The Aesthetical Essays, Friedrich Schiller [ebook reader color screen txt] 📗

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.


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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