It will be also troublesome to recognise the instinct of play in its first trials,seeing that the sensuous impulsion,with its capricious humour and its violent appetites,constantly crosses.It is on that account that we see the taste,still coarse,seize that which is new and startling,the disordered,the adventurous and the strange,the violent and the savage,and fly from nothing so much as from calm and simplicity.It invents grotesque figures,it likes rapid transitions,luxurious forms,sharply marked changes,acute tones,a pathetic song.That which man calls beautiful at this time,is that which excites him,that which gives him matter;but that which excites him to give his personality to the object,that which gives matter to a possible plastic operation,for otherwise it would not be the beautiful for him.A remarkable change has therefore taken place in form of his judgments;he searches for these objects,not because they affect him,but because they furnish him with the occasion of acting;they please him,not because they answer to a want,but because they satisfy a law,which speaks in his breast,although quite low as yet.
Soon it will not be sufficient for things to please him;he will wish to please:in the first place,it is true,only by that which belongs to him;afterwards by that which he is.That which he possesses,that which he produces,ought not merely to bear any more the traces of servitude,nor to mark out the end,simply and scrupulously,by the form.Independently of the use to which it is destined,the object ought also to reflect the enlightened intelligence which imagines it,the hand which shaped it with affection,the mind free and serene which chose it and exposed it to view.
Now,the ancient German searches for more magnificent furs,for more splendid antlers of the stag,for more elegant drinking horns;and the Caledonian chooses the prettiest shells for his festivals.The arms themselves ought to be no longer only objects of terror,but also of pleasure;and the skilfully worked scabbard will not attract less attention than the homicidal edge of the sword.The instinct of play,not satisfied with bringing into the sphere of the necessary an aesthetic superabundance for the future more free,is at last completely emancipated from the bonds of duty,and the beautiful becomes of itself an object of man's exertions.He adorns himself.
The free pleasure comes to take a place among his wants,and the useless soon becomes the best part of his joys.Form,which from the outside gradually approaches him,in his dwellings,his furniture,his clothing,begins at last to take possession of the man himself,to transform him,at first exteriorly,and afterwards in the interior.The disordered leaps of joy become the dance,the formless gesture is changed into an amiable and harmonious pantomime,the confused accents of feeling are developed,and begin to obey measure and adapt themselves to song.When,like the flight of cranes,the Trojan army rushes on to the field of battle with thrilling cries,the Greek army approaches in silence and with a noble and measured step.
On the one side we see but the exuberance of a blind force,on the other the triumph of form and the simple majesty of law.
Now,a nobler necessity binds the two sexes mutually,and the interests of the heart contribute in rendering durable an alliance which was at first capricious and changing like the desire that knits it.Delivered from the heavy fetters of desire,the eye,now calmer,attends to the form,the soul contemplates the soul,and the interested exchange of pleasure becomes a generous exchange of mutual inclination.Desire enlarges and rises to love,in proportion as it sees humanity dawn in its object;and,despising the vile triumphs gained by the senses,man tries to win a nobler victory over the will.The necessity of pleasing subjects the powerful nature to the gentle laws of taste;pleasure may be stolen,but love must be a gift.
To obtain this higher recompense,it is only through the form and not through matter that it can carry on the contest.It must cease to act on feeling as a force,to appear in the intelligence as a simple phaenomenon;it must respect liberty,as it is liberty it wishes to please.The beautiful reconciles the contrast of different natures in its simplest and purest expression.
It also reconciles the eternal contrast of the two sexes,in the whole complex framework of society,or at all events it seeks to do so;and,taking as its model the free alliance it has knit between manly strength and womanly gentleness,it strives to place in harmony,in the moral world,all the elements of gentleness and of violence.Now,at length,weakness becomes sacred,and an unbridled strength disgraces;the injustice of nature is corrected by the generosity of chivalrous manners.The being whom no power can make tremble,is disarmed by the amiable blush of modesty,and tears extinguish a vengeance that blood could not have quenched.Hatred itself hears the delicate voice of honour,the conqueror's sword spares the disarmed enemy,and a hospitable hearth smokes for the stranger on the dreaded hill-side where murder alone awaited him before.
