Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
but accessorily this effect, and make its chief object an aim so vulgar
as we imagine pleasure to be. But this apparent contradiction it would
be very easy to conciliate if we had a good theory of pleasure, and a
complete system of aesthetic philosophy.
It would result from this theory that a free pleasure, as that which the
fine arts procure for us, rests wholly upon moral conditions, and all the
moral faculties of man are exercised in it. It would further result that
this pleasure is an aim which can never be attained but by moral means,
and consequently that art, to tend and perfectly attain to pleasure, as
to a real aim, must follow the road of healthy morals. Thus it is
perfectly indifferent for the dignity of art whether its aim should be a
moral aim, or whether it should reach only through moral means; for in
both cases it has always to do with the morality, and must be rigorously
in unison with the sentiment of duty; but for the perfection of art, it
is by no means indifferent which of the two should be the aim and which
the means. If it is the aim that is moral, art loses all that by which
it is powerful,--I mean its freedom, and that which gives it so much
influence over us--the charm of pleasure. The play which recreates is
changed into serious occupation, and yet it is precisely in recreating us
that art can the better complete the great affair--the moral work. It
cannot have a salutary influence upon the morals but in exercising its
highest aesthetic action, and it can only produce the aesthetic effect in
its highest degree in fully exercising its liberty.
It is certain, besides, that all pleasure, the moment it flows from a
moral source, renders man morally better, and then the effect in its turn
becomes cause. The pleasure we find in what is beautiful, or touching,
or sublime, strengthens our moral sentiments, as the pleasure we find in
kindness, in love, etc., strengthens these inclinations. And just as
contentment of the mind is the sure lot of the morally excellent man, so
moral excellence willingly accompanies satisfaction of heart. Thus the
moral efficacy of art is, not only because it employs moral means in
order to charm us, but also because even the pleasure which it procures
us is a means of morality.
There are as many means by which art can attain its aim as there are in
general sources from which a free pleasure for the mind can flow. I call
a free pleasure that which brings into play the spiritual forces--reason
and imagination--and which awakens in us a sentiment by the
representation of an idea, in contradistinction to physical or sensuous
pleasure, which places our soul under the dependence of the blind forces
of nature, and where sensation is immediately awakened in us by a
physical cause. Sensual pleasure is the only one excluded from the
domain of the fine arts; and the talent of exciting this kind of pleasure
could never raise itself to the dignity of an art, except in the case
where the sensual impressions are ordered, reinforced or moderated, after
a plan which is the production of art, and which is recognized by
representation. But, in this case even, that alone here can merit the
name of art which is the object of a free pleasure--I mean good taste in
the regulation, which pleases our understanding, and not physical charms
themselves, which alone flatter our sensibility.
The general source of all pleasure, even of sensual pleasure, is
propriety, the conformity with the aim. Pleasure is sensual when this
propriety is manifested by means of some necessary law of nature which
has for physical result the sensation of pleasure. Thus the movement of
the blood, and of the animal life, when in conformity with the aim of
nature, produces in certain organs, or in the entire organism, corporeal
pleasure with all its varieties and all its modes. We feel this
conformity by the means of agreeable sensation, but we arrive at no
representation of it, either clear or confused.
Pleasure is free when we represent to ourselves the conformability, and
when the sensation that accompanies this representation is agreeable.
Thus all the representations by which we have notice that there is
propriety and harmony between the end and the means, are for us the
sources of free pleasure, and consequently can be employed to this end by
the fine arts. Thus, all the representations can be placed under one of
these heads: the good, the true, the perfect, the beautiful, the
touching, the sublime. The good especially occupies our reason; the true
and perfect, our intelligence; the beautiful interests both the
intelligence and the imagination; the touching and the sublime, the
reason and the imagination. It is true that we also take pleasure in the
charm (Reiz) or the power called out by action from play, but art uses
charm only to accompany the higher enjoyments which the idea of propriety
gives to us. Considered in itself the charm or attraction is lost amid
the sensations of life, and art disdains it together with all merely
sensual pleasures.
We could not establish a classification of the fine arts only upon the
difference of the sources from which each of them draws the pleasure
which it affords us; for in the same class of the fine arts many sorts of
pleasures may enter, and often all together. But in as far as a certain
sort of pleasure is pursued as a principal aim, we can make of it, if not
a specific character of a class properly so called, at least the
principle and the tendency of a class in the works of art. Thus, for
example, we could take the arts which, above all, satisfy the
intelligence and imagination--consequently those which have as chief
object the true, the perfect, and the beautiful--and unite them under the
name of fine arts (arts of taste, arts of intelligence); those, on the
other hand, which especially occupy the imagination and the reason, and
which, in consequence, have for principal object the good, the sublime,
and the touching, could be limited in a particular class under the
denomination of touching arts (arts of sentiment, arts of the heart).
Without doubt it is impossible to separate absolutely the touching from
the beautiful, but the beautiful can perfectly subsist without the
touching. Thus, although we are not authorized to base upon this
difference of principle a rigorous classification of the liberal arts, it
can at least serve to determine with more of precision the criterion, and
prevent the confusion in which we are inevitably involved, when, drawing
up laws of aesthetic things, we confound two absolutely different
domains, as that of the touching and that of the beautiful.
The touching and the sublime resemble in this point, that both one and
the other produce a pleasure by a feeling at first of displeasure, and
that consequently (pleasure proceeding from suitability, and displeasure
from the contrary) they give us a feeling of suitability which
presupposes an unsuitability.
The feeling of the sublime is composed in part of the feeling of our
feebleness, of our impotence to embrace an object; and, on the other
side, of the feeling of our moral power--of this superior faculty which
fears no obstacle, no limit, and which subdues spiritually that even to
which our physical forces give way. The object of the sublime thwarts,
then, our physical power; and this contrariety (impropriety) must
necessarily excite a displeasure in us. But it is, at the same time, an
occasion to recall to our conscience another faculty which is in us--a
faculty which is even superior to the objects before which our
imagination yields. In consequence, a sublime object, precisely because
it thwarts the senses, is suitable with relation to reason, and it gives
to us a joy by means of a higher faculty, at the same time that it wounds
us in an inferior one.
The touching, in its proper sense, designates this mixed sensation, into
which enters at the same time suffering and the pleasure that we find in
suffering. Thus we can only feel this kind of emotion in the case of a
personal misfortune, only when the grief that we feel is sufficiently
tempered to leave some place for that impression of pleasure that would
be felt by a compassionate spectator. The loss of a great good
prostrates for the time, and the remembrance itself of the grief will
make us experience emotion after a year. The feeble man is always the
prey of his grief; the hero and the sage, whatever the misfortune that
strikes them, never experience more than emotion.
Emotion, like the sentiment of the sublime, is composed of two
affections--grief and pleasure. There is, then, at the bottom a
propriety, here as well as there, and under this propriety a
contradiction. Thus it seems that it is a contradiction in nature that
man, who is not born to suffer, is nevertheless a prey to suffering, and
this contradiction hurts us. But the evil which this contradiction does
us is a propriety with regard to our reasonable nature in general,
insomuch as this evil solicits us to act: it is a propriety also with
regard to human society; consequently, even displeasure, which excites in
us this contradiction, ought necessarily to make us experience a
sentiment of pleasure, because this displeasure is a propriety. To
determine in an emotion if it is pleasure or displeasure which triumphs,
we must ask ourselves if it is the idea of impropriety or that of
propriety which affects us the more deeply. That can depend either on
the number of the aims reached or abortive, or on their connection with
the final aim of all.
The suffering of the virtuous man moves us more painfully than that of
the perverse man, because in the first case there is contradiction not
only to the general destiny of man, which is happiness, but also to this
other particular principle, viz., that virtue renders happy; whilst in
the second case there is contradiction only with regard to the end of man
in general. Reciprocally, the happiness of the wicked also offends us
much more than the misfortune of the good man, because we find in it a
double contradiction: in the first place vice itself, and, in the second
place, the recompense of vice.
There is also this other consideration, that virtue is much more able to
recompense itself than vice, when it triumphs, is to punish itself; and
it is precisely for this that the virtuous man in misfortune would much
more remain faithful to the cultus of virtue than the perverse man would
dream of converting himself in prosperity.
But what is above all important in determining in the emotions the
relation of pleasure and displeasure, is to compare the two ends--that
which has been fulfilled and that which has been ignored--and to see
which is the most considerable. There is no propriety which touches us
so nearly as moral propriety, and no superior pleasure to that which we
feel from it. Physical propriety could well be a problem, and a problem
forever unsolvable. Moral propriety is already demonstrated. It alone
is founded upon our reasonable nature and upon internal necessity. It is
our nearest interest, the most considerable, and, at the same time, the
most easily recognized, because it is not determined by any external
element but by an internal principle of our reason: it is the palladium
of our liberty.
This moral propriety is never more vividly recognized than when it is
found in conflict with another propriety, and still keeps the upper hand;
then only the moral law awakens in full power, when we find it struggling
against all the other forces of nature, and when all those forces lose in
its presence their empire over a human soul. By these words, "the other
forces of nature," we must understand all that is not moral force, all
that is not subject to the supreme legislation of reason: that is to say,