Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
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.
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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.