Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian
Kant · en
From the antagonism of the two impulsions, and from the association
of two opposite principles, we have seen beauty to result, of which
the highest ideal must therefore be sought in the most perfect union
and equilibrium possible of the reality and of the form. But this
equilibrium remains always an idea that reality can never completely
reach. In reality, there will always remain a preponderance of one
of these elements over the other, and the highest point to which
experience can reach will consist in an oscillation between two
principles, when sometimes reality and at others form will have the
advantage. Ideal beauty is therefore eternally one and indivisible,
because there can only be one single equilibrium; on the contrary,
experimental beauty will be eternally double, because in the
oscillation the equilibrium may be destroyed in two ways--this side
and that.
I have called attention in the foregoing letters to a fact that can
also be rigorously deduced from the considerations that have engaged
our attention to the present point; this fact is that an exciting
and also a moderating action may be expected from the beautiful. The
TEMPERING action is directed to keep within proper limits the
sensuous and the formal impulsions; the EXCITING, to maintain both
of them in their full force. But these two modes of action of beauty
ought to be completely identified in the idea. The beautiful ought
to temper while uniformly exciting the two natures, and it ought
also to excite while uniformly moderating them. This result flows at
once from the idea of a correlation, in virtue of which the two
terms mutually imply each other, and are the reciprocal condition
one of the other, a correlation of which the purest product is
beauty. But experience does not offer an example of so perfect a
correlation. In the field of experience it will always happen more
or less that excess on the one side will give rise to deficiency on
the other, and deficiency will give birth to excess. It results from
this that what in the beau-ideal is only distinct in the idea, is
different in reality in empirical beauty, The beau-ideal, though
simple and indivisible, discloses, when viewed in two different
aspects, on the one hand a property of gentleness and grace, and on
the other an energetic property; in experience there is a gentle and
graceful beauty, and there is an energetic beauty. It is so, and it
will be always so, so long as the absolute is enclosed in the limits
of time, and the ideas of reason have to be realised in humanity.
For example, the intellectual man has the idea of virtue, of truth,
and of happiness; but the active man will only practise VIRTUES,
will only grasp TRUTHS, and enjoy HAPPY DAYS. The business of
physical and moral education is to bring back this multiplicity to
unity, to put morality in the place of manners, science in the place
of knowledge; the business of aesthetic education is to make out of
beauties the beautiful.