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

have been assigned to the use of beautiful forms. These limits are embodied in the very nature of the beautiful, and we have only to call to mind how taste expresses its influence to be able to determine how far it ought to extend it.

The following are the principal operations of taste; to bring the sensuous and spiritual powers of man into harmony, and to unite them in a close alliance. Consequently, whenever such an intimate alliance between reason and the senses is suitable and legitimate, taste may be allowed influence. But taste reaches the bounds which it is not permitted to pass without defeating its end or removing us from our duty, in all cases where the bond between mind and matter is given up for a time, where we must act for the time as purely creatures of reason, whether it be to attain an end or to perform a duty. Cases of this kind do really occur, and they are even incumbent on us in carrying out our destiny.

For we are destined to obtain knowledge and to act from knowledge. In both cases a certain readiness is required to exclude the senses from that which the spirit does, because feelings must be abstracted from knowledge, and passion or desire from every moral act of the will.

When we know, we take up an active attitude, and our attention is directed to an object, to a relation between different representations. When we feel, we have a passive attitude, and our attention - if we may call that so, which is no conscious operation of the mind - is only directed to our own condition, as far as it is modified by the impression received. Now, as we only feel and do not know the beautiful, we do not distinguish any relation between it and other objects, we do not refer its representation to other representations, but to ourselves who have experienced the impression. We learn or experience nothing in the beautiful object, but we perceive a change occasioned by it in our own condition, of which the impression produced is the expression. Accordingly our knowledge is not enlarged by judgments of taste, and no knowledge, not even that of beauty, is obtained by the feeling of beauty. Therefore, when knowledge is the object, taste can give us no help, at least directly and immediately; on the contrary, knowledge is shut out as long as we are occupied with beauty.

But it may be objected, What is the use then of a graceful embodiment of conceptions, if the object of the discussion or treatise, which is simply and solely to produce knowledge, is rather hindered than benefited by ornament? To convince the understanding this gracefulness of clothing can certainly avail as little as the tasteful arrangement of a banquet can satisfy the appetite of the guests, or the outward elegance of a person can give a clue to his intrinsic worth. But just as the appetite is excited by the beautiful arrangement of the table, and attention is directed to the elegant person in question, by the attractiveness of the exterior, so also we are placed in a favorable attitude to receive truth by the charming representation given of it; we are led to open our souls to its reception, and the obstacles are removed from our minds which would have otherwise opposed the difficult pursuit of a long and strict concatenation of thought. It is never the contents, the substance, that gains by the beauty of form; nor is it the understanding that is helped by taste in the act of knowing. The substance, the contents, must commend themselves to the understanding directly, of themselves; whilst the beautiful form speaks to the imagination, and flatters it with an appearance of freedom.

But even further limitations are necessary in this innocent subserviency to the senses, which is only allowed in the form, without changing anything in the substance. Great moderation must be always used, and sometimes the end in view may be completely defeated according to the kind of knowledge and degree of conviction aimed at in imparting our views to others. There is a scientific knowledge, which is based on clear conceptions and known principles; and a popular knowledge, which is founded on feelings more or less developed. What may be very useful to the latter is quite possibly adverse to the former.

When the object in view is to produce a strict conviction on principles, it is not sufficient to present the truth only in respect to its contents or subject; the test of the truth must at the same time be contained in the manner of its presentation. But this can mean nothing else than that not only the contents, but also the mode of stating them, must be according to the laws of thought. They must be connected in the presentation with the same strict logical sequence with which they are chained together in the seasonings of the understanding; the stability of the representation must guarantee that of the ideas. But the strict necessity with which the understanding links together reasonings and conclusions, is quite antagonistic to the freedom granted to imagination in matters of knowledge. By its very nature, the imagination strives after perceptions, that is, after complete and completely determinate representations, and is indefatigably active to represent the universal in one single case, to limit it in time and space, to make of every conception an individual, and to give a body to abstractions. Moreover, the imagination likes freedom in its combinations, and admits no other law in them than the accidental connection with time and space; for this is the only connection that remains to our representations, if we separate from them in thought all that is conception, all that binds them internally and substantially together. The understanding, following a diametrically opposite course, only occupies itself with part representations or conceptions, and its effort is directed to distinguish features in the living unity of a perception. The understanding proceeds on the same principles in putting together and taking to pieces, but it can only combine things by part-representations, just as it can separate them; for it only unites, according to their inner relations, things that first disclosed themselves in their separation.

The understanding observes a strict necessity and conformity with laws in its combinations, and it is only the consistent connection of ideas that satisfies it. But this connection is destroyed as often as the imagination insinuates entire representations (individual cases) in this chain of abstractions, and mixes up the accidents of time with the strict necessity of a chain of circumstances. Accordingly, in every case where it is essential to carry out a rigidly accurate sequence of reasoning, imagination must forego its capricious character; and its endeavor to obtain all possible sensuousness in conceptions, and all freedom in their combination, must be made subordinate and sacrificed to the necessity of the understanding. From this it follows that the exposition must be so fashioned as to overthrow this effort of the imagination by the exclusion of all that is individual and sensuous. The poetic impulse of imagination must be curbed by distinctness of expression, and its capricious tendency to combine must be limited by a strictly legitimate course of procedure. I grant that it will not bend to this yoke without resistance; but in this matter reliance is properly placed on a certain amount of self-denial, and on an earnest determination of the hearer or reader not to be deterred by the difficulties accompanying the form, for the sake of the subject-matter. But in all cases where no sufficient dependence can be placed on this self-denial, or where the interest felt in the subject-matter is insufficient to inspire courage for such an amount of exertion, it is necessary to resign the idea of imparting strictly scientific knowledge; and to gain instead greater latitude in the form of its presentation. In such a case it is expedient to abandon the form of science, which exercises too great violence over the imagination, and can only be made acceptable through the importance of the object in view. Instead of this, it is proper to choose the form of beauty, which, independent of the contents or subject, recommends itself by its very appearance. As the matter cannot excuse the form in this case, the form must trespass on the matter.

Popular instruction is compatible with this freedom. By the term popular speakers or popular writers I imply all those who do not direct their remarks exclusively to the learned. Now, as these persons do not address any carefully trained body of hearers or readers, but take them as they find them, they must only assume the existence of the general conditions of thought, only the universal impulses that call attention, but no special gift of thinking, no acquaintance with distinct conceptions, nor any interest in special subjects. These lecturers and authors must not be too particular as to whether their audience or readers assign by their imagination a proper meaning to their abstractions, or whether they will furnish a proper subject-matter for the universal conceptions to which the scientific discourse is limited. In order to pursue a safer, easier course, these persons will present along with their ideas the perceptions and separate cases to which they relate, and they leave it to the understanding of the reader to form a proper conception impromptu. Accordingly, the faculty of imagination is much more mixed up with a popular discourse, but only to reproduce, to renew previously received representations, and not to produce, to express its own self-creating power. Those special cases or perceptions are much too certainly calculated for the object on hand, and much too closely applied to the use that is to be made of them, to allow the imagination ever to forget that it only acts in the service of the understanding. It is true that a discourse of this popular kind holds somewhat closer to life and the world of sense, but it does not become lost in it. The mode of presenting the subject is still didactic; for in order to be beautiful it is still wanting in the two most distinguished features of beauty, sensuousness of expression and freedom of movement.

The mode of presenting a theme may be called free when the understanding, while determining the connection of ideas, does so with so little prominence that the imagination appears to act quite capriciously in the matter, and to follow only the accident of time. The presentation of a subject becomes sensuous when it conceals the general in the particular, and when the fancy gives the living image (the whole representation), where attention is merely concerned with the conception (the part representation). Accordingly, sensuous presentation is, viewed in one aspect, rich, for in cases where only one condition is desired, a complete picture, an entirety of conditions, an individual is offered. But viewed in another aspect it is limited and poor, because it only confines to a single individual and a single case what ought to be understood of a whole sphere. It therefore curtails the understanding in the same proportion that it grants preponderance to the imagination; for the completer a representation is in substance, the smaller it is in compass.

It is the interest of the imagination to change objects according to its caprice; the interest of the understanding is to unite its representations with strict logical necessity.

To satisfy the imagination, a discourse must have a material part, a body; and these are formed by the perceptions, from which the understanding separates distinct features or conceptions. For though we may attempt to obtain the highest pitch of abstraction, something sensuous always lies at the ground of the thought. But imagination strives to pass unfettered and lawless from one conception to another conception, and seeks not to