Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller Part 9

Not satisfied with the needs of nature, he demands the superfluous.

First, only the superfluous of matter, to secure his enjoyment beyond the present necessity; but afterward; he wishes a superabundance in matter, an aesthetical supplement to satisfy the impulse for the formal, to extend enjoyment beyond necessity. By piling up provisions simply for a future use, and antic.i.p.ating their enjoyment in the imagination, he outsteps the limits of the present moment, but not those of time in general. He enjoys more; he does not enjoy differently. But as soon as he makes form enter into his enjoyment, and he keeps in view the forms of the objects which satisfy his desires, he has not only increased his pleasure in extent and intensity, but he has also enn.o.bled it in mode and species.

No doubt nature has given more than is necessary to unreasoning beings; she has caused a gleam of freedom to s.h.i.+ne even in the darkness of animal life. When the lion is not tormented by hunger, and when no wild beast challenges him to fight, his unemployed energy creates an object for himself; full of ardor, he fills the re-echoing desert with his terrible roars, and his exuberant force rejoices in itself, showing itself without an object. The insect flits about rejoicing in life in the sunlight, and it is certainly not the cry of want that makes itself heard in the melodious song of the bird; there is undeniably freedom in these movements, though it is not emanc.i.p.ation from want in general, but from a determinate external necessity.

The animal works, when a privation is the motor of its activity, and it plays when the plenitude of force is this motor, when an exuberant life is excited to action. Even in inanimate nature a luxury of strength and a lat.i.tude of determination are shown, which in this material sense might be styled play. The tree produces numberless germs that are abortive without developing, and it sends forth more roots, branches, and leaves, organs of nutrition, than are used for the preservation of the species.

Whatever this tree restores to the elements of its exuberant life, without using it or enjoying it, may be expended by life in free and joyful movements. It is thus that nature offers in her material sphere a sort of prelude to the limitless, and that even there she suppresses partially the chains from which she will be completely emanc.i.p.ated in the realm of form. The constraint of superabundance or physical play answers as a transition from the constraint of necessity, or of physical seriousness, to aesthetical play; and before shaking off, in the supreme freedom of the beautiful, the yoke of any special aim, nature already approaches, at least remotely, this independence, by the free movement which is itself its own end and means.

The imagination, like the bodily organs, has in man its free movement and its material play, a play in which, without any reference to form, it simply takes pleasure in its arbitrary power and in the absence of all hinderance. These plays of fancy, inasmuch as form is not mixed up with them, and because a free succession of images makes all their charm, though confined to man, belong exclusively to animal life, and only prove one thing--that he is delivered from all external sensuous constraint without our being ent.i.tled to infer that there is in it an independent plastic force.

From this play of free a.s.sociation of ideas, which is still quite material in nature and is explained by simple natural laws, the imagination, by making the attempt of creating a free form, pa.s.ses at length at a jump to the aesthetic play: I say at one leap, for quite a new force enters into action here; for here, for the first time, the legislative mind is mixed with the acts of a blind instinct, subjects the arbitrary march of the imagination to its eternal and immutable unity, causes its independent permanence to enter in that which is transitory, and its infinity in the sensuous. Nevertheless, as long as rude nature, which knows of no other law than running incessantly from change to change, will yet retain too much strength, it will oppose itself by its different caprices to this necessity; by its agitation to this permanence; by its manifold needs to this independence, and by its insatiability to this sublime simplicity. It will be also troublesome to recognize the instinct of play in its first trials, seeing that the sensuous impulsion, with its capricious humor and its violent appet.i.tes, constantly crosses. It is on that account that we see the taste, still coa.r.s.e, seize that which is new and startling, the disordered, the adventurous and the strange, the violent and the savage, and fly from nothing so much as from calm and simplicity. It invents grotesque figures, it likes rapid transitions, luxurious forms, sharply-marked changes, acute tones, a pathetic song. That which man calls beautiful at this time is that which excites him, that which gives him matter; but that which excites him to give his personality to the object, that which gives matter to a possible plastic operation, for otherwise it would not be the beautiful for him. A remarkable change has therefore taken place in the form of his judgments; he searches for these objects, not because they affect him, but because they furnish him with the occasion of acting; they please him, not because they answer to a want, but because they satisfy a law which speaks in his breast, although quite low as yet.

Soon it will not be sufficient for things to please him; he will wish to please: in the first place, it is true, only by that which belongs to him; afterwards by that which he is. That which he possesses, that which he produces, ought not merely to bear any more the traces of servitude, nor to mark out the end, simply and scrupulously, by the form.

Independently of the use to which it is destined, the object ought also to reflect the enlightened intelligence which imagines it, the hand which shaped it with affection, the mind free and serene which chose it and exposed it to view. Now, the ancient German searches for more magnificent furs, for more splendid antlers of the stag, for more elegant drinking-horns; and the Caledonian chooses the prettiest sh.e.l.ls for his festivals. The arms themselves ought to be no longer only objects of terror, but also of pleasure; and the skilfully-worked scabbard will not attract less attention than the homicidal edge of the sword. The instinct of play, not satisfied with bringing into the sphere of the necessary an aesthetic superabundance for the future more free, is at last completely emanc.i.p.ated from the bonds of duty, and the beautiful becomes of itself an object of man's exertions. He adorns himself. The free pleasure comes to take a place among his wants, and the useless soon becomes the best part of his joys. Form, which from the outside gradually approaches him, in his dwelling, his furniture, his clothing, begins at last to take possession of the man himself, to transform him, at first exteriorly, and afterwards in the interior. The disordered leaps of joy become the dance, the formless gesture is changed into an amiable and harmonious pantomime, the confused accents of feeling are developed, and begin to obey measures and adapt themselves to song.

When, like the flight of cranes, the Trojan army rushes on to the field of battle with thrilling cries, the Greek army approaches in silence and with a n.o.ble and measured step. On the one side we see but the exuberance of a blind force, on the other the triumph of form, and the simple majesty of law.

Now, a n.o.bler necessity binds the two s.e.xes mutually, and the interests of the heart contribute in rendering durable an alliance which was at first capricious and changing like the desire that knits it. Delivered from the heavy fetters of desire, the eye, now calmer, attends to the form, the soul contemplates the soul, and the interested exchange of pleasure becomes a generous exchange of mutual inclination. Desire enlarges and rises to love, in proportion as it sees humanity dawn in its object; and, despising the vile triumphs gained by the senses, man tries to win a n.o.bler victory over the will. The necessity of pleasing subjects the powerful nature to the gentle laws of taste; pleasure may be stolen, but love must be a gift. To obtain this higher recompense, it is only through the form and not through matter that it can carry on the contest. It must cease to act on feeling as a force, to appear in the intelligence as a simple phenomenon; it must respect liberty, as it is liberty it wishes to please. The beautiful reconciles the contrast of different natures in its simplest and purest expression. It also reconciles the eternal contrast of the two s.e.xes in the whole complex framework of society, or at all events it seeks to do so; and, taking as its model the free alliance it has knit between manly strength and womanly gentleness, it strives to place in harmony, in the moral world, all the elements of gentleness and of violence. Now, at length, weakness becomes sacred, and an unbridled strength disgraces; the injustice of nature is corrected by the generosity of chivalrous manners. The being whom no power can make tremble, is disarmed by the amiable blush of modesty, and tears extinguish a vengeance that blood could not have quenched. Hatred itself hears the delicate voice of honor, the conqueror's sword spares the disarmed enemy, and a hospitable hearth smokes for the stranger on the dreaded hillside where murder alone awaited him before.

In the midst of the formidable realm of forces, and of the sacred empire of laws, the aesthetic impulse of form creates by degrees a third and a joyous realm, that of play and of the appearance, where she emanc.i.p.ates man from fetters, in all his relations, and from all that is named constraint, whether physical or moral.

If in the dynamic state of rights men mutually move and come into collision as forces, in the moral (ethical) state of duties, man opposes to man the majesty of the laws, and chains down his will. In this realm of the beautiful or the aesthetic state, man ought to appear to man only as a form, and an object of free play. To give freedom through freedom is the fundamental law of this realm.

The dynamic state can only make society simple possibly by subduing nature through nature; the moral (ethical) state can only make it morally necessary by submitting the will of the individual to the general will.

The aesthetic state alone can make it real, because it carries out the will of all through the nature of the individual. If necessity alone forces man to enter into society, and if his reason engraves on his soul social principles, it is beauty only that can give him a social character; taste alone brings harmony into society, because it creates harmony in the individual. All other forms of perception divide the man, because they are based exclusively either in the sensuous or in the spiritual part of his being. It is only the perception of beauty that makes of him an entirety, because it demands the co-operation of his two natures. All other forms of communication divide society, because they apply exclusively either to the receptivity or to the private activity of its members, and therefore to what distinguishes men one from the other.

The aesthetic communication alone unites society because it applies to what is common to all its members. We only enjoy the pleasures of sense as individuals, without the nature of the race in us sharing in it; accordingly, we cannot generalize our individual pleasures, because we cannot generalize our individuality. We enjoy the pleasures of knowledge as a race, dropping the individual in our judgment; but we cannot generalize the pleasures of the understanding, because we cannot eliminate individuality from the judgments of others as we do from our own. Beauty alone can we enjoy both as individuals and as a race, that is, as representing a race. Good appertaining to sense can only make one person happy, because it is founded on inclination, which is always exclusive; and it can only make a man partially happy, because his real personality does not share in it. Absolute good can only render a man happy conditionally, for truth is only the reward of abnegation, and a pure heart alone has faith in a pure will. Beauty alone confers happiness on all, and under its influence every being forgets that he is limited.

Taste does not suffer any superior or absolute authority, and the sway of beauty is extended over appearance. It extends up to the seat of reason's supremacy, suppressing all that is material. It extends down to where sensuous impulse rules with blind compulsion, and form is undeveloped. Taste ever maintains its power on these remote borders, where legislation is taken from it. Particular desires must renounce their egotism, and the agreeable, otherwise tempting the senses, must in matters of taste adorn the mind with the attractions of grace.

Duty and stern necessity must change their forbidding tone, only excused by resistance, and do homage to nature by a n.o.bler trust in her. Taste leads our knowledge from the mysteries of science into the open expanse of common sense, and changes a narrow scholasticism into the common property of the human race. Here the highest genius must leave its particular elevation, and make itself familiar to the comprehension even of a child. Strength must let the Graces bind it, and the arbitrary lion must yield to the reins of love. For this purpose taste throws a veil over physical necessity, offending a free mind by its coa.r.s.e nudity, and dissimulating our degrading parentage with matter by a delightful illusion of freedom. Mercenary art itself rises from the dust; and the bondage of the bodily, at its magic touch, falls off from the inanimate and animate. In the aesthetic state the most slavish tool is a free citizen, having the same rights as the n.o.blest; and the intellect which shapes the ma.s.s to its intent must consult it concerning its destination.

Consequently, in the realm of aesthetic appearance, the idea of equality is realized, which the political zealot would gladly see carried out socially. It has often been said that perfect politeness is only found near a throne. If thus restricted in the material, man has, as elsewhere appears, to find compensation in the ideal world.

Does such a state of beauty in appearance exist, and where? It must be in every finely-harmonized soul; but as a fact, only in select circles, like the pure ideal of the church and state--in circles where manners are not formed by the empty imitations of the foreign, but by the very beauty of nature; where man pa.s.ses through all sorts of complications in all simplicity and innocence, neither forced to trench on another's freedom to preserve his own, nor to show grace at the cost of dignity.

AESTHETICAL ESSAYS.

THE MORAL UTILITY OF AESTHETIC MANNERS.

The author of the article which appeared in the eleventh number of "The Hours," of 1795, upon "The Danger of Aesthetic Manners," was right to hold as doubtful a morality founded only on a feeling for the beautiful, and which has no other warrant than taste; but it is evident that a strong and pure feeling for the beautiful ought to exercise a salutary influence upon the moral life; and this is the question of which I am about to treat.

When I attribute to taste the merit of contributing to moral progress, it is not in the least my intention to pretend that the interest that good taste takes in an action suffices to make an action moral; morality could never have any other foundation than her own. Taste can be favorable to morality in the conduct, as I hope to point out in the present essay; but alone, and by its unaided influence, it could never produce anything moral.

It is absolutely the same with respect to internal liberty as with external physical liberty. I act freely in a physical sense only when, independently of all external influence, I simply obey my will. But for the possibility of thus obeying without hinderance my own will, it is probable, ultimately, that I am indebted to a principle beyond or distinct from myself immediately it is admitted that this principle would hamper my will. The same also with regard to the possibility of accomplis.h.i.+ng such action in conformity with duty--it may be that I owe it, ultimately, to a principle distinct from my reason; that is possible, the moment the idea of this principle is recognized as a force which could have constrained my independence. Thus the same as we can say of a man, that he holds his liberty from another man, although liberty in its proper sense consists in not being forced to be regulated by another--in like manner we can also say that taste here obeys virtue, although virtue herself expressly carries this idea, that in the practice of virtue she makes use of no other foreign help. An action does not in any degree cease to be free, because he who could hamper its accomplishment should fortunately abstain from putting any obstacle in the way; it suffices to know that this agent has been moved by his own will without any consideration of another will. In the same way, an action of the moral order does not lose its right to be qualified as a moral action, because the temptations which might have turned it in another direction did not present themselves; it suffices to admit that the agent obeyed solely the decree of his reason to the exclusion of all foreign springs of action.

The liberty of an external act is established as soon as it directly proceeds from the will of a person; the morality of an interior action is established from the moment that the will of the agent is at once determined to it by the laws of reason.

It may be rendered easier or more difficult to act as free men according as we meet or not in our path forces adverse to our will that must be overcome. In this sense liberty is more or less susceptible. It is greater, or at least more visible, when we enable it to prevail over the opposing forces, however energetic their opposition; but it is not suspended because our will should have met with no resistance, or that a foreign succor coming to our aid should have destroyed this resistance, without any help from ourselves.

The same with respect to morality; we might have more or less resistance to offer in order on the instant to obey our reason, according as it awakens or not in us those instincts which struggle against its precepts, and which must be put aside. In this sense morality is susceptible of more or of less. Our morality is greater, or at least more in relief, when we immediately obey reason, however powerful the instincts are which push us in a contrary direction; but it is not suspended because we have had no temptation to disobey, or that this force had been paralyzed by some other force other than our will. We are incited to an action solely because it is moral, without previously asking ourselves if it is the most agreeable. It is enough that such an action is morally good, and it would preserve this character even if there were cause to believe that we should have acted differently if the action had cost us any trouble, or had deprived us of a pleasure.

It can be admitted, for the honor of humanity, that no man could fall so low as to prefer evil solely because it is evil, but rather that every man, without exception, would prefer the good because it is the good, if by some accidental circ.u.mstance the good did not exclude the agreeable, or did not entail trouble. Thus in reality all moral action seems to have no other principle than a conflict between the good and the agreeable; or, that which comes to the same thing, between desire and reason; the force of our sensuous instincts on one side, and, on the other side, the feebleness of will, the moral faculty: such apparently is the source of all our faults.

There may be, therefore, two different ways of favoring morality, the same as there are two kinds of obstacles which thwart it: either we must strengthen the side of reason, and the power of the good will, so that no temptation can overcome it; or we must break the force of temptation, in order that the reason and the will, although feebler, should yet be in a state to surmount it.

It might be said, without doubt, that true morality gains little by this second proceeding, because it happens without any modification of the will, and yet that it is the nature of the will that alone give to actions their moral character. But I say also, in the case in question, a change of will is not at all necessary; because we do not suppose a bad will which should require to be changed, but only a will turned to good, but which is feeble. Therefore, this will, inclined to good, but too feeble, does not fail to attain by this route to good actions, which might not have happened if a stronger impulsion had drawn it in a contrary sense. But every time that a strong will towards good becomes the principle of an action, we are really in presence of a moral action.

I have therefore no scruple in advancing this proposition--that all which neutralizes the resistance offered to the law of duty really favors morality.

Morality has within us a natural enemy, the sensuous instinct; this, as soon as some object solicits its desires, aspires at once to gratify it, and, as soon as reason requires from it anything repugnant, it does not fail to rebel against its precepts. This sensuous instinct is constantly occupied in gaining the will on its side. The will is nevertheless under the jurisdiction of the moral law, and it is under an obligation never to be in contradiction with that which reason demands.

But the sensuous instinct does not recognize the moral law; it wishes to enjoy its object and to induce the will to realize it also, notwithstanding what the reason may advance. This tendency of the faculty of our appet.i.tes, of immediately directing the will without troubling itself about superior laws, is perpetually in conflict with our moral destination, and it is the most powerful adversary that man has to combat in his moral conduct. The coa.r.s.e soul, without either moral or aesthetic education, receives directly the law of appet.i.te, and acts only according to the good pleasure of the senses. The moral soul, but which wants aesthetic culture, receives in a direct manner the law of reason, and it is only out of respect for duty that it triumphs over temptation.

In the purified aesthetic soul, there is moreover another motive, another force, which frequently takes the place of virtue when virtue is absent, and which renders it easier when it is present--that is, taste.

Taste demands of us moderation and dignity; it has a horror of everything sharp, hard and violent; it likes all that shapes itself with ease and harmony. To listen to the voice of reason amidst the tempest of the senses, and to know where to place a limit to nature in its most brutified explosions, is, as we are aware, required by good breeding, which is no other than an aesthetic law; this is required of every civilized man. Well, then, this constraint imposed upon civilized man in the expression of his feelings, confers upon him already a certain degree of authority over them, or at least develops in him a certain apt.i.tude to rise above the purely pa.s.sive state of the soul, to interrupt this state by an initiative act, and to stop by reflection the petulance of the feelings, ever ready to pa.s.s from affections to acts. Therefore everything that interrupts the blind impetuosity of these movements of the affections does not as yet, however, produce, I own, a virtue (for virtue ought never to have any other active principle than itself), but that at least opens the road to the will, in order to turn it on the side of virtue. Still, this victory of taste over brutish affections is by no means a moral action, and the freedom which the will acquires by the intervention of taste is as yet in no way a moral liberty. Taste delivers the soul from the yoke of instinct, only to impose upon it chains of its own; and in discerning the first enemy, the declared enemy of moral liberty, it remains itself, too often, as a second enemy, perhaps even the more dangerous as it a.s.sumes the aspect of a friend.

Taste effectively governs the soul itself only by the attraction of pleasure; it is true of a n.o.bler type, because its principle is reason, but still as long as the will is determined by pleasure there is not yet morality.

Notwithstanding this, a great point is gained already by the intervention of taste in the operations of the will. All those material inclinations and brutal appet.i.tes, which oppose with so much obstinacy and vehemence the practice of good, the soul is freed from through the aesthetic taste; and in their place, it implants in us n.o.bler and gentler inclinations, which draw nearer to order, to harmony, and to perfection; and although these inclinations are not by themselves virtues, they have at least something in common with virtue; it is their object. Thenceforth, if it is the appet.i.te that speaks, it will have to undergo a rigorous control before the sense of the beautiful; if it is the reason which speaks, and which commands in its acts conformity with order, harmony, and perfection, not only will it no longer meet with an adversary on the side of inclination, but it will find the most active compet.i.tion. If we survey all the forms under which morality can be produced, we shall see that all these forms can be reduced to two; either it is sensuous nature which moves the soul either to do this thing or not to do the other, and the will finally decides after the law of the reason; or it is the reason itself which impels the motion, and the will obeys it without seeking counsel of the senses.

The Greek princess, Anna Comnena, speaks of a rebel prisoner, whom her father Alexis, then a simple general of his predecessor, had been charged to conduct to Constantinople. During the journey, as they were riding side by side, Alexis desired to halt under the shade of a tree to refresh himself during the great heat of the day. It was not long before he fell asleep, whilst his companion, who felt no inclination to repose with the fear of death awaiting him before his eyes, remained awake. Alexis slumbered profoundly, with his sword hanging upon a branch above his head; the prisoner perceived the sword, and immediately conceived the idea of killing his guardian and thus of regaining his freedom. Anna Comnena gives us to understand that she knows not what might have been the result had not Alexis fortunately awoke at that instant. In this there is a moral of the highest kind, in which the sensuous instinct first raised its voice, and of which the reason had only afterwards taken cognizance in quality of judge. But suppose that the prisoner had triumphed over the temptation only out of respect for justice, there could be no doubt the action would have been a moral action.

When the late Duke Leopold of Brunswick, standing upon the banks of the raging waters of the Oder, asked himself if at the peril of his life he ought to venture into the impetuous flood in order to save some unfortunates who without his aid were sure to perish; and when--I suppose a case--simply under the influence of duty, he throws himself into the boat into which none other dares to enter, no one will contest doubtless that he acted morally. The duke was here in a contrary position to that of the preceding one. The idea of duty, in this circ.u.mstance, was the first which presented itself, and afterwards only the instinct of self-preservation was roused to oppose itself to that prescribed by reason, But in both cases the will acted in the same way; it obeyed unhesitatingly the reason, yet both of them are moral actions.

But would the action have continued moral in both cases, if we suppose the aesthetic taste to have taken part in it? For example, suppose that the first, who was tempted to commit a bad action, and who gave it up from respect for justice, had the taste sufficiently cultivated to feel an invincible horror aroused in him against all disgraceful or violent action, the aesthetic sense alone will suffice to turn him from it; there is no longer any deliberation before the moral tribunal, before the conscience; another motive, another jurisdiction has already p.r.o.nounced.

But the aesthetic sense governs the will by the feeling and not by laws.

Thus this man refuses to enjoy the agreeable sensation of a life saved, because he cannot support his odious feelings of having committed a baseness. Therefore all, in this, took place before the feelings alone, and the conduct of this man, although in conformity with the law, is morally indifferent; it is simply a fine effect of nature.

Now let us suppose that the second, he to whom his reason prescribed to do a thing against which natural instinct protested; suppose that this man had to the same extent a susceptibility for the beautiful, so that all which is great and perfect enraptured him; at the same moment, when reason gave the order, the feelings would place themselves on the same side, and he would do willingly that which without the inclination for the beautiful he would have had to do contrary to inclination. But would this be a reason for us to find it less perfect? a.s.suredly not, because in principle it acts out of pure respect for the prescriptions of reason; and if it follows these injunctions with joy, that can take nothing away from the moral purity of the act. Thus, this man will be quite as perfect in the moral sense; and, on the contrary, he will be incomparably more perfect in the physical sense, because he is infinitely more capable of making a virtuous subject.

Thus, taste gives a direction to the soul which disposes it to virtue, in keeping away such inclinations as are contrary to it, and in rousing those which are favorable. Taste could not injure true virtue, although in every case where natural instinct speaks first, taste commences by deciding for its chief that which conscience otherwise ought to have known; in consequence it is the cause that, amongst the actions of those whom it governs, there are many more actions morally indifferent than actions truly moral. It thus happens that the excellency of the man does not consist in the least degree in producing a larger sum of vigorously moral particular actions, but by evincing as a whole a greater conformity of all his natural dispositions with the moral law; and it is not a thing to give people a very high idea of their country or of their age to hear morality so often spoken of and particular acts boasted of as traits of virtue. Let us hope that the day when civilization shall have consummated its work (if we can realize this term in the mind) there will no longer be any question of this. But, on the other side, taste can become of possible utility to true virtue, in all cases when, the first instigations issuing from reason, its voice incurs the risk of being stifled by the more powerful solicitations of natural instinct. Thus, taste determines our feelings to take the part of duty, and in this manner renders a mediocre moral force of will sufficient for the practice of virtue.

In this light, if the taste never injures true morality, and if in many cases it is of evident use--and this circ.u.mstance is very important--then it is supremely favorable to the legality of our conduct. Suppose that aesthetic education contributes in no degree to the improvement of our feelings, at least it renders us better able to act, although without true moral disposition, as we should have acted if our soul had been truly moral. Therefore, it is quite true that, before the tribunal of the conscience, our acts have absolutely no importance but as the expression of our feelings: but it is precisely the contrary in the physical order and in the plan of nature: there it is no longer our sentiments that are of importance; they are only important so far as they give occasion to acts which conduce to the aims of nature. But the physical order which is governed by forces, and the moral order which governs itself by laws, are so exactly made one for the other, and are so intimately blended, that the actions which are by their form morally suitable, necessarily contain also a physical suitability; and as the entire edifice of nature seems to exist only to render possible the highest of all aims, which is the good, in the same manner the good can in its turn be employed as the means of preserving the edifice. Thus, the natural order has been rendered dependent upon the morality of our souls, and we cannot go against the moral laws of the world without at the same time provoking a perturbation in the physical world.

If, then, it is impossible to expect that human nature, as long as it is only human nature, should act without interruption or feebleness, uniformly and constantly as pure reason, and that it never offend the laws of moral order; if fully persuaded, as we are, both of the necessity and the possibility of pure virtue, we are forced to avow how subject to accident is the exercise of it, and how little we ought to reckon upon the steadfastness of our best principles; if with this conviction of human fragility we bear in mind that each of the infractions of the moral law attacks the edifice of nature, if we recall all these considerations to our memory, it would be a.s.suredly the most criminal boldness to place the interests of the entire world at the mercy of the uncertainty of our virtue. Let us rather draw from it the following conclusion, that it is for us an obligation to satisfy at the very least the physical order by the object of our acts, even when we do not satisfy the exigencies of the moral order by the form of these acts; to pay, at least, as perfect instruments the aims of nature, that which we owe as imperfect persons to reason, in order not to appear shamefaced before both tribunals. For if we refused to make any effort to conform our acts to it because simple legality is without moral merit, the order of the world might in the meanwhile be dissolved, and before we had succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng our principles all the links of society might be broken. No, the more our morality is subjected to chance, the more is it necessary to take measures in order to a.s.sure its legality; to neglect, either from levity or pride, this legality is a fault for which we shall have to answer before morality. When a maniac believes himself threatened with a fit of madness, he leaves no knife within reach of his hands, and he puts himself under constraint, in order to avoid responsibility in a state of sanity for the crimes which his troubled brain might lead him to commit.

In a similar manner it is an obligation for us to seek the salutary bonds which religion and the aesthetic laws present to us, in order that during the crisis when our pa.s.sion is dominant it shall not injure the physical order.

It is not unintentionally that I have placed religion and taste in one and the same cla.s.s; the reason is that both one and the other have the merit, similar in effect, although dissimilar in principle and in value, to take the place of virtue properly so called, and to a.s.sure legality where there is no possibility to hope for morality. Doubtless that would hold an incontestably higher rank in the order of pure spirits, as they would need neither the attraction of the beautiful nor the perspective of eternal life, to conform on every occasion to the demands of reason; but we know man is short-sighted, and his feebleness forces the most rigid moralist to temper in some degree the rigidity of his system in practice, although he will yield nothing in theory; it obliges him, in order to insure the welfare of the human race, which would be ill protected by a virtue subjected to chance, to have further recourse to two strong anchors--those of religion and taste.

ON THE SUBLIME.