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
Thus compressed between two forces, within and without, could humanity
follow any other course than that which it has taken? The speculative
mind, pursuing imprescriptible goods and rights in the sphere of ideas,
must needs have become a stranger to the world of sense, and lose sight
of matter for the sake of form. On its part, the world of public
affairs, shut up in a monotonous circle of objects, and even there
restricted by formulas, was led to lose sight of the life and liberty of
the whole, while becoming impoverished at the same time in its own
sphere. Just as the speculative mind was tempted to model the real after
the intelligible, and to raise the subjective laws of its imagination
into laws constituting the existence of things, so the state spirit
rushed into the opposite extreme, wished to make a particular and
fragmentary experience the measure of all observation, and to apply
without exception to all affairs the rules of its own particular craft.
The speculative mind had necessarily to become the prey of a vain
subtlety, the state spirit of a narrow pedantry; for the former was
placed too high to see the individual, and the latter too low to survey
the whole. But the disadvantage of this direction of mind was not
confined to knowledge and mental production; it extended to action and
feeling. We know that the sensibility of the mind depends, as to degree,
on the liveliness, and for extent on the richness of the imagination.
Now the predominance of the faculty of analysis must necessarily deprive
the imagination of its warmth and energy, and a restricted sphere of
objects must diminish its wealth. It is for this reason that the
abstract thinker has very often a _cold_ heart, because he analyzes
impressions, which only move the mind by their combination or totality;
on the other hand, the man of business, the statesman, has very often a
_narrow_ heart, because, shut up in the narrow circle of his employment,
his imagination can neither expand nor adapt itself to another manner of
viewing things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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