I approach continually nearer to the end to which I lead you,by a path offering few attractions.Be pleased to follow me a few steps further,and a large horizon will open up to you and a delightful prospect will reward you for the labour of the way.
The object of the sensuous instinct,expressed in a universal conception,is named Life in the widest acceptation:a conception that expresses all material existence and all that is immediately present in the senses.The object of the formal instinct,expressed in a universal conception,is called shape or form,as well in an exact as in an inexact acceptation;a conception that embraces all formal qualities of things and all relations of the same to the thinking powers.The object of the play instinct,represented in a general statement,may therefore bear the name of living form;a term that serves to describe all aesthetic qualities of phaenomena,and what people style,in the widest sense,beauty.
Beauty is neither extended to the whole field of all living things nor merely enclosed in this field.A marble block,though it is and remains lifeless,can nevertheless become a living form by the architect and sculptor;a man,though he lives and has a form,is far from being a living form on that account.For this to be the case,it is necessary that his form should be life,and that his life should be a form.As long as we only think of his form,it is lifeless,a mere abstraction;as long as we only feel his life,it is without form,a mere impression.It is only when his form lives in our feeling,and his life in our understanding,he is the living form,and this will everywhere be the case where we judge him to be beautiful.
But the genesis of beauty is by no means declared because we know how to point out the component parts,which in their combination produce beauty.
For to this end it would be necessary to comprehend that combination itself,which continues to defy our exploration,as well as all mutual operation between the finite and the infinite.The reason,on transcendental grounds,makes the following demand:There shall be a communion between the formal impulse and the material impulse -that is,there shall be a play instinct -because it is only the unity of reality with the form,of the accidental with the necessary,of the passive state with freedom,that the conception of humanity is completed.Reason is obliged to make this demand,because her nature impels her to completeness and to the removal of all bounds;while every exclusive activity of one or the other impulse leaves human nature incomplete and places a limit in it.Accordingly,as soon as reason issues the mandate,"a humanity shall exist,"it proclaims at the same time the law,"there shall be a beauty."Experience can answer us if there is a beauty,and we shall know it as soon as she has taught us if a humanity can exist.But neither reason nor experience can tell us how beauty can be,and how a humanity is possible.
We know that man is neither exclusively matter nor exclusively spirit.
Accordingly,beauty,as the consummation of humanity,can neither be exclusively mere life,as has been asserted by sharp-sighted observers,who kept too close to the testimony of experience,and to which the taste of the time would gladly degrade it;Nor can beauty be merely form,as has been judged by speculative sophists,who departed too far from experience,and by philosophic artists,who were led too much by the necessity of art in explaining beauty;it is rather the common object of both impulses,that is,of the play instinct.
The use of language completely justifies this name,as it is wont to qualify with the word play what is neither subjectively nor objectively accidental,and yet does not impose necessity either externally or internally.As the mind in the intuition of the beautiful finds itself in a happy medium between law and necessity,it is,because it divides itself between both,emancipated from the pressure of both.The formal impulse and the material impulse are equally earnest in their demands,because one relates in its cognition to things in their reality and the other to their necessity;because in action the first is directed to the preservation of life,the second to the preservation of dignity,and therefore both to truth and perfection.
