Aesthetical and philosophical essays : $b introducing the dissertation on the "connection between the animal and spiritual man"Schiller, Friedrich
Philosophy
Aesthetical and philosophical essays : $b introducing the dissertation on the "connection between the animal and spiritual man"
Schiller, Friedrich
Aesthetics; Philosophy
But all the movements of man are not capable of grace. Grace is never
otherwise than _beauty of form animated into movement by free will_; and
the movements which belong only to _physical nature_ could not merit the
name. It is true that an intellectual man, if he be keen, ends by
rendering himself master of almost all the movements of the body; but
when the chain which links a fine lineament to a moral sentiment
lengthens much, this lineament becomes the property of the structure,
and can no longer be counted as a grace. It happens, ultimately, that
the mind moulds the body, and that the structure is forced to modify
itself according to the _play_ that the soul imprints upon the organs,
so entirely, that grace finally is transformed—and the examples are not
rare—into architectonic beauty. As at one time an antagonistic mind
which is ill at ease with itself alters and destroys the most perfect
beauty of structure, until at last it becomes impossible to recognize
this magnificent _chef-d’œuvre_ of nature in the state to which it is
reduced under the unworthy hands of free will, so at other times the
serenity and perfect harmony of the soul come to the aid of the hampered
technique, unloose nature and develop with divine splendor the beauty of
form, enveloped until then, and oppressed.
The plastic nature of man has in it an infinity of resources to retrieve
the negligencies and repair the faults that she may have committed. To
this end it is sufficient that the mind, the moral agent, sustain it, or
even withhold from troubling it in the labor of rebuilding.
Since the movements become fixed (gestures pass to a state of
lineament), are themselves capable of grace, it would perhaps appear to
be rational to comprehend equally under this idea of beauty some
apparent or imitative movements (the flamboyant lines for example,
undulations). It is this which Mendelssohn upholds. But then the idea of
grace would be confounded with the ideal of beauty in general, for all
beauty is definitively but a property of true or apparent movement
(objective or subjective), as I hope to demonstrate in an analysis of
beauty. With regard to grace, the only movements which can offer any are
those which respond at the same time to a sentiment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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