dependent feeling to moral liberty, because beauty reveals to us the fact
that they can perfectly coexist, and that to show himself a spirit, man
need not escape from matter. But if on one side he is free, even in his
relation with a visible world, as the fact of beauty teaches, and if on
the other side freedom is something absolute and supersensuous, as its
idea necessarily implies, the question is no longer how man succeeds in
raising himself from the finite to the absolute, and opposing himself in
his thought and will to sensuality, as this has already been produced in
the fact of beauty. In a word, we have no longer to ask how he passes
from virtue to truth which is already included in the former, but how he
opens a way for himself from vulgar reality to aesthetic reality, and
from the ordinary feelings of life to the perception of the beautiful.
LETTER XXVI.
I have shown in the previous letters that it is only the aesthetic
disposition of the soul that gives birth to liberty, it cannot therefore
be derived from liberty nor have a moral origin. It must be a gift of
nature; the favor of chance alone can break the bonds of the physical
state and bring the savage to duty. The germ of the beautiful will find
an equal difficulty in developing itself in countries where a severe
nature forbids man to enjoy himself, and in those where a prodigal nature
dispenses him from all effort; where the blunted senses experience no
want, and where violent desire can never be satisfied. The delightful
flower of the beautiful will never unfold itself in the case of the
Troglodyte hid in his cavern always alone, and never finding humanity
outside himself; nor among nomads, who, travelling in great troops, only
consist of a multitude, and have no individual humanity. It will only
flourish in places where man converses peacefully with himself in his
cottage, and with the whole race when he issues from it. In those
climates where a limpid ether opens the senses to the lightest
impression, whilst a life-giving warmth develops a luxuriant nature,
where even in the inanimate creation the sway of inert matter is
overthrown, and the victorious form ennobles even the most abject
natures; in this joyful state and fortunate zone, where activity alone
leads to enjoyment, and enjoyment to activity, from life itself issues a
holy harmony, and the laws of order develop life, a different result
takes place. When imagination incessantly escapes from reality, and does
not abandon the simplicity of nature in its wanderings: then and there
only the mind and the senses, the receptive force and the plastic force,
are developed in that happy equilibrium which is the soul of the
beautiful and the condition of humanity.
What phenomenon accompanies the initiation of the savage into humanity?
However far we look back into history the phenomenon is identical among
all people who have shaken off the slavery of the animal state: the love
of appearance, the inclination for dress and for games.
Extreme stupidity and extreme intelligence have a certain affinity in
only seeking the real and being completely insensible to mere appearance.
The former is only drawn forth by the immediate presence of an object in
the senses, and the second is reduced to a quiescent state only by
referring conceptions to the facts of experience. In short, stupidity
cannot rise above reality, nor the intelligence descend below truth.
Thus, in as far as the want of reality and attachment to the real are
only the consequence of a want and a defect, indifference to the real and
an interest taken in appearances are a real enlargement of humanity and a
decisive step towards culture. In the first place it is the proof of an
exterior liberty, for as long as necessity commands and want solicits,
the fancy is strictly chained down to the real: it is only when want is
satisfied that it develops without hinderance. But it is also the proof
of an internal liberty, because it reveals to us a force which,
independent of an external substratum, sets itself in motion, and has
sufficient energy to remove from itself the solicitations of nature. The
reality of things is effected by things, the appearance of things is the
work of man, and a soul that takes pleasure in appearance does not take
pleasure in what it receives but in what it makes.
It is self-evident that I am speaking of aesthetical evidence different
from reality and truth, and not of logical appearance identical with
them. Therefore if it is liked it is because it is an appearance, and
not because it is held to be something better than it is: the first
principle alone is a play, whilst the second is a deception. To give a
value to the appearance of the first kind can never injure truth, because
it is never to be feared that it will supplant it - the only way in which
truth can be injured. To despise this appearance is to despise in
general all the fine arts of which it is the essence. Nevertheless, it
happens sometimes that the understanding carries its zeal for reality as
far as this intolerance, and strikes with a sentence of ostracism all the
arts relating to beauty in appearance, because it is only an appearance.
However, the intelligence only shows this vigorous spirit when it calls
to mind the affinity pointed out further back. I shall find some day the
occasion to treat specially of the limits of beauty in its appearance.
It is nature herself which raises man from reality to appearance by
endowing him with two senses which only lead him to the knowledge of the
real through appearance. In the eye and the ear the organs of the senses
are already freed from the persecutions of nature, and the object with
which we are immediately in contact through the animal senses is remoter
from us. What we see by the eye differs from what we feel; for the
understanding to reach objects overleaps the light which separates us
from them. In truth, we are passive to an object: in sight and hearing
the object is a form we create. While still a savage, man only enjoys
through touch merely aided by sight and sound. He either does not rise
to perception through sight, or does not rest there. As soon as he
begins to enjoy through sight, vision has an independent value, he is
aesthetically free, and the instinct of play is developed.
The instinct of play likes appearance, and directly it is awakened it is
followed by the formal imitative instinct which treats appearance as an
independent thing. Directly man has come to distinguish the appearance
from the reality, the form from the body, he can separate, in fact he has
already done so. Thus the faculty of the art of imitation is given with
the faculty of form in general. The inclination that draws us to it
reposes on another tendency I have not to notice here. The exact period
when the aesthetic instinct, or that of art, develops, depends entirely
on the attraction that mere appearance has for men.
As every real existence proceeds from nature as a foreign power, whilst
every appearance comes in the first place from man as a percipient
subject, he only uses his absolute sight in separating semblance from
essence, and arranging according to subjective law. With an unbridled
liberty he can unite what nature has severed, provided he can imagine his
union, and he can separate what nature has united, provided this
separation can take place in his intelligence. Here nothing can be
sacred to him but his own law: the only condition imposed upon him is to
respect the border which separates his own sphere from the existence of
things or from the realm of nature.
This human right of ruling is exercised by man in the art of appearance;
and his success in extending the empire of the beautiful, and guarding
the frontiers of truth, will be in proportion with the strictness with
which he separates form from substance: for if he frees appearance from
reality, he must also do the converse.
But man possesses sovereign power only in the world of appearance, in the
unsubstantial realm of imagination, only by abstaining from giving being
to appearance in theory, and by giving it being in practice. It follows
that the poet transgresses his proper limits when he attributes being to
his ideal, and when he gives this ideal aim as a determined existence.
For he can only reach this result by exceeding his right as a poet, that
of encroaching by the ideal on the field of experience, and by pretending
to determine real existence in virtue of a simple possibility, or else he
renounces his right as a poet by letting experience encroach on the
sphere of the ideal, and by restricting possibility to the conditions of
reality.
It is only by being frank or disclaiming all reality, and by being
independent or doing without reality, that the appearance is aesthetical.
Directly it apes reality or needs reality for effect, it is nothing more
than a vile instrument for material ends, and can prove nothing for the
freedom of the mind. Moreover, the object in which we find beauty need
not be unreal if our judgment disregards this reality; for if it regards
this the judgment is no longer aesthetical. A beautiful woman, if
living, would no doubt please us as much and rather more than an equally
beautiful woman seen in painting; but what makes the former please men is
not her being an independent appearance; she no longer pleases the pure
aesthetic feeling. In the painting, life must only attract as an
appearance, and reality as an idea. But it is certain that to feel in a
living object only the pure appearance requires a greatly higher
aesthetic culture than to do without life in the appearance.
When the frank and independent appearance is found in man separately, or
in a whole people, it may be inferred they have mind, taste, and all
prerogatives connected with them. In this case the ideal will be seen to
govern real life, honor triumphing over fortune, thought over enjoyment,
the dream of immortality over a transitory existence.
In this case public opinion will no longer be feared, and an olive crown
will be more valued than a purple mantle. Impotence and perversity alone
have recourse to false and paltry semblance, and individuals as well as
nations who lend to reality the support of appearance, or to the
aesthetic appearance the support of reality, show their moral
unworthiness and their aesthetical impotence. Therefore, a short and
conclusive answer can be given to this question - how far will appearance
be permitted in the moral world? It will run thus in proportion as this
appearance will be aesthetical, that is, an appearance that does not try
to make up for reality, nor requires to be made up for by it. The
aesthetical appearance can never endanger the truth of morals: wherever
it seems to do so the appearance is not aesthetical. Only a stranger to
the fashionable world can take the polite assurances, which are only a
form, for proofs of affection, and say he has been deceived; but only a
clumsy fellow in good society calls in the aid of duplicity and flatters
to become amiable. The former lacks the pure sense for independent
appearance; therefore he can only give a value to appearance by truth.
The second lacks reality, and wishes to replace it by appearance.
Nothing is more common than to hear depreciators of the times utter these
paltry complaints - that all solidity has disappeared from the world, and
that essence is neglected for semblance. Though I feel by no means
called upon to defend this age against these reproaches, I must say that
the wide application of these criticisms shows that they attach blame to
the age, not only on the score of the false, but also of the frank
appearance. And even the exceptions they admit in favor of the beautiful
have for their object less the independent appearance than the needy
appearance. Not only do they attack the artificial coloring that hides
truth and replaces reality, but also the beneficent appearance that fills
a vacuum and clothes poverty; and they even attack the ideal appearance
that ennobles a vulgar reality. Their strict sense of truth is rightly
offended by the falsity of manners; unfortunately, they class politeness
in this category. It displeases them that the noisy and showy so often
eclipse true merit, but they are no less shocked that appearance is also
demanded from merit, and that a real substance does not dispense with an
agreeable form. They regret the cordiality, the energy, and solidity of
ancient times; they would restore with them ancient coarseness,
heaviness, and the old Gothic profusion. By judgments of this kind they
show an esteem for the matter itself unworthy of humanity, which ought
only to value the matter inasmuch as it can receive a form and enlarge
the empire of ideas. Accordingly, the taste of the age need not much
fear these criticisms if it can clear itself before better judges. Our
defect is not to grant a value to aesthetic appearance (we do not do this
enough): a severe judge of the beautiful might rather reproach us with
not having arrived at pure appearance, with not having separated clearly
enough existence from the phenomenon, and thus established their limits.
We shall deserve this reproach so long as we cannot enjoy the beautiful
in living nature without desiring it; as long as we cannot admire the
beautiful in the imitative arts without having an end in view; as long as
we do not grant to imagination an absolute legislation of its own; and as
long as we do not inspire it with care for its dignity by the esteem we
testify for its works.
LETTER XXVII.
Do not fear for reality and truth. Even if the elevated idea of
aesthetic appearance become general, it would not become so, as long as
man remains so little cultivated as to abuse it; and if it became
general, this would result from a culture that would prevent all abuse of
it. The pursuit of independent appearance requires more power of
abstraction, freedom of heart, and energy of will than man requires to
shut himself up in reality; and he must have left the latter behind him
if he wishes to attain to aesthetic appearance. Therefore, a man would
calculate very badly who took the road of the ideal to save himself that
of reality. Thus, reality would not have much to fear from appearance,
as we understand it; but, on the other hand, appearance would have more
to fear from reality. Chained to matter, man uses appearance for his
purposes before he allows it a proper personality in the art of the
ideal: to come to that point a complete revolution must take place in his
mode of feeling, otherwise, he would not be even on the way to the ideal.
Consequently, when we find in man the signs of a pure and disinterested
esteem, we can infer that this revolution has taken place in his nature,
and that humanity has really begun in him. Signs of this kind are found
even in the first and rude attempts that he makes to embellish his
existence, even at the risk of making it worse in its material
conditions. As soon as he begins to prefer form to substance and to risk
reality for appearance (known by him to be such), the barriers of animal
life fall, and he finds himself on a track that has no end.
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 anticipating 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 ennobled 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 shine 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 emancipation 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 latitude 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 emancipated 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 entitled to infer that there is in it an independent
plastic force.
From this play of free association 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, passes 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 appetites,
constantly crosses. It is on that account that we see the taste, still
coarse, 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 shells 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 emancipated 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 noble 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 nobler necessity binds the two sexes 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 nobler 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 sexes 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 emancipates
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 nobler 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 coarse 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 noblest; and the intellect which
shapes the mass 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 passes 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
accomplishing 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 circumstance 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 appetites, 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 coarse soul, without either moral or
aesthetic education, receives directly the law of appetite, 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 aptitude to
rise above the purely passive 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 pass 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