certain
measure, transform the physical world itself into a domain of the ideal.
At all events, if it is accidental with regard to the object, that the
understanding associates, at the representation of this object, one of
its own ideas with it, it is not the less necessary for the subject which
represents it to attach to such a representation such an idea. This
idea, and the sensuous indication which corresponds to it in the object,
ought to be one with the other in such relation, that the understanding
be forced to this association by its own immutable laws; the
understanding then must have in itself the reason which leads it to
associate exclusively a certain phenomenon with a certain determined
idea, and, reciprocally, the object should have in itself the reason for
which it exclusively provokes that idea and not another. As to knowing
what the idea can be which the understanding carries into the beautiful,
and by what objective property the object gifted with beauty can be
capable of serving as symbol to this idea, is then a question much too
grave to be solved here in passing, and I reserve this examination for an
analytical theory of the beautiful.
The architectonic beauty of man is then, in the way I have explained it,
the visible expression of a rational conception, but it is so only in the
same sense and the same title as are in general all the beautiful
creations of nature. As to the degree, I agree that it surpasses all the
other beauties; but with regard to kind, it is upon the same rank as they
are, because it also manifests that which alone is perceptible of its
subject, and it is only when we represent it to ourselves that it
receives a super-sensuous value.
If the ends of creation are marked in man with more of success and of
beauty than in the organic beings, it is to some extent a favor which the
intelligence, inasmuch as it dictated the laws of the human structure,
has shown to nature charged to execute those laws. The intelligence, it
is true, pursues its end in the technique of man with a rigorous
necessity, but happily its exigencies meet and accord with the necessary
laws of nature so well, that one executes the order of the other whilst
acting according to its own inclination. |
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