Aesthetical and philosophical essays : $b introducing the dissertation on the "connection between the animal and spiritual man" — John Shaqi
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
It is not difficult to make application of these examples to what the
human face could be under the government of the mind. If the mind is
manifested in such a way through the sensuous nature subject to its
empire that it executes its behests with the most faithful exactitude,
or expresses its sentiments in the most perfectly speaking manner,
without going in the least against that which the æsthetic sense demands
from it as a phenomenon, then we shall see produced that which we call
_grace_. But this is far from being grace, if mind is manifested in a
constrained manner by the sensuous nature, or if sensuous nature acting
alone in all liberty the expression of moral nature was absent. In the
first case there would not be beauty; in the second the beauty would be
devoid of _play_.
The super-sensuous cause, therefore, the cause of which the principle is
in the soul, can alone render grace speaking, and it is the purely
sensuous cause having its principle in nature which alone can render it
beautiful. We are not more authorized in asserting that mind engenders
beauty than we should be, in the former example, in maintaining that the
chief of the state produces liberty; because we can indeed leave a man
in his liberty, but not give it to him.
But just as when a people feels itself free under the constraint of a
foreign will, it is in a great degree due to the sentiments animating
the prince; and as this liberty would run great risks if the prince took
opposite sentiments, so also it is in the moral dispositions of the mind
which suggests them that we must seek the beauty of free movements. And
now the question which is presented is this one: What then are the
conditions of personal morality which assure the utmost amount of
liberty to the sensuous instruments of the will? and what are the moral
sentiments which agree the best in their expression with the beautiful?
That which is evident is that neither the will, in the intentional
movement, nor the passion, in the sympathetic movement, ought to act as
a force with regard to the physical nature which is subject to it, in
order that this, in obeying it, may have beauty. In truth, without going
further, common sense considers _ease_ to be the first requisite of
grace. It is not less evident that, on another side, nature ought not to
act as a force with regard to mind, in order to give occasion for a fine
moral expression; for there, where physical nature commands alone, it is
absolutely necessary that the character of the man should vanish.
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