This awakening of all feelings in us, the dragging of the heart through the whole significance of life, the realization of all such inner movements by means of a presented exterior consisting merely in deception--all this was what, from the point of view which we have been considering, constituted the peculiar and pre-eminent power of art. Now, as this mode of treatment credits art with the vocation of impressing on the heart and on the imagination good and bad alike, and of strengthening man to the noblest, as of enervating him to the most sensuous and selfish emotions, it follows that the task set before art is still purely formal, and so it would have no certain purpose, but would merely furnish the empty form for every possible kind of significance and content. (_c_) It is a fact that art does include this formal side, in that it has power to present every possible subject-matter in artistic dress, before perception and feeling, just exactly as argumentative[80] reflection has the power of manipulating all possible objects and modes of action, and of furnishing them with reasons and justifications. But when we admit so great a variety of content we are at once met by the remark that the manifold feelings and ideas, which art aims at provoking or reinforcing, intersect and contradict, and by mutual interference cancel one another. Indeed, in this aspect, in so far as art inspires men to directly opposite emotions, it only magnifies the contradiction of our feelings and passions, and either sets them staggering like Bacchantes, or passes into sophistry and scepticism, in the same way as argumentation.[81] This diversity of the material of art itself compels us, therefore, not to be content with so formal[82] an aim for it, seeing that rationality forces its way into this wild diversity, and demands to see the emergence of a higher and more universal purpose from these elements in spite of their self-contradiction, and to be assured of its being attained. Just in the same way the State and the social life of men are, of course, credited with the purpose that in them _all_ human capacities and _all_ individual powers are to be developed and to find utterance in _all_ directions and with _all_ tendencies. But in opposition to so formal a view there at once arises the question in what _unity_ these manifold formations must be comprehended, and what _single end_ they must have for their fundamental idea and ultimate purpose. As such an end, reflection soon suggests the notion that art has the capacity and the function of mitigating the fierceness of the desires.