Two principal and different states of passive and active capacity of being determined 1can be distinguished in man;in like manner two states of passive and active determination.2The explanation of this proposition leads us most readily to our end.[Footnote 1:Bestimmbarkeit.][Footnote 2:Bestimmung.]The condition of the state of man before destination or direction is given him by the impressions of the senses is an unlimited capacity of being determined.The infinite of time and space is given to his imagination for its free use;and,because nothing is settled in this kingdom of the possible,and therefore nothing is excluded from it,this state of absence of determination can be named an empty infiniteness,which must not by any means be confounded with an infinite void.
Now it is necessary that his sensuous nature should be modified,and that in the indefinite series of possible determinations one alone should become real.One perception must spring up in it.That which,in the previous state of determinableness,was only an empty potency becomes now an active force,and receives contents;but at the same time,as an active force it receives a limit,after having been,as a simple power,unlimited.Reality exists now,but the infinite has disappeared.To describe a figure in space,we are obliged to limit infinite space;to represent to ourselves a change in time,we are obliged to divide the totality of time.Thus we only arrive at reality by limitation,at the positive,at a real position,by negation or exclusion;to determination,by the suppression of our free determinableness.
But mere exclusion would never beget a reality,nor would a mere sensuous impression ever give birth to a perception,if there were not something from which it was excluded,if by an absolute act of the mind the negation were not referred to something positive,and if opposition did not issue out of nonposition.This act of the mind is styled judging or thinking,and the result is named thought.
Before we determine a place in space,there is no space for us;but without absolute space we could never determine a place.The same is the case with time.Before we have an instant,there is no time to us;but without infinite time -eternity -we should never have a representation of the instant.Thus,therefore,we can only arrive at the whole by the part,to the unlimited through limitation;but reciprocally we only arrive at the part through the whole,at limitation through the unlimited.
It follows from this,that when it is affirmed of beauty that it mediates for man,the transition from feeling to thought,this must not be understood to mean that beauty can fill up the gap that separates feeling from thought,the passive from the active.This gap is infinite;and,without the interposition of a new and independent faculty,it is impossible for the general to issue from the individual,the necessary from the contingent.Thought is the immediate act of this absolute power,which,I admit,can only be manifested in connection with sensuous impressions,but which in this manifestation depends so little on the sensuous that it reveals itself specially in an opposition to it.The spontaneity or autonomy with which it acts excludes every foreign influence;and it is not in as far as it helps thought -which comprehends a manifest contradiction -but only in as far as it procures for the intellectual faculties the freedom to manifest themselves in conformity with their proper laws.It does not only because the beautiful can become a means of leading man from matter to form,from feeling to laws,from a limited existence to an absolute existence.
But this assumes that the freedom of the intellectual faculties can be balked,which appears contradictory to the conception of an autonomous power.For a power which only receives the matter of its activity from without can only be hindered in its action by the privation of this matter,and consequently by way of negation;it is therefore a misconception of the nature of the mind,to attribute to the sensuous passions the power of oppressing positively the freedom of the mind.Experience does indeed present numerous examples where the rational forces appear compressed in proportion to the violence of the sensuous forces.But instead of deducing this spiritual weakness from the energy of passion,this passionate energy must rather be explained by the weakness of the human mind.For the sense can only have a sway such as this over man when the mind has spontaneously neglected to assert its power.
Yet in trying by these explanations to remove one objection,I appear to have exposed myself to another,and I have only saved the autonomy of the mind at the cost of its unity.For how can the mind derive at the same time from itself the principles of inactivity and of activity,if it is not itself divided,and if it is not in opposition with itself?
