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 nevertheless, though that part of the movement is not determined by
the intention itself, it must be decided at length in one way or the
other, and the reason is that the manner in which my moral sensibility
is affected can have here decisive influence: it is this which will give
the _tone_, and which thus determines the mode and the manner of the
movement. Therefore this influence, which exercises upon the voluntary
movement the state of moral sensibility in which the subject is found,
represents precisely the involuntary part of this movement, and it is
there then that we must seek for grace.
A voluntary movement, if it is not linked to any sympathetic movement—or
that which comes to the same thing, if there is nothing involuntary
mixed up with it having for principle the moral state of sensibility in
which the subject happens to be—could not in any manner present _grace_,
for grace always supposes as a cause a disposition of the soul.
Voluntary movement is produced after an operation of the soul, which in
consequence is already completed at the moment in which the movement
takes place.
The sympathetic movement, on the contrary, accompanies this operation of
the soul, and the moral state of sensibility which decides it to this
operation. So that this movement ought to be considered as simultaneous
with regard to both one and the other.
From that alone it results that voluntary movement not proceeding
immediately from the disposition of the subject could not be an
expression of this disposition also. For between the disposition and the
movement itself the volition has intervened, which, considered in
itself, is something perfectly indifferent. This movement is the work of
the volition, it is determined by the aim that is proposed; it is not
the work of the person, nor the product of the sentiments that affect
it.
The voluntary movement is united but accidentally with the disposition
which precedes it; the concomitant movement, on the contrary, is
necessarily linked to it. The first is to the soul that which the
conventional signs of speech are to the thoughts which they express. The
second, on the contrary, the sympathetic movement or concomitant, is to
the soul that which the cry of passion is to the passion itself. The
involuntary movement is, then, an expression of the mind, not by its
_nature_, but only by its _use_. And in consequence we are not
authorized to say that the mind is revealed in a voluntary movement;
this movement never expresses more than the substance of the will (the
aim), and not the form of the will (the disposition). The disposition
can only manifest itself to us by concomitant movements.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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