There is also a negative species of the charming or exciting which is even
more reprehensible than the positive form which has been discussed; this
is the disgusting or the loathsome. It arouses the will of the beholder,
just as what is properly speaking charming, and therefore disturbs pure
æsthetic contemplation. But it is an active aversion and opposition which
is excited by it; it arouses the will by presenting to it objects which it
abhors. Therefore it has always been recognised that it is altogether
inadmissible in art, where even what is ugly, when it is not disgusting,
is allowable in its proper place, as we shall see later.
§ 41. The course of the discussion has made it necessary to insert at this
point the treatment of the sublime, though we have only half done with the
beautiful, as we have considered its subjective side only. For it was
merely a special modification of this subjective side that distinguished
the beautiful from the sublime. This difference was found to depend upon
whether the state of pure will-less knowing, which is presupposed and
demanded by all æsthetic contemplation, was reached without opposition, by
the mere disappearance of the will from consciousness, because the object
invited and drew us towards it; or whether it was only attained through
the free, conscious transcending of the will, to which the object
contemplated had an unfavourable and even hostile relation, which would
destroy contemplation altogether, if we were to give ourselves up to it.
This is the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime. In the
object they are not essentially different, for in every case the object of
æsthetical contemplation is not the individual thing, but the Idea in it
which is striving to reveal itself; that is to say, adequate objectivity
of will at a particular grade. Its necessary correlative, independent,
like itself of the principle of sufficient reason, is the pure subject of
knowing; just as the correlative of the particular thing is the knowing
individual, both of which lie within the province of the principle of
sufficient reason.