Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
happens), but merely because she is nature. This feeling is often
elicited when nature is considered in her plants, in her mineral kingdom,
in rural districts; also in the case of human nature, in the case of
children, and in the manners of country people and of the primitive
races. Every man of refined feeling, provided he has a soul, experiences
this feeling when he walks out under the open sky, when he lives in the
country, or when he stops to contemplate the monuments of early ages; in
short, when escaping from factitious situations and relations, he finds
himself suddenly face to face with nature. This interest, which is often
exalted in us so as to become a want, is the explanation of many of our
fancies for flowers and for animals, our preference for gardens laid out
in the natural style, our love of walks, of the country and those who
live there, of a great number of objects proceeding from a remote
antiquity, etc. It is taken for granted that no affectation exists in
the matter, and moreover that no accidental interest comes into play.
But this sort of interest which we take in nature is only possible under
two conditions. First the object that inspires us with this feeling must
be really nature, or something we take for nature; secondly this object
must be in the full sense of the word simple, that is, presenting the
entire contrast of nature with art, all the advantage remaining on the
side of nature. Directly this second condition is united to the first,
but no sooner, nature assumes the character of simplicity.
Considered thus, nature is for us nothing but existence in all its
freedom; it is the constitution of things taken in themselves; it is
existence itself according to its proper and immutable laws.
It is strictly necessary that we should have this idea of nature to take
an interest in phenomena of this kind. If we conceive an artificial
flower so perfectly imitated that it has all the appearance of nature and
would produce the most complete illusion, or if we imagine the imitation
of simplicity carried out to the extremest degree, the instant we
discover it is only an imitation, the feeling of which I have been
speaking is completely destroyed. It is, therefore, quite evident that
this kind of satisfaction which nature causes us to feel is not a
satisfaction of the aesthetical taste, but a satisfaction of the moral
sense; for it is produced by means of a conception and not immediately by
the single fact of intuition: accordingly it is by no means determined by
the different degrees of beauty in forms. For, after all, is there
anything so specially charming in a flower of common appearance, in a
spring, a moss-covered stone, the warbling of birds, or the buzzing of
bees, etc.? What is that can give these objects a claim to our love? It
is not these objects in themselves; it is an idea represented by them
that we love in them. We love in them life and its latent action, the
effects peacefully produced by beings of themselves, existence under its
proper laws, the inmost necessity of things, the eternal unity of their
nature.
These objects which captivate us are what we were, what we must be again
some day. We were nature as they are; and culture, following the way of
reason and of liberty, must bring us back to nature. Accordingly, these
objects are an image of our infancy irrevocably past--of our infancy
which will remain eternally very dear to us, and thus they infuse a
certain melancholy into us; they are also the image of our highest
perfection in the ideal world, whence they excite a sublime emotion in
us.
But the perfection of these objects is not a merit that belongs to them,
because it is not the effect of their free choice. Accordingly they
procure quite a peculiar pleasure for us, by being our models without
having anything humiliating for us. It is like a constant manifestation
of the divinity surrounding us, which refreshes without dazzling us. The
very feature that constitutes their character is precisely what is
lacking in ours to make it complete; and what distinguishes us from them
is precisely what they lack to be divine. We are free and they are
necessary; we change and they remain identical. Now it is only when
these two conditions are united, when the will submits freely to the laws
of necessity, and when, in the midst of all the changes of which the
imagination is susceptible, reason maintains its rule--it is only then
that the divine or the ideal is manifested. Thus we perceive eternally
in them that which we have not, but which we are continually forced to
strive after; that which we can never reach, but which we can hope to
approach by continual progress. And we perceive in ourselves an
advantage which they lack, but in which some of them--the beings deprived
of reason--cannot absolutely share, and in which the others, such as
children, can only one day have a share by following our way.
Accordingly, they procure us the most delicious feeling of our human
nature, as an idea, though in relation to each determinate state of our
nature they cannot fail to humble us.
As this interest in nature is based on an idea, it can only manifest
itself in a soul capable of ideas, that is, in a moral soul. For the
immense majority it is nothing more than pure affectation; and this taste
of sentimentality so widely diffused in our day, manifesting itself,
especially since the appearance of certain books, by sentimental
excursions and journeys, by sentimental gardens, and other fancies akin
to these--this taste by no means proves that true refinement of sense has
become general. Nevertheless, it is certain that nature will always
produce something of this impression, even on the most insensible hearts,
because all that is required for this is the moral disposition or
aptitude, which is common to all men. For all men, however contrary
their acts may be to simplicity and to the truth of nature, are brought
back to it in their ideas. This sensibility in connection with nature is
specially and most strongly manifested, in the greater part of persons,
in connection with those sorts of objects which are closely related to
us, and which, causing us to look closer into ourselves, show us more
clearly what in us departs from nature; for example, in connection with
children, or with nations in a state of infancy. It is an error to
suppose that it is only the idea of their weakness that, in certain
moments, makes us dwell with our eyes on children with so much emotion.
This may be true with those who, in the presence of a feeble being, are
used to feel nothing but their own superiority. But the feeling of which
I speak is only experienced in a very peculiar moral disposition, nor
must it be confounded with the feeling awakened in us by the joyous
activity of children. The feeling of which I speak is calculated rather
to humble than to flatter our self-love; and if it gives us the idea of
some advantage, this advantage is at all events not on our side.
We are moved in the presence of childhood, but it is not because from the
height of our strength and of our perfection we drop a look of pity on
it; it is, on the contrary, because from the depths of our impotence, of
which the feeling is inseparable from that of the real and determinate
state to which we have arrived, we raise our eyes to the child's
determinableness and pure innocence. The feeling we then experience is
too evidently mingled with sadness for us to mistake its source. In the
child, all is disposition and destination; in us, all is in the state of
a completed, finished thing, and the completion always remains infinitely
below the destination. It follows that the child is to us like the
representation of the ideal; not, indeed, of the ideal as we have
realized it, but such as our destination admitted; and, consequently, it
is not at all the idea of its indigence, of its hinderances, that makes
us experience emotion in the child's presence; it is, on the contrary,
the idea of its pure and free force, of the integrity, the infinity of
its being. This is the reason why, in the sight of every moral and
sensible man, the child will always be a sacred thing; I mean an object
which, by the grandeur of an idea, reduces to nothingness all grandeur
realized by experience; an object which, in spite of all it may lose in
the judgment of the understanding, regains largely the advantage before
the judgment of reason.
Now it is precisely this contradiction between the judgment of reason and
that of the understanding which produces in us this quite special
phenomenon, this mixed feeling, called forth in us by the sight of the
simple--I mean the simple in the manner of thinking. It is at once the
idea of a childlike simplicity and of a childish simplicity. By what it
has of childish simplicity it exposes a weak side to the understanding,
and provokes in us that smile by which we testify our superiority (an
entirely speculative superiority). But directly we have reason to think
that childish simplicity is at the same time a childlike simplicity--that
it is not consequently a want of intelligence, an infirmity in a
theoretical point of view, but a superior force (practically), a
heart-full of truth and innocence, which is its source, a heart that has
despised the help of art because it was conscious of its real and
internal greatness--directly this is understood, the understanding no
longer seeks to triumph. Then raillery, which was directed against
simpleness, makes way for the admiration inspired by noble simplicity.
We feel ourselves obliged to esteem this object, which at first made us
smile, and directing our eyes to ourselves, to feel ourselves unhappy in
not resembling it. Thus is produced that very special phenomenon of a
feeling in which good-natured raillery, respect, and sadness are
confounded. It is the condition of the simple that nature should triumph
over art, either unconsciously to the individual and against his
inclination, or with his full and entire cognizance. In the former case
it is simplicity as a surprise, and the impression resulting from it is
one of gayety; in the second case, it is simplicity of feeling, and we
are moved.
With regard to simplicity as a surprise, the person must be morally
capable of denying nature. In simplicity of feeling the person may be
morally incapable of this, but we must not think him physically
incapable, in order that it may make upon us the impression of the
simple. This is the reason why the acts and words of children only
produce the impression of simplicity upon us when we forget that they are
physically incapable of artifice, and in general only when we are
exclusively impressed by the contrast between their natural character and
what is artificial in us. Simplicity is a childlike ingenuousness which
is encountered when it is not expected; and it is for this very reason
that, taking the word in its strictest sense, simplicity could not be
attributed to childhood properly speaking.
But in both cases, in simplicity as a surprise and simplicity as a
feeling, nature must always have the upper hand, and art succumb to her.
Until we have established this distinction we can only form an incomplete
idea of simplicity. The affections are also something natural, and the
rules of decency are artificial; yet the triumph of the affections over
decency is anything but simple. But when affection triumphs over
artifice, over false decency, over dissimulation, we shall have no
difficulty in applying the word simple to this. Nature must therefore
triumph over art, not by its blind and brutal force as a dynamical power,
but in virtue of its form as a moral magnitude; in a word, not as a want,
but as an internal necessity. It must not be insufficiency, but the