Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
instinct of our own happiness, they take up all our thoughts, and seize
hold of us too powerfully to allow any room for the feeling of pleasure
that accompanies them, when the affection is freed from all personal
relation. Thus, in the mind that is really a prey to painful passion,
the feeling of pain commands all others notwithstanding all the charm
that the painting of its moral state may offer to the hearers and the
spectators. And yet the painful affection is not deprived of all
pleasure, even for him who experiences it directly; only this pleasure
differs in degree according to the nature of each person's mind. The
sports of chance would not have half so much attraction for us were there
not a kind of enjoyment in anxiety, in doubt, and in fear; danger would
not be encountered from mere foolhardiness; and the very sympathy which
interests us in the trouble of another would not be to us that pleasure
which is never more lively than at the very moment when the illusion is
strongest, and when we substitute ourselves most entirely in the place of
the person who suffers. But this does not imply that disagreeable
affections cause pleasure of themselves, nor do I think any one will
uphold this view; it suffices that these states of the mind are the
conditions that alone make possible for its certain kinds of pleasure.
Thus the hearts particularly sensitive to this kind of pleasure, and most
greedy of them, will be more easily led to share these disagreeable
affections, which are the condition of the former; and even in the most
violent storms of passion they will always preserve some remains of their
freedom.
The displeasure we feel in disagreeable affections comes from the
relation of our sensuous faculty or of our moral faculty with their
object. In like manner, the pleasure we experience in agreeable
affections proceeds from the very same source. The degree of liberty
that may prevail in the affections depends on the proportion between the
moral nature and the sensuous nature of a man. Now it is well known that
in the moral order there is nothing arbitrary for us, that, on the
contrary, the sensuous instinct is subject to the laws of reason and
consequently depends more or less on our will. Hence it is evident that
we can keep our liberty full and entire in all those affections that are
concerned with the instinct of self-love, and that we are the masters to
determine the degree which they ought to attain. This degree will be
less in proportion as the moral sense in a man will prevail over the
instinct of happiness, and as by obeying the universal laws of reasons he
will have freed himself from the selfish requirements of his
individuality, his Ego. A man of this kind must therefore, in a state of
passion, feel much less vividly the relation of an object with his own
instinct of happiness, and consequently he will be much less sensible of
the displeasure that arises from this relation. On the other hand, he
will be perpetually more attentive to the relation of this same object
with his moral nature, and for this very reason he will be more sensible
to the pleasure which the relation of the object with morality often
mingles with the most painful affections. A mind thus constituted is
better fitted than all others to enjoy the pleasure attaching to
compassion, and even to regard a personal affection as an object of
simple compassion. Hence the inestimable value of a moral philosophy,
which, by raising our eyes constantly towards general laws, weakens in us
the feeling of our individuality, teaches us to plunge our paltry
personality in something great, and enables us thus to act to ourselves
as to strangers. This sublime state of the mind is the lot of strong
philosophic minds, which by working assiduously on themselves have
learned to bridle the egotistical instinct. Even the most cruel loss
does not drive them beyond a certain degree of sadness, with which an
appreciable sum of pleasure can always be reconciled. These souls, which
are alone capable of separating themselves from themselves, alone enjoy
the privilege of sympathizing with themselves and of receiving of their
own sufferings only a reflex, softened by sympathy.
The indications contained in what precedes will suffice to direct our
attention to the sources of the pleasure that the affection in itself
causes, more particularly the sad affection. We have seen that this
pleasure is more energetic in moral souls, and it acts with greater
freedom in proportion as the soul is more independent of the egotistical
instinct. This pleasure is, moreover, more vivid and stronger in sad
affections, when self-love is painfully disquieted, than in gay
affections, which imply a satisfaction of self-love. Accordingly this
pleasure increases when the egotistical instinct is wounded, and
diminishes when that instinct is flattered. Now we only know of two
sources of pleasure--the satisfaction of the instinct of happiness, and
the accomplishment of the moral laws. Therefore, when it is shown that a
particular pleasure does not emanate from the former source, it must of
necessity issue from the second. It is therefore from our moral nature
that issues the charm of the painful affections shared by sympathy, and
the pleasure that we sometimes feel even where the painful affection
directly affects ourselves.
Many attempts have been made to account for the pleasure of pity, but
most of these solutions had little chance of meeting the problem, because
the principle of this phenomenon was sought for rather in the
accompanying circumstances than in the nature of the affection itself.
To many persons the pleasure of pity is simply the pleasure taken by the
mind in exercising its own sensibility. To others it is the pleasure of
occupying their forces energetically, of exercising the social faculty
vividly--in short, of satisfying the instinct of restlessness. Others
again make it derived from the discovery of morally fine features of
character, placed in a clear light by the struggle against adversity or
against the passions. But there is still the difficulty to explain why
it should be exactly the very feeling of pain,--suffering properly so
called,--that in objects of pity attracts us with the greatest force,
while, according to those elucidations, a less degree of suffering ought
evidently to be more favorable to those causes to which the source of the
emotion is traced. Various matters may, no doubt, increase the pleasure
of the emotion without occasioning it. Of this nature are the vividness
and force of the ideas awakened in our imagination, the moral excellence
of the suffering persons, the reference to himself of the person feeling
pity. I admit that the suffering of a weak soul, and the pain of a
wicked character, do not procure us this enjoyment. But this is because
they do not excite our pity to the same degree as the hero who suffers,
or the virtuous man who struggles. Thus we are constantly brought back
to the first question: why is it precisely the degree of suffering that
determines the degree of sympathetic pleasure which we take in an
emotion? and one answer only is possible; it is because the attack made
on our sensibility is precisely the condition necessary to set in motion
that quality of mind of which the activity produces the pleasure we feel
in sympathetic affections.
Now this faculty is no other than the reason; and because the free
exercise of reason, as an absolutely independent activity, deserves par
excellence the name of activity; as, moreover, the heart of man only
feels itself perfectly free and independent in its moral acts, it follows
that the charm of tragic emotions is really dependent on the fact that
this instinct of activity finds its gratification in them. But, even
admitting this, it is neither the great number nor the vivacity of the
ideas that are awakened then in our imagination, nor in general the
exercise of the social faculty, but a certain kind of ideas and a certain
activity of the social faculty brought into play by reason, which is the
foundation of this pleasure.
Thus the sympathetic affections in general are for us a source of
pleasure because they give satisfaction to our instinct of activity, and
the sad affections produce this effect with more vividness because they
give more satisfaction to this instinct. The mind only reveals all its
activity when it is in full possession of its liberty, when it has a
perfect consciousness of its rational nature, because it is only then
that it displays a force superior to all resistance.
Hence the state of mind which allows most effectually the manifestation
of this force, and awakens most successfully its activity, is that state
which is most suitable to a rational being, and which best satisfies our
instincts of activity: whence it follows that a greater amount of
pleasure must be attached necessarily to this state. Now it is the
tragic states that place our soul in this state, and the pleasure found
in them is necessarily higher than the charm produced by gay affections,
in the same degree that moral power in us is superior to the power of the
senses.
Points that are only subordinate and partial in a system of final causes
may be considered by art independently of that relation with the rest,
and may be converted into principal objects. It is right that in the
designs of nature pleasure should only be a mediate end, or a means; but
for art it is the highest end. It is therefore essentially important for
art not to neglect this high enjoyment attaching to the tragic emotion.
Now, tragic art, taking this term in its widest acceptation, is that
among the fine arts which proposes as its principal object the pleasure
of pity.
Art attains its end by the imitation of nature, by satisfying the
conditions which make pleasure possible in reality, and by combining,
according to a plan traced by the intelligence, the scattered elements
furnished by nature, so as to attain as a principal end to that which,
for nature, was only an accessory end. Thus tragic art ought to imitate
nature in those kinds of actions that are specially adapted to awaken
pity.
It follows that, in order to determine generally the system to be
followed by tragic art, it is necessary before all things to know on what
conditions in real life the pleasure of the emotion is commonly produced
in the surest and the strongest manner; but it is necessary at the same
time to pay attention to the circumstances that restrict or absolutely
extinguish this pleasure.
After what we have established in our essay "On the Cause of the Pleasure
we derive from Tragic Objects," it is known that in every tragic emotion
there is an idea of incongruity, which, though the emotion may be
attended with charm, must always lead on to the conception of a higher
consistency. Now it is the relation that these two opposite conceptions
mutually bear which determines in an emotion if the prevailing impression
shall be pleasurable or the reverse. If the conception of incongruity be
more vivid than that of the contrary, or if the end sacrificed is more
important than the end gained, the prevailing impression will always be
displeasure, whether this be understood objectively of the human race in
general, or only subjectively of certain individuals.
If the cause that has produced a misfortune gives us too much
displeasure, our compassion for the victim is diminished thereby. The
heart cannot feel simultaneously, in a high degree, two absolutely
contrary affections. Indignation against the person who is the primary
cause of the suffering becomes the prevailing affection, and all other
feeling has to yield to it. Thus our interest is always enfeebled when
the unhappy man whom it would be desirable to pity had cast himself into