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
In fact, according to the pure ideal, the ennobling goes on to infinity,
because reason is not restricted to any sensuous limits, and only finds
rest in absolute perfection. Nothing can satisfy whilst a superior thing
can be conceived; it judges strictly and admits no excuses of infirmity
and finite nature. It only admits for limits those of thought, which
transcends time and space. Hence the poet could no more propose to
himself such an ideal of ennobling (traced for him by pure (didactic)
reason) any more than the coarse ideal of recreation of sensuous nature.
The aim is to free human nature from accidental hinderances, without
destroying the essential ideal of our humanity, or displacing its
limits. All beyond this is exaggeration, and a quicksand in which the
poet too easily suffers shipwreck if he mistakes the idea of nobleness.
But, unfortunately, he cannot rise to the true ideal of ennobled human
nature without going some steps beyond it. To rise so high he must
abandon the world of reality, for, like every ideal, it is only to be
drawn from its inner moral source. He does not find it in the turmoil of
worldly life, but only in his heart, and that only in calm meditation.
But in this separation from real life he is likely to lose sight of all
the limits of human nature, and seeking pure form he may easily lose
himself in arbitrary and baseless conceptions. Reason will abstract
itself too much from experience, and the practical man will not be able
to carry out, in the crush of real life, what the contemplative mind has
discovered on the peaceful path of thought. Thus, what makes a dreamy
man is the very thing that alone could have made him a sage; and the
advantage for the latter is not that he has never been a dreamer, but
rather that he has not remained one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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